Coward Murderer
The girl was awoken by the smell of coffee. Seeing the thick slices of honey toast, the bisected soft-boiled egg, and the green salad spread out on the table, she sat down drowsily and slowly ate it all.
She didn’t look at me whatsoever while doing so.
“What are you going to do now?”, I asked.
She indicated the wound on her palm. “I think I’ll get payback for this next.”
“Sounds like it wasn’t your father who gave you that one, then.”
“That’s right. He was generally careful in his use of violence. He rarely left marks anywhere that couldn’t be covered up.”
“Other than him, about how many other people do you want revenge on, would you say?”
“I’ve narrowed it down to five. Five people who have all left permanent scars on me.”
So then there were five more wounds she was still postponing? Actually, there could be more than one per person. At least five more wounds was how I should think of it.
This led me to a realization. “Might I be one of your five targets of revenge?”
“Obviously,” she replied aloofly. “Once I’ve enacted revenge on the other four, I’ll subject you to a suitable fate too.”
“…Well, works for me.” Even so, I scratched my face.
“But don’t worry. No matter what I do to you, when the postponement of the accident - that is, the postponement of my death - wears off, everything that I’ve caused after my death will have never happened.”
“I don’t know if I quite understand that part,” I responded, voicing a concern I’d had for a while. “Does that mean you hitting your father with a hammer, once the postponement of my accident wears off, will be undone?”
“Of course. Because before I could enact any revenge, you ran me over and I died.”
That was when she told me the story about her first postponement, with the gray cat.
Finding the corpse of a cat she’d adored, going to see it again that night, seeing the corpse and blood gone, being scratched by the cat and getting a fever, then suddenly being cured of the scratch and fever, and gaining contradictory memories.
“So comparing it to the revenge on your father, you’d be the cat, and the hammer would be its claws.”
“Yes, I think you have the idea.”
So then, no matter how much harm the girl inflicted on others from here on out, all of it would be gone once the effects of her postponement ended.
“Is there a point to a revenge like that?”, I wondered aloud, airing some honest doubts. “Absolutely anything you do will just be undone in the end. And "the end” being in ten… uh, nine days.“
"Imagine you’re dreaming, and realize that you’re in a dream,” the girl illustrated. “Would you think, "Nothing I do will have an effect on reality, so why bother?”, or would you think “Nothing I do will have an effect on reality, so I’ll do whatever I want”?“
"I wouldn’t know. I’ve never had any dreams like that,” I shrugged. “I’m just thinking about what’s best for you. Bringing pain to the people who made you unhappy won’t bring back your lost happiness. I’m not trying to trample on your anger and resentment, but really, revenge is just meaningless.”
“Thinking about what’s best for me?”, the girl repeated, emphasizing each word. “Well then, if not revenge, what do you think would be best for me?”
“Well, there’s gotta be other stuff to do with this valuable time. Go around meeting your friends and people who helped you out, confess to people you like, or maybe used to like…”
“There isn’t,” she interrupted sharply. “There was no one kind to me, helpful to me, no boys I like or used to like, no one. What you just said couldn’t possibly be any more ironic to me.”
Are you sure you’re not just blinded by your anger? Just think about it, I’m sure you’ll remember someone who was nice…
I wanted to say something like that, but I couldn’t deny the possibility that what she was saying was 100% true, so I swallowed my words.
“Sorry,” I apologized. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“Yes, you should be more careful about that.”
“…So, who’s your next target?”
“My sister.”
First her father, then her sister. Would her mother be next?
“Sounds like you didn’t live in a very pleasant household.”
“Quit while you’re ahead,” the girl replied.
Until the moment I put my hand on the doorknob, I’d been convinced I was completely cured of my illness. But as I put on my boots and prepared to go out, I felt all the energy leave my body, and I froze up.
If someone who didn’t know the situation were to pass by, they might think the doorknob had an electric current running through it.
I stood in place. My pulse quickened, and my chest tightened and hurt. In particular, the pit of my stomach, my arms, and my legs went numb and limp.
I tried just waiting there for a while, but things showed no sign of returning to normal. These were the symptoms. I’d thought my shock from the car accident had quickly cured it, but I still hadn’t conquered my fear of the outside.
