Case 00: Yoishi (1)

Kii-chan’s funeral was held at a Buddhist temple close to the school, and although it was summer vacation, almost all of M’s classmates and their parents were in attendance. The spacious temple grounds were filled with countless umbrellas, with around half of them being little yellow ones.

All of them wore grave expressions with their heads hung down, and M was also there with her mother. I couldn’t bear facing her, to see her beautiful face distorted as it was. How should a first-year elementary schooler come to terms with a person’s death? Did I experience the loss of a close friend when I was alive?

I stood alone at the back of the crowd as I pondered on such things.

The temple was located at the top of a hill. At the bottom, countless reporters were loitering around with cameras in their hands. Would the death of this elementary schooler end up being reported as a continuation of the strange incidents that occurred in S and K town? I knew from Sako’s explanation that the two incidents (where someone added a sense of unease) were simply suicides, but the public might have continued to believe that there was still some killer lurking somewhere. And, Kii-chan’s mysterious death might have been presumed to be the work of that killer.

According to the conversation M’s mother had with the other parents on the phone, Kii-chan went alone to the school’s pool in the middle of the night. It was not yet known if she was alone or with someone. She had no external wounds, and the cause of death was drowning. The pool was surrounded by a wire fence and the entrance was locked, but it wasn’t impossible to climb over it. In fact, there was a previous incident where some boys in the school had snuck inside to play in the middle of the night without permission, and gotten punished for it. In short, it wasn’t known if it was an accident, something insidious, or -- the possibility I didn’t want to think of – of it being a suicide. The only immovable truth was, that a young girl only six years of age ended up departing this world.

The time to carry out the coffin finally arrived, and I raised my head.

As the car horn honked, the hearse carrying Kii-chan slowly started to move.

All at once, the sounds of the children rang out, “Kii-chan!” “I hate this,” “Thank you,” “Goodbye,” Even my own nose prickled, heavy with emotion. When I think about how much she was loved, something swelled up inside me at the absurdity of her passing at such an age once more.

In the midst of all this, I suddenly caught sight of a man standing at the back of the crowd, his head hung down and his hands joined together.

He seemed familiar somehow, and as I fixed my gaze at him, I remembered. It was the plain clothes detective I happened to see in that ‘Headless incident’ at the Nagami household – If I recall, he was an old guy named Tatsuke. He wore a scruffy navy-blue suit and worn-out leather shoes, and like me, he was drenched in the rain without an umbrella.

I felt some kind of kinship with him, and when I drew close, I heard him whisper under his breath, “That poor girl.” But, after that—

“…I’ll make sure to get them for this.”

Hearing the old man add that, I cocked my head in puzzlement.

--Get them?

Did that mean the police believed it was the work of a killer?

Unconsciously, I was midway through asking him just what the hell he meant, but of course, my voice didn’t reach the old man. After seeing the hearse go downhill, pass through the hordes of reporters with their camera flashes and drive off, he started walking towards the group of uniformed policemen waiting outside.

Ahh, that old man knew something. I wanted to ask him what the hell that was. If only Sako was here – I was gritting my teeth, when—

“…Um…Mr. Inspector?”

An unexpected voice called out to the old man.

I looked to see that it was M. The old man, whose clothes were drenched from the rain, brushed off the raindrops on his shoulders two to three times, turned around to face M, who was dressed in a black blazer and skirt, he bent down and softened his expression slightly.

“Yes, that’s correct, young lady.”

“…Ummm, about Kii-chan…”

“Yes?”

“—Who was inside Kii-chan?”

…Huh?

Hearing M’s question, me and the old man’s eyes widened at the same time.

“Young lady, were you a friend of hers?”

In response, M gave a small and firm nod.

“Do you know what that question means?”

Seeing M nod once more –

The old man told one of the uniformed police officers behind him to bring an umbrella. However, the police officer merely glanced at him before outright ignoring him. It seemed he was cut off from his colleagues as always. After clicking his tongue for a bit, the old man opened the trunk of the patrol car by himself, took out a plastic umbrella and held it out.

Thereupon, M’s mother rushed in. She put her hand on M’s shoulders, and looked at the inspector with a dubious expression.

“Um, do you have some business with my daughter?”

“Ahh, are you her mother? Umm…I wanted to ask her some questions about the child that passed away.”

“Please save it for another day. It’s too much on a day like this.”

In reply, M spoke to her mother, “It’s fine.”

“There’s something I want to ask as well.”

