Chapter 2: A Common Tragedy
Kiriko never showed up at the park.
Checking my watch to confirm that twenty-four hours had indeed gone by, I lifted myself up from the bench.
Waiting here any longer would be pointless. So I left behind the bench with peeling paint, the swings without seats, the rusted jungle gym - the playground that had so completely changed since a decade ago.
My body was chilled to the core. Even having an umbrella up, it was only natural after spending an entire day in this late October rain.
My mod coat was waterlogged and cold, my jeans clung to my legs, and my newly-bought shoes were covered in mud.
At least I'd taken the car, I thought. If I'd gone with my initial plan of taking buses and trains, I'd have to wait until morning for the train.
I quickly escaped into the safety of the car, threw off my wet coat, started the engine and turned on the heater. The ventilator spewed out moldy-smelling hot air, and twenty minutes later, the car was finally warm.
Right about as I stopped shivering, I started craving a drink. A good strong drink with lots of alcohol, perfect for drowning my sorrows.
I stopped by the late-night supermarket and bought a small bottle of whiskey and some mixed nuts.
As I waited in line at the register to pay, a woman in her late twenties with no makeup cut in front of me. Slightly afterward, a man who appeared to be her boyfriend came in.
Both of them looked like they'd just gotten out of bed, kept their pajamas on, and threw on sandals, yet I smelled perfume that seemed recently-applied.
I thought about complaining at them for cutting in line, but nothing came out of my mouth. "Coward," I silently scolded myself.
Sitting in my parked car in the corner of the lot, I leisurely had my whiskey. The hot candy-colored liquid scorched down my throat, putting a gentle fog around my senses.
The crackling golden oldies on the radio comforted me, as did the sound of raindrops beating on the roof. The lights in the parking lot shimmered through the rain.
But the music always ends, the bottle empties, the lights go out. As I turned off the radio and shut my eyes, I was hit with intense loneliness.
I wanted to get back to my apartment and thoughtlessly sleep with my blanket pulled over my head, right now, and not a moment sooner.
The darkness, silence, and solitude which I generally preferred, at this particular moment, ate into me instead.
Though I was determined not to get my hopes up from the start, it seemed I had been more hopeful to have a reunion with Kiriko than I even realized. My intoxicated brain was being more honest about recognizing my true feelings than usual.
Yes, I'd been wounded. I was deeply disappointed that Kiriko hadn't shown up at the park.
She must not have needed me anymore.
I'd have been better off not making this invitation in the first place. There was no changing that both at 17 and at 22, I was a lying loser with countless shortcomings.
In fact, I should have just gone to meet her when she actually wanted us to meet in person. What a waste I'd made of that chance.
I'd intended to sleep until the alcohol was out of my system, but I changed my mind.
I drove out of the parking lot, foot hard against the accelerator, making my old, second-hand car shriek in pain.
I was driving drunk. I knew it was against the law, but the pouring rain numbed me. I felt like in a storm like this, you couldn't hold a few wrongful acts against someone.
The rain gradually let up. To keep away the drowsiness from the alcohol, I upped the speed. 60 kilometers per hour, 70, 80. I would crash into deep puddles with a great sound, then speed up again.
On rural roads, in this awful weather, at this time of night, surely there was no need to worry about other cars or pedestrians.
It was a long straightaway. Tall streetlamps made long chains along both sides.
I took a cigarette from my pocket, lit it with the cigarette lighter, and took three puffs before tossing it out the window.
That was when my drowsiness hit its peak.
I don't think I was out for more than a second or two. But the moment I came back to my senses, it was too late. My car was veering into the opposite lane, and the headlights illuminated a figure mere meters ahead.
In a brief moment, I thought many things. Among them were lots of meaningless memories from my childhood that I'd long forgotten.
The watery-blue paper balloons my kindergarten teacher straight out of junior college made us, a crow I saw on the veranda when I had a cold and took the day off school, a gloomy stationery shop we stopped by on the way home from visiting my mother in the hospital, etcetera.
