“Why? Did something happen?”
Soji peered at him and nodded slowly, as thought his head were heavy. “There was … an accident.”
The air conditioner was blowing on them. That’s why I feel cold, Kotaro thought.
“I have never asked Kenji about it,” Soji continued. “He’s never said anything himself. There was a time when I think he wanted to talk about it. But I didn’t ask him. I was afraid.
“When I heard he was missing, the accident was the first thing I thought of. I never once asked him about it, never gave him a chance to unburden himself. That was my mistake. I’m sure he must’ve grown tired of carrying that burden alone,” Soji said.
“Giving your creditors the slip means running away from society,” he continued, matter-of-factly. “In a sense, you fall through the cracks. At first we moved from place to place, living with people who would take us in, but moving around like that meant Kenji couldn’t go to school, so we left him with my parents, then my wife’s parents, or with our siblings.
“That didn’t go well either. Naturally my creditors quickly discovered who our relatives were and made trouble for them too, which forced Kenji to move again. Then a friend of mine from college offered to help us. He had a son Kenji’s age, and he offered to take Kenji in until my wife and I were able to get back on our feet.
“Kenji had just started sixth grade. He transferred to the same school my friend’s son was attending. He was registered to go on to middle school in the same district. My wife and I were relieved to have him settled. We focused on taking care of the loose ends after the bankruptcy and getting our lives in order.
“We spoke with him by phone from time to time. We were relieved that he seemed to be doing so well. But we were wrong. He was suffering. My son’s friend was bullying him mercilessly.
“Kenji was in a weak position. In a sense, he was a freeloader. At first the son found it interesting to have someone his own age in the house, and he helped Kenji out. But when the son ridiculed me—his teacher told me this afterward—Kenji stood up to him. When the boy began playing silly pranks on Kenji, he ignored them, and him.
“Well, that sort of reaction probably grated on my friend’s son. Pretty soon the boy enlisted a few of his friends, and together they started bullying Kenji. Apparently they were quite cruel, but somehow my son endured it.”
The first term ended, summer vacation passed, and the second term began. On the surface, Kenji’s school life was peaceful. But in mid-December, someone from the neighborhood found him sprawled in the middle of a farmer’s field, midway between school and home. He was taken to the hospital.
“Apparently he’d been beaten by several boys at once. He spent three days in the hospital. This time the school really did sit up and take notice, and began an investigation. But before they were able to learn much, my son’s friend was found dead. He’d fallen off a cliff.
“My friend lives in a housing development carved out of woods and hills. The house—it was quite large—sat on the edge of a cut in the hills. The backyard ended in a drop-off higher than a two-story house.”
The son had fallen from the cliff, struck his head, and fractured his skull. He had no other injuries. He was dressed in a shirt, sweater and jacket, and sneakers. The control unit of a radio-control airplane was found smashed on the ground next to him.
There was no fence at the edge of the cliff. The view of the city spread out below was splendid. The boy had often flown his radio-control airplane out over the woods beyond the cliff. Apparently he had been doing that when he fell; the little airplane was found caught in the branches of a tree near the foot of the cliff.
A young boy, fascinated by his model airplane, slips and falls to his death. A tragic accident—
“But earlier, his mother heard him and Kenji shouting at each other in the backyard. She was in the front yard and saw nothing, but she heard snippets of what they were saying because they were shouting so loudly—‘give it back,’ ‘idiot,’ ‘cheeky,’ ‘homeless,’ things like that. She was worried that they were fighting again, but then things got quiet and she forgot about it. She was the first to find the body, later that afternoon.
“The police came and questioned Kenji. He said there’d been an argument because the boy refused to return some math notes Kenji had lent him. He told them … that he got tired of arguing, went in the house, and didn’t see what happened afterward. He didn’t know anything was amiss until the boy’s mother told him.”
Kotaro peered at Kenji’s father in disbelief. Soji gazed back at him. They both shivered. The air conditioning was freezing.
Kotaro still felt a chill when he got home that evening. It was as though the cold had sunk into his bones and was cooling the air around him.
He couldn’t get Kenji out of his mind. His words, the look on his face at times—everything kept coming back. When the hands of the alarm clock he’d been using since elementary school touched midnight, he made up his mind.
“Galla. I’ve got to talk to Kenji.”
He would convince him to return to the world of existence. What he was doing was just not right. It was too hard on his father.
And what would happen if he didn’t leave Galla’s scythe? What would happen to him and the other homeless people and their cravings when she fought her battle at the Gate of Sorrows? If she won, would they become part of the scythe forever, helping her guard the Tower of Inception? And what if she fell in battle? What if the scythe was broken? Galla would die … or maybe she wouldn’t, but if she disappeared, wouldn’t those in her scythe disappear with her?
He stood at the window. For a moment he felt pressure in his ears, as though he were diving into deep water.
He was in Galla’s sanctum, on the roof of the tea caddy building. The lights of the West Shinjuku skyscrapers seemed as distant as the Milky Way. The buildings closer by seemed to press down on top of him, as though distorted by a fisheye lens.
Galla was nowhere to be seen. She was still wrapped in darkness.
