The Murderer (Part 5)

"But about that Aoii chick," Zerozaki said apathetically as we walked westward down Shijô Street. "Seems pretty obvious that she's got the hots for you."

"What?" I couldn't help but be surprised by this sudden leap in our discussion.

It was already past midnight, meaning it was now Monday, the sixteenth. Even on Shijô Street, which was a major east-west road, traffic had grown sparse. Occasionally, we passed a group of college students probably coming home after a night of drinking, but the sidewalks were otherwise mostly empty.

I realized that the next day I had to go to school. And from the first period, no less. What's more, it was my foreign language class, where they always took attendance. And it looked to me like this was going to be another allnighter.

"Eh, what were we talking about again?"

"That Aoii chick," he said irritably, knitting his brow at me. "Hearing what you have to say about her, she's got to have a thing for you."

"No way. What could've possibly given you a dumb idea like that? That doesn't even sound like something you would say. I mean, she's already got a boyfriend anyway."

"No, she doesn't."

"Oh wait, that's right." Come to think of it, she may or may not have told me that. "But still. I don't think that's the case. I mean she does seem to be fond of me, but it's like how people are fond of animals. And even then, she probably sees me as an iguana or something in the reptile family. You know, like 'Aw, that's... Kind of cute.' "

"An iguana? If you're an iguana, then that makes me a chameleon," he said and proceeded to laugh. "For example," he then said, immediately switching back to his serious tone. "She knew your address, right? That's extremely suspicious right there. Who bothers looking up the address of someone they don't even have a crush on?"

"She didn't even have to. It was in the address log from class."

"Aha. You said it yourself, man. You were on vacation when the class started and you missed the first week of your... General education, was it? Whatever that class was. Hence, there was no way your address could've been recorded in that log."

"Oh."

Now, there was an oversight. I certainly didn't remember telling my address to anyone else, and that meant there was no way the address of my ancient ruin of an apartment building could've been on the sheet. There wasn't a single person at Rokumeikan who should've known where I lived.

"But Mikoko-chan claimed she got it off the address list. Was it just a misunderstanding? But misunderstandings like that don't happen, do they? So, maybe she lied to me."

"Eh, not so much a lie as an excuse. She probably followed you home one day."

"If she'd been following me, I would've noticed."

"Maybe. At any rate, she probably learned your address through fairly illegitimate means. She couldn't tell you the truth, so she just blurted out that thing about the address log."

"Uh-huh."

"So let's think about this. Have you ever met a girl who would go that far just to learn the address of some random guy? You might not put it past a guy, but we're talking about a girl here." He flashed an unsavory smile.

I let out a sigh of a laugh. "Don't act like you know what's going on."

"What can I say, it's who I am."

"But I really think you're wrong about this. I can say that for certain."

"Well, I'll be damned. And what are you basing this certainty on?"

"Well, she acts like she hates me."

"Huh?" Zerozaki's facial expression alone was enough to make it clear that he couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Come on now, at least remember the stuff you said yourself. You just said Aoii was fond of you, didn't you? So, what the hell are you squawking about now?"

"Hang on, this isn't a contradiction. I have sort of a dualistic or Boolean view of the world. Shall I explain? In other words... Like, take the cars on this road. Let's say there's a car going twenty-five miles per hour."

"Yeah. You want me to tell you if that's fast or slow?"

"Yeah. Which do you think?"

"It's slow, isn't it? At this time of night, they could go faster than that."

"Okay, then let's imagine the same car going at full speed. I don't know much about the limitations of automobiles, but let's just say it's going one hundred miles per hour at full throttle. Is that fast?"

"Fast works for me."

"Finally, let's imagine the car when it's at rest. How about this time?"

He gave a restless shrug. "It's at rest. What the hell do you think?"

"Just humor me."

"Well, slow, I guess. You sure can't call something that's not moving fast."

"That's right. Now let's go back to the initial question — is twenty-five miles per hour slow or fast? I would express it like this: 'It's twenty-five fast and seventy-five slow.' "

"Ahh." He gave a convincing nod. The cheek on the tattooed side of his face curled up into a slight smirk. "So the way you see it, what does Aoii think of you?"

