“Mima, are you watching this? It must look painful, I know. But it’s not that bad. As long as I avoid cutting any nerves, the pain isn’t too terrible. What really hurts is when I peel away the skin. What I learned from Ochiai Eri was that it’s best not to be overly cautious about it. Here, watch this. It’s better just to tear it off quickly—like this.”
The man put his hands to the sagging skin of his face and yanked. With a sound like shredding rubber, his outer layer began to separate. Blood sprayed from his face, from his neck, even from his shoulders.
Moaning, groaning, with his skin in his hands, he turned to Mima. His face had been completely peeled, and his shoulders were well on their way.
The man’s white T-shirt was painted red, his jeans sopping wet.
Mima tried to look away, but even as she tried, her eyes were inexorably drawn back to him. Attached here and there to the back side of the torn-off skin were clumps of flesh dotted with white fatty tissue.
As strange as the thought was, amid this horrific, stomach-turning ritual, the sight reminded Mima of a bug shedding its chrysalis to emerge a butterfly.
II
“This is odd,” Tadokoro said with a frown.
“Very odd,” Murano Yuji agreed.
The lights were on, the cooking underway, and Rumi and Mima were gone.
“The door was unlocked, too,” Tadokoro said. He’d been to Mima’s apartment dozens of times, but never had he known her to leave without locking up. “Something might have happened.”
The manager began searching the room. After a moment, Yuji called to him from the entryway. “I found something.”
Tadokoro ran over to the photographer, who held a scrap of paper.
“What is it?” Tadokoro asked. “Did she leave a note?”
Yuji spread open the paper. Scrawled on it in pencil were the words, “Old K-TV.”
The photographer scratched his head as he tried to work out what the note meant. “K-TV used to have a studio over in Azabu, didn’t they?”
Tadokoro thought about it a short while, then suddenly lifted his head. He looked to Yuji and said, “We need to go—now. To the old K-TV station. I’ve got the feeling something bad is going on.”
Tadokoro and Yuji ran into the darkness of the night.
III
In the scarlet mask, two eyes stared at Mima.
Mima stared right back at them.
The singer was struck by how repulsive the human face was without skin to hide it. The structure of the man’s flesh was laid open to the world. His eyeballs were exposed, almost wholly round. Two red holes remained where his nose had once been. With no lips, his teeth were bared down to his gums.
Mima thought, He’s not a human anymore. He’s a monster—a monster of red flesh.
He was on his hands and knees, creeping toward her. The man opened and closed his jaw as he spoke to Mima. His voice was oddly wispy, like that of a toothless old woman, and his words were hard to make out.
“Your skin comes off next,” he said.
The skin from his shoulders drooped down over his chest. Every time he slinked another step closer, the tissue flapped about.
With her wrists and ankles still bound by tape, she pushed with her arms and legs to get away from him. Curling her body up tightly, she slowly, slowly, backed herself toward the sink. All too soon, she had nowhere left to go. Her back was against the wall.
Mima was out of ideas.
The mass of blood and flesh that used to be a man was drawing nearer and nearer, and in his hand, he still held the knife.
“Your skin comes off next, Mima-san.” The man laughed weakly. “Your skin… I’ll take off your skin…”
He was getting even closer now. Not even two meters separated them. If she didn’t do anything, she knew she would die.
Desperately, she looked around her, seeking any avenue of escape. But her hands and feet were still bound by tape. Even if she somehow found an opening, she wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.
The man was right on her.
Mima despaired. This was how her life would end—being skinned alive by a monster.
She felt his sticky hand grasp her leg. “I’ve got you,” he said. His teeth chattered. Was that his laugh? Was he delighted by her supple skin? In one last attempt to resist him, she curled up her legs and shook off his hand.
Slowly, the man lifted himself up, before pouncing on top of her. He adjusted his grip on the knife and placed its tip against her face.
Reflexively, Mima closed her eyes.
She heard a dull thunk, and the man fell over.
Fearfully, Mima opened her eyes and saw him stooped over, head clutched in his hands. She looked up and saw Rumi standing behind him. In her hands was an industrial-sized bottle of facial lotion.
“Rumi-chan!” Mima said.
“I’m glad I made it in time,” Rumi said. She ran to Mima’s side and tore through the tape at her wrists and ankles.
The man was still holding his head while letting out low moans of pain.
“We have to hurry,” Rumi said. “Before he gets back up.”
Mima stretched out her freed arms and legs, then slapped Rumi on the back and said, “Let’s go!”
Just as they began running for the door, the man grunted and leaped past them. In a single, powerful frog-like bound, he crossed from the sink to the doorway. He was no longer a man, but a monster.
Mima and Rumi backed into a corner.
Anger contorted the flesh that used to be the man’s face as he glared at the two women. “You’re breaking my heart,” he said, tears spilling from his eyes. As he cried, his body convulsed, perhaps due to the salt in his tears touching exposed nerves.
“You’re breaking my heart,” he repeated. “Here I am, offering you my complete devotion. But you give me nothing. Why? Why?”
The man’s entire body writhed in agony. “Well,” he said, “it doesn’t matter what you want. I’m taking that pretty skin.”
The man slashed at the air with his knife before moving in toward Mima. He held his arms outstretched to block any path of escape.
What can we do? Mima’s mind went on overdrive. How can we escape this demon?
She pointed to the left and shouted, “Rumi, run that way!”
Without hesitation, Rumi ran, circling to the left of the man, toward the doorway. The man turned and moved to intercept her, giving Mima the opening to run to the right.
The movement caught his attention, and he turned his head to look—thus failing to catch either woman.
They both fled through the doorway and emerged into the darkened hall. Mima headed for the emergency exit, but Rumi stopped her.
“We can’t go that way,” Rumi said. “He chained up the door after you came in. He’ll catch us before we could ever hope to get it open.”
Mima turned back the other way and ran into the pitch black. Rumi kept right on her heels.
The man’s head popped out from the green room. Gnashing his teeth in rage, he hollered after them, “This’s how it’s going to be, is it? No matter what I do, you refuse to see things my way. Fine—I won’t count on your cooperation. I had hoped to take your skin while you were still alive, but I no longer have that luxury. You got that, you two?”
He kept shouting into the darkness. “Do you hear me? I’m done holding back! The first one of you I catch is going to be the first to die by this knife. You’d better run like your lives depend on it!”
Mima and Rumi could see hardly anything at all. They gripped each other tightly by the hand, walking one step at a time.