Loups-Garous (65 page)

“You're going to kill me too, after all?” Kunugi said.

“Having an idiot like you in the police force is a waste of taxpayer money. If you live, my great-grandfather won't be able to eat human flesh anymore. My great-grandfather is going to keep eating lots and lots of humans and keep living living
living
!”

The ornamental door crept open.

Ishida jutted his head out and peered around the door half-wittedly.

Right next to his neck he heard a
swoosh
sound.

Standing by him was a little girl.

Ishida stared at the little girl's profile, perplexed.

Blood.

She was covered in blood.

“K-Kono…”

The blood-soaked girl stood there unblinking.

Ishida.

Ishida, whose face still bore a perplexed expression, slowly collapsed to the floor.

Blood was dripping from Ayumi's aquiline jaw.

In her delicate right hand was a unique-looking weapon.

Kunugi raised himself. Shizue still couldn't swallow what had just happened.

“M-Miss. You…”

“I'm a murderer. He was a criminal,” she said confidently, without so much as wiping the blood from her face.

Shizue raised herself up too.

“As you just witnessed, I killed this man. I also killed the police officer named Takasugi, and the man with the peacock tattoo on his head. I killed Ryu Kawabata and Yuji Nakamura. I confess to all of those killings.”

“Kawabata and Nakamura?”

“Miss Kono…” Shizue stood up. She thought herself so weak. If what she just saw was real, and if what this girl just said was true. Despite it all, this little girl was standing firm. Despite being drenched from head to toe in blood.

Behind Ayumi was Hinako Sakura and probably the girl known as Ritsuko Kisugi. And behind her…

Cat.

She had the face of an adult. Ayumi walked into the room without so much as a glance at Ishida's dead body.

The others followed.

Ayumi faced Shizue and politely thanked her.

“Are you injured at all?”

“I'm fine.” The counselor couldn't tell them she was in pain.

Mio Tsuzuki appeared in the doorway.

And Hazuki Makino, covered in mud.

They were all all right.

They were all alive.

No…

These children had attacked the building.

This impenetrable fortress, overrun by little girls.

Ayumi kept her gaze straight ahead and walked through the room, past Ishida's desk, through the hidden door, and past the gate beyond it.

“Miss Kono,” Shizue called out.

Ayumi turned around slightly. And then she opened the wooden door in the very back.

Mio and Hazuki walked past Shizue and followed after Ayumi. Rey Mao, Hinako, and Ritsuko followed suit. Shizue lent Kunugi her hand to help him stand, and they followed after them.

They passed the doors, the gate, the wooden door.

The girls were lined up, two-by-two.

The room was so white it was glowing.

A huge window.

The giant heavenly body.

For some reason the moon shone brighter and closer than ever.

It was encircled by a large inorganic machine, inside which was a small white bed.

On it.

On it was a tiny old man, shriveled and covered in wrinkles. He raised his head and looked their way. There were tubes sprouting from all over his body, and on his hairless head were several electrodes, cables leading from them.

There was a small tabletop attached to his bed, and on it was a white plate.

On the plate was one morsel of meat left over from his meal.

Ayumi, dark red, stood at the side of the bed.

Stood there silently.

The old man looked at that crisp face with utter dread.

“Are you a demon?”

“I'm a wolf. I butcher everyone in my path. I'm a werewolf. Loup-garou,” Ayumi said.

The old man let out a short laugh.

“Are you here to ease my pain?”

“No, I'm here to kill you,” Ayumi said, and grabbing all of the wires connected to the old man, cut them with her knife.

Beep
.

The small lights all flickered and one by one were extinguished.

The sound of the machines stopped.

The fan stopped.

The monitor went black.

Even the lamp turned off.

The machine stopped.

The old man looked around him several times, looked at his wrinkled hands once, frowned his wrinkled face, and then quietly, so quietly, ceased to exist.

The old man was not alive. He had been
kept
alive.

Ayumi slowly turned on a heel.

“Police officer. I have killed another man.”

Kunugi lowered his eyes.

“Miss Fuwa,” Ayumi said to Shizue. “Killing people is wrong, right?”

“Yes.”

Shizue tried to answer as calmly as she could.

Not for her own sake but for the child's.

“Please arrest me. And then take me to prison.”

Kunugi, however, turned his head.

“I'm sorry, but, miss…I can't do that,” Kunugi said. “I can't arrest or convict any of you girls. I didn't kill anyone, but I might have committed an even greater crime. In fact I'd understand if you wanted me arrested along with you.”

“If no one is convicted of murder this tale won't have a conclusion. This leaves me—”

“There is no conclusion,” Shizue said, and she really believed it. “A conclusion is something the records will conveniently provide. In reality there is never any clean resolution. You can say it however many times you want with words, and you can even convince yourself of it, but humans aren't that simple. Or, on another level, humans are much closer to pure than that. Confessing to a failed middle-aged cop isn't going to start anything,” Shizue said.

“I'm…”

“It's okay.”

Shizue hugged Ayumi. Just the way her mother had held her once.

“I understand. I'm entrusting this to the police, the law. That's what you want.”

“The police will be here soon,” Mio said. “I timed their arrival perfectly. Though they don't know what happened here.”

In that case.

We could get out of here before daybreak. We could leave this impenetrable fortress.

Shizue looked at the girls' faces.

This was an impenetrable fortress, but it was also man-made, not the work of gods. We can take it down.

Despite the misery, despite the pathos, despite the horror. Despite the sadness.

Even though so many people were dead now. Even though so much blood was spilled.

Despite all this, Shizue was glad to see the girls were alive.

Even if it turned out they had committed serious crimes.

She was a horrible woman.

In reality, people had died, and people had killed those dead.

To be happy despite all that made her a horrible person.