M’s mother fell silent as if she were overpowered by M rarely expressing her will so straightforwardly. As she looked alternately at the old detective and her daughter in distress, the old man turned to the mother and bowed, “Please let me speak to your daughter for a few minutes.”

M and the old inspector moved to a park bench located just outside the temple.

I, of course, accompanied them. M’s mother was looking at our direction from a little further away, with her umbrella held up. Was she still somewhat distrustful of the inspector, or was she simply worried about M’s expression? It was likely the latter.

“So young lady, did you notice something about that girl?”

They arrived at the bench, but since it was wet with the rain, neither M nor the old man sat down. They remained standing as they began their conversation in front of the bench.

M was silent for a while with her head cast downwards, but when she eventually raised her head, her eyes were filled with tears.

“Kii-chan was my best friend.”

“……..”

“She was so kind, and she really cared about me; Even though I always ended up taking so much time thinking about the things I wanted to say…she would patiently wait for me, and, it was something no one else would do for me, so that’s why… that’s why, I knew Kii-chan really understood my thoughts…”

Large drops of tears streamed down her cheeks as she spoke. All the old man and I could do was to bite our lips and watch.

“But--” Thereupon, M wiped her tears and spoke. “But, one day, Kii-chan disappeared.”

“…Disappeared?”

“Since summer vacation started, Kii-chan hasn’t been Kii-chan.”

“…..”

--What did she mean by that?

I cocked my head in puzzlement, as Yoishi spoke while choosing her words carefully.

“…Even though the body was Kii-chan’s, and even though the face was Kii-chan’s… but, that wasn’t Kii-chan. Her eyes were so dark, pitch black… and also, Kii-chan didn’t laugh like that. But… no one would understand that… I didn’t know who I should tell it to…”

It was a strange way for M to speak, with insistence and emotion. The inspector gave a single deep nod and placed his rugged hand on top of M’s head before slowly stroking it.

“You noticed it, didn’t you?”

His words startled me.

“Yes, that’s right. That girl probably wasn’t Kii-chan.”

The inspector led M to a bench with a roof, where he took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. He took out the last remaining cigarette in the pack and put it in his mouth, then he crushed the pack, and lit the cigarette with his lighter. Thereafter, he remained silent for a while, staring at the rain. He seemed hesitant on whether or not it was a story he should tell a first-year elementary schooler, but perhaps because of the serious look in M’s eyes as she looked up to him, he made his decision, and finally began to speak.

“I call it ‘The migrating malice’.”

The old man began to open up.

“The first time I met ‘it’… was around twenty years ago. Back when I was still stationed as a uniformed officer in a police box. It was the end of the year, and I was almost at the end of my shift. It was the coldest time when the sun was about to come up – and I got a call on the radio. A man was on a rampage in front of the station, attacking passersby with a knife. I quickly rushed over there together with three of my colleagues, and found a man staggering in the roundabout in front of the station yelling something. I tried to make sense of it as I got closer, but it was all gibberish. We thought he might have been on drugs or something. There were two male students collapsed nearby, who appeared to have been stabbed. There was also a woman pressing down on a place near her shoulders. When a colleague aimed his gun at him and warned him to throw away the knife, the man looked our way. The way he looked at me – I still shudder when I remember it. How should I put it, it was like a hole, a dark hole that had pierced through his eyes.”

"……………………"

“After that, he started moving in a strange way. A jerky movement that seemed to loosen his body, like a dance. We warned him once more. We told him to throw away the knife and to lie down on the ground. It was right then and there. I thought the man made a slanting, falling movement, before he plunged a knife into my colleague’s stomach. I immediately fired a shot into the man’s leg. That was the first time I fired a shot at the scene of a crime, but – my colleague shot an additional round that struck the man in the stomach. The man recoiled backwards and collapsed on the spot. I could hear the screams and angry shouts all around me. I secured the man, while my colleague tended to the stabbed officer as he shouted over the radio to HQ for backup and an ambulance. In the commotion – I heard it. As I pressed down my arm on his stomach, the man smiled and spoke, 『This body is of no further use.』”

“…This… body?”

“That’s right, young lady. I’m certain the man said that. He kept cackling all the way in the ambulance, but died before reaching the hospital. After looking into it afterwards, he seemed to have been an earnest worker at a bread factory in Gunma. There were no signs of drug use, and we never found out why he came to Tokyo and why he did what he did. He was his mother’s only child. She was quite pitiful as she kept bowing her head and apologizing to the flood of reporters. The case file had a record of the words the man had said to me, but they were soon forgotten. I felt unconvinced as if something was amiss, but I myself thought the case was over. However – it was around two years later. On that that day, I got a report about a mother screaming with a child in her arms on the handrail of a footbridge. I was no longer in uniform at the time, but I was close by and heard it on the radio so I ran towards the scene.

