Ex8-2. The Day My Father Died

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/68/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

“Mochizuki-kun. Long time no see.”

In a night park lit only thinly by a few streetlamps, there were two figures, a boy and a girl.
The girl smiled at the large, long-limbed boy who had just arrived—Kosuke Mochizuki—with a familiar expression.
Kosuke, for his part, looked surprised at the sight of her.

“No way… Is that really you, Akizora? The one who went missing?”

Sakuna Akizora.
That was the name of the girl who, several months earlier, had gone missing along with several classmates.
A group disappearance, or perhaps a kidnapping—the news of them had stirred the public, but so few leads emerged that the uproar subsided with the mystery still intact.
The investigation continued, but personnel had been diverted to the recent mass murders, and it was not progressing properly.
By now, only a few occult enthusiasts whispered urban-legend rumors among themselves; aside from close friends and family, most people had lost interest in the case.

“What’s that supposed to mean? I look like someone else? From any angle I’m obviously me.”

Such a girl had suddenly appeared.
A message had arrived on Kosuke’s phone about twenty minutes earlier.
Why a message using Sakuna’s name would reach him, when they had not been particularly close.
His first suspicion was a prank, but if they had his contact, it was probably a summons from a classmate.
Some guy friend had sent it as a joke, no doubt, and he would have to go yell at them—so he had left the house.
That the person herself would be there had never entered his imagination.

“Um… I felt like you were prettier than the last time I saw you.”
“Ahaha. Don’t tell me you’re hitting on me? I can’t say I don’t get it. Being called to a park all of a sudden at night—a healthy guy would get his hopes up.”

He was not hitting on her.
She was certainly the Sakuna he knew, and yet something felt different from before.
Was it winter? Was it night? Or had his own expectations put a correction on the way he looked at her?
With her standing there, hands clasped behind her back, swinging her feet, Kosuke somehow could not speak well for nervousness.

“Well, we weren’t that close to begin with, so being called out of nowhere is awkward, yeah. Anyway, let’s get to the point.”
“A-ah…”
“There’s something I want to show you, Mochizuki-kun. Will you come with me?”
“Got it.”

Kosuke followed as Sakuna led him, walking behind her.
They went deeper into the park, left the path, and entered a grove of mixed trees.
The leaf mold of piled fallen leaves made poor footing; even so Sakuna went lightly, and Kosuke followed, losing his balance now and then.

“Sakuna-chan.”
“Oh, Toka. Weren’t you supposed to wait?”

Along the way through the woods, another girl appeared.
Toka Sato. She, too, was one of the classmates who had vanished with Sakuna.

“Sato as well… Where have you two been all this time.”

Kosuke spoke to Toka, but she gave him only a glance and at once looked away, uninterested.
They had had even less to do with each other than he had with Sakuna, so it was only natural, but the near-ignore still wounded him, alone.

“I got lonely waiting by myself.”
“It wasn’t even that long. Toka, you really are a baby.”
“Yeah… I can’t manage unless Sakuna or Lady Chigusa is nearby. I got changed that way.”

So saying, Toka brought her face close to Sakuna’s.
Sakuna closed her eyes as a matter of course and accepted the kiss.

The two of them did not stop at a greeting. They lingered, as if they had forgotten anyone else was there.

“Ha…? Wh-hey, you two, what are you…”

Kosuke could only stare, dumbfounded, at the girls’ sudden display.
Sakuna and Toka had been close, it was true, but they had not been like that.
Or had they closed the distance while they were missing?
Even so—it was not something to do in front of another person.

Sakuna chided her, and Toka looked downcast.
Even so she did not quite let go of Sakuna.

“Nn… You’re too worked up. After we’re done with business, later. All right?”
“U… Got it.”

Still drooping, Toka moved away from Sakuna.
Sakuna put on a face that was, at least, apologetic, and bowed her head to Kosuke.

“Sorry for making you wait. Come on, let’s go. There’s someone waiting.”
“…Yeah.”

This was abnormal.
Kosuke had noticed, and if he could have run he would have wanted to run, but somehow he could not bring himself to.
He did not feel that he could escape.
So he thought only of finishing the business and going home quickly.
That was all he thought.