Now you can talk to your friend.
He nodded and called into the darkness of the sanctum.
“Kenji?”
“You talked to my father.”
The voice came from somewhere behind. Kenji sounded just as he had on that first visit to the coffee shop. It was his voice in the flesh. But when Kotaro spun around in surprise, he saw no one.
“Where are you?”
“That’s a silly question. It’s not like you, Ko-chan.” Kenji chuckled. “I’m with Galla, always. I hear everything you say. But it’s been a while since we talked like this, hasn’t it, Ko-chan?”
Kotaro was on the verge of tears from joy and relief. Kenji was still his old self. There was still time.
“If you know I met your father, I don’t have to waste time briefing you. Let’s go home, Kenji.”
Silence. He peered around, searching for his friend.
“You can’t abandon him. You must’ve suffered, but he’s suffering too, maybe much more now that he’s lost you.”
In Galla’s sanctum, the human voice did not carry. Instead it seemed it disappear as soon as it left the speaker’s mouth, as though carried away on a moving current.
At last Kenji answered quietly. “I don’t have anything to atone for.”
“What?”
“My father’s wrong—though I guess it makes sense, since I was wrong for a long time myself.”
No matter which direction Kotaro faced, his friend’s voice seemed to come from behind him.
“I’m a murderer, you know.”
“Your father told me what happened.”
“He wasn’t there. He doesn’t know for sure. He said there was an accident. But I know what happened. I know what I did. I’m a child killer. I won’t say I killed my friend. That kid was no friend of mine.”
??
?That’s right. You could just as easily have gotten killed yourself when he and his friends attacked you.”
“So are you saying what I did was justified self-defense?”
Kotaro didn’t hesitate. “Yeah, I am. All you did was fight back.”
Silence again. The distorted cityscape seemed to press in even more. The reds and greens of traffic lights dazzled his eyes.
“That’s what I thought too, at first. I thought my back was against the wall. I was afraid if I let him keep pushing me around, I’d end up getting killed. I couldn’t stand the endless bullying. I was so angry and scared that I think I blacked out for a second. When I came to, he was at the bottom of the cliff. I thought I was free.
“But that feeling of being free from fear, of being liberated from a cage, didn’t last long. After that, all I felt was horror. What had I done? I couldn’t change what happened. That’s why I was never able to confess. I had to pretend. I just kept saying I had nothing to do with it, that I didn’t see him fall. I put a lid on the truth.”
“But you were suffering, Kenji. Weren’t you?” This feeling of always having Kenji somewhere behind him was getting more and more frustrating. Kotaro kept turning in place, looking this way and that. “You can’t change the past, but you wanted to atone for what you did. Be of use to others, help needy people or people who’d been abandoned by society. That’s why you couldn’t ignore those missing homeless people—”
“You’re wrong.” Kenji’s voice sounded right behind his ear. “That’s not how I felt. I lied to you, Ko-chan.”
Kenji was with Galla. Here in her sanctum, he was everywhere. Kotaro was enveloped in his thoughts, crystallized as words he could hear.
“True, I was worried about those missing people when I found out what was happening. If I didn’t investigate, I thought no one would notice they were vanishing. I thought I had to do something.”
“Of course you did.” Kotaro spoke louder. “I saw the pain in your eyes. I remember even now. They weren’t the eyes of a liar.”
“Probably not. Because at the time, I was lying to myself.”
“What does that mean?”
“As I walked the neighborhoods along the Seibu-Shinjuku Line, putting the pieces together and searching for Kozaburo Ino, I knew the stories about people going missing weren’t rumors. They were true. People were vanishing. Someone was erasing people who had fallen through the cracks. I was convinced of it. That was when I realized that what I really wanted was justice.
“I wasn’t worried about missing homeless people. I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t even interested in finding out why it was happening. I was angry. Who was doing this? Where was he? I wanted to see his face, hear his voice, listen to him try to justify himself, and then exterminate him.
“I wasn’t out there trying to help people weaker than me to atone for what I did. I didn’t feel that way at all, not really. That was just a story I made up for myself, a superficial motivation. In reality, I was enraged. Anyone who’d do this, I thought, isn’t human at all. He has no right to live. He has to be exterminated.”
Kotaro gave up trying to turn toward Kenji’s voice and stood still. He knew how Kenji felt. He’d felt that way himself. He understood the emotion and the eruption of energy it triggered. That’s why he’d decided to become a hunter.
“That’s when it hit me. When I pushed that kid off the cliff, I felt just the way I do now. I wasn’t afraid of him or trying to get back at him. I was righteously angry, so I exterminated the bully.
“Since then I’ve never regretted what I did. I never thought I needed to atone for it. I was just pretending to myself that was what I wanted, because that’s what good, honest kids are supposed to feel. But in my heart, I felt purified. I took it on myself to reduce the number of bullies in the world by one. What could be wrong with that? People like him don’t change. In fact, they get worse as they get older. Poisonous seeds just grow into poisonous trees, with poisonous fruit that harms society. What’s wrong with exterminating them?”
Kotaro knew exactly what Kenji meant. He knew it all too well.
