The Murderer (Part 4)

And so eight o'clock in the evening rolled around. Tea with Miiko-san had ended and I found myself walking between Shijô and Oike on Kawara-machi Street. Miiko-san had already driven her Fiat back to her apartment.

"Don't use me just to kill time and save on shoe leather." Those were the words she had left me with.

She could see right through me, all right. Miiko-san was sharp, all right. But you had to hand it to her for accepting my invitation anyway. She was a nice girl. Or maybe she just had a sweet tooth.

I came to a stop and entered a nearby karaoke spot.

"Welcome," the guy behind the counter said. "Party of one?"

"Umm, I have a friend who should already be here."

"May I have your friend's name, please?"

"Zerozaki Hitoshiki."

"Ah, Zerozaki-sama?"

He briefly entered something into his computer. "Okay, that would be room twenty-four," he said, flashing me a customer-servicey smile. I said my thanks and made my way to the elevator. Room twenty-four was on the second floor. I got off there and walked down the hall, checking the number of each room.

"Dadadadadada dadadadadadadada! Dadadada! Dadadadadadadadadadadadadadadada! Ah! Aaaahhhh!"

Just as I was wondering who was the bozo with the rusty pipes, I realized it was coming from room twenty-four. I gave a little shrug and opened the door without even knocking.

"Wha-?"

Zerozaki stopped his belting once he noticed me.

"Yo, Damaged Goods," he said, waving a finger at me. I entered the room without reacting and took a seat on the sofa.

"Hey, Human Failure," I said.

He placed down the microphone and used the remote control to end the song.

"You can keep singing if you want. You're paying for this, right?"

"Nah, it's okay. I'm not really all that into singing, to be honest. And I sure as hell don't like imitating other singers. I just do it to kill time."

He sat down so that he was facing me and sighed deeply.

"Haven't seen ya for a day. But, like, it doesn't really feel that way."

"Eh, I guess not." I nodded.

To be honest, I was surprised. Until a moment ago, I didn't even think Zerozaki would be here. Sure, after our conversation the day before yesterday — I mean, yesterday morning — we'd arranged to meet again. "I'll be at the karaoke joint, so let's meet up there," he had said. But I didn't think he would actually show up. I guess he probably thought the same thing. And that was no doubt the reason that I had come and the reason he was here waiting.

The meaning of the phrase used to wait: Here too lay a justified contradiction.

From there, we began talking about a variety of things, none of which mattered in the least. It was just like the night we had first crossed paths. Ridiculous philosophy, boring facts of enlightenment, irrelevant views on life. At times, we veered off-track a bit and got into discussions on music ("Guess the one-hit-wonder") or literature ("What's the trick to truly moving your reader?"). None of it had any real point. It was as if we were both just trying to check something. Something about each other.

"Say, Zerozaki," I said somewhere around the four-hour mark. "What's it feel like to kill someone?"

"Huh?" he said, tilting his head at me. His face looked blank as if he hadn't been thinking of anything in particular. "It's not really the kind of thing that makes you feel this way or that. I don't really feel much of anything."

"You don't? It doesn't feel good or refreshing or anything like that?"

"Listen, dumbass, what do you think I am, some kind of sicko?" he said with a heaping helping of condescension. Committing grisly murders sure seemed like a funny way of not being a sicko, but I decided to hear him out.

"'Cuz, you see, it's like this. I mean, I am a murderer. But I'm not what you would call a 'lust murderer.' That's a tricky distinction to make. I guess it doesn't do any good for me to make that kind of claim myself, anyway. In the end, it's the people around you who decide who you are. All I can do is go along with it. I'm not really one for deep thoughts, you know."

"Huh... Yeah, I guess not. Okay, then how about I change my question — what is murder to you?"

"Nothin'."

I could find two meanings buried in that word.

It was worth nothing.

And therefore, it cost nothing.

"Now here's a question for you, D.G. What is death to you?"

"When you flat-out ask me like that, I'm at a loss. If I had to answer, I guess I'd say it's kind of like a battery running out of juice."

"A battery? You mean like with the AA and stuff?"

"Yeah. Well, something like that. I guess you could say battery power is like a life force or something. Which I guess would make you and your body the insulator."

"I've been called worse," he said with a little laugh. He seemed to be truly enjoying himself. I wondered if I sounded like him when I laughed.