The girl noticed me stopping like I’d run out of battery and furrowed her brow. “What is this, a joke?”
I guess it would’ve looked like I was messing around to her. Gradually, nausea welled up in me like my stomach was being filled with rocks. A cold sweat ran down my skin.
“Sorry, can you give me some more time?”
“Don’t tell me, you’re feeling ill?”
“No, I’m not good with going outside. I’ve been living a life of only going out in the dead of night for nearly six months.”
“But weren’t you rather distant from home two days ago?”
“Yeah. And maybe that’s the reason I’m scared.”
“First that thing after the accident, now this? How horribly weak-minded are you?”, the girl remarked in disbelief. “Just cure yourself of that quickly, whatever it takes. If it’s been twenty minutes and you’re still hopeless, I’m going without you. Nothing’s stopping me from carrying out the plan alone.”
“I understand. I’ll cure it.”
I collapsed face-up on the bed. My quickened pulse continued, and the numbness hadn’t gone away.
Lying still, I noticed the sheets smelled faintly different, likely because the girl had slept here. I felt like my territory had been invaded.
Wanting to be alone even if it was only by way of a single wall, I hid away in the dim bathroom, lying my face on the toilet seat and covering it with both hands.
I took a big breath of the aromatic air, held it for a few seconds, breathed out, and repeated. Doing this very slightly eased me. But it was going to take quite some time to recover enough to go outside.
I left the bathroom and pulled some flip-up sunglasses out of a closet drawer. Shindo had bought them as a joke and left them with me. Anyone who wore them instantly looked like a foolish hippie.
I wiped off the lenses and put them on, then stood in front of the mirror. I looked even dumber than I could’ve imagined. I felt my shoulders ease up.
“What are those awful glasses?”, the girl asked. “They couldn’t fit you any worse.”
“That’s what I like about them,” I laughed. With these sunglasses, I could laugh naturally. I still felt nauseous, but I was sure it’d clear up eventually. “Sorry about the holdup. Let’s go.”
I swung open the door with excessive force and went down the stairs. Getting in my forever nicotine-smelling car, I turned the key. The girl gave me a map on which she’d written a route and detailed comments in red pen.
“With all this preparation, I guess you’ve been planning this revenge for quite a while.”
She continued to stare at the map. “I lived thinking about nothing else.”
The roads were congested in the morning. They were flooded with cars in both directions, and school commuters coming out of the station filled the sidewalks. Everyone carried umbrellas of all colors in preparation for rain.
When the car was stopped at the red light, some of the students walking across the crosswalk glanced at us, and I felt uncomfortable.
How must we have looked to them? I hoped that maybe I looked like someone on his way to college, taking his sister to high school on the way. The girl slid low into her seat to avoid being seen.
Turning toward the driver-side window, I saw a small flower shop surrounded by colorful flowers, and with four jack-o’-lanterns carved from pumpkins out in front.
All of the pumpkins had bright flowers blooming out of the hole on top, so they served as stylish flower pots.
I recalled now, of all times, that Halloween was at the end of October. It was nearly time for the local high school’s culture festival, too. An exhilarating season for many, to be sure.
“I just had a thought,” I said. “Can you be certain your sister is home? I find it unlikely your father wouldn’t have notified her about the beating you gave him. And if she’s aware you have a grudge against her, she might have fled elsewhere.”
The girl seemed annoyed. “I don’t think she’s been contacted. That man’s disowned her. Even if he wanted to contact her, I doubt he even knows her phone number.”
“I see,” I nodded. “How far is it to our destination?”
“About three hours.”
This was going to be a long drive. All the radio stations were boring, and none of the CDs in the glovebox were something that struck me as suiting the tastes of a high school girl.
“…I know I can’t be the only one surprised by the dip in temperature lately,” a radio personality said. “What’s the deal with the cold this year? This morning I saw someone wearing a winter coat, and I gotta say, it’s just the climate for it. I’m no good with the cold, you know, so not only do I wear a scarf and gloves, I simply have to double up the layers. Can you even believe it? But surprisingly enough…”
While we were stuck in traffic, I asked the girl if I could smoke.