When they went on along a path that was no path, a clearing came into view.
That place alone, unlike the rest, was lit and strangely bright.
No—there should have been no light in a place like that.
Wondering where the source was, Kosuke looked up toward the space above the clearing, and there were floating orbs of light.
Not only one. Four of them.
They were not supported by anything, nor hung from anything; they drifted there, softly.

“What is that…”

Distracted by the light, he stepped into the clearing with his face still turned up.
In that instant he caught a strange smell.
“Ugh”—he could not help groaning, and covered his mouth at the stench.

“We’re here, Mochizuki-kun.”

At Sakuna’s voice he lowered his gaze.
What he saw there was—

“…Ha?”

A familiar face.

“If words have no meaning, and actions have no value, and merely possessing a life is a sin, how ought they to atone?”

Toka spun words like a poem.
But they did not enter Kosuke’s ears.
More than that, there was this situation: the faces of his classmates lined up in a row before him.
Among them were close friends, but Kosuke did not feel like calling out a casual “yo.”
Because they were only faces.
To be precise, only heads. They were displayed at about the height of Kosuke’s eye line, arranged around a tasteless monument.

“If they cannot atone as living things, then they can only atone as objects. To express our gratitude, for the sake of their redemption, we were helping with that.”

Toka went on speaking as she looked up at that tower made of corpses.

“See, we were lucky enough to be girls, so we could atone to Lady Chigusa by quitting being human like this. But—if you’re a guy like you, Mochizuki-kun, the only way to say sorry is with a shape.”

Sakuna spoke toward Kosuke as if to supplement Toka’s words.
But he could not understand.
There was no way he could.
Seeing acquaintances killed, dismembered, and stacked as carefully as building blocks, no one’s thinking would move properly.

“In short, we want you to become a part too, Mochizuki-kun. That’s all right, yeah? Not that you have the right to refuse in the first place.”
“Don’t tell me… it’s you? Lately a bunch of people from class have been dying. That was you…!”

There was no reply.
Sakuna and Toka approached Kosuke without changing expression.
That served as an answer; he understood without asking.
The boy stepped back; the girls closed in.
And the moment Kosuke’s feet were about to leave the area of the clearing, a faint wind brushed his hair.
He felt someone’s presence behind him and turned.
In that instant his face was seized in someone’s palm; then his line of sight rose softly, then plunged at once, falling to about the height of a waist.
From that strange sensation onward, his body would not obey a single command.
He could not even speak well. His neck crawled.

(What’s going on…)

His field of vision swayed as if he were tied to the tip of a pendulum.
The scenery shifting without regard to his will gave Kosuke a sensation like terrible carsickness, and he furrowed his brow at a headache that squeezed his skull.
But the time of movement was not long.
Kosuke was lifted once more by someone’s hands, then inserted into something and fixed in place.
At both sides were the freshly severed heads of friends; Sakuna and Toka were not looking at him, but directing flushed, ingratiating smiles at someone standing in front of him.
A little apart on the ground lay a headless corpse.

“Lady Chigusa! You came!”
“It wasn’t something that needed to trouble Lady Chigusa’s hands…”
“This is my revenge, so I thought it would be flavorless if I did not do it myself. Mochizuki-san, too, would rather know why, how, and by whom than be killed without understanding, wouldn’t he?”

A smiling, fair-skinned girl entered Kosuke’s field of vision.
Over that girl, whom one could call beautiful without objection, was superimposed the shadow of someone remaining in his memory.
Chigusa Hinata.
A classmate. The girl who had been badly bullied by the group centered on Kazeoka and the others who had gone missing.
Kosuke himself had raised a hand against her several times.
But that had been because Kazeoka invited him, so it could not be helped—he unfolded a self-defense in his thoughts, but since he could not speak, it would not reach Chigusa.
And even if it had reached her, as to whether Chigusa would forgive him, the answer was no.
Because it was a fact that Kosuke had hurt her, and more than that, because he was a man.
At that point, the right to live had not existed.