"I guess my question was ambiguous," I said. "How about this, then? Do you understand why other people commit murder?"

"Huh? That's a bizarre one. But very you somehow. Let's see... Nope."

"You don't?" I asked.

"Well, first of all, I don't understand other people, period. Whether or not they're killers, and regardless of how evil they may or may not be. Second of all, I don't even understand myself. I have no freaking idea what causes all that chaos and confusion swirling around in my guts. So all I can say is no, I don't understand people who kill others."

"I see your logic there."

"I might add that murder was never particularly what I was going for," he said as if it really was just an afterthought.

"What does that mean?"

"Well, this is going to get awfully conceptual, but in other words... Well, here's an example." He picked up the receiver for the room phone. "Excuse me, could we get two ramens please?"

Not much later, a staff member came in carrying ramen.

"Eat up. I'm payin'," he said and took some noodles with his chopsticks. "Now this is a meal."

"Yup. You didn't even have to tell me."

"They say food, sleep, and sex are the three basic desires of mankind. But why are we eating this meal right now?"

"To ingest vitamins."

"Yes. Without vitamins, people die. And thus eating food brings pleasure. Sleeping feels good, too, and sex, well, that's obvious. Anything that you have to do to stay alive always comes with pleasure."

"Sure. That's easy enough to understand. So?"

"Don't rush me. 'So? So? So?' You sound like Akutagawa Ryu-freaking-nosuke."

"Huh? Wasn't that Dazai's thing?"

"It was Akutagawa, dammit. Dazai wrote about it in an anecdote on Akutagawa."

Whichever literary figure it was, I decided to once again do as told and hear him out. He paused for a moment before speaking, as if to build up the suspense.

"Now let's imagine someone who's obsessed with eating. In other words, someone who eats not simply to take in vitamins, but because he's mad for the sensation of eating itself; for the beauty in the very act. The stimulation of his taste buds. The pleasure of feeling the food pass through his mouth. The joy of mastication. The ecstasy of feeling that mushed-up gook flowing down his throat. The feeling of fullness nearly destroying his satiety center altogether. The euphoria taking over his brain. In other words, I'm talking about a fat guy," he said, laughing. 'To a guy like that, vitamins or lack thereof are totally irrelevant. The means and the end have switched places for him so that his main goal is something subsidiary. Now there's your problem. Can you still say this guy is eating? No, don't answer. You and I both know the only possible answer is no. What this guy is doing isn't eating. He's just eating the concept of eating."

"And you're just killing the concept of killing? That's a bit of a stretch," I said with a shrug. "It's pretty perverse to try to equate a natural appetite for food with the urge to kill. Are you sure you don't just have your priorities mixed up? Maybe you're mistaking killing for something else."

"Ehh, that's a tough one. It's hard to say. I'll say it again, man — the act of killing itself was never my intention, nor was the stuff that comes afterward. Y'know, the dismemberment."

Then what the hell is your intention? Man, you're a tough guy to understand."

"Not as much as you. I mean, I know that I'm hard to understand. I just said that. Anyway, in the beginning, I thought I was in it for the thrill."

"The thrill," I said.

"Yeah. You've heard of 'high risk, high return' before, right? In Japanese, I think we say, 'If you don't go into the tiger's den, you don't get no cub.' With murder, the risk is high, but the return is low, right? It hardly seems worth it. It's stupid. That's why most murders are almost always cases of people 'going too far' or 'using too much force.' They're not trying to kill the person, but before they know it, they've gone and done it. However..."

He pulled a rather dangerous-looking blade from his vest pocket. "This here is what they call a dagger. You grip it in your fist like this. So the first person I killed, I stuck this thing in his carotid artery and just tugged it to the side. This was an inexplicable act of murder. I had no particular intention of causing the person suffering or pain. In fact, it was a rather pleasant way to die, if you ask me. Now, let me just say right now that by no means was this a boastful act. I'm sure you know this, but acts spurred by one's pride are the most pathetic actions a person can take. People who take pride in causing harm are the lowest of the low. I'm just boasting about my faults here. Seriously, all joking aside, that's the only kind of murder I can perform. Even when I went after you, on the other side of the mirror."

"Huh. You don't say."

