The Biter

  After looking around the shelves for a bit, he took one package of mints that came with a small case and headed to the register. Out of the two payment counters, one was closed and the other had two customers already waiting. The customer checking out was a man who was nearly elderly. His basket was jammed full of items, which the female employee was holding up to the bar-code scanner sullenly. In line behind the man was a boy in about third grade, swaying his body around as if unable to wait any longer.

  A few minutes after Minoru stood behind the elementary schoolboy in line, the first customer finally finished checking out. As the man made his way to the exit with plastic bags hanging from both hands, the boy moved forward enthusiastically to take the man’s place, putting his item on the counter. It was a ten-card package of a fighting-style trading card game that was very popular among elementary and middle school students; even Minoru knew the name.

  The boy seemed to want to open it as soon as possible. Without waiting for the employee to hold the package up to the bar-code reader, the boy dropped a few coins he had been clutching in his left hand onto the counter. Immediately after, the employee looked at the register display and said, “That’ll be 313 yen.”

  Hearing that, the boy’s shoulders began to tremble.

  At first, he looked up at the employee’s face, then down at the coins he had just put on the counter. He stopped moving. Minoru leaned over a bit to see what was going on and looked at the counter.

  On the glass were three hundred-yen coins and one ten-yen coin. That was three yen short to buy the cards, but the boy was frozen in place and showed no signs of trying to add more coins.

  Suddenly, Minoru understood the situation. The sales tax had risen to 8 percent in 2014. It had become 10 percent in 2015, the year after, and this easy-to-calculate number had been used for a while. But this year, it had been raised to 12 percent. Moreover, the sudden talk of a tax increase had thrown the Diet into confusion, and the implementation of the new tax rate had been pushed back to the end of the year, December 1—in other words, five days ago.

  The price of the cards in question had probably been less than three hundred yen including tax through November. But because of the 2 percent tax increase, the price had gone up a little bit.

  Even though it was only just a few yen apart, it was a world of difference to an elementary school student. The boy finally seemed to understand that the price had changed, and his ears instantly reddened. He dug around in the front pocket of his pants many times but didn’t produce any coins to make up the difference. He had probably just run to the store from his house clutching only the allowance that he needed to buy one pack of cards.

  Discovering that one didn’t have enough money after bringing an item to the register would be incredibly embarrassing even for the teenage Minoru. The boy was completely dumbfounded, as if this was the first time this had ever happened in his life, and he continued to fervently search his pockets with his eyes all the way down.

  Minoru felt as if he could see the memory being engraved in the young boy’s mind with his own eyes. The boy would definitely recall this moment over and over in the future.

  Or the woman working at the register could tell the boy that she would hold on to his cards while he got three more yen from home, pulling him out of his panic and making it possible for him to forget this incident. But she didn’t seem to have any intention of doing so. She kept her silence with a scowl on her face, drumming her fingers on the glass surface of the counter.

  After the oppressive silence had gone on for about ten seconds, the boy finally seemed to have an idea of what to do next. Plucking his four coins up from the counter, he said, “I don’t need it,” in a barely audible voice. He turned right around and started to run toward the automatic door.

  Minoru had gotten a five-yen coin out of his wallet a little earlier, and it was now clutched in his right hand. At this moment, he dropped it on the floor. The boy turned around hesitantly, and Minoru bent down in front of him, picking up the brassy coin as it spun on the floor. Still crouched down, he held the coin out to the boy with it pinched between his fingers.

  “This fell out of your pocket,” he called out.

  The boy’s eyes grew wide with wonder, and he opened his clenched right hand.

  Minoru set the five yen on the other four coins atop the boy’s sweaty palm and stood up.

  “Now that you have this, I think you can buy the cards you wanted earlier.”

  At Minoru’s words, the boy counted his coins one by one with the index finger of his left hand. When he had confirmed that there was 315 yen, he looked up and smiled bashfully. He went back to the register right away and dropped his coins on the counter again.

  Once the employee rang up the card pack again and the boy had two yen clutched in his hand, he dashed out without giving Minoru a second glance.

  Minoru watched as the little figure disappeared on the other side of the automatic doors. When he remembered that he was in the middle of doing his own shopping, he rushed to put the mints down on the counter. When he glanced up, he locked eyes with the employee, who was giving him a creepy look. As he quickly averted his eyes, Minoru murmured in his head that he would have to stay away from the store for a while.

  When Minoru left the convenience store and got on his bike, he peddled against the cold wind that blew in his face. He rode through a residential neighborhood for a bit and crossed a bridge over the Kamogawa River, which was a branch of the Arakawa River. He stood on the pedals to power himself up the narrow path on top of the embankment, and the riverbed of the Arakawa at dusk spread out to fill his field of vision.

  Around here, the width of the riverbed was up to 1.5 kilometers, and the embankment on the other side was just like a hazy horizon. He couldn’t see the surface of the river because another embankment blocked the view, but the broad swath of green that lay nearby was Minoru’s destination, Akigase Park.