“You look blank, so I will say it just in case: at present you have been pulled out from the neck up and made part of the monument. See, there is a corpse over there, isn’t there? That is your body, Mochizuki-san.”

Even told so, he still could not understand.
Because he was alive.
There ought to be no such thing as a human living after being pulled out from the neck up.

“You still don’t understand? It cannot be helped. Then—I will return to you the ‘pain’ I had taken from you, as a meager kindness.”

The moment Chigusa said so, the pain that had until then been waived by her kindness poured into Kosuke’s head all at once.

“—!”

Kosuke opened his mouth wide, his eyes so wide they might have left their sockets, and raised a scream that made no sound.
But no sound could be heard.
What was expelled was only saliva mixed with pinkish blood.
Under pain enough to burn the brain out, his face gradually changed color, his eyes rolled up—and in less than ten seconds after the sense of pain was unlocked, he was reduced, like his friends, to a lump of flesh without life.
With that the monument was complete, and their atonement as well.

“Sister, is something the matter?”

Sakuna called out worriedly to Chigusa, who was gazing at it with an uncharacteristically languid expression.

“I was chewing over again that this really was a necessary revenge. For me to seize happiness myself, and also to love someone from the bottom of my heart without sediment.”

Rage and hatred, when one is drowning in unhappiness, assimilate and are lost; when one is steeped in happiness, they interfere at the edge of one’s vision.
Then they must be removed.
The classmates had all been eliminated tonight, but for Chigusa there remained impurities that still spoiled the view.

“In other words, Lady Chigusa will love us even more than yesterday. That’s right, isn’t it, Lady Chigusa?”

At Toka’s remark, which raised the hurdle, Chigusa could not help a bitter smile.
In fact it was true, and they had worked even harder than yesterday, so a reward had to be given.

“Yes. That is correct. I will make it far worse than yesterday.”

When Chigusa said so, Toka and Sakuna’s eyes sparkled.
Sakuna in particular even made a guts pose and said, “Yesss!” out loud.
To be rejoiced at so directly was a master’s fortune.
Whether she liked it or not, she found herself getting into it.

“Now then. My feelings are quite cleared, so let us go home to our house.”
“Yeees!”
“Fufufu. Yes.”

Sakuna answered with an exaggerated raise of her hand, and this time even Toka laughed as if exasperated.
The lined-up heads of the corpses seemed to glare resentfully at the Demi-Vamps who had killed them—but they could do nothing.
The murderers left the park, looking thoroughly pleased, their arms linked.

 

◆◆◆

 

“Two male bodies found in park in City A, Prefecture H: missing high school students?”
“Around 10:30 a.m. on XX, a severed male finger was found in a park in Town F, City A, Prefecture H.”
“When prefectural police subsequently searched the park, the bodies of two males were discovered. The bodies had been severed and abandoned in an assembled state, it is said.”

The man knelt on the bed and traced the article pasted to the wall with a finger, then twisted his mouth and let out a hot breath, “Haaa.”
He collapsed as he was and crouched, repeating rough breaths.
When the excitement subsided he stood again and this time stared hungrily at another article.

“New male body discovered in City A, Prefecture H”
“In City A, Prefecture H, where two bodies were discovered on XX, a further male body was discovered on YY.”
“The male’s identity is believed to be a male student attending the same high school as the two previously discovered. The condition of the body is also similar to the two, and police are investigating with the possibility of the same perpetrator in view—”

His nasal cavity registered a scent.

“Damage to the body is severe, and identification is difficult.”

His skin registered warmth.

“The severed head is said to have been abandoned inside playground equipment in the park.”

As for the sound of breathing, it was as if it were being blown against his ear.

“Moreover, an arm discovered in another location belonged to a different person, from which it is thought there is a further victim, and police are hurrying identification.”

When he finished that article he went on to the next, and the next—and in the dim room the middle-aged man read the articles as a substitute for other acts, chewing over the reality that his own daughter’s existence was drawing close at hand.

“Aaa… Chigusa-chan. You’ve finally come home. I understand. Papa understands. That you’re heading here wanting me.”