It was probably something like my life flashing before my eyes. I was searching through twenty-two years of memories trying to find some useful knowledge or experience to help avoid this impending crisis.
The brakes screeched shrilly. But it was unquestionably too little, too late. I gave up on it all and closed my eyes tight.
The next moment, a powerful thump rocked the car.
Except, there was no thump.
A few seconds passed that felt like an eternity. I stopped the car and looked around fearfully, but saw no one fallen to the road, at least not within range of the headlights.
What happened?
I turned on my hazard lights and got out, first going around to the front of the car. Not a scratch or dent. If I had run someone over, there would definitely be some trace of it.
I looked around again, under the car too, but there wasn't any corpse. My heart was beating like mad.
I stood there in the rain. The beeping telling me that my door was still open echoed through the darkness
"Did I make it in time?", I asked myself aloud.
Had I swerved out of the way just in time? Had they swiftly avoided me? And then, did they just run away?
Maybe it had all been an illusion, from my intoxication and fatigue.
At any rate, did it mean I had made it out of the situation without running someone over?
A voice came from behind me.
"You didn't."
I turned around and saw a girl. From her gray blazer and tartan-check skirt, she looked like a student on her way home.
She seemed more or less 17, so she was almost two heads shorter than me. And she had no umbrella, so she was soaked, her hair clinging to her face.
Odd as it may sound, I think I fell for that long-haired girl standing in the rain, lit by the headlights.
She was a beautiful girl. It was a kind of beauty that wasn't marred by rain and mud - rather, such things drew more attention to it.
Before I could ask what she meant by "You didn't," the girl pulled off the school bag hanging from her shoulder, held it in both hands, and hurled it at my face.
The bag landed a direct hit on my nose, and a flash of light filled my vision. I lost balance and tumbled to the ground, landing face-up in a puddle. The water quickly seeped into my coat.
"You were too slow. I died," the girl spat, straddling over me and shaking me by the collar. "What have you done to me? How could this happen?"
As I began to open my mouth, the girl's hand flew out and slapped my cheek, then a second time, and a third. I felt the back of my nose plugging up with blood. But I had no right to complain about what she was doing.
Because I'd killed her.
Granted, my victim was quite heartily beating the stuffing out of me still, but no doubt, I'd run her over going over 80 kilometers an hour.
At that speed? At that distance? No braking, no swerving could have prevented the inevitable.
The girl balled up her fist and struck me repeatedly in the face and chest. I felt little pain while being beaten up, but the impact of bone against bone unsettled me.
She seemed to get exhausted, coughed fiercely and tried to catch her breath, and finally stopped.
The rain continued to pour as always.
"Hey, can you explain what happened here?", I asked. The inside of my mouth had been cut, and it tasted like licking iron. "I ran you over and killed you. That seems pretty undeniable. So, why are you unhurt and moving around? Why isn't there a scratch on the car?"
Rather than answer, the girl stood up and kicked me in the flank. Actually, maybe it would be better to say she stomped me with the weight of her whole body.
That was effective; a pain shot through me like my organs had been stabbed with a stake. I felt all the air leave my lungs.
For a while, I couldn't breathe. If I'd had a little more in my stomach, I'd probably have vomited. Seeing me curl up feebly and hack in anguish, the girl seemed satisfied to an extent and stopped with the violence.
I stayed down on the ground, face-up toward the rain until the pain cleared. When I raised myself to stand up, the girl extended a hand to me. Unsure of her intent, I stared at it blankly.
"Do you want to lie down there forever? Stand up already," she insisted. "I'll have you take me home. You'd better at least do that for me, murderer."
"...Right. Of course." I took her hand.
The rain started pouring hard again. It made a sound like hundreds of birds pecking on the roof.
The girl sat in the passenger's seat and threw her wet blazer onto the back seat, then fumbled to turn on the light.
"Are you listening? Take a look at this." She thrust her palm in front of my face.
Shortly after doing so, a light-purple wound appeared on her pretty palm. It looked like a cut made with something sharp that had healed into a scar over the years. I couldn't see it being something she suffered from the accident earlier.