“Galla showed me my true self. She revealed who I really am.”
How, Kotaro wondered, but then he knew he didn’t have to ask. Kenji would have encountered Galla as he searched for Kozaburo Ino. She’d probably taken him to the roof of the tea caddy building. There, she had shown him his Shadow.
“I want you to see it too. Turn around.”
Kotaro closed his eyes, turned, and opened them slowly.
The darkness before him began to deepen and take shape, a human shape. It was larger than Kenji, with broad shoulders and thick, muscular legs. To Kotaro’s relief, it was not a monster.
The darkness was fully congealed. Kenji’s Shadow stood before him.
It was inky black and powerfully built. Its outstretched right arm grasped the long, stout handle of some sort of tool. It lifted the tool, which looked heavy. The head of it made a scraping noise on the roof. A real tool, but one that did not exist.
It was a huge ax. The Shadow would probably need both hands and all of its strength to wield it. It looked more suited to Makoto’s giant.
But it belonged to Kenji. It was part of him, the embodiment of the words spoken in his heart, part of what he really was.
It was an executioner’s ax.
This was Makoto’s secret, a secret no one could ever have guessed, just as no one could have guessed that an extroverted female friend was secretly consumed by a jealousy powerful enough to drive her to murder, or that a kindly neighborhood florist was a pervert thirsting for blood.
The executioner took a step forward, dragging its ax. It moved closer to Kotaro in a jerky slow motion that sparked both drowsiness and nausea.
Kotaro was paralyzed. The black executioner drew closer until it was upon him, then passed through him, just as Galla once had. For less than a second, as Kenji’s words passed through him, his heart reverberated with bellows of rage and screams of terror.
He felt compelled to turn and watch as the executioner melted into the darkness and disappeared. But before it was gone, he saw that its spine was paralleled by dense rows of razor-sharp spikes, like a dinosaur.
“If this is my real self, my true essence—”
Kenji spoke out of the enfolding darkness.
“—then I have no regrets. I have nothing to atone for. I would do it again if I had to, as many times as I had to.”
Kotaro had a vision of Kenji at Kumar, eyes fixed on his monitor on School Island, tracking the text messages of young kids excitedly exchanging information about their “homeless hunting.”
Kenji had gone from observer to hunter. He had awakened fully to his true self and would find it more than easy to do the same thing again, if he returned to Kumar.
All right, who’s next? Whose evil head will this ax of mine send flying?
“But there’s another part of me, the boy I was before I pushed the bully over the cliff, and it keeps murmuring in a small voice, ‘I’m afraid.’ ” Kenji said. “I’m not a child anymore, but I’m also not clever enough to kill again and get away with it. If I keep executing people, it’ll just be a matter of time before someone finds out. I won’t be able to say it was an accident.”
I’m afraid.
“Still, I wouldn’t care. They could catch me and I wouldn’t be sorry. But my father and mother would suffer. I can’t do that to them.”
That was why he’d sought refuge in Galla’s scythe. He had offered up his craving to punish evil and root out those who would torment the weak, and turned his back on the world of existence.
“I wore that mask for my parents, the mask of the good kid.” There was a smile in his voice now. “And I thank you for worrying about me, Ko-chan, but I’m not coming back. I can’t.”
Kotaro had lost his voice. He was too stunned to even no
d.
“I think my father knows it wasn’t an accident. My mom too. They took pity on me and suffered for me, and they both fear me. That’s why my father’s looking for me. My mother knows enough not to.”
When Kotaro had parted with Kenji’s father outside the coffee shop, Soji had said, “I think Kenji may already be dead.”
“Goodbye, Ko-chan. I’m not going to die.” As he faded away, Kenji called one last time. “I’ll be with Galla for eternity. I won’t exist, but I’ll be real—forever.”
Kotaro’s legs turned to jelly. He sank to his knees. He covered his face with his hands.
All he could think of, all he could hear, were the words of a man facing extinction.
You’ve got huge fangs …
If what he’d just seen was the real Kenji, what did his own Shadow look like at this moment? Kotaro was engulfed in pure terror and immutable despair.
In Galla’s sanctum, silence reigned.
The Gate of Sorrows
1
“I’m thinking about washing my hands of this whole thing.”
It was late August. The summer sun was still fierce, but there was a soft breeze. The bench under the trees at the edge of the quad was cool and pleasant.
Shigenori sat next to Kotaro, watching with a critical gaze as students walked past.
“Young ladies come to school dressed like that? What’s with that chemise, or whatever you call it?” He sounded faintly lecherous. Kotaro hadn’t encountered this side of him before.
“That’s not a chemise, it’s a camisole. And there are no classes now. They’re here for club meetings. They can dress any way they want.”
“You’re taking classes.”
“Just makeup lectures. Anyway, I’m finished.”
For a week after his last encounter with Kenji, Kotaro had been sunk in a depression. His emotions had swung like a pendulum. He’d had trouble sleeping and his body felt like lead. He told his family it was just the summer heat.
He’d called Shigenori because the ex-detective was the only person who could understand what he was going through. Shigenori had agreed to meet right away. He hadn’t even asked what it was about.