Several months since Chigusa went missing.
Since the divorce from Chiaki, Ryotaro Hinata’s madness, which had been breaking down steadily, had rapidly deepened in depth from being left alone.
He almost never went out; he began repeating unexcused absences from work, and seemed recently to have been dismissed.
He had a certain amount of savings with his daughter’s future in mind, but if he continued his present life it would run out before long.
He needed a sense of crisis about the life ahead.
But in his head there remained no room to think about anything but his beloved daughter.

“Even if we aren’t related by blood, Chigusa-chan and I are connected at the heart. Being connected at the heart is the same as being connected in the body. We’ll always be together. We can’t be apart. Wherever we are, whatever we do, we’re parent and child.”

It goes without saying that Ryotaro’s attachment to Chigusa is abnormal.
The cause of every tragedy began because he had loved one woman far too single-mindedly.

 

Chiaki and Ryotaro, Chigusa’s parents, met in high school.
They began dating in their second year after Chiaki confessed, cultivated a healthy love, and promised, “Let’s get married when we’re working adults.” Chiaki went on to junior college, Ryotaro to university.
Compared with when they had attended the same high school there was somewhat more distance, and yet because they lived together the distance only shrank further.
Ryotaro, sincere and earnest; Chiaki, good-natured and good-looking.
They were such an ideal couple that people around them teased, “You’ll definitely make a good married pair.”

A change arose in their relationship around the time Chiaki graduated from junior college and became a working adult.
Ryotaro, invited by Chiaki, tried as usual to be intimate with her.
By that point the two of them were considerably worked up; they ought long since to have been in a state where it was possible.
The trouble was that Ryotaro could not.
His feelings were unmistakably directed at her; he was in love, he loved her, and he ought to have felt desire, and yet somehow he could not.
Chiaki, looking frantic, tried various means, but there was no sign they would be able to go through with it.
That day they concluded he was probably unwell and rested, but from then on Ryotaro ceased to feel sexual desire toward Chiaki.
The reason was unknown.
Ryotaro suffered and began going to the hospital as well.
Chiaki devotedly encouraged him and supported him—but she had an idea of her own.

It was a common wavering of the heart.
Having become a working adult, she had begun to find Ryotaro, still a university student, childish compared with her colleagues at the company.
Unluckily, around the same time a man with a poor reputation around women approached her and tried to court her.
If her reason had been intact she would not have arrived at so foolish a conclusion as an affair—but drink melted that reason.
A single mistake.
But that “once” produced a tragedy that could not be taken back.

Even so, Ryotaro never suspected his lover.
He thought the cause was in himself, did not imagine an affair at all, and continued to worry.
In that interval they tried substitute acts any number of times, but there was still no change in him.
And then, just before he graduated from university—Chiaki became pregnant with Chigusa.
Needless to say, the life that had taken hold was not Ryotaro’s child.
Frustrated that he would not hold her, she had repeated the affair several times afterward as well.

The Chigusa who was born resembled Chiaki well and did not much resemble Ryotaro.

Even so he doted on Chigusa.
There had been the question of whether that substitute intimacy could really produce a child, but more than anything the beloved daughter who had been born was simply too dear.
Chiaki, perhaps from guilt, kept a somewhat withdrawn position, but even so in the early years she seemed to have tried as a mother.
On the surface they were a peaceful family.
A friend of Chiaki’s from junior college days praised the three of them with a laugh: “An ideal family.”
By the time Chigusa was three, Chiaki had become convinced that “if no one knows the truth we can stay happy like this,” and at last she was able to act like a mother without reservation.

But sin does not vanish so easily.

The punishment arrived when Chigusa was four, in the bath with Ryotaro.
He became aroused—desire that none of Chiaki’s efforts had ever been able to raise. In that instant he had no choice but to admit everything.

This is not desire one holds toward blood kin. Chigusa-chan and I really aren’t related by blood.

At the same time, that was also to admit Chiaki’s affair.
The mind of a man who had gone on loving single-mindedly could not possibly tolerate his wife’s infidelity.
It was then that the seed of madness took root in Ryotaro’s heart.