I must have looked sufficiently dumbfounded, so she explained. "I got this cut five years ago. ...You figure out the rest. You more or less know the explanation now, don't you?"
"No I don't. Actually, I'm just more confused. What's going on here?"
She sighed in annoyance. "In short, I can change events that happen to me so that they never happened."
Never happened?
I tried to give her words some thought, but found I didn't understand anything about it.
"Can you make it a little simpler for me? Is that a metaphor?"
"No. Just interpret it exactly the way it sounds. I can change events that happen to me so that they never happened."
I scratched my neck. Interpreting it exactly as it sounded just made it impossible to understand.
"I can't blame you if you don't believe me. Even I haven't figured out why I can do it yet."
She slowly ran her index finger over the cut on her palm. "To repeat - I got this cut five years ago. But I nullified the fact that I was cut. And now, for the sake of this explanation, I put it back to normal."
She "nullified" the fact it happened?
It was a story much too distanced from reality. I'd never heard of anyone who could undo events that happened to them. It was clearly beyond human ability.
But I found myself faced with a situation that couldn't be explained any other way. Her being here proved it.
Logically, I should have run her over, yet she was spared it. And she made a wound she hadn't had before suddenly appear out of nowhere.
It sounded like magic from a fairy tale, but I had to believe it until some other acceptable explanation presented itself.
For the time being, I accepted the theory. She was a wizard. She could make things that happened to her "not happen."
"So you mean, you also undid the accident I caused?"
"That's right. If you don't believe that, I can show you another example..." She rolled up the sleeve of her blouse.
"No, I believe it," I told her. "It's pretty... pretty unreal, but I'm seeing it before my eyes. But if you undid the accident, why do I seem to remember running you over? Why didn't I just keep driving along?"
Her shoulders sagged. "I don't know. It's not something I do entirely consciously. I want someone to tell me just as much."
"And one more thing. You probably say it that way for convenience, but strictly speaking, you can't really undo everything, right? Otherwise I can't think of an explanation for your anger earlier."
"...Yes, you're right," she confirmed, sounding discouraged. "My ability is only something temporary. After a fixed time, the thing that I undid will go back to happening again. So all I can do, in essence, is "postpone" events that I don't want to happen."
Postponing... That explained it. Her anger made perfect sense now. She hadn't avoided death, she just stored it away, and would eventually have to accept it.
From the other things she said, I supposed she could at least postpone events for five years. She seemed to see through my thoughts and interrupted.
"Just so you know, I could only postpone the cut on my palm by five years because it was a light, non-threatening wound. How long it can be prolonged depends on the strength of my desire and the size of the event. A stronger desire extends the time, and a bigger event shortens it."
"So then how long can you postpone tonight's accident?"
"...Going off intuition, I'm guessing ten days at the most."
Ten days.
Once that time had passed, she would die, and I would be a murderer.
It didn't feel real to me. For one thing, the victim of my crime was here talking to me at this moment, and I couldn't let go of the faint hope that this was all a bad dream.
I'd had tens, hundreds of dreams like this where my mistakes had caused irreparable harm to others, so I wondered if that could be all this was.
For the time being, I apologized.
"I'm sorry. I really don't know how to make it up to you..."
"Fine by me. Apologizing won't bring me back, nor will it absolve your crime," she shot at me. "For now, just take me back home."
"...Sure."
"And please drive safely. I won't stand for you running over someone else."
I drove carefully, as she instructed. The sound of the engine, usually ignored, seemed unusually loud in my ears. The taste of blood in my mouth never leaving, I swallowed my spit repeatedly.
She told me she became aware of her strange power when she was eight.
On the way home from piano lessons, she found the corpse of a cat. It was a gray one she knew well, that wandered around the local area.
It was thought to have been someone's pet, as it was unusually friendly and would come circle around your legs if you beckoned to it. It wouldn't run away when pet, and wouldn't hiss. It was something of a friend to the girl.
The cat died in a terrible way. The blood on the asphalt was blackened, but the blood that had seemingly splattered on the guardrail was bright red.