"Well, to give an approximation, she likes me seventy and hates me fifty. Approximately."

"I guess that doesn't add up to her liking you twenty."

Indeed. The logic of arithmetical operations didn't apply when it came to human emotions. Besides, these numbers were highly prone to fluctuate, making such calculations troublesome. They could only be expressed as averaged values.

"Okay, so what about you, now?" he asked.

"Huh?"

"You. How much do you like and hate Aoii?"

"I like her zero and hate her zero."

"Whoa..." He pulled back a bit in surprise. "My God, man... You're brutal."

"You should talk."

"Cram it, Captain Passive."

I liked her zero and hated her zero. You might call it apathy.

Sure, my words might have been a little exaggerated and laced with apathy, but that didn't mean I wasn't telling the truth.

Because after all, I'm such a cold, dried-out person that I can kill a person just by living. Indeed, I was as brutal as Zerozaki made me out to be. I simply couldn't take any type of assertive action for the sake of a stranger.

"This is totally..."

"Totally."

"A masterpiece," Zerozaki said, laughing.

"Nonsense." I didn't laugh.

"Well, putting all that textbook mumbo-jumbo aside, don't you have the hots for anyone?"

"Huh. I don't really know."

"Even though they're your emotions?"

"Because they're my emotions."

"Ah, I get it. Because you're the passive spectator. You understand other people better than you understand yourself. I guess they say you can't be your own observer. It's like that thing... What was it again? The uncertainty principle? Quantum mechanics? Doppelgänger's cat?"

"'Doppelgänger' can't be right."

"Ahh, who was it? It's math, so it's gotta be a German guy, but..."

After that mildly racist remark, he sat and thought to himself for a minute. But ultimately, he couldn't seem to recall whose cat it was. "Goddammit," he said, slapping himself in the left cheek. This seemed to relieve him.

"Well then," he said. "Here's my conclusion: You've got a fucking terrible attitude."

"That's probably correct. But..."

But.

What could I possibly have intended to follow that up with? Might I have been considering saying somebody's name? Of course, I was. But who's name that could've been, I don't know.

"It's all just nonsense in the end."

"Um, is that supposed to be, like, your escape line?" He slumped his entire upper body dramatically as if my incredibly delayed response had completely knocked the wind out of him. Though not to the same extent as Mikoko-chan, it seemed Zerozaki was also one for big reactions.

"Eh, then again, I guess I'm kind of like that too. Or rather, I am like that," he said.

We arrived at the Nishiôji-Shijô intersection. The Hankyû Saiin Station was visible to the south. Of course, the final train had long since made its stops, and the area surrounding the station was desolate. We turned north. If we continued up as far as Maruta-machi, we'd arrive at Tomo-chan's apartment.

"Maybe we should've hailed a cab after all. We're still only halfway there."

"It's a waste of money. That is to say, I don't have any money. Or were you going to pay?"

"Nope. There isn't a single student in Kyoto who rides in cabs."

"Huh. I'm not a student, so I wouldn't know."

Suddenly a doubt arose in my mind. I thought of Sasaki-san's stern gaze for some reason as I asked Zerozaki my question.

"Are you on a most-wanted list or anything?"

"I don't think so. Nobody's ever tried to talk to me, and nobody's ever followed me. I've done my share of following other people, though," he boasted. It amazed me that someone who stood out this much — I mean, he had a tattoo running down half his face; maybe that kind of thing was normal in Tokyo, but he was probably the only one of his kind in all of Kyoto — hadn't been arrested yet. But then again, if you thought about it, whether he stood out or not probably didn't make much of a difference in a case like this.

"So we're going to Emoto's place from here, right? But..."

"What?"

"In reality, you can already pretty much deduce what happened, right? I mean, who the killer is and stuff."

"Deduce?" I parroted his word back at him. Could I really figure out the answer based only on what I knew at this point?

"Sorry to disappoint you, but I mean it when I say I don't really know what happened. I'm not some mystery novel or movie..."

Detective.

The redheaded private contractor.

"Detective."

