Zaregoto

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3

My world is the coolest.

Rokumeikan Private University, located in Kinugasa, in Kita

Ward of Kyoto, has a total of three dining halls. Of the three,

the Zonshinkan Chika Dining Hall (lovingly abbreviated to

“Zonchi”) was thought to be the most lively. This was

probably because it had an extensive menu, and it was right

next door to the co-op bookstore.

That day, since I had no class during second period, I went

straight to the Zonshinkan Chika after first period. I’d had no

breakfast that morning—I’d accidentally overslept by a whole

hour—so I thought I might grab an early lunch.

“Man, it’s empty at this hour. Risky business,” I mumbled

to myself, doubting all the while that I was using the phrase

“risky business” correctly. I picked up a tray.

Now, what to eat?

I’m no foodie, so usually I just eat whatever without much

of a fuss. Be it spicy or sweet, I say bring it on. But lately

things had been just a little different.

It was only a month ago that I’d spent a hell of a week in a

place where I’d been served three gourmet meals a day.

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Now, as an aftereffect, my tongue was still stuck in Snootyville.

It had been a whole month since anything had made me

say, “Wow, this is good.” Every time I ate some-thing, it

always felt like something was missing, like some key ingredient

was lacking.

It wasn’t enough of a problem to merit being called a problem,

but I sure was sick of feeling that way. As far as solutions,

I had already thought of two.

The first was fairly simple: Just eat tasty food.

“Can’t hope for that to happen in a school dining hall.”

But that first suggestion was impossible to follow. Not, anyway,

without heading back to that strange, isolated little island.

I won’t say I was totally against the idea, but I certainly

had my reservations.

“So that’s no good.”

Yes, I was talking to myself.

This left one other possible measure, and it was a strongarm

tactic. It was the “beat the child who doesn’t listen” tactic.

Most problems in the world are solved by either giving or

taking.

I made my way to the donburi corner and placed an order.

“Excuse me. Large kimchee bowl, please. No rice.”

The lunch lady gave me a quizzical expression and said,

“That’s just kimchee, son,” but she dished it out all the same.

As if it were nothing, she plopped it in front of me, displaying

an admirable degree of professionalism.

A big, heaping, mountainous bowl of kimchee. I doubt

there was a single tongue in this world tough enough to chow

all that down and still preserve its sense of taste. I nodded

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with satisfaction, placed the bowl on my tray, and settled the

bill.

The dining hall was so empty that I could hardly decide

where to sit. In another hour, the place would be filled up

with students who had cut out of second period early. I was

never a fan of crowds, so I considered myself under a time

limit. I took a seat in the corner.

“Down the hatch,” I muttered, and took the first bite. . . .

This. Was. Awful.

I really had to eat a whole bowl of this stuff? Wasn’t this

what was commonly known as suicidal behavior? What cruel

fate had brought me to this pass? What had I done?

“Is this divine retribution?”

I guess they also say reap what you sow.

From then on, I wielded my chopsticks in silence. If I kept

on talking to myself, people would start thinking I was a

weirdo. And besides, it’s poor table manners to talk while

you’re eating.

And then, just as I hit my limit—my entire head had gone

numb from the tip of the tongue up, I didn’t know what the

hell I was doing, or, for that matter, who I was, or what the

word who meant, and even what the word meant meant . . .

“Yo.”

She sat in the chair across from me.

“Pull that tray back a little, will you?” she said. Then she

pushed my tray toward me and placed her own tray in the

newly opened space. Her tray was laden with a plate of

spaghetti carbonara, some tuna-and-kelp salad, and a bonus

fruit dessert for a grand total of three courses.

Oh, how bourgeois.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 6

I looked to my right, then to my left. The dining hall was

empty as ever. You could practically call it deserted. So why

had she decided to eat her spaghetti directly across from me?

Probably some kind of dare.

“Oh my God, what is that?! It’s all kimchee!” she exclaimed

at the shocking sight of my lunch. “Wow! You’re

eating a whole entire bowl of kimchee!”

She was wide-eyed, her hands up in the air like she was doing

a banzai cheer. Maybe that was what she was doing, or maybe

she was surrendering. There was also the possibility that she

was just Muslim. Any of these was fine by me, but in reality,

she was probably just surprised.

Her shoulder-length hair had a reddish tint and was done

up in a sort of bob. Her clothes were nothing out of the

ordinary. They were ultra-plain, following the style of so

much of the Rokumeikan student body. All of a sudden, when

she sat down, she seemed much shorter—but then I realized

most of her height had come from her extra-tall London

boots.

She had a young face, so I couldn’t tell if she was my senior

or a peer. Judging by her demeanor alone, it would have

seemed plausible that she was my junior, except that being

that I was a freshman, that was pretty much impossible.

“Hey. Y’know, if you don’t respond, I’ll get lonely and

stuff.” She stared at me with puppy-dog eyes.

“Right,” I finally said. “Who are you?”

I was pretty sure this was our first encounter. But I’d

learned one thing in the past month: This weird little pocket

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 7

of space known as a “university” had an unusually large

number of people who were friendly and genuine. These

strange people would strike up conversations with you like

you had been their close friend for the past ten years—even if

you had never seen them before in your life. For a guy like me

who’s bad at even remembering personal encounters, this made

things difficult from time to time.

And surely this girl was another one of those types. Fearing

the hassle of having to deal with a club invitation or,

worse, some religious thing, I went ahead and posed the above

question.

Doing so launched her into an over-the-top shocked pose.

"Hwa?!” she said. “Oh my God! You mean you forgot? You’ve

forgotten? You freaking forgot?! Ikkun, that’s so cold!”

Huh.

Judging from her reaction, it seemed this was not our first

encounter.

“Ohhh. I am shocked. But what are you gonna do, right?

Yeah, nothing, I guess. You’ve just got a bad memory after all,

right? Well, might as well introduce myself again.” She flashed

both hands at me and gave a full-faced grin. “I’m Aoii

Mikoko!”

This might prove to be a painful encounter.

Whether it was our first encounter or not, this was, to be

sure, my first impression of Aoii Mikoko.

Her story was simple. Mikoko-chan and I were classmates.

Not only were we taking the same core subjects, but we were

also in the same foreign-language class. We had met face-to-

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 8

face a number of times, and were in the same group for the

class training camp before Golden Week. We had even been

paired up before in English class.

“Man . . . from this conversation alone, I must seem like a

total nut for not remembering you.”

“I think you are a total nut!” She laughed lightheartedly.

To be able to laugh so cheerfully after someone had entirely

forgotten her existence took a special kind of vacuousness. I

figured she was probably a pretty nice girl after all.

“Normally, I’d find it pretty disturbing that you forgot me

like that. Or rather, I’d be pissed. But that’s just how you are,

right? Like, you don’t forget the stuff that’s really important,

but you forget normal stuff,” she said.

“Well, I can’t argue with that.”

She was exactly right. One time I had even forgotten if I

was right- or left-handed, and found myself in quite a bind

when I actually tried to sit down and have a meal. To top it all

off, when all was said and done, I turned out to be ambidextrous.

"Okay, and what’s happening with you?” I asked. “Why

aren’t you in class?”

“Class? Well, the thing about that is . . .”

For some reason she seemed abnormally happy. But I got

the feeling that “abnormally happy” was her default setting.

To be honest, even though I’d seen her before, I still could not

remember what she was like normally. But either way, it was

hard to be put off by this smiley-faced girl.

“I’m playing hooky.”

“Freshmen really ought to go to class,” I said.

“Aw, come on, it’s boring. Totally boring. What was it

again? Oh, yeah, my economics class. It’s just a nonstop

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 9

stream of jargon. And it’s like a math class. I’m a humanities

person! And you’re skipping class too!”

“I don’t have a class right now.”

“Really?”

“Yep. Fridays I only have a first period and a fifth period.”

She flung her hands wildly in the air again. “Doesn’t that kind

of suck? That’s like six hours of boredom.”

“Boredom isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”

“Hm, I thought boredom was practically the definition of

‘a bad thing.’ Different strokes, I guess.” She began winding

the spaghetti around her fork as she spoke. Unable to successfully

get it all on the utensil, it soon became a matter of

trial and error. I reckoned it would be awhile before the food

actually reached her mouth. Before I knew it, she had put the

fork down and switched to chopsticks. So much for stick-toitiveness.

“Say . . .” I said.

“Hm? What-what?”

"There are tons of open seats.”

“Yeah, for real. I think this place will fill up pretty soon,

though,” she said.

“But it’s empty now, right?”

“You said it. Something wrong with that?"

“I wanna eat alone, so let’s move along now, honey,” I

wanted to say. But then I saw her smile—a vulnerable smile

that showed she couldn’t possibly have imagined she was

about to be completely rejected—even I had to take pity.

“Nah . . . it’s nothing.”

“Hm? You’re a weird guy.” She gave me the pouty lips.

“Ah, but I guess if you weren’t weird, you wouldn’t be you.

Weirdness is like your identity, right?”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 0

I couldn’t help but feel like I was being inadvertently

insulted. But then again, it wasn’t as bad as completely

forgetting someone you had been regularly interacting with for

a whole month. So I swept the notion aside and switched my

focus back to the kimchee.

“Ikkun, you’re a kimchee fan?”

“Nah, not particularly.”

“But that’s a ton of kimchee. Not even Koreans eat that

much in one sitting.”

“Well, I have my reasons,” I said as I crammed some

kimchee into my mouth. More than half of it still remained in

my bowl. “Not very interesting ones, but still.”