 

And the seed continued to grow steadily, and the decent human being called Ryotaro Hinata broke down with the passage of time.

“Haah, haah, haaah, aaaah…! I can smell it. I can smell Chigusa-chan! I see, that was it, yesterday’s thing was a sign! Those corpses were a love message Chigusa-chan sent me! How dense of me not to notice! What do I do, the room is a mess and it stinks and it’s filthy! Aah, but maybe Chigusa-chan will come to like my smell too. That’s it, that’s right, then it’s fine, that’s fine. I’ll welcome her. Chigusa-chan’s favorite dishes are made ahead and frozen, so I only have to microwave them, so it doesn’t matter if the kitchen is dirty. We’ll sit at the table together, chat, rejoice at the reunion, hold each other, take a bath together. And once we’ve confirmed our love, next, next, next—!”

After he had begun to lust after his daughter, strange things mixed little by little into Ryotaro’s speech and conduct.
Chiaki decided on the divorce because she could no longer bear that conduct, and the guilt of knowing she was its cause.
Even so she could not throw away her love for Ryotaro, and after the divorce she set herself as the “villain,” telling herself, “The reason I cannot be in love with him is that I am trash.”

“She’s here, here here here here here aaaah! Footsteps! Yes, footsteps climbing the stairs aah! Chigusa-chan, Chigusa-chaan!”

Ryotaro rolled on the bed and fell to the floor.
Using the shock of the fall he bounced to his feet, raised a strange cry, and ran for the entrance, slamming his body into the walls again and again.
And almost at the same moment he reached the door, the intercom rang.
He unlocked it in a restless rattle and opened it with force.
Waiting there, with no need even to confirm with his eyes, was Chigusa.

“Chigusaaa! I’m so glad, I’m so glad…! You came back, you really did… ueh, ueeeeh…!”

Ryotaro at once clung to his daughter’s waist and wailed.
He wet a crumpled face with tears in a way unlike a middle-aged man, and pressed it against her.
He moved his face there, then suddenly stopped dead and took several large breaths on the spot.

“Nsuuu… nn, haaaah… aah, Chigusa-chan, you’re sweet? There’s a sweet smell? When you were little it was like milk, but now you smell like a woman’s sweetness. Chiaki was like that too. Chiaki’s was such a good smell… aah, Chiaki, Chiakiii…”

Chigusa looked down on such a father in silence, with cold eyes.
She had considered the possibility that if some time were left he might have become a little more decent, but there was no such convenient thing.
What is broken does not return.

“Come, Chi— Chigusa-chan, let’s go inside. If we stay in a place like this you’ll get cold, cold. A precious girl’s body has to be in a warm place. Let’s go, let’s go.”

Ryotaro stood and pulled Chigusa’s hand by force, drawing her into the house.
Then he headed at a quick pace not to the living room but to his own room, where he had been until a moment ago, and the instant they entered he shoved his daughter’s body toward the bed.
Chigusa fell onto the bedding without changing her expression at all, and gazed downcast at empty space.
Ryotaro covered her and pressed his body against hers, shoving.

“You’re not resisting much. Good. You remembered our promise. We did a pinky swear that when you came back next time I could do as I liked with Chigusa-chan’s body. We did… wait, did we? Imagination? Ah, well, whatever, we did, so it’s fine, right? Even if we didn’t, see, it’s all right, isn’t it, Chigusa-chan. You won’t abandon me. You’ll accept me, won’t you?”

No such promise existed.
It was only one of the ideal scenarios he had drawn while she was away, absorbed in delusion.
Already he could not even tell the boundary between reality and fantasy.

“See, Father is this excited with expectation too. Chigusa-chan’s body should be getting hot as well, because Chiaki loves me, so of course. Parent and child matching, huh.”

Ryotaro pressed himself against Chigusa.
At this, at last, Chigusa frowned in distaste.
In words alone, in voice alone, he was a male parent speaking to a beloved daughter.
If one did not consider the content.
Facing a father who made no attempt to hide his desire for her, Chigusa did not come apart. She opened her mouth in a calm manner.