  The park, one of the largest within the city of Saitama, was on a three-kilometer plot of land that ran alongside the embankment. Inside it there were wooded areas, wild bird parks, and barbecue areas in addition to sports facilities like baseball fields and tennis courts.

  There had been a large park similar to this one near the town where Minoru had lived until eight years ago. On sunny days off, the four of them would go on picnics as a family, bringing a basket packed with lunch boxes.

  Shaking his head vigorously to interrupt the thoughts, Minoru came down from the embankment and entered the park. He stopped his bike in front of the directory for a moment, confirmed the route to his destination, and got moving again.

  Riding slowly down the path that cut through the center of the park, Minoru saw a wide-open lawn planted with orderly trees come into view. That was where he was headed; it was called the Western Garden. It was probably bustling with groups of families in the spring and summer, but now, in December, there wasn’t a soul around.

  Minoru got off his bike at the side of the lawn. Stepping onto the withered brown grass, he took his messenger bag off his shoulder and took a seat on one of the several benches there. His watch read 4:40. Another twenty minutes until the person he was meeting would arrive.

  He had a book in his bag, but, not in the mood to start reading, he leaned on the hard backrest and closed his eyes. Then the scene at the convenience store played automatically inside his brain.

  The reason he had put on such a show to give the boy the five-yen coin was definitely because Minoru felt sorry for him, not because he was trying to help him.

  It was because he was sure he would be in an unpleasant mood afterward if he had watched that scene all the way to the end. In other words, at the end of the day he had done it for himself. But that was the action he had taken, and now Minoru was getting a taste of the intolerable feeling of his self-important meddling.

  Ultimately, interacting with other people always increased his negative memories. Three days ago, when he’d fled in the middle of his e
arly-morning conversation with Tomomi Minowa on the embankment. Two days ago, when he’d clumsily fallen on his backside in front of the track team guys. And now today with his hypocritical actions.

  The marsh where the black water of his memories continued to accumulate tried to capture Minoru and drag him down into it whenever it could. Lurking in the depths of this marsh was that incident eight years ago. The memories of that gruesome tragedy that he could remember clearly second by second, decorated in fear and despair, regret and self-recrimination.

  Every time he reexperienced that night, he felt like he was losing something inside himself. It was probably something like the strength to live.

  Was there any reason in this world to go on living when it brought such painful feelings? Wouldn’t he be happier if he could end his life right away and go to the place where his parents and sister were waiting? Every time he sunk into that marsh of memories, that urge came over him.

  The reason he had resisted thus far was because if he committed suicide or something, he couldn’t imagine how sad it would make Norie, who had protected and raised Minoru for eight years…or how sad it would make his sister Wakaba, who had sacrificed her life that night to save Minoru.

  But if those black memories grew any more than this… If the marsh overflowed inside him…wouldn’t there come a day when he could no longer recover from it? He would rather go off to a world without anyone in it. In a place where there were no other humans, his negative memories shouldn’t increase at all.

  If one reads science fiction or horror novels, they often come across plot developments where the main character is thrown into an uninhabited town and overcome with fear. If he were to be put in those kind of circumstances, Minoru thought he would definitely feel a deep relief before fear.

  What if—

  Had that thing descended from the sky to take Minoru to that kind of world of solitude…?

  Yesterday and today, after Minoru had finished his daily running in the early morning, he had tried to reproduce that mysterious phenomenon on the embankment when no one was around. Unfortunately, he hadn’t succeeded even once, but that didn’t mean the phenomenon had disappeared. He just didn’t know how to flip the switch. He had a feeling that if he kept on with his trial and error, he would someday be able to will the phenomenon to occur himself.

  Even if he was able to manipulate the power at will, Minoru’s true desire couldn’t be fulfilled through a physical phenomenon.

  Even so, that was fine right now. Because if he kept chasing after it hard, he might really be able to go someday. To a world of absolute solitude, all alone.

  As he thought this with his eyelids still closed, the faint sound of footsteps reached his ears. He had heard that light rhythm before. Picking himself up, he looked to the left. In the twilight, most of the afterglow having already vanished, he could see a small silhouette dashing toward him. Checking his watch, it was three minutes until five o’clock. A little surprised he had been worrying for a whole seventeen minutes, he stood up from the bench.

  The person Minoru had been waiting for, now standing before him, marched in place for a bit while catching her breath. Even when her breathing had returned to normal, for some reason she made no attempt to speak. Minoru himself actually felt it was hard to breathe, so he pointed to the bench first and said, “Um… Should we sit…?”

  At this, the girl in her workout clothes, Tomomi Minowa, nodded firmly and sat down at the end of the bench still wearing her day pack. Minoru sat down as well, leaving a little space between them.

  As Minoru was wondering whether he should start talking about something himself, it apparently hit five o’clock on the dot and the solar-powered light nearby flicked on. Tomomi took that opportunity to open her mouth.

  “…Sorry for dragging you out this late to somewhere so far.”

  “…I just go home after school ends, so…”

  “You aren’t in any clubs, are you, Utsugi?”