“Reasons?”

“Try to figure it out yourself first.”

“Huh? Oh, right. . . okay.” Mikoko-chan crossed her arms

and began to contemplate my rationale. Of course, figuring

what circumstances could possibly require my eating an entire

bowl of kimchee wasn’t exactly easy. After just a few

moments of pondering, she let her arms drop back down

apathetically. She really was quick to throw in the towel.

“Oh, yeah, by the way, I had a question for you. I thought

this was a good opportunity to ask you. May I?”

“Uh, sure.”

Wasn’t the phrase “a good opportunity” usually used for

something that came up by chance? As far as I knew, Mikokochan

had come here and sat down in front of me of her own

volition.

Or maybe that was beside the point.

She was wearing the same smile when she posed her

question. “Ikkun, you know how you didn’t come to school

for a while in the beginning of April? Why was that?”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 1

“Uh . . .” My chopsticks stopped moving. The bits of kimchee

they held plopped back into the bowl. “Uh, well . . .”

I must have had a troubled look on my face, because

Mikoko-chan was quick to start waving her hands around

frantically and say, “Oh, if it’s hard to talk about it, don’t

worry. I was just wondering, that’s all. It’s like, Unsolved Mysteries

Featuring Mikoko-chan.”

“No, it’s not hard to talk about. It’s a simple story, really.

I was just on a vacation. For about a week.”

“Vacation?” She blinked at me like a little forest animal.

Her expressions were also easy to read. It made it easy for me

to talk to her—she was a great listener.

“Vacation? Where’d you go?" she asked again.

“Out to some deserted island in the Sea of Japan, kind of

by accident.”

“By accident?”

“Yeah. A big accident. Anyway, that’s how I got myself

into this kimchee-eating situation.”

She scratched her head, which was probably a natural response.

But I am a fundamentally lazy person, so I couldn’t

be bothered to explain all the details. Or rather, just how the

hell would I?

“Anyway, just a vacation. Nothing particularly deep.”

“Huh. You don’t say.”

“What did you think it was?”

“Oh, nothing . . .” She blushed a bit. “I just thought maybe,

uh, like you hurt yourself somehow and had an extended

stay at the hospital or something.”

How and why such an idea would occur to her was a mystery

to me, but then again, for someone to suddenly take a

week off just after entering a university, there weren’t really

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 2

any other plausible explanations that came to mind. At the

very least, it was a more likely explanation than “I was just on

a vacation.”

“I see. Sort of like a delayed graduation trip.”

“Yeah, something like that. I couldn’t get a reservation, so

it ended up eating into April,” I said with a shrug, but of

course the real facts were totally different. The very idea that I

had “graduated from school” was something I hadn’t

experienced since elementary school. I’d certainly never been

on a “graduation trip.” But all of the circumstances surrounding

what had happened would have required a pointlessly

long explanation, and it wasn’t exactly the kind of thing

I wanted to talk about at length anyway, so I just went with

her interpretation.

“Hmm . . .” She gave a sort of half-convinced expression.

“So did you go alone?”

“Yeah.”

“Gotcha.” And then, just like that, the cheerful smile was

back. It was as if all confusion had been cleared. It was like she

really didn’t put on any façades. She was so straightforward

with her emotions that I almost envied her.

Well . . .

Not really.

“So, Mikoko-chan . . . Why are you really here?”

“Huh?”

“You have something to say, I assume? I mean, considering

you came and sat right here when there’s a whole roomful

of empty chairs.”

“Huh.” She narrowed her eyes and lowered her gaze a bit,

down to my chest. “So I can’t sit with you unless I’ve got

something specific to say to you?”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 3

“Huh?” This time it was my turn to scratch my head.

She continued talking in the meantime. "I mean . . . am I

bothering you? I just saw you when I was walking by, so I

thought maybe we could eat together.”

“Ah, gotcha.”

So she’d just wanted someone to eat with. I was the type

who preferred doing personal things, like eating, alone, but

there were plenty of people who viewed mealtime and talk

time as one and the same. Surely Mikoko-chan was one of

them. But having unexpectedly decided to skip class, she

couldn’t find a friend to eat with, so she went ahead and

struck up a conversation with the first acquaintance she

happened to see—me.

“Well, if that’s all it is, it’s fine by me,” I assured her.

“Thanks. That’s a relief. I don’t know what I would’ve

done if you had said no.”

“You don’t?”

“Hm? Yeah. Maybe something like this,” she said, pretending

to hold the edges of her tray in both hands. Then she

twisted her wrists in a sudden cracking motion. “Like that.”

“I see . . .” Even if she was just joking, I was a little relieved

I had refrained from saying no. I wouldn’t have put

such a reaction past her, in reality. Someone who expressed

happiness so freely might express anger just as freely.

“Well, I guess I’m free anyway. As long as you just want to

talk,” I said.

"Thanks.”

“So what are we talking about?”

“Oh, umm . . .”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 4

As I prompted her onward, she began anxiously scraping

her chopsticks together. She was probably trying to think of a

topic.

I may have forgotten who she was, but surely in the past

month it seemed like she’d at least managed to grasp the surface

of my personality. So just what kind of topic would she

broach with me? Me, who was so ignorant, and so lacking in

common sense, that I used to think soccer was baseball played

with your feet? I was strangely interested to find out, as if I

were watching it happen to someone else.

She clapped her hands as if she had suddenly thought of

something. “Don’t you think the world’s gone crazy?” she said.

“Huh? In what way?”

“I mean . . . er, you know, the prowler. Even you must

know about it.”

Even me.

Even me—the phrase was pretty enraging. Except that it

happened that I had no idea who the hell “the prowler” was.

“Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot! Of course I know!” An

angry outburst like that would have been fairly justified, but

"Shut up! How the hell am I supposed to know what that is,

stupid?!” just didn’t have the same ring of validity to it.

“Hm? What’s wrong, Ikkun?” she asked.

“Ah, nothing. What’s ‘the prowler’?”

Obviously I wasn’t looking for the dictionary definition,

one who prowls. She gawked at me in amazement.

"You’re kidding, right? Is this a joke? Ikkun, it’s been all

over the news. There’s no way you could have missed this

if you live in Kyoto.”

“There’s no TV in my house, and I don’t get the paper

either.”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 5

"What about the Internet?”

“Oh, I don’t have a computer. Don’t really use the ones on

campus much either.”

"Oh my God, Ikkun is a caveman!” she said, sounding almost

impressed in a way. “Is it some sort of ethical policy?”

“Maybe it is, in a sense. How do I put it . . . I don’t like

having possessions.”

“Cooool! You’re like an ancient philosopher! Wow!” She

clapped her hands with joy. I seriously doubted I would have

gotten the same reaction if she knew it was actually for a

practical—and completely lame—reason: My room was just

too small.

I mean, newspapers take up a lot of space.

“When you say ‘if you live in Kyoto,’ do you mean this

‘prowler’ thing is going on here?”

“Yeah, that’s right. It’s made a pretty big splash. ‘Panic in

the Old Capital!’ Some places have even called off field trips.”

“Wow . . . too bad for them.”

“Six people have been murdered! And it’s still going on

right now! With no known suspects!” She had become all riled

up, and there was a hint of excitement in her voice. “He stabs

them with a knife and then flings their guts all around and

stuff! Freaky, huh?”

“. . .”

Let’s set aside the fact that we were in the middle of

eating. After all, I was partly responsible for the fact that the

conversation had veered in this direction. But what did it say

of this girl that she was able to discuss the murder of others

with such absolute glee?

It’s scary how detached people can become.

“Six people, huh? Is that a lot?”

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“Yeah it’s a lot! It’s a hell of a lot!” She almost sounded

boastful in a way, as if she were the one doing the killing.

“Maybe not overseas, but serial killings are rare in Japan! It’s

become quite a sensation, you know.”

“Huh. So that’s why there are patrol cars circling around all

over the place.”

“Yeah. There are people from the mobile police force in

Shinkyôgoku. Makes me think of the Gion Festival.” She

chuckled to herself for some reason.

“Wow, go figure. I didn’t know anything about this.”

As I nodded along with her explanation, somehow I knew

Kunagisa would definitely get a kick out of this. Kunagisa, for

those new to my story, is the short version of Kunagisa Tomo,

one of my few friends. That is to say, my only friend. Kunagisa

Tomo was a nineteen-year-old electronic and mechanical engineering

professional shut-in of the mysterious variety, with

blue hair and a passionate interest in collecting information on

just these types of incidents.

Unlike me, she wasn’t constantly in the dark about what

was going on in the world. In fact, she was essentially an

information-collecting expert, and she was probably already

well aware of this prowler case without my having to say anything

about it. In fact, she was probably already taking action.

“So when did it start?”

“Around the beginning of May, maybe? I think that’s right.

Why?”

“Oh, I was just asking.”

I put the last piece of kimchee in my mouth. My tongue,

or rather the entire inside of my mouth, was completely

mangled. I would probably never take food for granted or say

"this tastes bad” again. If you thought about it, the fact that a

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 7

single bowl of kimchee could so easily destroy all my principles

didn’t say much for my taste buds. Or maybe it was more

of a stomach issue.

“Well, I’m done. See you again sometime.” I put down my

chopsticks and began to get up from my seat.

"Ah! Hold on! Hold on, will you?! Where are you going?!”

Mikoko scrambled to stop me. “Wait a minute, Ikkun!”