“We are not related by blood, though.”

The first words upon reuniting with her father were those.
Under the abnormal circumstance of being attacked by a blood relative, a remark so without feeling that Ryotaro froze, an eerie smile still on his face.
They were not related by blood. That was an unmistakable fact.
It was also a reality Ryotaro wanted to avert his eyes from.
Gradually his lips began to tremble, and he stammered out words like excuses.

“B-blood… isn’t… connected. That’s… true, yeah. That’s… right. Because Chiaki slept with someone who wasn’t me. Slept—not just lay down together, they joined. Into my Chiaki, another man went in. Aaaah, filthy filthy filthyyy! Iii… i… b-but, still, that’s it, that was it! So Chigusa-chan and I aren’t related by blood, so even if we joined it wouldn’t be a problem, see? Chiaki loves me, so there’s no way Chigusa-chan would refuse me, so relax—”
“I don’t want to. Or rather, Father, doing that to your own daughter is disgusting.”

The second shock shot through Ryotaro’s heart.

“Ah… a, a… dis…gusting? I’m… disgusting, from Chigusa-chan’s point of view?”

That could not be, because Chiaki loved him, and if so then Chigusa, her daughter, ought to love him as well.
He had not even asked the person herself, and yet inside Ryotaro it had become an established fact.
Therefore a logical contradiction occurred.

“No, na, no, impossi, ble. Chigusa-chan likes me. Loves me. We’re supposed to join. That’s why she came back. And yet, and yet, and yet! Why!? Whyyy!? Dammit, dammit, dammiiiit!”

It had been the same before, when Ryotaro hurt Chigusa.
A casual word would break his thinking and strip away his reason.
What remained in him as a result was—violent anger, hatred toward the unreason of having his wife taken.
Before he knew it both his hands were going for Chigusa’s slender throat.
When both arms touched there he put force into them and pinned her to the bed.
As he was, Ryotaro straddled her and tightened his grip on her throat.

“I-i-it’s strange, right? It’s strange, riiiight!? Why, whyyy, love meee! Let me hold you, let me— I’m already at my limit! I want to join with Chiaki so badly I can’t stand it!”

That is why.
Father or mother, both of them—they do not see Chigusa.
She is the crystallization of Ryotaro and Chiaki’s love, a result, a product, and she is not recognized as the individual Chigusa Hinata.
In other words: lovers who could not become parents.

“I know! I get it! That it’s disgusting—more than anyone, more than anything, even without Chiaki saying it, I’m the one who knows it best! Do you get it!? You don’t, do you!? What it is to be a parent who got aroused looking at his four-year-old daughter! How much I despaired then, that I lost everything, every last thing of the life I’d built up until then—you don’t get it… Chiaki neither, you neither… ooooh, ooooooh!”

It had no doubt been a despairing event for him.
That does not make it a reason to hurt Chigusa.

He put his weight into both arms, shedding tears, spitting out resentment.
Of course Chigusa would not die from that degree of it—but an ordinary human would unquestionably have been killed.
In other words, he had murderous intent.

—Ah. As I thought.

She had known, but Chigusa was disappointed anew.
In the end she had only ever been a substitute for Chiaki.
Dropped as an abominable child, raised as a doll, about to be killed as a tool.
Lily and Shuri Shirogane, when they were human, had denied the way of Demi-Vamps—but if they had truly been allies of justice, could they have saved the Chigusa who was still human?
No. Impossible.
No hero can save her.
The only ones who can save her are, in the end, arrogant, selfish, cruel, and yet warm, overflowing with affection—things that are not human.

Chigusa took hold of Ryotaro’s hands, which were tightening on her throat, and peeled them off.
However little he had been going out lately, he was not so weak as to lose to a high-school daughter.
At a strength clearly different from the girl she had been before, he here for the first time showed a human bewilderment on his face.

“Do you know, Father, what I came here to do today?”
“To… see me… ah… no. That’s not it. There’s no way you’d want to come back to a father like this.”

