Unexpectedly, something white flitted across the edge of her vision.
Snow?
White snow was drifting through the dark night beyond the train window.
Oh, yes, it’s snow.
Mao had gazed at the fluttering snow through a window then, too. She was pretty sure it was while she was trying to light a match with shaking fingers, after she’d poured gasoline over the back seat.
Yes, back then, Mao had been in the car. Her mother lay limply on the seat; conscious or not, Mao didn’t know. She was sitting beside her, trembling with cold and fear.
She’d plotted a murder-suicide.
She’d packed the muffler with snow from the road’s shoulder, using the carbon monoxide from the exhaust to render the pair unconscious. Then she’d broken a window, opened the door, and splashed around gasoline from a fuel can. Once she climbed in and lit a match, that would be that.
A family suicide. Not that I even want to call it that.
She’d meant to burn herself and her parents alive. Mao, her mother—and her biological father.
“That man isn’t even really your father.”
Mao’s mother had spat the words at her a few days before the incident. Mao had realized she was having an affair and had confronted her with evidence—photos she’d taken herself.
If her parents got divorced, naturally, she’d planned to go with her father. She’d wanted to support him in his work as a police officer, and someday she’d wanted to follow in his footsteps, but…
“Your real father is the man in those photos. I don’t need you telling me to divorce; after you graduate from middle school, I fully plan to. I’ve waited all this time for the day when I could ditch that workaholic and the three of us could live together as a real family.”
“There’s no way you take after that man.” Finally, Mao understood the words her mother had repeated like a curse. They might as well have been despair itself.
She’d always believed she was on the side of justice.
Like her father.
In fact, though, Mao’s whole existence was unjust.
Ever since birth, she’d been an accomplice in her mother’s sin, someone who had wronged her father. And, since she’d been born as a child of adultery, she had absolutely no way to right that wrong.
In that case, she’d at least wanted to die as her father’s daughter.
And yet…
Just as she finally managed to strike a match, she felt an impact run through her. Mao was flung out of the car through the rear door, which had been opened before she noticed. The next thing she knew, she was sprawled on the gray pavement, and flames were erupting from the open door.
And then she saw it…
Her mother’s hand…which had shoved Mao away.
That hand had opened the door of the car and sent her to safety.
A moment later, fire had engulfed the vehicle, sending up a geyser of sparks. It was strangely quiet; there were no sounds, no screams, nothing at all. In the midst of the drifting, fluttering snow, Mao had launched herself off the road and run—rejecting reality and fleeing.
And now, in the present…
“I heard something else about your father, too.”
Saijou’s voice pulled Mao back to reality. She could hear the endless clackety-clack of the train wheels. The heartbeat of the night train, which was racing intently toward dawn.
“During his interrogation, he stated that he had packed the muffler with snow from the shoulder of the road and knocked the pair out with the exhaust gas before perpetrating the crime. The contents of his testimony all matched the state of the crime scene. In other words, your father saw the culprit burn his wife and her lover alive and did nothing to stop it. His suicide may have been an attempt to atone for that.”
Oh, I see.
If her father had taken paid leave, he might also have found out about her mother’s affair and planned to catch her in the act. Even if they weren’t related by blood, Mao and her father really did resemble each other.
And if he had learned that she wasn’t his real daughter…
Dad hated me, too, not just Mom.
That was why he’d stood by and watched his wife and the man she was having an affair with be burned alive by their own child. Even though that child was planning to burn herself along with them.
As far as her father was concerned, that had been unjust beyond all hope of redemption.
Being a police officer wasn’t just a job to him. It was the way he lived. Now he’d turned a blind eye to murder. Even if it had only been temporary insanity, the fact that he’d prioritized his revenge on his wife and her lover must have seemed like an unforgivable crime. As a result, he’d punished himself by taking responsibility for the killings and committing suicide.
Then Mao was the only one left.
“Once you were alone, you couldn’t forgive yourself, just like your father couldn’t forgive himself. However, you couldn’t bear the reality—and so you forgot it all.”
That was why Mao had covered the windows of her room on the inside after they’d become mirrors: so that she wouldn’t see herself as a kasha and be reminded.
“All that was left inside you was anger with nowhere to go. Anger at the adults, who’d escaped punishment through death, and at yourself, for living on comfortably even though you were a sinner. Above all else, anger seeks an enemy. It engendered a hatred in you of those who had committed crimes and still lived without a care, and of those who had escaped their sins through death.”
She tried to deny it, but her voice wouldn’t come.
That was the one thing she absolutely must not admit. If that was the reason she’d hated criminals… If she’d sent a hundred sinners to Hell, alive, just for that…
“Yes, frankly speaking, you were just venting your anger on them. While you punished others, you could prove that you were in the right. You were good when you attacked evil—‘and so I’m not bad.’ You punished sinners simply to justify yourself.”
Oh, that’s right. She’d finally remembered it. Another memory she’d kept sealed away.
Ibara had said he wanted to borrow the power of Mao’s Mirror of Illumination eye in exchange for punishing one hundred sinners. Then he’d said that after the hundredth sinner had been punished, it would be her turn.
“Are you…telling me to die?” she’d asked.
Ibara had cocked his head slightly. “You’ve been the hundred and first sinner all along, haven’t you?”
Come to think of it, Ibara had never called her his assistant. Not even once. In those amber eyes of his, she’d probably always been just another ugly, foolish sinner.
I can’t take this, she thought.
Her trembling finger tried to pull the trigger, but just then—
“Don’t run.”
A voice that was far too quiet reached her ears.
When she looked up, startled, she saw a ferocious yaksha dressed in white. His dreadfully pale face radiated an ominous anger.
“Escaping one’s sin by dying is unforgivable. That was what you believed. In that case, you have no right to die and flee your own sin. You have a duty to live and atone for it.”
The words seemed even more terrible than a death sentence.
But…
Oh, I see. I don’t even have the right to go to Hell anymore.
Mao had personally inflicted a second death on sinners who had died once already. Even though she was the most sinful one on this train.
Even so…
“…I’m sorry.”
The words slipped out as a dazed murmur—and she pulled the trigger.
A gunshot.
But her skull didn’t erupt in a burst of blood and brain fluid. With a jolt that felt as if it might tear her fingers off, the gun she’d pressed to her temple flew out of her hand.
And then…
“Glad this was loaded,” said a voice.
She turned. A slight figure was standing just inside the door, holding the revolver he’d confiscated from the detective’s assistant in the library a little while ago.
It was Tosu.