He looked up to the sky through eyelids half closed over by blood.
Scaffolding had been erected around and above the water tank that had brought about his failure. It looked like the building’s owners were intending on installing an even larger reservoir. The scaffolding held platforms that spiraled up to the top of the tank, with more framework going higher still, leaving a void in the middle.
Slowly, he put a hand on one of the scaffolding tubes and leaned back against the wall next to the stairway door. For now, he needed a break. He’d get some energy back, gather himself, and think of how he would handle Yukiko.
His ears folded back against his head, and his eyes closed—but then he let loose a small, startled exclamation and opened his eyes. He sensed someone nearby. Above. Someone was above him.
His ears stood straight up as he looked up at the scaffolding. “She’s… she’s here.” Yukiko was there.
He had been wrong. She hadn’t escaped far away, but was right there, partway up the scaffolding.
Yukiko was standing still, gripping the guardrail, but when the rabbit took his first awkward, water-soaked step onto the decking, she quickly turned and began ascending the ramp to the next platform.
“Yukiko,” the rabbit rumbled, “give it up. You’ve got nowhere to run.”
With her lithe body, Yukiko climbed her way from level to level with ease, while the rabbit’s encumbered, leaden steps prevented him from closing in. In the end, that wouldn’t matter, because what the rabbit said was right. Once she’d reached the top of the structure, there was nowhere farther for her to go. Even if he couldn’t catch up with her before then, he would still reach her.
Yukiko must have known that, but still she climbed.
There was no guarantee she’d even manage to ascend that far. The scaffolding was by no means sturdy. With each step she took, the platforms shook, and the connecting bolts gave a loud and dissonant creak. Even attempting the ascent was dangerous—and that was only under her comparatively light weight. The giant, waterlogged rabbit was climbing after her now, and he was much heavier.
When Yukiko neared the top of the water tower, she stumbled and leaned against the guardrail. The platform had suddenly bowed beneath her. It seemed that some careless worker had only half-fastened the bolts in that section.
Yukiko looked down, and her head spun. The water tower stood several stories tall above the rest of the roof. She had a fear of heights, though not on the same level as James Stewart in Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Still, she clung to the handrail and did her best not to look down again.
Yet she couldn’t just remain standing there, without doing anything. The rabbit, slow as he was, was coming for her, closing in. She risked another glance down and found that he was quite close now, moving faster even as his footsteps made the rickety scaffolding creak and groan.
Yukiko looked up. At the top of the tower was a small square landing just one meter long on each side. The terminus of the water tower. The only way back down was the same way the rabbit was coming up.
She could hear him now, muttering in that scratchy voice. “Yu…ki…ko.”
The rabbit’s fingertips appeared on the lip of the platform one level down. Yukiko drew in her legs and hugged her arms around her knees. The rabbit laughed and ran the remaining distance with surprising speed. And then his hand was on her ankle. His grip was incredibly strong. She kicked her leg as hard as she could, but his fingers held on tight.
Slowly, he pulled her toward him by the ankle. As her body was dragged down, the rabbit rose up and soon their faces met. The rabbit let out a delighted sigh.
As she suffered under the stench of his rotten-meat body odor, she moved a hand behind her back and begin loosening one of the bolts holding the scaffolding together. When it had been first constructed, the bolt would have been far too tight to loosen with her bare hands, but after extended exposure to wind and small vibrations, the bolt had gradually worked itself loose.
Careful not to let the rabbit catch on, she shifted her weight toward the wall of the tower so that the scaffolding pressed against the tower’s surface. With some of the strain taken off the bolt, it began to turn more easily. The bolt had rusted over, and Yukiko still had trouble turning it, but as she kept putting her muscle into it, the layer of rust flaked away, and the bolt itself popped free from the joint.
Yukiko shoved at the rabbit’s face with both hands and threw her weight backward. With a shrill creak, the scaffolding sagged and began tipping away from the tank.
Taken by surprise, the rabbit let go of Yukiko and grabbed for the scaffold’s vertical tube—which was quickly becoming rather less vertical. Yukiko hooked her arm around the railing at the top landing, lifted her feet, and used her stomach muscles to raise her lower body up and onto the platform.
The scaffolding began to buckle under the rabbit’s weight, and it twisted toward the next section where the bolt still held. The rabbit’s platform traced a wide and slow arc until it came back to slam into the side of the tower.
The rabbit’s hand jolted free from the handhold, and he smacked hard into the wall. Pancaked against the curved surface, he slid and skidded down, gravity winning the fight against friction. As he fell, his arms searched about for anything to grab that might arrest his descent, but they found nothing.
Yukiko sat motionless on the platform atop the water tower.
She was relieved to have defeated the rabbit, but now it seemed she was stuck, with nothing to do but wait until help came for her.
Since panicking would get her nowhere, she simply sat hugging her knees while gazing up at the empty sky.
After watching the rabbit fall with the scaffolding, she was confident he couldn’t have survived. Though she felt a little uneasy being entirely alone on her high-up perch, she was free from the terror the rabbit had struck into her.
What she didn’t know was that the rabbit, driven by his obsession, was slowly working his way back up the tower. He took whatever small handholds it had to offer, moving his oversized body with the deftness of a rock climber.