The girl wasn't brave enough to pick it up and bury it; she looked away from the corpse and hurried back home. As she did, she heard a music box, playing "My Wild Irish Rose."
Since then, she started to hear that same song again and again. When her "postponement" succeeded, she would hear it start up in her head. And by the time the mental performance ended, whatever it was that hurt her would have been "undone."
After doing her homework and eating her wrapped dinner, she thought, "I wonder if that cat was really the one I knew?"
Of course, subconsciously, she knew that there was no mistaking it. But her surface consciousness wouldn't accept it.
The girl put on sandals and snuck out of the house. When she arrived at the place she'd seen the corpse in the day, she found no corpse, and not even a bloodstain.
Had someone already come and picked it up? Was someone unable to bear it, so they moved the corpse? But no, something seemed off. It was like there had been no corpse or blood to begin with.
She stood there befuddled. I couldn't be in the wrong place, right?
A few days later, she saw the gray cat. So it was all just a misunderstanding, she told herself, stroking its belly. The cat walked over as always when she beckoned.
As she reached to stroke the cat's head, she felt a burning pain on the back of her hand. She quickly retracted it and found a scratch on it about the length of her pinky.
She felt betrayed.
About a week passed, and the cut didn't heal - rather, it began to swell red. She felt nauseous and had a high fever, having to call in sick to school.
Maybe that cat was diseased, she thought. She forgot the name, but maybe it had that sickness one in ten cats have, and she got infected when it scratched her.
The fever refused to recede. Her body felt heavy, and her joints and lymph nodes hurt badly.
I wish that gray cat being run over and killed hadn't just been me misunderstanding. It didn't take long for her to start thinking that. If only that cat hadn't been alive, I wouldn't have to go through this.
When she next woke up, her fever was completely gone. She didn't hurt or feel nauseous; she was the picture of health.
"I think my fever's gone," she informed her mother, who tilted her head and asked, "Did you have a fever?"
What are you talking about?, the girl thought. She'd been bedridden by it for days. Yesterday, and the day before that...
But as she went back through her memories, she noticed that separate memories existed alongside those days she had been bedridden.
In those memories, she had gone to school yesterday, and the day before, and every day without fail for the past month. And she could remember everything: the lessons she had, the books she read at lunch, and all her meals.
At once, she was filled with deep confusion. Yesterday, I slept in bed all day. Yesterday, I had math class, and Japanese class, and arts and crafts, and PE, and social studies. Her memories contradicted one another.
Thinking to look at her hand, she saw the wound was gone - and she didn't feel as if it had healed. It had completely vanished from where it should have been. No, she thought, it was never there.
The cat that died was the cat I knew. That cat wouldn't scratch people.
The girl became convinced, without any reason, that she was responsible for temporarily keeping alive the cat that should have died.
Because I wished for it, because I desperately didn't want that gray cat to be dead, I temporarily "undid" the event of the cat being run over.
But when that cat scratched me and made me sick, I wished for it to be dead instead. So the first wish lost effect, and the accident went back to "happening," so I was never scratched.
This interpretation the girl made was exceedingly correct. To test her theory, she returned to where she found the cat's corpse the next day.
As predicted, the bloodstains were back; so the accident had happened. It was only temporarily made to not.
Thereafter, whenever bad things happened, the girl would make them not happen, one by one. Her life was absolutely full of things she wanted not to have happened. That's why she figured she was given this ability.
All of this was something she told me some time afterward.
While we waited at a red light, the girl spoke, gazing out the passenger-side window.
"You know, it smells weird in here."
"Smells?"
"I didn't notice before because of the rain... But have you been drinking?"
"Oh. Yeah," I carelessly answered.
"Drunk driving?", she asked incredulously and defeatedly. "So, what? You know how many people die from it and you just think you'll be fine?"
I had no reply. I certainly must have known the risks of drunk driving, but the dim idea I had of those risks was getting pulled over for it, or crashing into something and hurting myself.
When it came to things that resulted in people dying, I thought of bank robberies or bus hijackings, things that I felt had nothing to do with me.
"Turn left here," the girl instructed.
