“There were several inconsistencies in the story you just told, Miss Unoki.”
The words sent a chill through her.
The boy in the white robe was still wearing an inscrutable smile.
Mao should have no need for things like fear or dread now. She could end this just by pulling the trigger—and yet.
“For good people, true happiness would be a world with no bad people left in it. That was your credo. However, it’s a lie. One you’ve told yourself.”
“What?”
Saijou went on impassively. “By rights, those words are something only one who believes in the justice and rightness of the world should say. You believe in no such thing. As far as you’re concerned, the world is what branded your grandfather and pet dog as ‘a killer’s family’ and persistently mocked, blamed, harmed, and spoke ill of them.”
That remark hit her squarely.
He was right: The man who’d spit in her grandfather’s face and the one who’d kicked their guard dog Dumpling hadn’t been monsters. They’d been ordinary people. Even if she couldn’t call each individual person a sinner, a mass of countless small malicious acts could kill people—that was what the world was like.
“In this case, those people used ‘justice’ simply as a mask to hide ill will. Deep down, they were angry. Dissatisfaction, irritation, impatience, loneliness—pent-up negative feelings want nothing more than to find an enemy. In you, the relatives of a criminal, they found a target. That’s all it was. To you, the world is nothing more than that. You couldn’t believe that humanity was inherently good, and yet you punished sinners in order to bring the general public true happiness. It’s far too inconsistent. That means you had another reason for punishing sinners.”
The lack of malice in his smile made it ominous. Those dark eyes were as black, deep, and endless as the night.
“Now, what concerns me is the fact that although your father confessed to the murder of his wife, he appeared human to the very end. If the power of the Mirror of Illumination is infallible, that means your father was falsely accused.”
Why bother to say that? Mao thought. He hardly needed to; it was completely obvious.
“In that case, why did he kill himself? Do you know?”
“Huh?” He’d caught her by surprise. She drew a breath, then let it out, trying to come up with something that sounded logical. “Well—my father was on the force, and the police were probably very harsh when they interrogated him.”
“Then why did you not search for the perpetrators of that inhumane interrogation?”
“What?”
“In the first place, if the accusation against your father was false, then the true culprit behind the killings of your mother and her lover was still out there somewhere. An inhuman fiend who framed your father for a crime he had not committed and went on with their life, free of care. Didn’t you want to track them down?”
Mao felt as if the air had begun to warp and twist.
Saliva that had an ominous tang to it spread over her tongue. It tasted and smelled as if she’d licked something rusty—no, it was blood. She’d bitten her lip without realizing.
Hurry. I have to pull the trigger fast.
But her finger seemed paralyzed. It wouldn’t move. She felt like a frog in a stare down with a snake.
“It’s strange, isn’t it? You have a stronger sense of justice than anyone, and you are quite capable of acting. Searching for the killer would come naturally to you, and yet you’ve continued to leave them at large. Now, why would that be?”
Mao could feel her teeth begin to chatter. Unease and fear were constricting her throat.
Even then, Saijou smiled at her. “The hint was the photo you showed me at dinner. I would imagine you showed me a picture of your pet to divert my attention from Tosu’s poisoned sugar packet, but it proved to be your undoing.”
What is he talking about? Mao thought.
She’d shown Saijou a photo of Dumpling yawning in his bed by the window. She’d taken the photo after her parents died, when she was living on the second floor of her grandfather’s house. However, there hadn’t been a single thing in the image that might have given her away.
“It was the reflected light from the flash. It may have been turned up too high; it reflected off the metal water dish, creating a lens flare. The window glass should have reflected the most light, but it was pure black, completely unaffected. In other words, the glass was covered on the inside with black cloth, paper, or some other material that would reflect no light whatsoever.”
“B-but that was to keep the rubberneckers and reporters who got into our yard from peeking in—”
“No, it wasn’t. You said so yourself a moment ago: After Dumpling grew frightened of passersby, he lived with you in a room on the second floor, with all the shutters closed tight. The shutters were already hiding the second-floor windows. In that case, what purpose was there in covering them on the inside?”
Saijou’s index finger came up.
“If the shutters are fully closed, darkening the glass, the inner surfaces reflect light as a mirror would. See, just like that?”
He was pointing at the dining car window.
Beyond the glass was solid darkness, devoid of light and color. Their three figures were reflected in its surface, as pale as ghosts: the detective, his assistant, and Mao in the form of the yokai shoukera.
“That’s right. You covered the windows in order to hide your yokai form from yourself. Seiji was struggling with the same thing when I first met him: Seeing yourself as a monster is unbearable. In avoiding your reflection, you were attempting to avert your eyes from your sin. But…” Shiroshi cocked his head slightly. “What yokai did you resemble at the time?”
Mao’s heart gave a heavy thump.
She couldn’t even scream; she just sat there trembling. She could tell the monster reflected in the window was trembling, too. As if it were a member of a shadowy demon horde and the light of dawn was about to reveal its true shape.
“I’m told your current form is a shoukera. It’s conceivable that you assumed that form when you helped Ibara send nearly a hundred sinners to Hell. However, you met him after you were driven out of your grandfather’s house. In other words, you were not a shoukera when you took that photo. You wore another yokai’s form.”
Her vision seemed to warp. As it did, the shape of the reflected monster in the train window twisted like taffy—and then she saw it blaze up with the fires of Hell.
Yes, I know.
She knew this yokai: a kasha. It was an oni from a tale in the Uji Shuui Monotagari who loaded living sinners into a blazing, fiery cart and sent them to Hell.
It was also Mao’s former shape.
“When one commits a graver sin, the yokai form that the Mirror of Illumination reflects is overwritten with another. In short, when you gave your list of a hundred sinners to Ibara, you took the form of a shoukera. I believe you assumed your first yokai form when your mother and her lover were burned to death and your father took the blame on himself and died.”
She didn’t want to hear this.
She wanted to pull the trigger right this second, but her finger refused to move. After all, if she did that, she’d be running away by dying—just like the five sinners who’d been resurrected from bones for the sake of this one night.
“I’ve spoken with someone I know on the police force. According to them, your father’s arrest wasn’t entirely groundless. A security camera captured the license plate of a suspicious vehicle near the scene of the fire, and it matched the plate of your father’s car. At the time, he was on paid leave. In other words, your father was present during the incident. He killed himself with full knowledge of the true culprit’s identity. By now, it must be quite clear who that is.”