The First Decapitation (Part 1)

It was a dreadful sight.

If I were to compare it to something, let's see, yeah, okay. Gruber Norbert's painting The River. The same sort of creepy, marble-colored river ran through the middle of Kanami's atelier, dividing it in half.

Seemingly, due to the previous night's earthquake, cans of paint lay scattered around the room, and the simple, iron-pole shelf had fallen over as well. The earthquake had caused the shelf to tip, spilling cans everywhere, their contents dumped on the floor, and this "river" was the result. It was a feasible theory, and that's no doubt how it had happened.

But while this "river" was a bizarre enough spectacle on its own, the real issue lay on the opposite "riverbank." It was beyond imagination or speculation, and couldn't be written off as the earthquake's doing. An earthquake capable of this wouldn't be found on this Earth.

The facedown body of a person lay on the floor, with a noticeable vacancy from the neck up.

A headless corpse.

A beheaded corpse.

It didn't matter much what words you chose to describe it; it was what it was.

This body with the missing head was wearing the same dress Kanami-san had been wearing the previous day. That exquisite-looking dress that Kanami-san had boasted would never get dirty while she was painting was now stained red-black with blood. It didn't look wearable anymore.

What's more, there was no longer anyone to wear it.

Or let's be more specific.

The wearer was no longer alive.

"This is… Grotesque," I uttered reflexively. It went without saying, but the words just came out.

The room smelled like paint thinner.

Next to Kanami-san's fallen body sat an overturned wheelchair and a single canvas. It was far away so I wasn't sure, but the painting appeared to have been my portrait.

It was beautiful. A masterwork, even, if I do say so myself. Even from this distance, separated by the river, I could tell. I felt the shock with my body, not with my mind. In some ways, it was more disturbing than the sight of the headless body.

I recalled what Kanami-san had said the previous day. It's not art if you get to pick who looks at it.

Point taken. With this picture, I had no complaints.

Without a doubt, Ibuki Kanami-san was indeed a genius.

To the point that it made me tremble.

And this made her death all the more devastating. It had been a long time since I had felt devastated by anything, but I was truly devastated by this.

By the death of Kanami-san.

The death of Ibuki Kanami.

"Why?"

Yes, Ibuki Kanami was dead.

I mean, who could stay alive after their head's been chopped off? Even Rasputin couldn't have survived a decapitation. And Kanami-san was just a physically normal human being.

"Well, we shouldn't just leave her like this," I said, breaking everyone's silence. I looked over at Kunagisa. Her lower lip stuck out dubiously as if she had noticed something strange about Kanami-san's body. She appeared skeptical about something. But now probably wasn't the time to be thinking about such things. If I had to give a reason for each and every one of Kunagisa's actions, I would surely die.

As I tried to take a step forward, she tugged at my arm.

"Ii-chan, wait a second."

"Huh? Why?"

"The paint isn't dry yet."

"Hmm? Oh, yeah."

Crouching down and checking with the tip of my finger, I found that she was right. My middle finger turned marble-colored.

"But now isn't really the time to worry about things like that."

There was a cut-up dead body right in front of us. To worry about dirtying your shoes at a time like this was beyond trivial.

"Hey, I said wait!" she stopped me again. Then, before I knew what she was getting at, she took off that black coat of hers and tossed it right in the middle of the river of paint. It was like a stepping-stone in the river.

"Wasn't that your precious coat?"

"Its time had come."

I tried to say something about her just tossing her memories off like they were nothing, but as she had said, there was a bigger issue at hand right now. Besides, what's done is done. With little recourse, I jumped to the coat, then to the other side of the river.

I groaned.

It had been quite a while since I'd last seen a headless body. I removed my sweatshirt and placed it over Kanami-san's upper body.

I looked back toward the door, where everyone was standing, and slowly shook my head.

There was no point in using words.

"Everyone," Iria-san finally spoke, "could I have us all gather in the dining room? I think we need to discuss what we'll do from here on out."

With that, she made her way for the hall. The four maids—Rei-san, Akari-san, Hikari-san, and Teruko-san—quickly followed close behind. Finally, the other guests began filing out of the atelier, two by two and three by three.

The last ones to remain in the room were Kunagisa, me, and Shinya-san.

He was staring at Kanami-san's body, his face pale and blank.

"Shinya-san…" Stepping back on the coat, I returned to the other side. "Let's go, there's nothing we can do here." It killed me to say it.

"Oh… Yeah. Right."

His mind was off in a very different place. Despite his response, he made no attempt to move. He stood completely rigid, his mind unable to comprehend, refusing to comprehend the sight before his eyes.

I understood how he felt.

If the same thing had happened to Kunagisa, I probably would have been the same way. No, that's not right. I probably would have broken down and gone on a screaming rampage. I know that's hard to imagine for a guy like me, who, as Maki-san would say, was "dead to all emotions," but that's probably what would have happened.

In that respect, Shinya-san was truly admirable.

He didn't look too good, but at least he hadn't broken down. And he could even speak. His mental faculties remained intact, albeit just barely.

This is what separated him from me. I was just a kid.

Shinya-san was an adult.

I didn't know what kind of relationship Shinya-san and Kanami-san had, whether he was just her caretaker or something more, or perhaps something less.

However…

Remembering the sad look in his eyes the previous night…

And seeing him now, I somehow understood.

"Ii-chan, let's go ahead," Kunagisa said, pulling on my arm.

"Yeah."

And thus ended our tranquil lives on this island.

And thus began the next chapter.