"Well, of course not," he said with surprising plainness. "But I guess, I also mean it when I say that I don't think it's beyond figuring out. She was strangled to death. Inside a room. The estimated time of death leaves a fairly narrow window. The suspects all have alibis. We just need a few more clues."

And it just so happened that I currently had Kunagisa collecting that very thing. And I myself was on my way to do the same.

"Is it possible that it was just a random robbery?"

"Well, technically it's possible, but the cops don't seem to think that's the case."

There was something very unordinary about both Sasaki-san and Kazuhito-san. It was hard to believe they were the kind of people who would be sent out just to handle a simple burglary-homicide case. Of course, that was just my hunch.

"Mmm." Zerozaki's eyes drooped lazily. "But I don't think you really have to go out of your way to investigate things. Is there some logical reason for doing this?"

"Not especially. Listen, nobody's making you come along. Why don't you go cut up some more people?"

"Nah, that's okay. I'm not in the mood for that tonight." He took my suggestion more seriously than I had intended. "Besides, I was the one who suggested we go in the first place."

Meanwhile, we'd arrived at Tomo-chan's apartment building. Apparently, the police had already checked out, leaving the area as desolate as the train station. We made our way through the automatic door and into the main lobby.

Now then.

"Ah, right. You need an auto-lock card key to get in."

"What now?"

"Here's what we do." I walked a step ahead of Zerozaki and entered a random room number into the intercom.

"Hello?"

"Um, this is the person from room three, oh, two. I'm so sorry to bother you, but I went and locked my own card in the room. Would you mind opening the door for me?"

"Oh, certainly."

K-chunk, the glass door said as it opened up.

"Thank you," I said to the complete stranger, and Zerozaki and I quickly made our way into the building.

"You don't mind lying just like that, huh?" he asked.

"What can I say, it's who I am."

We got into the elevator and went up to the sixth floor. As we walked down the sixth-floor hall, I produced some thin white gloves from my pocket and slid them onto my hands.

"Not to make this awkward, but... Were you prepared with those gloves this whole time?"

"Yup. I planned this whole thing."

"Wow," he said as he pulled his own pair of gloves out of his vest pocket and switched them with the fingerless ones he was currently wearing. Of course, a guy like him probably just carried gloves around with him every day.

We arrived in front of Tomo-chan's room. When I tried the knob, the door turned out to be locked, as expected.

"So, how do you propose we clear this one?"

"Actually, I hadn't thought about it. Any ideas?"

"I gotcha," he grumbled, pulling a thin knife from his vest pocket. Or perhaps drill was a more accurate word for it. He jammed it into the keyhole. He rattled it left and right until we heard the click of something settling into place. Then he pulled the knife back out, spun it around once in his hand, and closed it back up in his vest.

He turned the knob. "It's open."

"This can't be safe, can it?"

"Not even a little bit. The killer could be anywhere."

We shrugged and went in anyway.

We walked down the hall between the kitchen and bathroom and passed through the door at the end. The room hadn't changed much from my Saturday visit. It looked like some things had been slightly moved around, but that was probably owed to the crime-scene investigation.

And then, there was the center of the room. White stripes of tape formed the shape of a person.

"Wow," Zerozaki said with awe. "So, they really do that. It's like something out of a TV show or a manga. Hey, that Emoto girl had about the same build as me. Look at it!"

"Looks like it."

Tomo-chan was pretty small, even for a girl, but for a guy, Zerozaki was ridiculously petite. They weren't exactly the same size, but they could've easily fit each other's clothing.

"Incidentally, I prefer tall girls," he said.

"Really?"

"Yup. But tall girls don't like short guys, do they?"

"But none of your six victims were tall girls."

"Who goes around killing the girls he's into, idiot?" he asked angrily. It looked like I had touched on a difficult subject.

Nevertheless.

My gaze fell back on the tape on the floor. Tomo-chan must have been strangled and then collapsed on the floor here in this position, asphyxiated. But this tape hardly captured the reality of it.

I looked back over at Zerozaki to find him immersed in silent prayer. His eyes were closed, with his hands pressed together in front of his chest.

I deliberated for a moment before deciding to do likewise.

Afterward, I once again began inspecting the area around the tape.

