Holding fast to the curved wall, he climbed all the way to the top. When he crested the top edge, he saw Yukiko on the platform, her back turned to him. A low laugh of victory threatened to come up, but he stifled it so as not to spoil the surprise.
The metal railing of the upper platform was nearly within his grasp.
When they had at long last managed to quell the mass panic, Kanda and Yoriko went to the roof to look for Yukiko.
“Where in the world could she have gone?” Yoriko wondered.
Kanda said, “If she wasn’t in the green room or backstage, she must be out on the roof somewhere. She probably waited for everything to settle down and then went out there to find us.”
From the stage, they looked out across the vacant roof. The scattered heaps of folding chairs spoke to the severity of the chaos that had occurred.
“Surely she wouldn’t have left the department store,” Kanda said, sounding unsure. “Would she?”
“Not a chance,” Yoriko replied. She surveyed the rooftop with worry in her eyes. “She may be young, but she has a strong sense of duty. She wouldn’t have left her fans—or us—behind.”
“You’re right. Well, where else could she be?” Kanda thought for a while, then muttered, “Wait, what about…” Then to Yoriko, he said, “Follow me,” and started jogging to the emergency stairs. “The original part of the building has its own little roof—it’s still there today. Maybe that’s where she went!”
Yoriko hurried after him.
The rusty door opened onto a small, dilapidated roof dominated by a weatherworn water tower.
Yoriko shouted, “Up there!”
Kanda saw it at the same time.
Yukiko was sitting, arms around her knees, at the top of the half-collapsed scaffolding. She seemed to be staring off into the distance, lost in her thoughts—oblivious to the monster coming up on her from behind, his arms spread wide.
Opening his mouth so wide his jaw might have fallen off, Kanda shouted, “Yukiko! Behind you! Yukiko!”
But even yelling as loud as he could, his voice didn’t reach her.
The rabbit put his hands on her shoulders. Watching helplessly from below, Yoriko could feel his fingers digging painfully into her flesh, as if she were the one up there.
Yukiko remained still, stoically enduring the rabbit’s cruel touch.
“That’s good,” Yoriko said. “Don’t upset him. Fighting will only make things worse. Just do as he says.” If Yukiko tried to fight him off and failed, it might anger him into doing something terrible.
Yukiko couldn’t have heard her, but she seemed to have gotten the message, as she remained entirely pliant and passive. Whether she was choosing not to struggle or just didn’t have the strength left to try it, Yoriko didn’t know. Whatever the case, complying with the rabbit was the safest route.
“Yoriko-kun, bring the police,” Kanda said. “And get word to management and security.”
He put his hand on what remained of the scaffolding and began attempting the ascent. Before he could start, Yoriko let out an unearthly scream that was so loud her heart might have leapt out from her throat.
Kanda froze.
He looked up with eyes open wide. The rabbit had grabbed Yukiko’s head and was twisting it as if she were a doll. By the time he looked up, the rabbit had already wrenched her head around more than ninety degrees.
The rabbit’s shoulders rose as he put even more force into his hands, turning Yukiko’s head fully backward.
Kanda’s face went pale.
Unable to bear the sight of such madness and cruelty, Yoriko covered her face with both hands and slumped to the concrete.
The rabbit kept on turning her head right and left and right again until it popped clear off. He swung her head against the water tower over and over and over, cackling as he did so. Then he tossed Yukiko’s head up into the sky. It traced a tall arc until it gradually gave way to gravity, slowing down and beginning its descent.
The head crashed into the concrete roof exactly halfway between Kanda and Yoriko. It landed with a heavy thunk and crumbled into course powder.
Yoriko stared at the dust in blinking disbelief. She leaned over what had become of Yukiko’s head.
“This,” she said, “is this…plaster?”
Yukiko, dressed only in her underwear, came running out from the other side of the water tower.
Kanda and Yoriko cried her name in unison, but she held up a palm to quiet them. She beckoned the two over and handed them a rope that hung down from the platform atop the tower. Speaking only through looks and gestures, she signaled for them to pull the rope as hard as they could.
Kanda nodded in understanding, and Yoriko tightened her grip on the rope, whispering, “That was the replica, wasn’t it?”
Yukiko nodded.
Above them, the rabbit screeched, “Yu…ki…ko!”
As if that were their cue, the three put all their combined strength into pulling the rope. They pulled it with all their focus and all their weight.
The supports beneath the platform hadn’t been sturdy in the first place, and they collapsed as readily as if they were made of taffy. The platform began to tilt, and the rabbit rolled forward.
Yukiko’s replica was the first to slide off, and the rabbit came tumbling down immediately after, as if still in pursuit. As they both fell, the rabbit caught the life-size doll in his arms and drew it into a deep embrace.
Speed increasing, he slammed against a water valve jutting from the side of the tower. He rebounded out and over the rooftop’s guardrail and then down toward the street below in an unwitting dive toward his death.
Yukiko patted Yoriko on the back with a rope-burned hand. Yoriko embraced her, covering the singer’s unclothed body.
“It’s over,” Yoriko said. “It’s over, Yukiko-chan.”
In her arms, Yukiko nodded several times.
Yoriko took off her jacket and gave it to Yukiko, then walked to the rooftop’s guardrail and leaned out to look down below.
Yukiko’s life-size twin figure had fragmented against the pavement directly in front of the department store’s entrance. Several hundred curious onlookers were gathering around the doll’s remains.
But somehow, inexplicably, the rabbit suit was gone.
“I can’t believe it,” Yoriko said. “What could have happened? He was dead. He had to be.”
Yoriko and Yukiko’s eyes met.
As if to herself, Yukiko said, “What was he?”
Kanda looked off into the clouds floating far in the distance. Softly, he said, “Maybe he was a phantom. Maybe that’s what he was all along—a monster conjured by jealousy and obsession.”
Yukiko simply nodded.