"I do say. Like, let's imagine that you and I ended up fighting to the death again. Of course, logically speaking, it's entirely possible that you would kill me. But in the one time that you could kill me, I could kill you nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine times. Well, in reality, you and I each only have one life, but this is a metaphor. At any rate, I can only kill for the sake of killing. In other words, I can affirm that the eight people I've killed up until now were not victims of me 'going too far'."

Eight people.

In two days, the body count had risen by two.

Well, I guess you could say that Zerozaki had gone about living his life while I had been living mine.

"So am I an idiot? Maybe. After all, it's not like I'm getting anything out of killing these people. Well no, I guess I am getting something. Whatever's in their wallets," he said.

One of the alarming details of the prowler case had been that the victims' money and valuables had been stolen. This was a rare thing in cases like this, in which the murders seemed to have been committed for the thrill of it, but the reason was simply that Zerozaki needed the money to support his homeless lifestyle.

Even his karaoke money was probably coming out of one of those victims' wallets. If you looked at it that way, even this ramen was tainted with sin, I thought as I slurped my noodles.

"But you could get that stuff just by working a normal job, so it's no reason to commit murder. If you think about the effort that goes into killing one person, it makes a lot more sense to just spend the day working somewhere instead. And yet I choose murder. And therein lies my whole theory."

"Ah, I get it. In other words, to Zerozaki Hitoshiki, the risk is the return."

"Yup. The means and the end aren't just swapped, but unified. The act itself is the purpose. The purpose is the act. The act is complete when you've carried out that purpose. This is actually not a bad theory at all."

"But how is that any different from just losing sight of your purpose? It's like having a guy who loves to read, so he fills his room with books until it's completely buried in them. But he still keeps buying new ones. Whether he buys books or not is up to him, but he's got so many books in his room now that even if he spent his whole life reading them, he'd never get through them all. But he just keeps on buying and buying."

"Hmm. Ahhh, ah-ah-ah, I get it, I get it. You're talking about processing capacity. Once you've surpassed your processing capacity, means and end become one and the same. It's like Ishikawa Goemon said: 'A splendid view, a splendid view, even a thousand pieces of gold is too little to pay for the beautiful sights of spring. I, Goemon, am worth ten thousand ryô.' Hmm. Yeah, maybe so," he said with an impressed sigh as he reclined into the sofa. "But you know, my man, even if that is the case, it doesn't have much to do with me. You know why? Because that theory I've been talking about is so totally wrong, to begin with. Risk equals return? Now there's a bullshit equation if I've ever heard one. I'm just having fun with the logic here."

"Huh. So what are you getting at?"

"Well, this story is a little generic," he said, leaning forward. "But let's go back to when I was just a little brat. You were a little brat once too, huh? Well so was I. What kind of brat was I? Well, I wasn't particularly weird or anything. I even believed in God. If I got smacked, it hurt. If I saw someone else get smacked, it hurt. I had all your average sensibilities. I wanted to bring happiness to the people near me. I knew gratitude. I knew unconditional affection for another human being. That's the kind of little brat I was... But sometimes, I would just sit. Not to read a book or watch TV or something. I would just sit. I'd be there resting my chin in my hands, my mind up in la-la land, just sitting there. Sooner or later, I realized that during these times, I would always naturally start pondering how one kills a human being. The first time I realized what I was doing, I was seriously freaked out. I mean, I was pondering, examining how you kill a person as if it was the most normal thing in the world. The idea that this was really me was the scariest thing," he said.

"So it was something you discovered in yourself. But what part of this story is supposed to be generic? It seems pretty out there to me. You're saying that from birth, you've had an innate proclivity to murder?"

"I said don't rush me. I thought that once myself, but that's not the case at all. I thought I was born with a murderous mindset, with the urge to kill. But that's not it. It's that — and this is where it gets generic — I'm attached to a rail."

"A rail? What are you talking about?"

"It's a metaphor. You hear it a lot. People talk about life on a track, right? You go through middle school, you go through high school, you go through college, you enter society, you support yourself with a salary so that you can bag a lover, and then you depart from the world. That's the track of life. Well, similarly to that, I'm on the murderer's track."

"Sounds more like you're off the track to me."

"Like you're one to talk. Anyway, that's not important. The kind of track I'm talking about here isn't necessarily the one set up by society. It might be a track you've set for yourself. Like, imagine there's a kid who becomes obsessed with Ichiro in elementary school and decides he wants to be a baseball player. At that moment, he makes a track for himself."