“Fine, but give me one too,” she said.
I had no reason to refuse. Trying to preach to the person I’d killed about her health would be a laugh.
“Make sure no one outside sees,” I warned, then took a cigarette out of the pack and handed it to her after rubbing the leaf end.
Watching a girl in a high school uniform smoke a cigarette inside a car was unnatural to the extreme. With zero familiarity in her movement, she lit it using the cigarette lighter, took in some smoke, and coughed violently.
“You can just take in about a teaspoon of smoke,” I suggested. “That might have a better taste at first.”
She switched to my suggested method, but still choked after taking in the smoke.
I considered telling her she might not be made for smoking, but watching her stubbornly try again and again, I decided to let her do as she pleased.
“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” I prefaced, “but what did your sister do to you?”
“I don’t want to answer.”
“Okay.”
Putting the cigarette butt in the ashtray, she said “It’s not something I can explain briefly. At any rate, she’s someone who drove me to a point from which I could never recover. Just remember that for now.”
“What do you mean you could never recover?”
“There are hopeless faults in my personality. You know that, right?”
“I don’t. You seem pretty normal to me.”
“Already trying to score points with me? Flattery won’t get you anywhere.”
“That wasn’t the idea.” So I claimed, though I’d hoped those words would cheer her up.
“You said you’d consider me normal? Then let me show you proof to the contrary.”
She reached into her school bag and took out a teddy bear. It wore a red military uniform and a black cap. It looked like a nice, soft toy.
“Despite my age, I still can’t part with this. If I don’t touch it from time to time, I’m overcome with anxiety. …Am I making you shiver yet?”, she spat out. She seemed to be considerably troubled by the fact.
“Like Linus and his blanket? It happens all the time, nothing to be embarrassed about,” I interjected. “I used to know a guy a long time ago who named a doll and talked to it all the time. Really creepy. Compared to that, just having to touch it…”
“Oh, I’m sorry for creeping you out.” She glared at me and put the bear away.
Should’ve kept quiet, I realized too late. I’d only ridiculed her in the most effective way possible. But really, who could have imagined a girl with such a cold glare naming a teddy bear and talking to it…
An awkward silence prevailed.
“…On that note, the theme for today’s write-ins is "moments that make me glad I’m alive!”,“ the radio host said. "Our first letter is from a self-described mother of two. "My daughters of six and eight get along so well that even I’m astonished. But for Mother’s Day this year, they prepared a surprise present…”“
The girl reached out to turn down the volume before I could.
It was a subject too dizzying for us right now.
We escaped the traffic, spent two hours speeding down a stunningly autumn-colored road over a mountain pass, and arrived at the town where the girl’s older sister lived.
After getting a light meal at a hamburger shop and driving a few more minutes, we arrived at her house.
It was a very tidy house. Behind brick fencing, there was a well-kept garden with roses from all seasons, and in the corner of it was a swing with a roof on top of stone pavement.
The outside walls were a blue that seemed to melt into the sky, and the three windows on the second floor were white with round tops.
Such a happy-looking house. This is where the girl’s newlywed sister lived, she told me.
Nothing like my parents’ house, I thought.
Not to say that the house I used to live in didn’t have any money put into it, but its outer appearance demonstrated the mental ruin of the owners.
The walls were covered in vines, and beneath them were scattered things that had long ago become unusable: a tricycle, rollerskates, a stroller, steel drums.
The front yard was big, but infested with so many weeds as to suggest the house was vacant, becoming a subpar place for stray cats to gather.
Maybe for a brief time after I was born, it was a happy enough house for me. Either way, by the time I gained self-awareness, my parents had come to consider the house not worth it.
Even though I was an only child, they considered me a heavy burden. Why did these people decide to start a family at all?, I always wondered.
When my mother left, it was relieving. It was the more natural way for things to be.
"Nice house,” I said.
“You stand by outside the gate. I’d say there’s an 80, 90% chance I won’t need your help. Just be prepared to drive off right away.”
The girl took off her jacket and left it with me, went under the arch to the front door, and rang the bell hanging on the wall. The clear metallic sound rang out.