Perhaps discharging his runaway feelings by strangling her had succeeded; the present Ryotaro had, uncharacteristically, recovered his reason.
A small remaining normal part of his broken heart.
That had come to the surface, no doubt.

“A farewell, then?”
“Yes. More precisely, ‘settling accounts.’ I am grateful, for what it is worth, that you raised me until today, so I thought I had to say it directly.”

Ryotaro’s expression became terribly weak; he withdrew slowly from atop Chigusa’s body.
She got down from the bed and patted the places he had touched, as if knocking off dirt.
When that was done she faced her father again and informed him, as ever expressionless and matter-of-fact:

“Please choose. Die by your own hand, or be killed by me.”

Though it had been said to his face, Ryotaro showed no sign of surprise.
He even wore a smile as he looked down and murmured, “I see.”

“The truth is, I’ve been thinking it was about time myself.”

Ryotaro moved to the corner of the room and picked up a home-center bag that had been placed there.
Inside was a brown rope.
There was no need to ask what it was for, but Chigusa listened in silence to Ryotaro’s explanation.

“I bought it. One that looked about right for hanging.”

So saying, he began to prepare.
Perhaps he had practiced several times; he tied the rope deftly and hooked it on a hook that had been attached to the ceiling beforehand.
There he stopped moving and spoke as if remembering.

“Ah, sorry. Could you wait a little? I need to get ready to die.”

Chigusa was silent.
Taking that as consent, he continued the work quietly.
When she turned her gaze to the bookshelf, several books on suicide were lined up.
Some of them were old; she learned for the first time that his wish to die had existed not recently but from fairly long ago.
…It could not be helped, given that she had had no interest in the personality called father.
However much guilt Ryotaro had felt about lusting after his daughter, for Chigusa such a thing was only a reason attached after the fact.

The rope hung at a place a step away from the bed.
Having finished preparing, Ryotaro climbed onto the bed, set his neck in the loop made somewhat large, and took a deep breath.

“Until Chiaki graduated from junior college, everything was going well.”

Memories returned like a revolving lantern.
Most of his memory was filled with Chiaki; almost nothing of Chigusa remained.

“In high school, after I started going out with Chiaki, we often talked about ‘what we’ll do in the future.’ What jobs we’d have, what kind of house we’d live in, how many kids we’d have, what about a pet, even how we’d save for old age…”

Happy memories are only empty to recall.
His voice trembled. His vision blurred.

“Back then… I was happy. I was sure we’d be able to stay happy like that forever…”

The pain in his constricted chest resembled nausea.
Before the memories crushed him and he collapsed in misery, Ryotaro decided to leap.

“Why did it turn out like this.”

Facing death, there was nothing but regret and lingering attachment.
Even so, he thought dying would be better than going on living in a world without Chiaki.
He had given up.
All that remained was a little courage—see, put force into the feet, take one step forward—and if the body flew in midair, the next instant the whole weight would be on the neck, breathing would become impossible, consciousness would recede.
Suspended, Ryotaro for a little while clutched at his throat as if in pain and struggled, then ceased to move, and died with a face hideously distorted.
Chigusa, who had been watching, stood before his corpse and lengthened the nails of her right hand to a sharp point.

“‘Why like this,’ is it. To the very end, you are self-centered—!”

Then she swung her arm down and tore Ryotaro’s remains.
Cut diagonally from the shoulder in a kesagiri, the lower half of his body fell to the floor; the lightened upper half, from the shock of the severance, swung like a pendulum.

“Even a death like this clears my feelings. I may have hated this person more than I myself thought.”

If lack of feeling is the reverse of fondness, then the emotion Chigusa had held toward him might, in a sense, have been called the feeling of blood kin.
That said—it was only of a degree that, seeing a corpse hanging before her eyes, she could not help smiling.

Chigusa turned on her heel and left the room.
Her heart was lighter than when she had come here.
The effect was far greater than when she had killed, or made fall, a single former classmate.
This really had been necessary for her.
Having reconfirmed that, Chigusa turned her thoughts to the remaining one—Chiaki, her mother.

—It was the following day that she visited Chiaki’s apartment.