We got onto a mountain road with no lights. I looked at the speedometer and saw I wasn't even going 30 kilometers an hour.
As I was about to press hard on the accelerator, my leg stiffened. Though I found it odd, I still increased speed, and found my hands getting abnormally sweaty.
I noticed the lights of a car in the opposite lane. I let off the accelerator. Even after the car had passed by, I kept letting the car slow down until it came to a total stop.
My heart was beating like mad again, just like after the accident. A cold sweat dripped down my sides.
I tried to get the car moving again, but my legs wouldn't move. That sensation I'd felt right before running the girl over was stuck in my brain.
"Could it be," the girl supposed, "that after running me over, you're afraid of driving?"
"I give. Yeah, it seems that way."
"Serves you right."
I challenged myself again and again, but could hardly make it a few meters before coming to a standstill again.
I pulled off to the side of the road and stopped the car. Once the windshield wipers stopped, the window soon became completely covered with water.
"Sorry, but we're taking a break here until I can drive properly again."
With that, I undid my seatbelt, reclined the seat all the way back, and closed my eyes.
A few minutes later, I heard the other seat recline, and the girl turning on her side. She wanted to sleep facing away from me, naturally.
As I lay still in the darkness, waves of regret came upon me. I've done something that can't be undone, I told myself again.
I regretted each and every thing. It was a mistake to drive so fast. It was a mistake to be driving drunk. In fact, it was a mistake to be drinking at a time like that. No, even going to meet Kiriko at all had been a mistake.
People like me should just be miserable and cooped up in their rooms. Then at least they won't bother anyone else.
I'd ruined this girl's life.
To take my mind off it, I asked her, "Hey, what was a student like you doing walking in that desolate place, anyway?"
"That's my business," she coldly spat. "Are you trying to say that even though it was an accident, I did something to deserve it?"
"No, I wasn't implying anything like that, I just..."
"Your lack of caution and bigheadedness took someone's life. You don't get to talk like that, murderer."
I sighed deeply, and focused on the sound of the rain outside. I realized as I turned on my side that my body was completely exhausted. And thanks to the remaining alcohol in me, my senses were going in and out.
I wished that when I woke up, everything would be back to normal.
As I dozed off, I heard the girl sobbing to herself.
I was in an arcade, late at night. It was a dream, of course.
The ceiling was yellowed with nicotine, the floor was covered in burn marks, the fluorescent lights flickered, and two of the three vending machines had notices with "OUT OF ORDER" crudely written on them.
None of the old cabinets all lined up in a row were turned on, and everything was deathly silent.
"I ran over a girl," I said. "I was going way faster than you'd need to, to kill someone. The brakes barely worked in the rain. I guess I've become a killer."
"Aha. So, how do you feel now?", Shindo asked with great interest, sitting on a stool with a torn cushion, smoking a cigarette, and leaning on the cabinet with his elbow.
His brusqueness was strikingly nostalgic. Shindo was just that kind of guy. What was good news for others was bad news for him, and vice versa.
"Whaddya think? I feel terrible. Just imagining what kind of punishment I'll get for this makes me want to die."
"Nothin' to worry about. You've got no "life" to lose in the first place, right? You're already living like you're dead. Nothing to live for, no goals, no fun..."
"And that's why I just want it to be over! ...I should've just followed after you, Shindo. I could've killed myself easy, after the death of my best friend."
"Stop it, you're grossing me out. You make it sound like a lovers' suicide."
"Guess it is."
Our laughter filled the silent arcade. We put coins into a beaten-up old cabinet and went head-to-head in an ancient game. He won, 3 to 2. Considering our relative skill levels, I think I put up a good fight.
Whatever you had him do, Shindo was always better than average. He was quick to grasp just about everything. But on the other hand, up to the last, he was never the best in anything.
I think maybe he was scared. Deathly afraid of a moment when he'd devote himself to something, then blank out and think "What was I doing?"
So he could never give all of himself to just one thing. I wished I could be like that.