“What do you mean, Where am I going’? I’m finished

eating so I figured maybe I’d drop by the bookstore.”

"I’m not done!” I took a look at her tray. Indeed, more than

half of her food was left.

"But I am.”

"Don’t make me sad. Stay with me till I’m finished.”

“Why should I have to do a pointless thing like that?” . . . is

exactly the kind of thing I’m not tough enough to say. I’m

more of the go-with-the-flow type.

“Okay. I’m free now anyway.” I didn’t have anything

urgent to do, and it wasn’t like I was full yet, either.

I figured I might as well eat some real food while I was

there. “Wait a minute. I’m gonna go buy something.”

I approached the register from the opposite direction

(which was against the rules) and took a look at the menu on

the wall, pondering whether I should order the beef bowl.

Geez, it was more expensive than Yoshinoya. Maybe something

else was the way to go.

“Kimchee again?” the lady at the counter interrupted

lightheartedly as I was trying to decide.

“Yes.”

Oops.

I had up and said it.

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“No use crying over spilt milk.” Or wait, was this more of a

“hindsight-is-always-twenty-twenty situation”?

A few dozen seconds later, I received another heaping

bowl of kimchee (this time the lunch lady gave me a little

extra) and sat back down in front of Mikoko-chan.

"What the hell? Am I supposed to be following along with

something here?” she said.

“Don’t worry about it. So what were we talking about?”

“Hm? Uh, what was it? I forgot."

“Gotcha. Well, then you want to talk about class?”

She shook her head firmly.

“Why? There were some things I didn’t really get in first

period today, so I was thinking maybe we could go over it

together. It’s a required class for freshmen, so you must have

gone, right? If you ask me, the professor’s inability to explain

things properly is to blame, but what do you think?”

“What do I think?’ I think that there isn’t a boy alive who

brings up something like this to a girl when there isn’t even a

test coming up!”

I was only kidding, but she seemed seriously put off by it.

“What’s the matter? You don’t like studying?”

“Nobody likes studying.”

“That sounds debatable to me. But if you hate studying,

why did you go to college?”

“Ah, that’s a forbidden question. If you ask that, it’s all

over. I mean . . . everyone’s like that, right?”

It seemed I had inadvertently touched a soft spot, and she

suddenly seemed a bit melancholy. Come to think of it, it

seemed to me that someone had once said Japanese universities

weren’t a place for people who wanted to study, and

that college was just a time to prepare for entering society.

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“Heh, that’s one way to put it.”

“Do you like studying?” she said.

I shrugged.

Of course not.

In fact, I hated it.

“But it’s not bad for killing time. Or as an escape from

reality, rather.”

“Usually studying is the reality.” She gave a heavy sigh.

Then, as if shifting her focus back to her meal, she picked at

her salad for a while in silence.

Hmm. Was a plate of spaghetti, a large salad, and a dessert

really a normal-size portion for a girl under the age of twenty?

I didn’t know anybody fit to use as a standard for comparison—everyone

I knew was either incredibly finicky, ridiculously

gluttonous, or always fasting or something—so I had no

standards for judgment. But seeing as Mikoko-chan was neither

too slim nor the opposite, perhaps it was, at the very

least, an appropriate portion for her.

“Umm, it’s hard to eat with you staring at me like that,”

she said.

"Oh, sorry.”

"S’okay.”

She resumed eating. When she was nearly done, she began

looking my way in a sort of probing fashion. Really, she had

been peeping up at me every so often the whole time, but

now she had suddenly become obvious about it, making eyes

at me like there was something she wanted to tell me.

And indeed, that proved to be an accurate speculation.

As if she had at last made up her mind about something,

she placed her chopsticks down without finishing her dessert.

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She gave a bit of a playful smile as she leaned her body

forward, bringing her face close to mine.

"So, Ikkun,” she said.

“Yeah . . . ?"

“The truth is, I may or may not have a favor to ask you.”

"You don’t.”

“I do.” She leaned back again in her seat. “Are you the kind

of guy who might be free tomorrow?”

“If you define free as not having any plans, then I sup-pose

I’m more apt to say yes than no.”

“Yeah, kind of hard to follow you.”

“That’s just how I am,” I responded as I chewed my kimchee.

“To put it more simply—I’m a free dude.”

“Really? You’re free? Oh, good!” She pressed her hands

together in front of her chest with a look of true joy. To cause

someone such teary-eyed happiness just by not having plans

on a Saturday seemed a bit much.

More important, this didn’t look good. I had the distinct

feeling I was about to get dragged into something.

“I see, I see, so if I’m free, something good happens to you,

huh? One hand washes the other. It’s also kind of like the

food chain. A magnificent circuit, if you will,” I said.

She wasn’t even listening. "Yeah. So anyway, if you’re free

tomorrow, I was hoping we could get together!”

Her hands still pressed together, she tilted them to the side

a bit as if to emphasize her request. It was such an earnest,

imploring pose that it almost felt like foul play. There was

scarcely a male life-form alive that wouldn’t have surrendered

to it. They would want to surrender.

Nevertheless, I refused without mercy.

“No,” I said.

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“Wha?! Why?!” she shrieked. “You’re free, right?”

“Well, yeah. But it’s like I said, I don’t dislike boredom.

Sometimes people like to just spend the day doing nothing,

right? Everyone feels like that sometimes. Everyone wants to

escape the hustle and bustle of the world sometimes, to free

themselves of the hassle of dealing with other people.

Everybody has a right to time to contemplate their own lives.

I just happen to have more.”

“But-but-but! How can you just refuse without even

hearing me out?! That’s crazy! It’s like a bunch of eighth

graders forming a band, but they all end up playing bass!”

It was a pretty great analogy.

On close inspection, it was apparent that she was about to

cry. That is to say tears were already brimming in the corners

of her eyes. This was not a desirable situation.

I looked around. It was about time for the dining hall to

start filling up, and students began trickling in, their numbers

gradually increasing. At this point, I wanted to avoid standing

out (by, say, making a relatively hot girl cry) as much as possible.

But come on, who cries just from one little rejection?

“Okay, okay, just calm down. I’ll hear you out. Come on,

have some kimchee.”

“Okay,” she said, sniffling.

Doing as suggested, Mikoko-chan placed some kimchee in

her mouth. “Uwa!” she peeped, and then the tears really

started flowing. It seemed she wasn’t much for surprises

(which I kind of knew).

“Ahh, hot . . .” she cried out.

“Well, it is kimchee. It wouldn’t be kimchee if it wasn’t

spicy.”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 2 2

They say there’s also sugar-preserved kimchee, but I always

went with spicy, so I had never seen it. I wouldn’t mind if I

never did, either.

“Ohh, you’re terrible. You’re so mean. . . . Now, what

were we talking about?”

“That prowling killer?”

“No! We were talking about tomorrow!”

Bam! She slammed her hand on the table. It looked like she

was seriously a little mad now. Maybe I had gone too far, I

reflected.

“Umm, do you know Emoto-san?”

“Whether I know her or not, I don’t remember her.”

“She’s in our core subject classes. Her hair is like this.” She

stuck her fists to the sides of her ears, but even with this

striking pose, “Emoto-san” and her hairstyle remained firmly

beyond the grasp of my imagination.

“She’s a pretty noticeable girl. She’s always wearing shiny

things.”

“Huh. Well, I don’t really look at people much. What’s her

full name?”

“Emoto Tomoe. That’s the tomo from wisdom and the e

from blessing."

Interesting name. Sounded like it could do a headstand and

start running around upside down. It felt like it rang a bell, but

I couldn’t put my finger on it. I didn’t want to just toss out

some answer like, “Oh yeah, yeah, I know that chick. She’s

the one with the contact lenses, right?” There was always the

chance that Mikoko-chan would throw it right back in my

face, like, “I tricked you! There’s nobody like that in our class!

Ahahaha, looks like the pants are on the other leg now! Nyanya-nya!”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 2 3

And then the egg would be on my face, my fraudulence

exposed. Not that Mikoko-chan would do something like that.

“Her nickname is Tomo-chan.”

“That’s not gonna work for me.”

“Huh? Why not?”

“No reason. Just my own personal thing.” I shook my head.

“Sorry. I don’t remember at all.”

“Figures,” she said, laughing. “But if you didn’t remember

me, I guess it goes without saying that you wouldn’t remember

her. If you did remember her, I’d be a little shocked.”

I didn’t quite follow her reasoning, but as long as my lack

of memory made her avoid feeling terrible, I guessed it wasn’t

totally worthless. Something definitely seemed off with the

logic there, though.

“Well, okay. How about Atemiya-san? Atemiya Muimisan?

I call her Muimi-chan.”

“Another classmate?”

She nodded. "Then there’s Usami Akiharu-kun. Akiharukun

is a guy, so you must remember him, right?”

“My memory functions in a gender-neutral environment.”

“But you sure don’t seem like a feminist.”

She let out a big, unintentionally exaggerated sigh. It was

like I had done something wrong. But it was my memory’s

fault, right?

“Anyway, so Tomo-chan, Muimi-chan, and Akiharu-kun.

We’re all going out tomorrow night for a little drinking.”

“Huh. What’s the occasion?”

“It’s Tomo-chan’s birthday!” For some reason she seemed a

tad boastful. It was hard to deny her adorableness as she sat

there with her hands on her hips, chest stuck out. “May fourteenth!

Happy twentieth!”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 2 4

If this Tomo-chan was a classmate, that meant she was a

freshman. Maybe she had entered college a year late. Or

maybe she was a returnee like me. It didn’t really matter.