In the window illuminated by the full moon, Shizue could see her tired face reflected back at her.

Shizue looked at the pathetic face and couldn't stop crying.

The moon was slow.

And cold.

 

“And then the wolf ate Little Red Riding Hood.”
–Charles Perrault

CHAPTER
031

IN THE END.

There was no conclusion to the tale of Hazuki and the other girls.

Actually, there is no need for fairy-tale conclusions in the real world.

Everything just went along as usual without any more understanding, and at the end of the day, nothing changed.

Yuko Yabe, Asumi Aikawa, Ryu Kawabata, and Yuji Nakamura, plus all the others who lost their lives, were almost thought of as people who'd
always
been dead when you read about them on monitors.

They were branded victims.

The myth-making of the lives of the victims was extremely compact and easy to understand. For example the Yuko in the monitor was completely different from the Yuko that had once been alive and breathing.

It didn't matter how many times Hazuki watched her surveillance video of Yuko, she could no longer recall the soft sensation or scent of her that day they carried her to Ayumi's house.

The Area 119 SVC Memorial Building was one day attacked by terrorists from some-ism, and since it took place on a non-workday, fortunately the casualties were limited.

With all that blood, and all those explosions and that many deaths,

How dare they call it limited
, Hazuki thought.

Hazuki was received warmly by her father.

He did not ask any questions but said, “I was worried. I don't ever want to worry like that again.”

He scolded her lightly.

Hazuki never found out what happened to Ayumi. Had no way of finding out.

They were each interviewed by different people and afterward escorted home. She didn't know what happened with Mio or Rey Mao either.

In her interview Hazuki described everything she saw and heard, and didn't think to lie or make up anything about Ayumi or Mio. Hinako and Ritsuko had no reason to hide anything either.

They should have been punished accordingly.

However.

After the three-month summer break, Mio and Ayumi were present at the communication sessions. Hinako and Ritsuko too. No one said anything. Like nothing had changed from before. So there was nothing to ask.

Because it was all the same.

Hazuki had never talked to Mio before, and hadn't even known who Hinako and Ritsuko were. Ayumi…

She eventually also went forward and didn't stand out.

Ayumi was always looking outside during the sessions.

Afterward, Hazuki went to their spot alone.

She folded her knees and sat down.

The vaporous ambitionless cityscape.

Buildings that looked like flash drives.

Hills that went on forever.

I was there
, she thought.

I went over those hills.

But it was probably from a different angle. She knew that.

“Miss Makino,” a voice called.

Hazuki turned her face up and saw Shizue Fuwa standing by the handrail of the stairs.

“Miss…Fuwa.”

“Hello,” said Shizue and sat next to Hazuki.

Hazuki remembered that Miss Fuwa was not at the day's session. A substitute counselor had come and said nothing important. Hazuki hadn't listened to any of it, so she didn't know what the substitute had said.

“Miss Fuwa…”

“I'm on break,” she answered before Hazuki could finish her question.

“I'm taking a short vacation. Sorry.”

“Um…”

“No one was punished. It was like nothing had happened.”

“Nothing?”

“It just makes you want to give up on humanity, doesn't it?” Shizue said with a laugh.

Was this the kind of person she was?

Miss Fuwa?

Hazuki looked at her.

“According to the records, that man on the top floor was already dead. He was kept alive with those machines. The master of that body was the machine. Biologically speaking too, he was dead. So he couldn't be killed. Even if he were, he wasn't.”

“How about the others?”

“Terrorism.”

“And the serial killings?”

“It's a huge maze. Some of those people…I mean the Kawabata and Nakamura cases were even broadcast on the public channel. But the person who killed those two and Yabe aren't to be found anywhere.”

“But Ayumi confessed to it.”

“It's a tremendous nuisance for the truth to be revealed. The man on the top floor of that building was a very important figure. The criminal had said that when he died, the whole world would turn upside down.”

“Criminal?”

“His name was Ishida,” Fuwa said. “But you know, it was just his delusion. That man was certainly important. He had the money and the power to run this country. But he died, and it's not like the world fell apart. Nothing changed. You know that, right?”

“Yeah. Nothing changed.”

“Of course it didn't. Humans aren't that extraordinary. We're small. The more humans tell themselves they are giant, the more I feel like I'm losing sight of myself. Humans are only as big as a human can be.”

“Ayumi said something similar.”

“Miss Kono…” Shizue said, looking far away.

“What's going to happen to Ayumi?”

“Probably nothing.”

“But.”

“It was a lie. The police determined that she must be a pathological liar. That's what they said in their data. I guess that really makes her a wolf girl,” said Shizue.

Hazuki didn't know what that meant.

“It's not very satisfying, is it, Miss Makino?”

“Not…not necessarily,” Hazuki said.

“Yes it is,” Shizue said. “Good, bad, weak, strong, holy, evil. The stories created around polar opposites are easiest to understand. But nothing's that simple. I don't think. I mean I don't know,” Shizue said. She leaned on her side.

“Then there are those people who can murder people and then take a nap,” she said.

“Huh?”

A hand came out of the grass and waved.

“That was legitimate self-defense. He had a gun.”

“Who was the one with the gigantic gun, Tsuzuki?” Shizue said.

“M-Mio?”

Mio popped her dried-grass-covered head up from the lawn.

Ayumi was not there.

There was no scent of a beast.

“I wonder where she's going to go,” Shizue said, looking high up into the sky.

“It must be hard. She can't even repent for her crimes.”

Hazuki didn't know.

She looked up at the sky.

The moon was not visible in the daytime.

But it wasn't like it was gone.

Hazuki was here.

Mio was here.

Ayumi was nowhere.

It was in the past now.

There once was a beast called the
wolf
.