"I see. So that means we're all on a track... Except for people who 'drop out,' I suppose."

Except for people who have suffered a fatal blow.

Except for people who go off the rails.

"Yup. I don't know who laid down this track for me. I might have done it myself. Someone else might have. But one thing I know for sure is that I've taken the track too far. I've made it too far down without suffering that fatal blow, and now there's no stopping me. I can't even entertain the idea of putting on the brakes."

"Aha. So it just keeps going on and on."

In other words, right now, he was in motion. And he in midmotion was entirely different from the him who had first started running along this track.

"Yup. It's like a curse from the past. And in my case, it's slowly killing me. It may sound boring living life on a track someone else has laid out, but you know, it doesn't make any difference who laid it out if you get sick of it midway through. Not that I could just quit at this point. Too many strings attached now."

"Must be even tougher not having anyone to blame."

"That's right. Especially for an outcast like me."

"Might as well give it up. You may not break away from the track, but you sure do break away from the rules."

"Oh? Well, you're no Mother Teresa yourself, you know."

"But I am a serious student at a university. I'm not like you."

"Doesn't saying that depresses you? It's like looking into the mirror and asking, 'Who the hell are you?'"

"Exactly," I said nodding.

"Anyway, it's for that reason that I don't view myself as a murderer. Because killing isn't my goal. You've heard of people who 'kill like it's as simple as breathing,' right? Well, for me, if I don't kill, it becomes hard to breathe. I'm just paying the train fare for this track I got on long ago. Or it's like I'm perpetually repaying a loan. You could say I'm killing the act of killing."

"This is all becoming a little too idealistic and abstract for me. Can't you put it more realistically?"

"Not really. I mean, we're talking about a vague concept here. If you put it in realistic terms, the conversation would be over with 'I killed and dismembered someone times eight.'"

"That's true..." I sighed and looked up at the ceiling. Talking with Zerozaki was interesting enough, and I had even learned a thing or two, I suppose, but it wasn't exactly useful information. "Hmm. And here I thought a killer like you would be the one most capable of understanding the heart of a killer."

Maybe I'd been wrong to assume that. After all, Zerozaki's MO and Tomo-chan's cause of death were completely different. I didn't believe for a second that Sasaki-san had given me the whole scoop, but she had at least told me that Tomo-chan had been strangled with a thin piece of cloth. Meanwhile, Zerozaki was cutting people up with a knife. The similarities began and ended with the fact that both killers had brought death to their victims.

Zerozaki killed people at random.

Tomo-chan's killer had sought her out. It was most likely the result of a grudge. Something spurred by a sticky, slimy, disgusting personal relationship that had eroded away.

"Hah? Why do you say that?" he asked.

"Well, it's just that a classmate from my university was murdered recently."

"Murdered? Your classmate?"

"That's what I said. Yeah, at first, I wondered if you had done it, but it doesn't match your style at all. They strangled her with a piece of cloth."

"Ah, yeah, that's not my thing," he said, waving his hands with a grimace.

"So I thought. But I just figured one monster would understand another."

"You're mistaken. And it's such a big mistake. Monsters don't kill people; people do. And just as people don't understand monsters' feelings, monsters don't understand people's. It's like comparing a platypus to the archaeopteryx."

I didn't know who was supposed to be the platypus and who the archaeopteryx, but he was probably right. Guys like Zerozaki were peculiar and dysfunctional, and that was why they were so rare.

"So, what happened, then?" he asked, sounding not particularly interested. Figuring there was no need to keep it a secret, I proceeded to tell him everything I had heard from Sasaki-san. I told him about Mikoko-chan, Tomo-chan, Muimi-chan, and Akiharu-kun and about the birthday party. He occasionally dropped in a brief remark or shook his head as he tried to follow along with the story's twists and turns, and just once, he even flashed a look of concern.

"Hmm," he said when I was finished. "I see. I see I see I see. So that's how it went down. So?"

"What do you mean so?"

"So means so." He stared me directly in the eye. I didn't answer him. This silence continued for a whole hour.

"Okay, I got it," he eventually said, standing to his feet. "Let's go."

"Huh? Where?"

"To Emoto's place," he said like with all the casualness of a good friend inviting someone over to hang out. With that, he made his exit. This was all going just as I had expected, I thought. I rose from the sofa and followed him out, leaving our half-eaten ramen behind.