“I’m only nineteen, by the way. My birthday’s April twentieth.”

“Huh,” I said.

I didn’t really care.

She continued. “Umm, so anyway, tomorrow’s Tomochan’s

birthday, so we figured we’d throw a really light, casual

kind of party.”

“Huh. Seems like an awfully intimate group for a party.”

“Yeah, well. We all like the rowdy atmosphere thing, but

nobody wanted there to be a ton of people, so what are you

gonna do?”

“Ah. Then four people is pretty appropriate, huh.”

“Huh?” She looked surprised.

“A fifth person would throw off the balance.”

“Huh? What?”

“Well, say hi to everyone for me. And happy birthday to

you.”

“It’s not my birthday! Hey, wait, I mean don’t just get up

and leave! You don’t know the other half of the story yet!”

“Well, they say knowing is only half the battle,” I said.

“That’s not what that means!”

She grabbed me by the sleeve as I started to leave and

forced me to sit back down. But even if the conversation was

only half-over, I could more or less tell what was coming next.

“Okay then. So now you’re going to tell me to partake in

this drinking party . . . or birthday party, rather. Right?”

“Gah! Wow, that’s exactly right.” She flung up her hands

in surprise, but this time it reeked of phoniness. Maybe it

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 2 5

wasn’t that she didn’t put on any façades; she was just a lousy

actress. “Amazing, it’s like you’ve got ESP or something,

Ikkun.”

“Let’s not go there. Not a good subject.” I let out a light

sigh. “How did all this come about? I don’t even know these

people, right?”

“Yeah you do. They’re your classmates.”

Ah, right.

Maybe I had amnesia. I was never good at remembering

people, but lately it had gotten particularly bad. These three

classmates aside, there wasn’t a single person in all of Rokumeikan

University whom I had a clear picture of.

But there was a more likely explanation: that it was simply

the result of my apathy toward other human beings. It had

nothing to do with my mind’s functionality. It wasn’t a defect.

It wasn’t that some essential part was missing, either.

It was just that I was, from the very start, a broken thing.

“Could it be that I’ve just forgotten, and that I’m actually

good friends with these three people? Even I wouldn’t forget

something like who my friends are, I think.”

Mikoko-chan’s expression grew a little sad. “I don’t think

that’s the case,” she said. "You probably haven’t spoken much.

I mean, you’ve always got this narrow-eyed scowl as if you’re

thinking really hard about something or filled with contempt.

Even now. It makes you kind of hard to approach. It’s like

you’ve got a wall in front of you. Or your AT field is fully

operational. And in spite of all that, you always sit directly in

the middle of the classroom.”

I wanted her to leave me the hell alone. I wanted to tell

her not to bother talking to me if that was how she felt. But I

didn’t.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 2 6

I finished my kimchee. As it turned out, two bowls ended

up being pretty excessive, and I felt dreadful fullness in my

stomach. I probably wouldn’t be having kimchee again for a

long time.

“But you and I are friends, right?” she asked.

“Are we?”

"Yes!” She slammed both hands on the table again. It

seemed she had a habit of hitting nearby things when she got

emotional. I’d have to remember to stay out of range of those

slender arms if I was going to make fun of her. That is to say,

I’d have to stay out of range when I made fun of her. Maybe it

was better to pick on her over the phone.

Er, I mean, why was I planning ways to harass her?

“And, so, naturally, I tell my friends about you sometimes,

right?”

“I guess.”

"And then my friends think, ‘Man, for a guy who’s always

got such a crummy face, he seems kind of cool,’ right?”

“I guess it’s possible.”

“So it’s not so strange that they would want to try being

friends with someone who seems kind of cool, even if he is a

weirdo. Right?”

“Yeah, I guess we all have temptations.”

“So that’s what I’m saying,” she said.

“What is?”

“That.”

She peered up at me with eager, expectant eyes. I pretended

I was drinking tea in order to escape her gaze. But a single

cup of tea sure wasn’t going to be enough to revive my

paralyzed mouth.

"Huh. I understand,” I said.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 2 7

“You do?”

“It’s a good opportunity and all, so I think I’ll go spend the

night at my parents’ place tomorrow.”

“Don’t make plans’ You didn’t even go home during

Golden Week!”

She slammed the table again. I was a little disturbed that

she knew what I had been doing during Golden Week, but

then again, maybe I had told her and forgotten.

“But you know . . . it’s almost Mother’s Day and stuff.”

“That was last week! And besides, you’re not the kind of

guy who would go out of his way to show devotion to his

parents!”

That was rather harsh. And even if she was right, did she

believe that a seventeen-year-old guy who wouldn’t even go

out of his way for his parents would be any nicer to someone

who was just a classmate? Maybe she was so worked up she

didn’t realize what she was saying anymore.

“Come on, I’m begging you. I already told them I’d bring

you. I’ll lose face.”

“It seems like there’s a misunderstanding here, so let me

clear things up—I’m not the kind of guy you can have fun

talking to. They say I’ve got about as much pep as a storm

cloud.”

“Wow, that’s as disappointing as hearing about two budding

young authors, only one’s poison ivy and the other got

eaten by tent caterpillars." She looked a little somber as she

chewed her lip. “Come on, Ikkun. Do it as a favor to me. I

know it’s selfish of me, but hey, I’ll even pay for drinks.”

“Sorry, I’m not a drinker.”

This was true.

“Why not?”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 2 8

“I once drank a whole bottle of vodka in one go.” I didn’t

dare tell her how things ended up after that, but at any rate,

ever since then I had sworn off alcohol. I may not be such a

smart guy, but I’m not so dumb that I don’t learn from my

experiences either.

“Wow, not even the Russians do that.” She was truly surprised.

“I see. . . . So you can’t drink. Hm, now what?”

She immersed herself in thought once again. It seemed she

had a firm understanding of what it was like for a non-drinker

to show up at a drinking party. Perhaps she was a lightweight

herself at least to some extent.

Nevertheless . . .

I wasn’t so cold-blooded that I felt nothing for this girl sitting

before me, looking so deeply troubled.

Dammit . . . I get dragged into things so easily. Going along

with something out of pity was one thing. But getting dragged

in just because the situation presented itself was totally lame.

“Okay, okay. As long as you’re okay with me just sitting in

the middle of the room scowling.”

“Hmm, I guess that would be an awful bother for you, but

you know, I think . . . Wait, you mean you’ll go?” she said.

She shot her body forward. Maybe it’s a rude analogy, but

she was like a dog who had just had food tossed in front of it.

A cat would have approached it with some caution, suspecting

the possibility of a trap, but Mikoko-chan was completely unguarded.

She may have physically resembled a cat, but she

was definitely more like a dog in personality.

“Is it really okay? Will you really come?”

“Yeah, it’s fine. I’m free anyway.”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 2 9

Even I was a little appalled by my own bluntness and

wondered if I couldn’t have put it a little more nicely. All the

same, she shrieked with joy.

“Waaah! Thank you!” She smiled innocently.

I replied by downing the rest of my tea. At some point she

had finished her dessert as well, so it was time I really should

start to leave.

“Ah, wait a sec. Let me know your phone number. I’ll call

you.”

“Hm? Ah . . .” I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket.

“Okay, it’s . . . uh, I forgot.”

“Figures. Okay, then I’ll give you mine, so dial me.”

I entered her number as told and sent it. A ringtone

emerged from her little bag. David Bowie. She had surprisingly

great taste.

“Okay, got it. Hey, Ikkun, your phone doesn’t have a

strap.”

“Ah, yeah. I don’t like that girly stuff.”

“Are straps girly?”

“Well, I’m no expert or anything, but they’re definitely not

very manly.”

“Mmm, guess not,” she said with consternation.

“Well then,” I said, stepping away from my seat with my

tray. “See you tomorrow, Mikoko-chan.”

“Yep! Don’t you forget about me again!”

She gave me a big wave, to which I responded with a small

one as I made my way out of the dining hall. After returning

my tray and silverware, I headed straight to the co-op bookstore.

Of course, being a university bookstore, its main selection

consisted of academic texts, and its recreational reading

selection was fairly limited. But on the plus side there was a

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 0

10 percent discount on everything, and for some reason (I

wonder why) this particular bookstore had an unusually large

selection of magazines, so it got fairly crowded.

I made my way to the novels section and picked one out.

Wait. Huh? Something had occurred to me.

"Wait a minute. Did Mikoko-chan call me ‘Ikkun’?”

Now that I looked back on our encounter, that nickname

she used seemed to stand out. I hadn’t even noticed when

she’d used the nickname—but I didn’t think anyone had ever

addressed me with such an overly familiar nickname in the

past. I thought about it for a moment, but I couldn’t remember.

I had no specific memory of her calling me that before,

but then again, I didn’t remember her not calling me that,

either. After all, I hardly have any memory of Mikoko-chan

herself, much less a trivial thing like what name she called me.

“Eh, whatever.”

Either way was fine by me. Satisfied with that notion, I

began reading the novel inside the store.

Yup.

No big deal.

Hardly a life or death situation.

All was well with the world.

Even if Heaven was empty.

What is a fatal wound?

Cutting off someone’s head.

Yeah, obviously that’s one.

Crushing someone’s heart.

Again, obvious.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 1

Destroying someone’s brain.

Naturally.

Stopping their breathing.

That’s another good method. Pretty final, too.

But when I say "fatal wound,” I’m not referring to these

trivial sorts of things.

