The door closed behind Shiroshi.
That was all it took to separate him from Seiji, who’d been half a step behind him. He’d probably been sent back to Room 302 by Takamura.
Shiroshi had been invited in, and at the same time, he’d been trapped.
The door behind him required an eight-digit code for both entry and exit. That was probably the reason he’d been summoned to the observation car: In order to face the victor of the game, as the defeated, in a locked room that would never be opened.
“Welcome.”
Ibara’s voice was almost a whisper. He was seated at a table for two.
The space had nothing of the starkness the words “observation car” suggested. It was furnished with antiques, and it reminded Shiroshi of a box upholstered in deep red velvet. The entire front wall was an observation window made from a single enormous pane of glass. Did the door in the corner mean it would be possible to go out onto the exterior observation deck?
That said, jumping from a moving train would be suicide.
“May I sit?” he asked.
“Go ahead. It’s your seat.”
Across from him, Ibara’s white hair seemed to hint at death, like always. His features were too even, almost doll-like. In combination with his delicate build, they made him seem terribly fragile. His pale skin was more the white of grave wax than of fallen snow, and his veins showed through it.
“To begin with, permit me to ask a question: Tosu was taken away a few minutes ago. What will become of him?”
Ibara’s eyes narrowed. He probably hadn’t expected Shiroshi to ask about another passenger first thing. “He’ll be released when the train reaches its destination. Those were the rules of the game, after all. I have a set of identification documents and cash for him, so he’ll be able to continue living as ‘Fumihiko Tosu’ if he likes.”
However, it wouldn’t be possible to take back his real name… Was that what he meant?
Tosu had already committed suicide. His death had been reported and his certificate of residence erased. He’d have no choice but to start over as someone else. Of course, since he’d turn to water and vanish the moment someone called his old name, discarding his former life would have been his only option anyway.
“All right. Then why have you invited me here?”
“Well, let’s see. To kill time until we arrive at our final destination—and since we had the chance, I thought I’d let you and your father bid each other farewell. Yours is the one on the left.”
With a dull clunk, he set two mirrors on the table. They didn’t look like mirrors at first glance. They were lumps of bronze, each with a silvery reflective surface: the ruins of the broken Mirror of Illumination.
“I see. You used a magic mirror to seal the demon kings? …It really was you who stole the Mirror of Illumination, then.”
“Well, well.” Ibara blinked. “It sounds as if that isn’t a new realization for you.”
“No doubt Takamura was the one who falsified the Enma Ministry’s storage records. No matter how I thought about it, though, he had no motive for the actual theft.”
Exactly: Since his position would have allowed him to borrow the mirror indefinitely, the idea of stealing it was ridiculous.
“The Mirror of Illumination reveals sinners who’ve escaped punishment in the mortal world. Who would find that useful? The obvious answer was ‘a proxy service for Hell.’ Not only that, but I’m told Great King Enma proposed this contest to the two demon kings eighteen years ago. That also happens to be when the mirror was stolen and its fragments sown in the human realm.”
“I’m the one who stole it; my father ordered the theft. He wanted a human with a Mirror of Illumination eye to help with the proxy service for Hell. Since the mirror isn’t compatible with supernatural eyes, of course.”
That was why the Mirror of Illumination’s fragments had been sown in the human world.
However, no matter how many fragments they scattered, no human with the power ever appeared. Their efforts had been in vain, because…
“It’s likely that only very young children are able to acquire the power of the Mirror of Illumination. Seiji Tohno, Mayuka Asaka, Mao Unoki—those three acquired their mirror fragments at the ages of five, six, and less than a year, respectively. They were all below the age of reason.”
Until the age of seven, children are among the gods—was that why? It was probably a power that only came to dwell in the innocent. As a result, Evil God Shinno Akugorou’s scheme had ended in failure.
Ibara had found Mao and her Mirror of Illumination eye just three years ago. At that point, the contest to send sinners to Hell had been underway for two years already.
“Yes. That’s why my father hit on the idea of ordering the thirteen of us to kill each other, taking advantage of the confusion to fake my death, and having me work covertly behind the scenes—in order to do away with you.”
“And so he installed your twin as his heir, as a false display for the public. I understand that much. However, there is one thing that doesn’t make sense to me.” Shiroshi tilted his head to one side. “Why didn’t you kill Odoro?”
“What do you mean?”
“A week ago, you shot him with a shotgun. You even used a slug, ammunition typically meant for hunting big game. However, shotguns are really designed to fire buckshot. Had you used buckshot, it would have struck many points across his entire body; adequately extracting the pellets would have been impossible, and he would have died… Why, then, did you opt to use a slug?”
Ibara blinked, quietly gazing at Shiroshi through his bangs. “Because buckshot doesn’t have the force that a slug does. Even if it is highly lethal, it wouldn’t have been enough to forestall a counterattack.”
“In that case, you went too far when you avoided his dominant arm. Saying you meant to prevent him from retaliating isn’t convincing unless you take the arm he would use to strike back out of commission. And yet at such close range that you couldn’t possibly have missed, you intentionally fired at his left shoulder. Were you afraid you’d cause lasting damage?”
Exhaling, Ibara cocked his head slightly, eyes narrowing as if he were biting back irritation. “…What are you getting at?”
“It’s something I’d wondered about for a while: What sort of person were you to your twin? Odoro can’t read others’ intentions, but his instincts are exceptionally sharp. After all, when I disappeared in Okuhida, he immediately suspected a charade.
“Even during the Shidou family incident, despite the nue ripping his throat out, he made the right call regarding the criminal. He might stumble partway through the equation, but somehow, he finds the right answer. At a glance, he seems easy to lead around by the nose, but no one would be harder to fool once he becomes suspicious.
“However, Odoro never doubted your suicide. In other words, to him, that was the sort of person you were. The type who, at the end of a fight to the death between thirteen brothers, would end his own life to yield the position of heir to his younger brother. Was he actually wrong?”
Ibara gave an abrupt smile, something between a smirk and a jeer. “That’s nauseating. You can’t mean to tell me I look like that to you, too.”
Shiroshi didn’t nod.
He wordlessly closed his eyes, then opened them again. After the space of a breath, he shook his head. “No, you don’t. And so I’ll say from the bottom of my heart—that this serves you right.”
He gave a mocking smile.
It was like a stark white peony, blooming out of season on a freezing night.
Sensing an ominous presence behind him, Ibara began to turn, and in that very moment—there was a splash.
It was followed immediately by the stink of burning flesh and hair and a scream.
The voice wasn’t Ibara’s. The assailant who’d crept up behind him and dashed a small bottle of sulfuric acid in his face had shrieked, her mouth open so wide, it threatened to split at the corners.
She was shuddering with the horror of what she’d just done.
It was Shiori Nomura—the passenger Mao had said she’d dissolved.
From his chair, Ibara slammed a kick into Ms. Nomura’s side. She went over sideways, landing with a brief groan; she might have hit her shoulder or her head. Immediately standing up, Ibara planted a foot on her back, pinning her down. He was breathing shallowly through ferocious pain: The acid had splashed across the upper half of his face.
“…And why exactly are you alive?”