There, a young woman was surrounded by several police officers. At first glance, I noticed how bizarre it was. With one slender arm, she dangled her frightened, flailing child upside down over the edge of the footbridge. She cackled and laughed right above the barreling traffic. The officers were trying to talk her down, but it was like their words didn’t even reach her. The highway was underneath, so we couldn’t put cushions or anything. As I thought desperately about what to do, it happened. The woman looked at me with hollow eyes that were like holes. She then smiled and spoke,『Yo』. In a masculine tone of voice, she said,『Long time no see』. I asked her if we had met before. And in response, she pointed at her stomach and feet, and laughed again, saying, 『Didn’t you shoot me before? 』”

A shiver ran down my spine. I finally began to piece the puzzle together. In short, what was it? Could ‘The migrating malice’ possibly mean – that the same personality inhabited two different people?

“The woman spoke. She said that humans are sacks of blood. That if I were to drop this one from here, everyone will understand that; when suddenly without warning, she dropped the child. Everything went silent as if time had frozen for a moment, before I heard a horrible sound, and the screams of people passing by. We instantly arrested the woman. I asked her as she was pinned down, ‘Why would you do something like this?’ In reply the woman just laughed and said,『Because it’s fun, after all』. ”

….Huh…….?

“The way she tilted her head, and her strange twisted smile – it was enough for me to confirm it. It was the same as the man from that time. The thing that was inside the man from back then, was right now, in the shape of a woman in front of my very eyes. I couldn’t tell if ‘it’s’ real gender was that of a man or a woman. I didn’t know if it was young or old. Anyhow, I don't think words got through to it. No, not words, but things like morality or values. Seeing an existence like that with my own eyes which was out of sync with everything for the first time made my knees tremble.”

The old man glanced downwards with a bitter look on his face, threw his cigarette down on the spot and smothered it with the sole of his shoe.

"Listen young lady. I've seen a lot of criminals up until now, and there's no such thing as being evil from birth. There are only weak people. Most of them are hopelessly weak people who couldn't stop themselves from indulging in crime. But that was different. I don't know if it would be appropriate to describe it as such, but that was a demon, no, pure unadulterated evil -- yeah, if I dare say, what you'd call absolute evil."

"Demon" -- "Unadulterated evil"... "Absolute evil".

I felt the blood leaving my entire body as I repeated the words inside my head.

"When I heard about the cases in S and K town, I felt a strange sense of unease."

"...A sense of unease?"

"Ah, by a sense of unease, umm, the fact that I couldn't picture the culprit -- a shiver that made me feel like I wasn’t dealing with a human being. When I stood at the scene of the crime, my premonition became a certainty. Ahh, it's the same as that time, is what I thought. At any rate, I have a feeling as if 'it' has appeared once more. I can't help but feel it's here somewhere in town, and that right now, it's trying to do some kind of experiment. What can it do with the human body and how far can it go? I have no idea what it's trying to do. However, it has some goal in mind which it’s trying to achieve."

"You can't capture it?"

In response to the question, the old man showed a bitter smile.

"That's exactly it. Young lady, I'm sure you're thinking what exactly the police are doing when they're supposed to catch the bad guys. But on top of the question of how to capture something like malice -- the problem is who would believe you. You see, young lady, the number of officers who noticed 'its' existence is very little. No, at the moment I'm the only one."

The old man muttered bitterly,

(--Heey, I know who that is!)

I unintentionally screamed out loud.

(I saw it. I met and spoke to it! And her ultimate aim is for this girl and her family!)

I spat out loud, but of course, my voice didn't reach the detective or anyone else.

"There are no official documents within the police. And none of my colleagues believe me. Thanks to that I'm treated like a weirdo, and they already think I'm crazy in the head. My superior bluntly told me that as well. Well, it can't be helped because that bastard only cares about his career. " He clicked his tongue as if reminded of someone, "Besides that, there's another reason I can't capture 'it'."

The old man spoke.

"I don't know who it's hiding inside right now."

....Ah.

"That's right, that thing is always inside people. It keeps moving from body to body. When that body dies, it moves on to the next one. I don't know what criteria it uses to select its host, or how to stop it."

“Despite that…” The old man looked at the town drenched in rain and spoke.

"Even now, ‘it’ is inside someone in this city."