I’m thinking of something else. A fatal wound is an impact

so intense, so devastating, that you fall into a state where

you’re no longer a human—even though you are. You’re no

longer able to lead a life even though you’re living. It means

being ground to bits after falling victim to a relative paradox

created by reason itself.

That is a fatal wound.

In other words, failure.

The key here is the fact that even after a profound failure,

we go on.

The world is brutally tepid.

It’s so kind that it’s cruel. It’s a devil’s Heaven.

To put it plainly, you don’t die by making a big mistake.

Or maybe I should say you can’t die.

Yeah, you don’t die.

You just suffer.

You simply suffer in agony.

And you go on. Forever, wherever.

Meaninglessly, you just go on.

Life isn’t a video game, not because there’s no reset button,

but because there’s no Game Over. Even though it was

"over” long ago, tomorrow shows up anyway. Even when night

falls, morning comes again after it. When winter ends, spring

rolls in. Life is wonderful.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 2

It’s an absolute paradox—even though you’ve taken a fatal

blow, you can’t die. It’s like asking what a person sees when

he looks backward while traveling faster than the speed of

light. An unthinkable question.

Even though the potential to be you has long since been

cut off, you go on. You do it all over, again and again. You

redo your life again and again.

But it’s like making a million crappy copies, and each time

you make one, your “self” gets a little bit shoddier.

And eventually you get to thinking . . .

Am I really me, or . . .

. . . did I become something else

long ago?

Have I devolved?

Just as the central figure in an incident can’t all of a sudden

become just a disinterested bystander, you can’t become your

own spectator.

And that, my friends, is what’s truly fatal.

“In other words, it’s like mind over matter . . .” I muttered.

As I pondered these fruitless ponderings, I was trying the new

McDonald’s burger. The five hundred twenty-five yen value

combo.

The kimchee must have worked, because my sense of taste

had returned to normal. A McDonald’s hamburger tasted

pretty luscious again. After all, as a Japanese person, there was

no way I could have gone on with my life if unable to enjoy

McDonald’s.

The time was 7:30 in the evening.

The place: Shijôkawara-machi, Shinkyôgoku Street.

After fifth period had ended, I decided I wanted to see

those mobile police Mikoko-chan was talking about for

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 3

myself, and my feet had taken me this far in an effort to kill

time.

Next to the tray with the hamburger on it was a single

magazine. What they call a “weekly infozine.” I had bought it

at the co-op, and on the cover it said, “Feature Story: Jack the

Ripper Resurrected in the Devil’s City!”

“Pretty tasteless.”

The ridiculously apocalyptic feel of the magazine was

actually the second reason I had bought it. The first was that it

featured a big story on the “prowler” incidents Mikoko-chan

had been telling me about.

I shoved two fries in my mouth, added a straw as well, and

sucked down some cola. I started flipping through the weekly.

The first page was set with an all too vivid picture of a corpse

as the background, and in big, Gothic letters, it read: “The

Homicidal Monster Who Shook Kyoto!”

Ominous indeed.

“So they let you show photos like this . . .” I muttered as I

flipped through the pages. I had already scanned through the

details of the articles, so I at least knew something about the

incidents now, if not everything.

The media had dubbed the crime spree the “Kyoto Prowler

Serial Killings.” Not the most imaginative name in the world,

but then again, maybe a case like this didn’t need one. Still,

the word prowler hardly seemed to be an accurate description

of the criminal. I always thought of as a prowler as a sort of

stalker, someone who stalks people on the street and causes

them harm. But in this case the culprit was luring the victims

into desolate areas, killing them with a sharp blade, and finally

dismembering the corpses. It seemed like maybe “serial killer”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 4

was a better description than prowler. And you could definitely

make an analogy with the Jack the Ripper murders.

“Six people now, huh? Not bad,” I muttered as I stuffed

the magazine back into my bag.

Yeah, six people. Just as Mikoko-chan had said, six people

in less than two weeks’ time was quite a death toll. It was

probably unprecedented. By the third murder, the police force

had been dispatched all over the region for surveillance. Even

the riot police had been dispatched, and yet the murders went

on, as if the killer were laughing at them.

The victims had no apparent connections. They were

young and old, male and female: The killer showed no mercy

to anyone. The police (and everyone else, for that matter) had

deemed these incidents merely a series of acts of random

violence.

Therefore the sixth victim probably wouldn’t be the last.

The killings would go on. As long as this monster remained on

the loose—or until he decided to stop of his own volition—

there would be more murders. Perhaps even tonight. Perhaps

even right now.

“It’s all nonsense in the end, huh?” I stared out at Shinkyô-

goku Street from the entrance of McDonald’s.

It was the same scenery as always. Fewer tourists and students

on field trips, but it was still pretty crowded—a lot of

kids with dyed hair were milling around. I suppose you could

say that this was when they came out to mark their territory.

Nobody, absolutely nobody walking along this street right

now was seriously considering the notion that they could be

the next victim.

Of course, everyone was still being a little cautious. Some

were visibly unsettled by the mobile police units scattered

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 5

here and there. “What a mess,” they might think, but that

about covers it. At most, they would go home a little earlier

than usual.

But deep in their hearts, everyone believed they would be

going home.

That’s how it is with these things. There are very few

people who can accept as a hard reality the possibility that

they might be the next to die.

It was true that the probability of becoming the next

victim was negligibly low: “Those victims must’ve had been

really unlucky.” A terrible thought, but what else could

people think?

Anyway . . . perhaps I should go ahead and mingle in with

this unguarded crowd? With that in mind, I got up from my

seat only to feel my phone vibrating in my right pocket. I

wasn’t familiar with the number on the display. But I didn’t

want to just ignore it. I went ahead and pushed send.

“Ciao! Mikoko-chan here!”

Hyper from the get-go. It was easy to imagine her giving

me the thumbs-up on the other end, even though I guess she

probably wasn’t actually doing that. But without even knowing

who she was talking to, she was so bubbly and friendly.

What would she have done if this was the wrong number? A

small fire ignited in my inquiring mind.

“Eh? Hey, it’s Mikoko-chan. What’s wrong?”

I didn’t reply.

"Uhh . . . This is Ikkun, right?”

Again, I was silent.

“Hellooo? This is Ikkun, right?”

I persisted in not replying.

“Did I mess up? Huh? I messed up!”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 6

I kept up the silent treatment.

“Gahhh! It’s like getting all prepped for the next radio

calisthenics session—you know, that exercise show broadcast

over the radio—only to have them go ‘We’re outta time, so

just do the chicken dance’! I’m sorry, I dialed the wrong

number!”

At that, I finally said something: “No, this is right. What’s

up?”

“Uwa!” she shrieked in surprise when I spoke. “Huh?

Wha?” she sputtered, confused. Eventually, she let out a sigh,

so I figured she had calmed down a bit. I also figured that it

was only a matter of seconds before her relief turned to anger.

"For crying out loud! It’s the phone! You have to say something!

I’ll freak out if you don’t! Ikkun, you jerk! You snake!

You . . . you monster!”

I didn’t think I’d done anything that bad.

"Sorry, sorry, I was just kidding around.”

I hadn’t meant to stay quiet for so long, but I also had

never expected she’d provide such a hilarious response either.

Before I knew it, my timing had been thrown off.

“God . . . It’s fine, I guess. Since it’s you and all.”

She let out a moan. It was hard not to feel a little sorry for

her. “Umm,” she started again, back to her normal self. “This

is a business call! Regarding tomorrow’s business!”

“You know, you don’t have to yell. It’s quiet here.”

“Hm? Where are you now?" she asked.

“Ah, uh, I’m at home. At the boarding lodge.”

“Oh. I’m still at school. I had to talk to Inokawa-sensei

about something, so I just got out of the research room. Isn’t

that place incredible?! Books everywhere!”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 7

Inokawa-sensei led the general-education class. A slightly

eccentric assistant professor, he was popular enough with his

students if you were willing to set aside the fact that he was

way too strict about punctuality. (If you weren’t in your seat

by the time the bell started ringing—even if you were in the

classroom and were in the act of sitting down while it was

ringing—he marked you absent).

“Umm, right, so about tomorrow. Will you be home tomorrow?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Are we meeting somewhere?” I asked.

“Uh-uh. If we set a meeting place, we might miss each other,

right? That’s no good, so I’ll come meet you at your boarding

lodge. I bought a scooter and I kinda wanna take it for a spin.

So, let’s say four o’clock. Can I go to your place at four?”

“Yeah, it’s fine, but . . . you know where the boarding

lodge is?”

“Huh? Oh, no problem there.” She seemed flustered. “I

mean, because we made that address list when classes first

started, so I know it.”

“Is just the address enough?”

"I know Kyoto well, so we’re a-okay. You’re at Senbon

Nakadachiuri, right?”

“Huh?” I asked. There was something suspicious about the

way she was acting, but if she said she knew it, I figured there

was no problem.

“Fine by me,” I replied.

“Okay. That settles that, then. Hmm, I’d like to talk more

since I went to the trouble of calling, but I’ve got to go to

driving school from here. I made an appointment, and if I

don’t go now I’ll be late.”

“Huh. You’re going to driving school.”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 8

“Yep. How about you? Got a license?”

“I do. Just for automatic, though.”

If it wasn’t such a big hassle to get a license, I could

actually drive anything, but that was a secret.

“I see,” she said. “I’m going for a manual. I’m reaching that

age where I want my own set of wheels, you know? My dad

said he’ll get me a car once I get my license. Yup. Anyway, see

ya tomorrow. B-b-b-byeee!”

