Mao’s response sounded almost like a monologue. “Because I couldn’t forgive them. I couldn’t stand the fact that they got away from their sins just by dying. That’s why I asked Ibara to let me be the executioner.”
Her voice was so impassive it seemed flat, but Seiji could sense anger seething in its depths.
Shiroshi rebutted that as well. “They had all died once already, most likely taken by illness and accident. Couldn’t you say that they had already reaped what they had sown—that they had been punished?”
“Yes, that’s true. Evil begets evil, it serves them right… And it does look as if they all ended up unhappy.” In a light, pleasant voice, Mao began to explain.
According to her, Godou, who had escaped with a fortune, had fallen sick and died just as he was preparing to flee overseas.
Tosu, who had provoked his stepbrother’s suicide by pushing him to the brink of starvation, had killed himself, intentionally choosing the anniversary of his brother’s death.
Ishizuka’s wife had been trying to obtain a divorce by consent when he pushed her into a river on the night of a typhoon and drowned her; he’d become an alcoholic and had finally fallen into the river himself when he was blind drunk.
“Maybe it was Schubert’s ‘Wiegenlied’ that called him there. A detective named Masayuki Kubo told me that Ishizuka’s wife had been pregnant, and she’d hummed that piece frequently. Ishizuka suspected her of cheating on him, but actually, the baby was what made her decide to leave him. She brought up divorce because she wanted to protect her child from her husband’s verbal abuse.”
The barrage of information was making Seiji’s head reel.
“I was planning to die soon anyway.”
So Tosu had been serious about that? And Ishizuka, too. If he’d begun drinking heavily to forget the fact that he’d killed his wife and child and had ended up meeting the same end—wasn’t that basically suicide?
“The death of the coworker Nomura envied was treated as an unfortunate accident. I hear the police were never even called. Nomura couldn’t bring herself to keep working at that company, though; she quit almost immediately and went back to the country. I guess it was too hard for her to face her family, because she was living out of net cafés when she was killed by a robber.”
Seiji felt as if he’d taken a punch to the head.
“He’d destroyed his health, quit his job, gambled himself into debt. He couldn’t face anybody. If he went to see an old childhood friend like you despite all that, it’s clearly because he wanted you to encourage him to go back home.”
Had Ms. Nomura been describing her own feelings as well? She killed someone, lost her job, was too ashamed to see her family—and even then, she’d wanted to go home.
She’d hoped someone would nudge her in that direction, and yet…
“When Kaganuma turned twenty, he got into a fight and ended up doing jail time for manslaughter. As it happened, back when he was in middle school, he’d knocked over a pregnant woman while snatching her purse, and she’d wound up in a vegetative state. Though the case never went to trial due to insufficient evidence, one of the woman’s relatives avenged her by killing Kaganuma right after he got out of jail.”
Just as Seiji was about to say No way, he remembered something: The tale of the yonaki-ishi was also a story of revenge, in which the baby grew up and killed his mother’s murderer.
“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.”
Then, just as Kaganuma had said, even though he’d died, he hadn’t been forgiven.
How tragic.
All of their stories were far too tragic. Maybe endings like theirs were only to be expected for sinners, but still…
“Even then, you felt it wasn’t enough. And so you became the executioner and punished them further. Were their sins that grievous?”
Mao’s smile didn’t so much as flicker at Shiroshi’s question.
“Who measures the weight of a sin? It’s true that murder, arson, and robbery are grave trespasses, but if the victims of ‘minor’ sins wished for the deaths of those who harmed them, would you tell them to simply grin and bear it? Even if some sins are more serious than others, the sadness and resentment of one victim isn’t less serious than that of another. It isn’t the sort of thing anyone can measure.”
Her eyes slid smoothly to the side, coming to rest on Seiji.
“As Kaganuma said, I bet you decided to confess specifically because your sin wasn’t serious,” she continued. “However, the family who claimed Mr. Inokoshi’s body wanted him to come home sooner. I’m told they cried and said, ‘How can he have been all by himself, all this time, even after he died…?’”
Seiji felt his breath catch in his throat. He really should have realized it earlier. After all, if Inokoshi had a place he wanted to go home to, it meant he had family waiting for him to come back.
As far as they were concerned, what Seiji did must have been an exceedingly grave sin.
“Oh…”
His voice deserted him.
Averting her eyes, Mao turned back to Shiroshi. “For good people, true happiness would be a world with no bad people left in it. Ibara has been kind enough to help me with that. I wanted to send as many monsters as possible to Hell, and he heard my wish and punished sinners.”
Shiroshi thought for a little while. Then he sighed. “Ah, I see. I finally understand why your sin is a shoukera.” He looked straight back at Mao. “A shoukera is a yokai depicted in The Illustrated Demon Horde’s Night Parade; it’s considered to be the same as the Daoist Sanshi, which are also known as the ‘three worms.’ On the night of Koushin, if one falls asleep instead of spending the night in prayer, the three worms crawl out of their host’s body and report the host’s sins to the lord of Heaven. The lord then metes out a commensurate punishment.”
When Seiji heard that, a thought tugged at him.
Informing a judge of crimes. If that judge were an oni who actually existed in this world, someone like Shiroshi or Ibara, that would be almost like…
“By informing Ibara of the sinners your eye revealed to you, you’ve sent them to Hell, haven’t you? Like Seiji, you possess an eye with a shard of the Mirror of Illumination.”
Seiji was so startled, he stopped breathing.
Mao gave a small nod. “Yes, that’s right. Like Mr. Tohno, I’m an assistant for a proxy service for Hell.”