And that must be why Shindo always liked things which were clearly pointless. Games from generations past, useless music, his unreasonably huge vacuum tube radio. I loved that sense of unproductiveness.
Shindo sat up from the stool and brought two canned coffees from the single working vending machine.
As he handed me one, he said, "Hey, Mizuho, I wanna ask something."
"What?"
"Was that accident really something that was totally avoidable?"
I didn't understand his question. "What do you mean?"
"What I mean is, well... Maybe you called this tragic situation you're in upon yourself, somehow."
"Hey, now, you trying to say I had that accident on purpose?"
Shindo didn't reply. With an intriguing smile, he tossed his cigarette, now mostly filter, into the empty coffee can and lit a new one. As if to say, "think about it some."
I pondered his words. But as much as I scoured my brain, I couldn't come to a conclusion worth calling a conclusion. If he was just pointing out my destructive tendencies, there was no need to ask it like that.
He was trying to get me to notice something.
With that dreamlike lack of consistency, I was no longer in an arcade. I stood at the entrance to an amusement park.
Behind the stands and ticket booths, a merry-go-round, and a revolving swing, I could see such attractions as a giant Ferris wheel, a pendulum ride, and a roller coaster.
There was noise from the attractions all around me, and shrill voices yelling. Large speakers around the park played infinitely cheery big band music, and I heard the sound of an old photoplayer among the attractions.
It didn't seem I had come there alone. Someone was there holding my left hand.
Even in my dreamy state, I found it odd. I'd never once gone to an amusement park with someone.
I sensed a light beneath my eyelids. When I opened them, I found the rain had stopped, and the deep blue of night and the orange of morning were mixing near the horizon.
"Good morning, murderer," the girl chirped, having woken up before me. "Do you think you can drive now?"
Illuminated by the sunrise, her eyes showed traces of having been cried out.
"Maybe," I answered.
My fear of driving seemed only temporary after all. My hands on the wheel and my feet on the accelerator had no problems. Even so, I drove carefully down the wet roads glimmering in the morning light at around 40 kilometers an hour.
There was something I wanted to tell the girl. But I didn't know how to break the subject. I arrived at the destination while my early-morning brain was still thinking things over.
"That bus stop is fine," she pointed. "Let me off here."
I stopped the car, but also stopped the girl as she tried to open the passenger door and leave.
"Listen, is there anything I can do? I'll hear out anything. Let me try and make up for my crime."
She didn't reply. She got onto the sidewalk and started walking away. I left the car and ran after her, grabbing her shoulder.
"I really know I've done something terrible. I want to make up for it."
"Please, get out of my sight," she insisted. "Right now."
I hung on. "I'm not expecting your forgiveness. I just want to make you feel the tiniest bit better."
"Why should I have to go along with your self-serving idea of scoring points with me? "Make you feel better?" You just want to feel better, don't you?"
That was a bad way of putting it, I realized too late. Anyone would be insulted to hear that from the person who killed them.
I felt like anything more I said would make her angrier. I could only back off for now.
"Okay. You seem to want to be alone, so I'll go poof for now."
I took out a notebook and wrote down my phone number, tore out the page, and gave it to the girl.
"If there's anything you want me to do, call that number and I'll come running."
"No thanks."
She tore the page to pieces before me. The strips of paper were blown away, mingling with the yellow leaves that had fallen to the road after last night's rainstorm.
I wrote my phone number in the notebook again and put it in the pocket of her bag. She tore that page apart too, throwing confetti to the wind.
But I refused to learn and kept writing my number down and giving it to the girl.
After eight tries, she finally gave in.
"All right, I get it. Now just leave. You being here just saps my energy."
"Thank you. Whether it's late or night or early in the morning, call me about the most trivial things if you want."
Adjusting her uniform skirt, the girl walked off quickly as if running. I, too, decided to return to my apartment for now.
I went back to the car, stopped at the first restaurant I saw for breakfast, and drove safely home.
Thinking about it, it had been a long time since I'd been out while the sun was. Crimson cosmos grew on the roadside, blowing in the wind.
The blue sky under which the madder reds danced seemed much bluer than it was in my memory.