She giggled and hung up. I stared at the phone for a while

before putting it back in my pants pocket.

Right. We did have plans tomorrow, didn’t we? It hadn’t

completely slipped my mind, but it was close enough. At this

rate, I might forget again by tomorrow. Maybe it would have

been best to write “Plans with Mikoko-chan tomorrow” on the

palm of my hand, like an unusually dim-witted elementary

school student.

Oh, but if she was coming to meet me at my house, it

didn’t really matter if I remembered or not, I thought. I was

just going to be there all day anyway. I returned my pen case

to my bag.

This time I really did actually walk out of the McDonald’s.

It was already almost eight o’clock, and the shops outside

were preparing to close. Suddenly something occurred to me.

“Ah, that’s right. It’s a birthday thing.”

In that case, I should probably take the opportunity to buy

a present while I was out and about. It was only common

sense—not that I ever thought of myself as someone with a lot

of common sense.

Then again, I’d been sort of half-forced into going. Maybe I

didn’t have to go out of my way to be a good guy or anything.

As I thought it over, I peeped into a nearby souvenir shop.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 9

Emoto Tomoe. Now, what kind of a character was she? I

didn’t have a single memory of her. Once I actually saw her

face, I might remember her. But no matter how hard I

thought about it, I couldn’t remember a single thing about

her. Which meant she probably wasn’t a particularly eccentric

or remarkable person. Maybe she was a little more subdued

than most. The kind of person who reads a book before the

start of class instead of messing with her cell phone.

Wait . . . but hadn’t Mikoko-chan said she was a striking

girl who always wore shiny things? Huh. I had no idea after

all. Not even a vague image.

Then there were those other two: Atemiya Muimi-chan

and Usami Akiharu-kun, right? I tried to recall them as well,

but with no success.

“Eh, I guess if they’re Mikoko-chan’s friends, they can’t be

all that weird.”

“Tell me what company thou keepst, and I’ll tell thee what

thou art.” Cervantes said it, but surely you could’ve switched

it around and it would still make sense. Nothing to worry

about too much.

As my mind wandered, I picked up a box of snacks from a

display. They were yatsuhashi cinnamon cookies folded into

triangles and stuffed with red bean paste. A wholly

conventional Japanese snack. Thirty pieces, one thousand two

hundred yen.

"Hm . . .”

Kyoto and yatsuhashi—a confection made from rice flour,

cinnamon, and sugar—were synonymous with each other. If

there were no yatsuhashi, it wasn’t Kyoto, which meant that if

there were yatsuhashi, it was. Compared to yatsuhashi,

Kiyomizu Temple, the Daimonji Fire Festival, and the Big

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 4 0

Three festivals didn’t even matter. Shrines and Buddhist

temples were irrelevant. If you didn’t eat yatsuhashi, you

didn’t know 80% of Kyoto.

Okay, then, I thought.

And so it was settled that Tomo-chan would receive snack

food for her birthday. I didn’t want to burden her with

something nondisposable, and I figured it would be the perfect

thing to eat while drinking. Or wait, did sweet stuff go

with alcohol? I didn’t drink, so I didn’t know. At any rate, it

wasn’t like they would be inedible.

And then my back shivered.

It felt as though liquid nitrogen had been poured into my

spinal cord. As if my entire body had been frozen to absolute

zero and the heat of the outside air was about to scorch me.

Only a basic level of brain functionality remained. And then I

felt an intense pressure crushing me. If I couldn’t maintain my

composure, surely I would be pulverized.

But I didn’t look back. I just tried to collect myself as

coolly as possible, and thrust the box of yatsuhashi at the store

clerk. The clerk had a brown earring, a brown ponytail, and a

smile that wasn’t very professional.

"Welcome, now.” The clerk wrapped up the treats for me,

which I accepted as I fished for the exact change. “Please

come again there, now,” the clerk said cheerfully with a little

head bob. Surely it was this kind of heartfelt service that captured

the hearts of tourists, I thought, a little irrelevantly, as I

left the store and began on my way to Shijô Street.

And then I felt it. A gaze so intense it couldn’t be ignored

once detected, a gaze so ferocious there was no way not to be

aware of it. No, this was more than a gaze.

This was the intent to murder.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 4 1

It was a 100 percent pure murderous desire. Nothing—not

one of a million emotions; not animosity, aggression, or a

sense of mischief—diluted the purity of this desire. My entire

body ached with a terrible feeling. This feeling was long past

the point of unpleasant or unsettling.

I walked.

The feeling followed me.

I walked some more.

The feeling still followed.

“In other words, I’m being followed,” I muttered to myself.

Since when? From where?

I had no idea.

It was so blatant that I didn’t even need to look back.

It was so blatant that I didn’t even need to sense it.

That meant that whoever it was had surely noticed that I

had noticed. The fact that they continued to tail me anyway

was the most blatant thing of all.

“This ain’t good,” I sighed as I weaved my way through the

crowd. It was strange. I really thought I’d left all danger

behind me . . . back on that island on the other side of the sea.

Being tracked all the way to this country, to this city, no less,

seemed unthinkable, much less being killed. I had already

employed Kunagisa’s skills to confirm that.

In which case . . .

This was a random act.

The first thing that came to mind was the feature story

from the magazine in my bag.

The slasher.

“Aw, hell no,” I said to myself. What cruel fate had

brought me to this pass? If I were to put it like Mikoko-chan, I

might have said something like, “It’s like forming a second

Onyanko Club, but everyone’s a backup dancer.” On second

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 4 2

thought, I have no idea what that means. I guess you

shouldn’t try to be something you’re not, I thought. Clearly I

was panicking.

But even supposing the person one thousand feet behind

me right now was the famous prowler, or even supposing it

was just your run-of-the-mill psycho killer, or even supposing

that it was someone with a grudge against me . . .

Something was off. This just didn’t make sense. It was unfathomable

and absurd.

What I felt was uneasiness. Yes, like the uneasiness you

feel when you notice that reflection in the mirror is looking

back at you, that kind of absolutely mistaken textbook

explanation. I had now confirmed that that red line that’s

usually in front was, suddenly, behind.

“More nonsense?” Of course this was an illusion.

What mattered right now was that someone was following

me. This much was certain. That and, sometime soon, I would

be killed. This much was also certain. With these two

essentially definite facts in mind right now, I had no leeway to

be distracted by any other sensations. Ultimately, my options

were limited.

Give, or take.

“Ahhh, this is becoming a freaking hassle,” I muttered.

I made my way from Shinkyôgoku Street onto Shijô Street.

On the other side of a cluster of cabs was a long line of cars.

Shijô Street was extremely congested at this time of day, to

the point that it was actually faster to walk than to drive. In a

town like Kyoto, which had so many traffic lights it wasn’t

even funny, a bicycle was by far the number one most

effective way to get around.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 4 3

Number two, incidentally, was by foot. Maybe number

three was a boogie board.

I had come to school by bus, so number two was my only

option. I debated for only an instant about which way to go

before heading east.

After a pause at a red light, I crossed Kawara-machi Street.

If I kept straight on this road, it would take me to Yasaka

Shrine. From there, if I broke south, I would reach Kiyomizu

Temple. It was a textbook route for the Kyoto temple sightseer.

But I was no sightseer, and I had no intention of going as

far as Yasaka Shrine.

I was on pins and needles. I felt that high-pressure gaze

edging ever closer. And if it ever caught up to me, that pressure

would erupt into plain, simple violence.

“Ah . . . this is gonna be close." May already and here I was

in a cold sweat. Just how long had it been since I had been this

nervous? Surely not since I’d left that odd little island. Yet at

the same time, what I felt now was somehow distinctly

different from what I had felt back then.

I am nervous, therefore I am at peace.

I became aware that, for me in this nervous state, failure

was something wholly improbable.

“Phew . . .”

And so I arrived at Kamo River. Instead of crossing the big

Shijô Bridge, I made my way down the staircase beside it and

emerged on the riverbank. Whenever the sun came out,

countless young couples would start crowding the riverbank.

In my personal opinion, this riverbank, lined with perfectly

spaced out boy-girl pairs, was one of the top three must-see

attractions of Kyoto. When the moon was out, the riverbank

offered itself as an after-bender hangout for drunks. After

drinking the night away, they could come here to sleep it off.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 4 4

The drunks ranged from college students all the way up to

salarymen.

The drunks and lovers had one thing in common: They

were both complete nuisances who went around shoving their

happiness in other people’s faces. But there was no time to

wax philosophical about. No matter what I thought about the

drunks and young lovers, only one thing mattered right now.

It happened to be that one brief moment of the day when the

riverbank was empty. The lovers had already gone home, and

the drunks were still getting drunk.

In other words, it was a perfect situation.

And being underneath a bridge made it even better, right?

I entered the shadow of the bridge as soon as I had

descended to the riverbank. The sounds of passing cars rushed

overhead. The chatter of people crossing the bridge. It was

one hell of a ruckus. But it wasn’t enough to cover this guy’s

footsteps.

Shuffle.

The sound of scraping grit.

I muttered something and turned around.

He made an incoherent noise as he faced me.

My feelings at that point were probably pure and simple

confusion. Ordinary, everyday confusion and nothing more.

There was a mirror in front of me.

Or so I thought.

