“Um, then, why me?”
“You got out first, so there’s a good chance you’ll survive this. Take care of that for me, a’right?”
He’d said the words so casually that it took Seiji a minute to understand them.
“Okay, see ya,” Kaganuma said, turning to go.
Impulsively, Seiji called after him. “W-wait a second. If you know you might die, then—” Wouldn’t it be better to confess? But before he could get the words out, Kaganuma had turned back to him wearily.
“First off, that executioner piece of shit burns me up.” As he spoke, he took out a folding survival knife and snapped it open. The brutally serrated blade shone like a misplaced joke. “Who the hell is he, anyway? The husband or kid or dad or friend of the woman I killed? No way. If he was, he’d never make a screwball rule like ‘If you survive until we reach our destination, you’ll be released.’”
He was right. Aggressor and victim, murderer and avenger—neither pair described the passengers on this train.
It was Hell-bound sinners, the oni who’d made them pawns in his game, and that oni’s executioner.
“Not only that, but he’s saying that, if I confess my sin and atone for it, he’ll send me home alive? Any guy who says that is just a total stranger with a hero complex. If he knew my victim, even if I died, he’d never be able to forgive me. It ain’t the sort of thing an apology or whatever can fix. In the end, whether I repent or not doesn’t mean a damn thing.”
That’s irrational, thought Seiji, but he couldn’t say it. As far as Kaganuma was concerned, that was the unvarnished truth. Besides, he knew that in the face of sins even death couldn’t erase, repenting and apologizing were meaningless.
“But—” Seiji tried to respond anyway, but Shiroshi spoke up in the same moment.
“If you won’t allow atonement in order to forgive, and you won’t atone in order to be forgiven, how do you intend to live from now on? Whether you regret your sin and atone for it is your affair. No matter how mistaken the executioner may be, it doesn’t justify your playing the victim and giving up on life.” His voice was quiet, and his eyes reflected the other man’s shape like still water.
“Ha!” Kaganuma barked. “Yeah, probably not. That’s why I made up my mind: If that executioner comes to kill me, I’m killing him right back. You watch yourself, too, Underdog; don’t get offed by accident.”
With that, he turned and left the room.
Seiji stood there in a daze, still holding the envelope with the flyer—the “letter” to Kaganuma’s brother.
“Wai—!”
He didn’t even have time to stop him.
But maybe the person he’s sending this letter to doesn’t…
If there was a chance that person didn’t want Kaganuma to die—shouldn’t Seiji stop him?
Just then, Shiroshi patted Seiji lightly on the back, as if encouraging him, or maybe sympathizing.
“Let us return to the lounge as well,” he said. “I’m concerned about the other passengers.”
“Oh, yes, absolutely.”
Seiji hastily slipped the envelope into his jacket pocket, and the two of them went back into the library together.
But when they arrived, Seiji doubted his eyes. The glass connecting door in front of them—or no, the lounge beyond it—was solid white.
“Is that…? It can’t be fog, can it?”
It looked like a white haze. As if the night mist drifting outside the train had stolen inside somehow. But…
“Hey, what the hell?! A fire?! What, they’re gonna burn us to death?”
The roar from the lounge finally tethered Seiji’s mind to reality.
It was a fire.
It had started in the lounge, and the room was already filled with smoke. The air was so thick with it that even keeping your eyes open had to be difficult.
“Somebody get the fire extinguisher! Hurry!”
“Dammit, I can’t see a thing! What’s going on?!”
He could hear angry yells from somewhere in the smoke. Whose voices were those? Seiji was close to panicking as well. Y-you’ve gotta be kidding; this can’t… If a fire breaks out in a place like this…
But if he just stood here, it would be the same as the night when he’d stood in front of that blazing temple gate, completely at a loss—when he’d been told Shiroshi had died, and all he’d been able to do was despair.
And so…
“Um, it has to be somewhere—! Oh, there! A fire extinguisher!”
Sure enough, a compact fire extinguisher sat in the shadow of a glass-doored bookshelf. It had been bound to its stand by a chain, for some reason, and it took him time to free it.
Stay cool, stay cool… Okay, it’s off!
However, just as he’d grabbed it and was about to dash into the lounge car—
“Dwaaah!”
Shiroshi grabbed the back of his collar, and he landed heavily on his butt.
“Wh-what are you doing?!” he asked.
“Calm down, please. That may not be a fire.”
…Huh?
“Wh-what do you mean?”
“If I recall, there are sprinklers with heat sensors on the lounge ceiling. They haven’t activated, and on top of that, the smoke doesn’t appear to be turning black. That means…”
Just then, Seiji spotted something on the other side of the door.
The black silhouettes of living creatures were thrashing around, low in the thick white smoke.
Were they…snakes?
Two shadowy serpents were flailing and thumping their heads on the carpet.
In the next moment, Seiji realized that the “snakes” were the legs of someone writhing in agony on the floor, and he felt goose bumps prickle up all over his body.
“N…no…”
His stunned murmur sounded so distant, it could have been someone else’s voice. His knees began to quake, but although he stumbled several times, he managed to get through the door.
As he did so, he realized that the smoke was no longer opaque.
The air was clearing.
By the time he ran over to the “snakes,” they’d collapsed to the floor, clearly somebody’s legs.
It was Kaganuma.
He was lying on his back beside the door, in front of the fire extinguisher. His eyes were wide and glaring, his mouth open as if he were gasping. A trickle of saliva ran from the corner of his lips all the way to the back of his ear.
There was no room for doubt. That was the face of a dead man.
“……Ngh.”
Seiji’s vision lurched, as if he’d been hit with a hammer.
Why is Kaganuma…?
Just a minute ago, he’d been talking and walking around. He’d forced Seiji to take that envelope with the flyer; he’d said he’d kill whoever came to kill him. As soon as that thought struck Seiji, his desire to reject all this turned to nausea.
However, what he really wanted to reject was what he was seeing. He staggered away, and then…
“You stay back.”
Someone knelt down, as if taking Seiji’s place. It was Tosu.