In the basement below the stage, Tadokoro and Yuji came running.
“Look out!” Tadokoro shouted.
Mima looked down at them.
“Mima!” Tadokoro called out. “In front of you!”
Mima looked back up. Knife in hand, the man was trudging inexorably closer.
Mima was out of time. She yelled, “Bon-chan, switch on that fan. Switch on the fan below the stage!”
Tadokoro went to the fan and threw the lever with a loud ka-chunk.
The machine roared to noisy life. All six of its one-meter blades began to spin, sending up years of accumulated dust along with tiny paper cherry blossoms.
Behind Mima, several blossoms danced in the air.
The man stopped. For one moment, he saw Kirigoe Mima as she had been in her debut. Tears began to stream from his eyes.
Mima spoke to him. “I understand now,” she said. “I won’t ever change. I’m still that same woman.”
The man gave her a small nod, but the next moment his was shaking his head furiously.
“No,” he said. “You’re not her anymore. Only your face is still her. On the inside, you’re rotten.” The man glared at her. He gripped the knife with both hands and pointed the weapon at her face. “Stand still! I’m going to cut off your skin.”
Then he was charging toward her with terrible force.
Mima threw herself onto her side as the knife’s tip passed her by. As she fell, she hooked her leg around his, tripping him, and his momentum carried him onto his back. As he landed on the stage, the knife clattered from his hand, just beyond reach.
Mima got to her feet, then straddled atop the man as she reached for the knife. Just as her fingers were nearly on the weapon, the man grabbed her by the waist and pulled her into him.
Her face was right up against his; her nose touched his darkening red flesh and off-yellow fat. The man’s teeth chattered in an approximation of a laugh.
He wrapped his arms around her back. His lipless mouth closed in on her lips.
Mima stretched out her arm, blindly feeling for the knife. His mouth brushed against hers, and his sickly, foul breath enveloped her.
Mima’s fingertips found the knife.
Quickly, she took it in hand and thrust its blade into the exposed meat of his shoulder.
The man’s arms went limp.
Keeping the knife in her grasp, Mima stood up.
The man held a hand over his shoulder, swaying as he rose.
Mima shouted, “Stay away from me! If you come any closer, I’ll stab you.” She held the knife at the ready.
Ignoring her command, the man lunged toward her with outstretched arms.
Mima thrust the knife into his face. The blade sunk deeply into his right eye, spraying blood while the man coughed and burbled.
Mima wrenched the knife free and let out a startled gasp. The man’s eyeball had come out along with it, a gelatinous orb skewered on the tip of the blade, tendrils of its optical nerves clinging to the metal.
Reflexively, Mima dropped the knife. Her guts began to twitch, threatening to send up whatever was in her stomach. As she fought against the urge, Mima couldn’t help but ask, “Doesn’t that hurt?”
The man took up the knife, eyeball and all. “Of course it hurts. But what’s a little more pain? Just look at me. My face is torn off. I took a knife to the throat. The pain all runs together.”
His teeth chattered again. He shook his eyeball from the knife, before stabbing the blade into his own side.
He groaned a little, then said, “See? I can do that, and it hardly hurts at all. It won’t kill me, either. I couldn’t die now, even if I wanted to. Not until I have your skin.”
The man stepped toward Mima and spread out his arms in a magnanimous gesture. “I’ll make this quick and painless for you. So, no more running.” He held the knife aloft. “I’ll aim for your heart, since I’ll still have to take your skin off. I wouldn’t want to damage your face, after all.”
The knife came down at her as if in slow motion.
Mima took one step back, and her feet found the edge of the stage. She had nowhere left to run, no way to dodge his attack. The knife’s tip bore down. The man loomed tall above her. There was no slipping past him, now.
“Mima and I will be one!” the man shouted.
Death was barreling toward her. She had only one move left to make.
Mima ducked down quickly. The man leaned forward.
Mima planted her face into his stomach. He slumped across her back, and she took his weight, then twisted to the side.
The man rolled from her back and off the stage, where he plummeted down to the basement.
The man screamed as the giant fan-blades caught him.
The machine groaned. It shredded through flesh and bone, turning the man’s arms into pulp. A moment later, the blades chopped his legs into a frothing slop. Then his waist was gone, then his stomach, then his chest.
For a brief eternity, his bloodstained head hung in the air.
To Mima’s horror, his mouth opened wide and cried out, “Mi… ma….”
But then the head was sucked into the fan, butchered by its spinning blades.
The man’s blood and flesh scattered everywhere, staining the white paper flowers red. Mima watched the bloodstained petals dance through the wind. As they passed by, they no longer resembled cherry blossoms. Instead, they looked like vivid red roses.
The passion, the obsession, of the so-called Darling Rose—stalker, freak, and monster—had been so strange that he had transformed the blossoms into rose petals.
At least, in that moment, that was how Mima saw it.
END