He had a hand over the left side of his face. His exposed right eye was clouded white; his rippled, blackish-red, ulcerated flesh was bubbling here and there.
That eye had been blinded.
“It looks as if it will be faster to break your spine,” he said, grinding the sole of his shoe into her back.
Ms. Nomura gave a whistling shriek. “Sh-she called me! Miss Unoki called my room telephone! She said she was the executioner, but she’d send me home alive if I followed her instructions and killed you! She promised!”
What she said was incoherent in places, but after Shiroshi had pieced it together…
When Miss Unoki had first told Ms. Nomura to kill Ibara, she’d refused and had planned to harass her by killing herself. However, Seiji had stopped her, so she’d decided to go through with the plan after all.
“A-and then, on Miss Unoki’s orders…”
She’d splashed water around near her door to mimic the circumstances under which Godou had vanished, then left Room 301 and hid in the common bathroom in Car 4. While there, she’d picked up the bottle of sulfuric acid that Miss Unoki had hidden earlier.
Oh, I see. Shiroshi nodded.
Thinking back, he and Seiji had run into Miss Unoki outside the restrooms in Car 4. She might have been hiding the acid then.
After that…
Concerned for Ms. Nomura’s safety, Shiroshi, Seiji, and Tosu had gone to Room 301. At that point, she’d relocated to the lounge car. Then she’d searched Kaganuma’s corpse for the key to Room 701—now vacant, since its occupant had died—and hidden there.
After a little while…
Ibara had emerged from the observation car and crossed in front of Room 701. Having watched him leave through the peephole, Ms. Nomura input the numerical code Miss Unoki had taught her and slipped into the car he’d just left.
Then she’d hidden in the shadows, gripping the bottle of sulfuric acid, waiting for an opportunity to strike.
Even though Miss Unoki is already dead…
But Ms. Nomura had had no way to know that. As a result, she’d dashed the contents of the bottle into his face, just as she’d been told.
In order to survive.
Seiji’s words—Please don’t die—had given her the push she needed.
“Did she happen to tell you why she wanted to kill me?” Ibara asked.
Ms. Nomura groaned like a frog under his foot. “Sh-she said if you asked, I should tell you…‘I wanted to be you, but you wouldn’t be me. If I die tonight and won’t get to judge bad people anymore, I’d rather you died with me.’”
Ibara laughed out loud.
His throat and shoulders shook with amusement. He might have been in the audience at the end of a comedy.
“…I’d expect no less of her. A consummate villain, even in death.”
Then he snapped his fingers.
Immediately, Ms. Nomura’s head fell limply to the floor. She was breathing slowly, like a child who’d cried herself into exhaustion. He’d put her to sleep.
“You aren’t going to kill her?” Shiroshi asked; he sounded rather surprised.
Ibara lifted his foot from Ms. Nomura’s back. There was no hostility or malice in his eyes as he looked down at her, just complete disinterest. “She’s in the same position as Tosu. There’s no reason to kill her.”
“By the way.” With an intentionally loud click, Shiroshi cocked the hammer of the revolver in his hands. “You’d foreseen this development, hadn’t you?”
He was holding the Smith & Wesson Model 19.
Tosu had returned it to Seiji, who’d given it to Shiroshi for self-defense. Originally, it had been Odoro’s.
As a matter of fact…
As soon as Ibara had kicked Ms. Nomura to the floor, Shiroshi had drawn the gun from where he’d hidden it in the breast of his kimono. He’d been prepared to fire the moment her life was in danger. However, Ibara hadn’t noticed: When Shiroshi leveled the gun, he’d acted in perfect silence.
In other words—Ibara had lost sight in both eyes.
“…I suppose it was never going to be possible to hide this completely,” he murmured, almost to himself. He lifted the hand he’d used to cover the left side of his face.
He might as well have been removing something that had been glued down. An unsettling substance dripped from his face: a mixture of congealing blood and pus—and skin.
Once revealed, his left eye was as clouded as his right. Drawing a shallow breath, Shiroshi trained the gun on that eye. “It always seemed odd to me. The rule tonight was that neither of us was allowed to harm the other until we reached our destination. However, the penalty for doing so was ‘losing the game.’ In other words, that rule would be meaningless to the loser as soon as the contest was decided.”
At that point, the victor could do one of two things: either keep the loser isolated somewhere until they reached the station or hide somewhere himself.
“And yet, out of all the options, you chose to lock yourself in a room with me—in the full knowledge that I was carrying a weapon.” As he finished the sentence, his finger tightened on the trigger. He exhaled heavily. “You’re practically asking me to kill you. Is that what you want?”
Ibara’s only response was a smile.
The moment Shiroshi looked into his eyes, a numbing shudder ran down his spine.
Aside from white misted darkness, those eyes held nothing.
All that was there was a deep, dark void.
“…That should have been obvious from the start.” Ibara tilted his head. He was in such pain that simply breathing threatened to make him pass out, but he kept smiling. “There’s only one person I want to kill, and one thing I want to steal. I want to drop Evil God Shinno Akugorou into Hell and steal the throne he spent his life pursuing. That is my wish, and the wish of the eleven brothers who died pretending to fight me.”
His whisper carried the scent of death.
The smell of blood and pus—of a living corpse.
“Blood for blood, a life for a life: That was what the twelve of us decided. Only two of us would live. Only I had a chance of killing our father. We needed one more, someone who could take the throne after I’d killed that man. One who knew nothing of this, who would destroy me—a traitor who’d killed our father—and assume the throne as the legitimate heir. That was Odoro. That’s all it was.”
Shiroshi closed his eyes.
His eyelashes trembled. His lips parted, trying to form words of some sort, then closed. After the space of a breath, he opened his eyes again.
“And so now you are trying to make me kill you? At the end of tonight’s duel, you—a traitor guilty of patricide—will meet your end at my hands after defeating me, and Odoro will take the throne in your place. That is what you intended.”
Ibara didn’t answer. There was probably no need to.
Moment by moment, dawn was approaching. Shiroshi had only two options left.
Kill Ibara—or be killed.
“However…,” Shiroshi murmured.
With a light clunk, he set the gun down on the table. Then, slowly, he turned to face Ibara again.
“I believe I do have a third option. Even now.”
He was smiling.
He looked like a demon worthy of the name King of a Thousand Horrors and like the boy he was.
He wore the expression of a master boasting about his pet dog, and of a child proud of his one and only friend.
“I apologize if he offends you. He’s merely being Seiji.”
Right after that…
“Shiroshi!”
The door behind him opened. The door to the observation car, the one with the eight-digit code that only Ibara should have been able to open.
A figure dashed through it and stopped in front of him, shielding him.
Seiji.
And then, faster than a blink, even before his face could twist in shock, Ibara pulled a pistol from inside his cape and pointed it in the direction of the voice, his finger tightening on the trigger.
In the next moment…
“…I see. Finally, I understand.”
…a voice spoke—from right beside him.
Ibara froze from the toes of his shoes to his fingertip on the trigger.
Taking advantage of that momentary vulnerability, a hand reached in and grabbed the gun, slotting an index finger into the space in front of the hammer so that it couldn’t fire.
“Why…?”
The murmur sounded delirious. Ibara’s clouded eyes were so wide, it seemed as if the corners might tear.
“…Why is Odoro here?”
That’s right—the speaker was right next to him.
He’d silenced his footsteps and hidden his presence, but he’d been close enough to reach out and touch him.
It was Odoro Rindou.