"Hmm."

There was something on the right hand of the human shape. It was dark, so I couldn't see it very well, but we couldn't just go turning on the light, either. I managed to make out a small ring made out of black tape.

It seemed this was some sort of mark they had made during the investigation.

"What's this? Maybe something was on the floor here?"

"No, look closer," Zerozaki said, crouching down next to me. "Something's written here."

"Dammit, I wish we had a little more light."

"Just wait a little longer. Your eyes will adjust soon enough."

It assumed that we were working at our leisure here, but right now that was our only option.

In time, my eyes did begin to adjust.

Thin carpet. On its surface, there were red letters.

"x over y?" we both said.

The letter x was written in cursive handwriting. Then a diagonal line below it. Then the letter y in the same cursive handwriting. It was messy writing, so you had to struggle to make it out. But it didn't seem like it could've said anything else.

"What's x over y?"

"Beats me."

"Is it red because it's written in blood?"

"Nah, seems to be some kind of oil-based ink."

Strange writing next to the body's right hand. Could this have been her dying message?

"But hey, we don't actually know that this is the right hand. We can't tell if the body was faceup or facedown just by looking at this tape."

"Ah, right. But, Zerozaki, I don't think she could've written this if she was facedown. Not that she was necessarily the one who wrote it."

"Yeah, that's right. There's still the possibility that the killer wrote it. So what's this x over y bullshit all about? Math? But this isn't an equation. You can't take it any further than this."

"Maybe whoever wrote it didn't finish."

"If that's the case, we're pretty much at a dead end. I can't even imagine what they were getting at with this," he said as he walked over to a comer of the room and slid down against the wall. "I'm sleepy," he said with a big yawn. "Figure anything out?"

"Just the fact that this may or may not have been her dying message is a pretty good haul. Now, then..."

I scanned my eyes around the room. There were no signs of a struggle. As far as I could see, nothing was broken or missing.

"Yeah, I don't think this was just a burglary," I said. Was it all because of a grudge after all? But what could a girl who had just turned twenty years old two days ago have done to have inspired such hatred?

I continued examining the room as I pondered. Of course, the police had probably already done this with complete thoroughness, but right now it was necessary to see the crime scene with my own eyes, in order to fill in the gaps in my imagination. For later on.

"What now?" Zerozaki asked as he watched me moving around. Judging from his current state, it didn't look like he intended to help me any further. Not that I was expecting him to do anything. I'm not such an idealist that I would expect anything from a mere water reflection.

"You seem strangely comfortable doing all this," he said.

"Well, I've got experience."

"What could a twenty-year-old have possibly experienced in his life to have broken him so badly as a human being? I can't even imagine," he said.

"You should talk. But I guess, I'll humor you anyway. I guess you could say, I haven't lived a very respectable life. Or no, my life has been plenty respectable, but I haven't been."

"Hmm. You know, I don't like myself very much," he said plainly to my back. "But seeing you, I realize I'm not so bad."

"You took the words right out of my mouth. I may be a screwup, but I'm not as bad as you. When I look at it that way, it's kind of a relief."

"I wonder."

"I wonder."

"Say... Why do people die anyway?" he asked.

"Because you kill them."

"Well, yeah, but I mean, aside from that. Umm, what is it again? Apoptosis? Darwinism? Genes? Cancer cells? Cell suicide? All that good stuff. It's like the termination point of our functionality."

"Come to think of it, I heard once that the longest a human can live is somewhere around one hundred ten years, regardless of the era or region."

"Huh."

"I mean, the bottom line is that living creatures have a lot of diversity. But you know, whether you live a long time or not doesn't really make a difference. I don't really think there's even much point in living two hundred or three hundred years. I've lived for nineteen years and two months up until now, but quite frankly, I've had enough."

"You're tired of it?" he asked.

"Well, it's more like, I just can't endure it anymore. I'm still okay for now, I guess, but if things go on like this... Yeah, in another two or three years, my ability to process reality will have reached its limit."

"But isn't that just one of those things? Like, I'll bet you thought the same thing when you were fourteen, right? Like, 'in another few years I'll probably have committed suicide'."