  “No. I guess I’m in the going-home club. Apparently there are less than ten of us in our grade.”

  The conversation broke off there again. A few hours ago, when another scrap of paper had fluttered down as he opened his shoe locker, Minoru had thought it might be better to just not look at it. But the precise handwriting he saw when he reluctantly picked it up spelled out a message reading, “Please come to the Western Garden in Akigase Park at five in the evening.” It was signed by Tomomi Minowa.

  He of course wondered if he should ignore it this time as well. The reason he didn’t was that he could feel the powerful intentions behind her signing her full name. The day before yesterday, he came to the conclusion that he would ignore the track team guys’ orders. He had no reason to timidly obey those guys, who wouldn’t even sign their names on his summons. Or at least he shouldn’t have a reason to. As he told himself this, Tomomi once again apologized in a small voice.

  “…I’m sorry, Utsugi.”

  “It’s fine… My house isn’t even that far from here…”

  “Not about that.”

  Tomomi’s expression, which had for an instant held a faint smile, suddenly distorted completely. Transparent droplets welled up rapidly in the corners of her eyes, and Minoru felt like he might stop breathing.

  “I heard the older girls on our track team gossiping. They said that the members of the boys’ team called you out and…beat you up.”

  “Huh?”

  Minoru’s eyes grew round as he listened to the words Tomomi said in a shaking voice. It was true that they had called him out, but everything after that was kind of an overstatement. Although he had been punched once in the stomach, that mysterious phenomenon had kept him from taking any damage at all. Besides, it wasn’t something that Tomomi, who had not been directly involved, needed to cry and apologize for.

  “Th-that’s sort of an exaggeration. I didn’t get hurt at all, and all they did was say a few things to me…,” Minoru explained hastily, thinking that he was in a real mess.

  Anyway, he should have denied being called out at all. Tomomi had probably chosen to meet in a park so far from school because she suspected that his conversation with her was why the guys’ team had set their sights on Minoru. Minoru’s response had only confirmed Tomomi’s fears.

  “…I’m sorry…,” Tomomi apologized again in a barely audible voice, then covered her face with both hands.

  Her weak sobs shook the dry December air.

  While Minoru knew he should say something, he didn’t know what more he could say. There was no reason he would know. Up until now, he’d always avoided facing girls—no, facing anyone one-on-one like this.

  Minoru kept his mouth shut, and Tomomi kept on crying. Ultimately, the one who ended this moment was not Minoru but Tomomi herself.

  Suppressing her crying with her mouth pulled incredibly tight, Tomomi rubbed at her eyes with the sleeve of her workout shirt to wipe them. She kept her eyes all the way down as she said in a hoarse voice, “It’s probably better if I don’t talk to you anymore, right, Utsugi?”

  “…”

  She likely took Minoru’s silence as agreement.

  Shrinking her small body down even further, she finished by once again whispering, “…I really am sorry.”

  With that, Tomomi stood up. Turning her back to him, she started walking slowly not toward the path she had come from, but toward the woods in the center of the park. She gradually picked up her pace, eventually breaking into a jog.

  Even after the somehow heavy sound of her footsteps had grown distant in the twilight, Minoru couldn’t move. He just sat and stared as a single droplet that shone from where Tomomi had been sitting soaked into the wooden seat of the bench little by little.

  Hmm.

  Looking down on the vast park from the path atop the embankment, Takaesu tilted his head slightly.

  His prey’s behavior pattern was different than it had been before. Although she had passed beside Saitama Super Arena after six o’clock in the eve
ning and gone straight home from there both yesterday and the day before, today she had changed course along the way. Instead of heading for home, she had continued running on the narrow path along the river, went over the high embankment, and entered the park about five minutes ago.

  He had kept a distance of more than fifty meters between them, so he found it hard to believe that she had realized she was being followed. Still, just in case, he came to a stop just this side of the park and decided to carefully take stock of the situation.

  It was only the third day since he had started tailing her, so he didn’t know whether this was irregular behavior. Maybe she headed all the way out to this park two kilometers from her house every Friday, but he had a feeling that today there was something heavy about his prey’s footsteps.

  He didn’t actually believe it, but had the police caught on to him without him noticing? Was this a trap to lure Takaesu out? If he set foot here to hunt his prey, would he become the one being hunted?

  In these last three months, Takaesu had already chewed on the bones of four people. There was little chance of the leftovers being discovered, as he had disposed of them discreetly, but twice his prey had been reported as missing persons. Naturally, the police would be moving forward with investigations, and Takaesu couldn’t say that it was absolutely impossible for them to be led to him by some unforeseen clue.

  That thing had given him physical abilities that far surpassed that of the average person and teeth that could easily break a human humerus or femur. However, it was indeed impossible for him to avoid or stop bullets. If he was surrounded by police officers who opened fire with their pistols, Takaesu’s biting ability would likely end there.

  He wasn’t afraid of death. However, what he flatly refused to accept was an unseemly, ugly end. He would rather suffocate to death by getting an overboiled fettuccine noodle stuck in his throat than die because he was trapped by a police plot.