His height was a bit under five feet, and he was longlimbed

and slender as a flower stem. He wore tiger-striped

shorts; nonskid rustic boots; a red, long-sleeved, hooded parka;

and a black tactical vest. Both hands were clad with gloves,

but they obviously weren’t for something as cowardly as covering

his fingerprints, as they were fingerless gloves. It was my

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 4 5

guess that they served a much more sinister purpose—to stop

the knife from slipping on sweat.

His long hair was tied up in the back and buzzed on the

sides as if he were a dancer. His right ear had a triple piercing,

and two straps that looked like they belonged on a cell phone

dangled from his left ear. His stylish sunglasses rendered his

expression unreadable, but the sinister-looking, obviously real

tattoo running down the right side of his face communicated

this person’s eccentricity loud and clear.

He was unlike me in almost every conceivable way. Our

similarities ended with age and gender.

And yet I felt like I was looking into a mirror.

So naturally I was confused.

And my new friend appeared to be just as confused.

Still, he made the first move. He inserted his right hand

into a pocket of the vest, and an instant later he was

brandishing a small, five-centimeter-wide knife. He made not

a single wasted motion. It was as if he had surpassed the limits

of the merely human. Light and sound seemed distorted

around him.

Even supposing I had been observing all this from the point

of view of an uninvolved bystander, even knowing that this

was a murderer, his technique was so perfect that I could’ve

only described it as artful.

There was no escaping it. There was no accepting it.

But I managed to dodge the knife by pulling my upper

body back. Of course, normally this would be impossible. I

wouldn’t say I’m any less athletic than average, but I’m

certainly no Mary Lou Retton either. I had neither the quick

eye nor agile body needed to elude a plausible contender for

the title of the world’s fastest knife fighter.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 4 6

However, supposing a dump truck was coming straight at

you at a hundred miles an hour, but you became aware of this

when it was a few miles away, I think we can all agree that

dodging it would be a simple task.

Likewise, I’d been anticipating my assailant’s slash attack.

It was so obvious that it was coming that it was if I had been

expecting it for the past five years.

I groped wildly for my bag, then swung it around, hoping

to smash him in the face. But with no more than a simple

motion of the neck, he managed to dodge my attack as if he

had been expecting it for ten years.

Because I had strained to dodge his attack, I tumbled

backward. Of course, I didn’t do anything as foolish as try to

roll back to my feet. Even a single arm wasted on such a

maneuver would surely have created a prime opportunity for

the killer. Just as I feared, he wheeled back from his initial

miss and came straight for my carotid artery. Not good. There

was no way to dodge from this position. I guess I could have

theoretically performed a stupid-looking roll and dodge this

one attack. But the next moment, or the moment after that,

regardless of how pathetically I scrambled around on the

ground, he would plunge that knife into my spine. I could

imagine it so clearly that I felt like a certain clairvoyant I once

knew.

In which case, dodging was beside the point. The key was

simply taking it. I swung my right elbow up at the knife.

My opponent twisted his wrist, altering the direction of his

swing. Consequently, the excess momentum from my elbow

had me swinging at nothing. This left my entire front side,

including all of my organs, not least notable of which were the

heart and lungs, completely exposed to the enemy.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 4 7

Behind the sunglasses, his eyes seemed to smile ever so

faintly.

With another twist of the knife, he aimed it directly at my

heart.

A moment’s pause.

And then the tactical knife swung down at double speed.

So strong was his will to destroy human life that it made his

body move at speeds that couldn’t be detected by the human

eye.

He left me not even time enough to gasp. That’s right: I

didn’t even have time to gasp.

But I had known this one had been coming before I’d even

been born.

!

!

The knife tore through a single layer of my clothing and

stopped. My left index and middle fingers had stopped it—by

pushing up my assailant’s sunglasses.

A stalemate.

He had my heart and I had his eyes. If you put the two on

a scale, their weights obviously differed, but this was no

matter to be weighed on a scale. For my opponent, tearing

through my flesh and bone to demolish my heart was simpler

than taking candy from a baby. But it would leave just enough

time for me to pulverize his eyeballs.

The opposite was also true.

I could sacrifice my own heart to destroy his eyeballs, and

he could sacrifice his eyes to obliterate my heart. Hence, a

stalemate.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 4 8

We stayed that way for as long as five hours, or maybe it

was five seconds, and then: "This is a masterpiece,” he said,

tossing his knife aside.

“It’s nonsense is what it is.” I retracted my fingers.

He backed away from me, and I rose to my feet slowly,

shaking the grit off my clothes and slowly straightening out

my posture.

Our fight had been a farce—but it had gone so harmoniously,

it was as if it had all been predestined. I felt overcome

by an incredible faintness.

“I’m Zerozaki,” my opponent said as he straightened his

crooked glasses. “Zerozaki Hitoshiki. So who the hell are you,

Mr. Doppelgänger?”

The question left a sour taste in my mouth. It was like

seeing myself asking someone else for my own name.

And that—that was the first encounter between the passive

onlooker and the homicidal monster.

Strangely enough, it was Friday the thirteenth.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 5 0

Misfortune and misery are underplayed.

Give me more despair. Give me more darkness.

Give me wholehearted depravity.

The thirteenth of any given month, by the way, is more likely

to fall on a Friday than any other day. Friday the thirteenth

occurs once a year at least, and three or four times a year on

average. But for a guy like me who wasn’t Christian—I don’t

even understand the difference between Catholic and

Protestant—Friday the thirteenth meant little more than that

the next day was Saturday the fourteenth.

Now, then. The next day was Saturday, May fourteenth. I

awoke inside my one-room Senbon Nakadachiuri apartment.

I looked at my clock to discover that it was about ten until

four p.m.

“Seriously?”

I was a bit . . . that is, fairly—nay, insanely—surprised. This

was a whole new oversleeping record for me. How many years

had it been since the last time I slept until the afternoon? And

it wasn’t only the afternoon—the p.m. was a third over

already. This would probably remain as a stain on my memory

for the rest of eternity.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 5 1

“But then again, I want to bed at nine in the morning, so

it’s only natural.”

Finally shaking away the sleepiness, I returned to my sense

and rose from my bed.

The room had four straw mats of floor space and a naked

lightbulb. This little pocket of space was unbelievably classic,

and so full of anachronisms that it made you wonder if it had

been around since the olden days when Kyoto was still our

capital. Naturally, the rent was deathly low. Deathly to the

landlord, that is.

I folded up my futon and stuck it on the closet. There was

no toilet or bath, but there was a washstand of sorts, so I used

it to wash my face, then got dressed. My wardrobe wasn’t

exactly jam-packed with options, so all of this took less than

five minutes.

I opened the window and let in the outside air. Kyoto is an

incredible place, in that once you’ve passed Golden Week,

you’ve already entered summer. It’s as if life is still being run

according to the old Chinese calendar—or as if fall and spring

don’t even exist.

Then there came a knock at my door. This apartment

wasn’t equipped with such modern amenities as telephone

intercoms. It was exactly four o’clock. Mikoko-chan was certainly

a punctual one. I was just a little bit dazzled by this.

People who were as anal about time as Inokawa-sensei were

just annoying, but I figured that if you really wanted to refer

to yourself as a human being, you had to be at least as punctual

as an analog clock. In that sense, Mikoko-chan passed as a

human.

“Yo, I’m coming.”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 5 2

I unbolted the lock (now that’s what I call radically retro)

and opened the door. But to my surprise, it wasn’t Mikokochan.

“Sorry.”

It was Asano Miiko-san, my neighbor. She was twenty-two

years old, making her my senior, and she was a seasonal

worker. There was something strangely Japanesey about her

style, and even right now she was dressed in classic Japanese

summer casual wear. It was black cloth, with the word

Carnage printed on the back of her top in white letters, and

she had a distinctly samurai-esque ponytail. At first she

seemed unapproachable, but after you talked to her for a bit,

it quickly became clear that she was a pretty decent human

being. Maybe a little on the mysterious side, but that just

added to her charm.

“Miiko-san . . . right? Good morning.”

“Yeah. Were you sleeping?”

“Yeah, I actually overslept a bit, so . . .”

“If you slept this late, I don’t think it still qualifies as ‘a

bit,’ ” she said drably. With her subdued demeanor, it was

often hard to guess what she was thinking. It wasn’t that she

was completely expressionless. Instead, her default expression

was a glare, with changes so subtle that she might as well have

been expressionless.

“Oh, please come in. As usual, there’s not much to see,

though,” I said without a hint of false modesty. I stepped aside

to make way, but she shook her head.

“Nah, I just came to give you this.” She passed me a flat

box. It was wrapped in paper with the word Snacks written in

big letters.

“. . . .”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 5 3

“They’re yatsuhashi. They’re a Kyoto favorite.”

“I know them, but—“

“They’re yours. They’re good, you know. Well, see ya . . .

I’ve got to get to work.”

She spun around, flashing the word Carnage at me. The

fact that she had offered no explanation as to why she had just

given me a box of yatsuhashi was hardly unexpected. She was

a woman of few words, and when you thought about how

much effort you would have to exert just to fish an answer out

of her, it was easy to justify leaving things unexplained. And

so I send her off with a simple “Thanks very much, I’ll definitely

enjoy them,” and nothing more.

She stopped in her tracks.

“Sounded like you got back just this morning,” she said

without turning around. “So, what’s the story?”

“. . .” Damn these thin-walled apartments. Actually I suppose

they do have their perks.

“Oh, I was just hanging out with a friend all night. Nothing

shady. Nothing exciting either.”

“A friend, huh? Wouldn’t happen to have been that

colorful blue-haired girl who came by around February, would

it?”