The wooden door opened slowly. From behind it came a woman around the age of 25.
I observed her from behind a tree. She wore a dark green knit pullover with gray parents. She wore her hair dyed chocolate-colored in a single-curl perm.
Her eyes looked wise, and her movements opening the door were graceful.
So she’s the girl’s sister, I pondered. They had some facial similarities, with their somewhat-colorless eyes and thin lips.
But I felt like their ages were too far apart for sisters, and I couldn’t imagine her being someone who would slash the girl’s palm with a knife.
I couldn’t hear their conversation, but it didn’t seem to be turning into an argument. I leaned back on the gate and dug around in my pocket for a cigarette, but I’d left them in the car.
I wondered, though, in what way did the girl intend to get revenge? Right before arriving, I’d taken a look in her bag and was certain she hadn’t hidden away any dangerous weapons.
She’d attacked her father with a hammer, so would she do the same to her sister? Or did she have some other weapon prepared?
I never got to think about it, though. My questions were quickly answered.
Almost exactly when I finished my cigarette and looked toward the front door again, I saw the girl fall on top of her sister.
The sister quickly tried to catch her, but couldn’t hold her, and they fell over together. So it appeared.
Yet while the girl got back up, her sister showed no sign of getting up again. And she didn’t ever get up.
I ran over to the girl, and the scene made me doubt my eyes.
Large dressmaking scissors had been stabbed into her sister’s chest. One blade of the open scissors had been pushed all the way into her.
She’d done a very good job of it. There wasn’t even a scream.
Blood filled the entryway, flowing through the gaps in the floor.
She’d achieved her objective with astonishing speed.
That stunned silence reminded me of an incident of my own.
When I was in fourth grade, and we had 30 more minutes left in PE, the teacher said we’d spend the remaining time playing dodgeball, and the children rejoiced.
This had become a semi-common event. I meandered over to the corner of the gym and mixed in with the other students watching the match.
Once about half of each team had been hit by the ball, some of the people who were out started getting bored. Ignoring the outcome of the game, they started playing around in their own ways.
One person did a clean frontflip on a part of the floor without a mat, and not to be bested, five or six other boys attempted to do the same.
This became more interesting to watch than the dodgeball game, so my eyes followed the boys hopping and flipping around.
One boy flubbed his landing and hit his head on the floor. It was loud enough that I could hear it from a few meters away.
Everyone stopped moving. The one who hit his head didn’t get up for a while.
After about ten seconds, he held his head and started to wail in pain - but he was only making a lot of noise to distract from his embarrassment, as it didn’t seem to be that serious.
Those surrounding him, too, to do away with the brief worry that crossed their minds, pointed at laughed at the fallen boy, hitting and kicking him.
I was the first to notice a boy who wasn’t part of that circle, and was lying down in a strange position. Everyone’s attention was on the one who hit his head, so no one had had seen the moment when a boy with particularly slow reflexes broke his neck.
One by one, people became eerily aware of the boy not moving a muscle and stopped to look at him. Finally, the PE teacher noticed something was wrong and ran over.
Speaking so calmly as to seem too calm, the teacher told the students not to touch him, not to move him at all, and sped out into the hall.
Someone remarked “Of course the teachers get to run in the halls,” but no one responded.
That boy never came back to school. We were told he’d damaged his spinal cord, but as fourth-graders, we could only think “I guess he hit his Achilles heel or something.”
But our teacher, to emphasize the severity of the matter, explained that “he’ll be wheelchair-bound his whole life” (a softened explanation, now that I think about it - he was already fully paralyzed and hooked up to a ventilator), and some of the girls started crying.
That’s so sad. We should have been paying attention. Others dutifully began to cry as well, and people suggested “Let’s go visit him,” “Let’s make him a thousand paper cranes.” The classroom was distressed, full of goodwill and selflessness.
The next month, the teacher told us in homeroom that he’d died.
That wounded boy uncomfortably lying on the floor of the gymnasium and the woman collapsed in front of us now overlapped in my mind.
At times, life can be lost so easily, as if swept away in the wind.
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