"Yeah, I did think that. But I didn't have the balls to go through with it."

"Chicken."

"Yeah, well. I always wanted to be a bird."

"Not a chicken, I bet. They can't even fly."

"I'm joking. But I do think this: There isn't a person on this earth who's lived for ten or twenty years without pondering God and death unless he's just some slaphappy nut."

"God and death, huh?"

"Yeah. But before he can contemplate those things, he has to have learned about life. Some knowledge of life is necessary in order to contemplate death, so you have to study life before you can even begin to think about the fact that it will one day end. It's like that saying: 'If you want to kill someone, your victim had to have been alive to start with.' No matter how much effort I might exert, I can't kill John Lennon."

Nor could I kill Emoto Tomoe.

"Now tell me, Zerozaki. What does it mean to be alive?"

"That your heart's still beating?" he answered off the top of his head.

"Wrong," I answered. "Showing signs of life and being alive is not the same thing. But that aside, what if there existed a person who had experienced death before life? What kind of human being would he turn out to be? Could we even call him a human being? A living creature who could reminisce about his own passing, who had mourned his own death before life even began. What would we label such an existence?"

"I guess that would be Death himself. It would have to be, or else..." His eyes seemed to be searching for the right words. He pointed a finger at me with an awkward look on his face. No words came out. To be sure, they probably didn't need to.

"Eh, it's just another mind-over-matter thing," I surmised.

An escape line.

"Say, man. I know I already asked, but is there some reason you've gone to all this trouble — I mean, illegally entering her apartment, not to mention the fact that you're supposed to be the passive observer type — just to gather information about the murder?"

"Yeah, there is," I answered. I meant to say no, but for some reason, a confirmation leaped out of my mouth. I wasn't sure which one I really meant.

"Huh... You said yourself that you don't like or dislike Aoii, right? Then why should you do anything for her? And it seems to me that you only met those other three through her, like little add-ons."

He slapped his hands together as if he had just thought of something. "Is it for Emoto Tomoe?"

Tomo-chan.

A tragic figure brutally murdered just after celebrating her own birthday.

That alone wouldn't have moved me, normally. If starving children on the other side of the world were being shot to death, I wouldn't have thought anything of it. If some giant earthquake in some faraway country killed tens of thousands of people, I wouldn't feel a thing. Whether or not a string of murders occurred in the town where I lived, it was no matter to me. I just didn't have that kind of spirit; it wasn't much more to imagine that I wouldn't feel much sadness or despair over the passing of even a nearby acquaintance.

However, there were always exceptions.

"I was hoping I'd get to talk to Emoto Tomoe just a little more."

Zerozaki said nothing to this.

"That's all, though, really."

"I see," he nodded. "Well, whatever the case, what we have here is a masterpiece for sure."

Indeed, he was right that there seemed to be no compelling reason for me to go to all this trouble. It wasn't like I was being somebody else, but it certainly wasn't my usual style.

I realized I was being stupid. I just didn't think I was wrong.

"Ahh," Zerozaki yawned again.

"If you're bored, you can go." That is to say, get lost.

But he shook his head. "It's okay. Besides, how are you planning to lock up without me?"

"Actually, I've got one of those things that allow you to lock the door without the key."

"That's a pretty useless device."

Of course, I was joking.

Zerozaki soon closed his eyes and began to doze off. It was like watching my own sleeping face, which was a bizarre, alien sensation, to say the least. I continued examining Tomo-chan's room until four in the morning but didn't come up with anything that seemed like a decent lead.

"But..."

Maybe, it didn't matter anyway. In fact, halfway through, I had entirely lost my will to search for clues and spent the rest of the time staring down at the tape human.

And I reminisced. About the time I had spent here on Saturday night. That wild, ridiculous night during which we'd all left reason and rational thought behind.

If I could be allowed to say something a bit romantic, perhaps this was my memorial to Tomo-chan. Now that wasn't my style, to be sure, but it seemed like a good enough reason all the same.

"Okay, let's go."

"Satisfied?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"Okay."

We left the building, and Zerozaki and I parted ways there. We spoke no parting words and made no plans to meet again.