“Actually, Kunagisa’s an extreme shut-in. This was someone

else. A guy.”

She nodded with a look of complete and utter disinterest,

but I wondered if she would’ve perked up a little if I had said

“I was schmoozing with that killer everyone’s been talking

about under the big Shijô Bridge.” Then again, Miiko-san

being the way she was, it was entirely possible that she

wouldn’t have given me more than a “huh,” even if she knew I

wasn’t joking.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 5 4

She nodded, seemingly satisfied, and proceeded on her way

down the planked hallway. She was headed to her part-time

job. When I first discovered those weren’t just her indoor

clothes, even I couldn’t help but vocalize my surprise.

I shut the door and returned to the middle of the room.

But why did it have to be yatsuhashi? Come to think of it,

these were the exact same yatsuhashi I had picked up the

previous day for Tomo-chan’s birthday. It was a terrifying coincidence,

but there it was.

“Well, whatever.”

I stacked the two boxes and stuck them in the corner of

the room.

Looking at the clock, I discovered is was several minutes

past four.

Thirty minutes later, it was past 4:30.

“Well, duh,” I said aloud and lay down on the floor.

Well now. Wasn’t Mikoko-chan coming to pick me up at

four? Of this I was certain. I may forget things, but I never

misremember them. This meant Mikoko-chan had either

gotten in an accident, gotten lost, or was just a sloppy person.

But no matter which it was, there was nothing I could do right

now.

“Time for some Eight Queens?”

Of course, there was nothing as extravagant as a chessboard

in my room, so I’d just have to play it in my mind. The

rules to Eight Queens were simple, and concise—just place

eight queens on a chessboard so that none of them can capture

any other. It’s one of those “brain exercise” routines. I’d

played the game quite a few times, so I basically knew the

solution. But with my poor memory, I always forgot the exact

arrangement, so I was able to enjoy the game every single time

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 5 5

I played it. Okay, not that it was really all that enjoyable. But

it was a good way to kill some time.

I started strong, but the trouble set in around the fourth

queen. The game was starting to lose its consistency. Queens

just don’t get along with other queens. There should never be

more than one party in power. Moreover, if I allowed my

thoughts to wander like this, I’d lose track of where I had put

all the pieces up until now, and I’d have to start all over.

The thrill of sectioning off your mind like this was indescribable.

You could say it was something like the feeling of

walking on a balance beam, only the more pieces you placed

down—that is, the closer you got to a final solution—the

harder it became. In that sense, it was very much like a game,

and great in that sense. In the case of failure, there was no one

but yourself on whom to vent your anger, and herein lay the

real thrill.

And just as I was trying to find the place for the seventh

queen, there came a knock at my door and a cry of “Ikkun!”

The chessboard went flying. Queens everywhere.

For an instant, my heart, not to mention my thoughts,

stopped.

I approached the door and swung it open. This time, it really

was Mikoko-chan. She wore a pink camisole with a red

miniskirt, exposing a healthy and refreshing amount of skin.

“Morning!” she said with a wave. Then came the full-faced

grin. “Ikkun, guten morgen!”

“. . .”

“. . .”

“. . .”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 5 6

“Morgen . . . gen . . . gen . . . It’s like the Doppler effect or

something.” She was as spastic and smiley as I’d come to expect

her to be. Her eyes drifted away from me off into space.

“Umm, I was just wondering, and I know this isn’t the kind of

thing you would do, but . . . Are you mad or resentful or hatefilled

or cursing my name or anything? Actually, cursing my

name does seem kinda like something you’d do.”

“. . .”

“Come on, let’s communicate! Hey! Don’t be so quiet!

When you get all quiet I feel like I’m about to have something

terrible done to me!”

“Your palm,” I said.

“Hm?”

“Hold the palm of your hand in front of your face like

this.”

“Okay . . .”

She did as told.

Smack! I smooshed her hand into her own face.

“Gwah!” she shrieked in unfeminine fashion. Satisfied for

the time being, I went back inside to fetch my bag. Now

where had I put those yatsuhashi?

“Uwa! You’re terrible!” she said as she came into my room

for some reason. “You’re being violent with me just for being a

little bit late? That’s abuse, you know. It’s like forming a jurybased

judicial system, only all the jurors are O. J. Simpson!”

Apparently forty minutes late was only “a little bit late” in

Mikoko-chan’s mind. Without waiting for an invitation, she

came into the middle of my room and took a seat on the floor.

Plop. She scanned her surroundings with a look of true curiosity.

“Oooooo,” she sighed in awe. “Wow, there’s nothing

here. Amazing!”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 5 7

“You know, that kind of compliment isn’t particularly

flattering.”

“You really don’t have a TV! You’re like one of those

struggling students from the good ol’ days. I bet you study by

the light of fireflies! Does anyone else live in this apartment?”

“Uh, well, there’s one swordsman freeloader, one hermit,

a fifteen-year-old and thirteen-year-old brother and sister currently

running away from home, and then there’s me, so that’s

four rooms and five people. Up until recently there was an

aspiring singer here too, but she went to Tokyo to launch her

major-label debut.”

“Wow, so this place is kind of prosperous. Kind of a surprise.

So I guess that means there’s an open room here? Hmm.

It does have a certain ambience, huh? Maybe I should move

in!”

What could she have possibly seen in this apartment, in

this room, that would’ve given her such an idea? “Better not,”

I said, giving her the appropriate advice. “Well, let’s get going,

huh?”

“Ah, not yet. It’s still too early,” she blurted out.

“But won’t it be bad if we don’t leave soon? We’re already

pushing forty minutes here.”

“No, we just have to be there by six. Tomo-chan’s apartment

isn’t far from here, so even if we leave at five thirty we’ll

have plenty of time to get there.”

“Oh really?”

“Really,” she said with an index finger thrust skyward. It

was hard to deny the adorableness of her grandiose gesticulations,

but it didn’t seem like the thing I needed to go out of

my way to mention, so I didn’t. I didn’t want to get her all

excited.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 5 8

“Then why did you say four o’clock?”

“Huh? Oh, that. Well, you know. Ehh, I’m not so great

with time. It was just in case, just in case.”

“You mean there was a chance you might have been an

hour and a half late?”

Just thinking about it made me feel like blood might shoot

out of my ears.

“Huh?” she said, peeping at my face to catch my expression.

“What’s the matter?” she asked cheerfully.

“Nothing. I’m not thinking about anything. I’m definitely

not thinking about how you should maybe consider the feelings

of the person waiting for you to arrive. Or how you

should stick to the time that you designated. Or how you

should at least call if you’re going to be late. Or how you

should take better care of chessboards.”

“Chessboards?” She scratched her head.

Naturally she wasn’t supposed to understand that.

I found the yatsuhashi lying in the corner of the room and

cut the seal on one of the boxes. I placed it in front of her.

“Can I eat ’em?”

“Sure.”

I stood up and made my way over to the sink. I thought to

boil some water for team, but I didn’t have a kettle. I thought

of using a hot pot, but I had no burner in any case. So I just

poured her a cup of tap water and placed it in front of her.

Looking thoroughly baffled, she glanced at the liquid

thrust before her, but then pretended not to see it and didn’t

bother touching it.

She chowed down enthusiastically on the yatsuhashi.

“Asking this might be one of those things and all, but are you

poor, by any chance?”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 5 9

“No, I’m not particularly strapped for funds.”

Living in an apartment like this, I had no evidence to support

this statement, but it was the truth. At the very least, I

had enough money saved up to pay for your years of college

without lifting a single finger. Technically it wasn’t money I

had earned personally, but it was in my possession.

“I guess you’re sort of an economist then, huh? Or is it a

philosopher?”

“I’m just bad at spending money. Sort of the opposite of a

shopaholic.”

I helped myself to some yatsuhashi as I spoke. She gave me

a halfhearted nod of comprehension.

As she knelt on the straw-matted floor of my room, I

stared at her from top to bottom. Huh. Not that I was thinking

anything in particular, but there was something very

awkward about having her sitting here in the middle of my

room. I don’t know if you would call it unnatural or risqué,

but something about it felt incredibly iffy.

I stood up.

“Huh? Where ya going? We’ve still got an extra forty minutes.”

“Forty minutes is just a ‘little bit,’ right?”

“Ahh! Ikkun, that’s the kind of thing a big jerko would

say!” she said, recoiling overzealously. “You don’t have to hold

it against me forever!”

“I’m just joking. Let’s go get a light lunch somewhere. It’s

no fun just picking at each other in this empty room.”

I hoisted my bag over my shoulder and headed toward the

door.

“Aww, that’s not true,” she mumbled as she followed me.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 6 0

Tomo-chan resided in a students-only apartment complex

near Nishiôji Maruta-machi. Just looking at that steelreinforced,

concrete exterior, I could imagine the difference in

rent from my own place. Five times as much, or even ten

if you got swindled.

Mikoko-chan must have been there before, because she

entered the main lobby with an air of confidence. She pushed

the room number on the intercom and pressed the call button.

“Yellooo! It’s Mikoko-cakes.”

“Yo-yo. C’mon up.”

As the somewhat drowsy voice emerged from the intercom,

the firmly locked glass door slid open. An autolock security

system. Actually, maybe that’s too extravagant a term.

Whether that lock was there or not made little difference to

anyone trying to break in.

“Come on, hurry. Hurry hurry hurry hurry.” Mikoko-chan

passed through the door and beckoned for me to hurry along.

“Sixth floor, sixth floor! We gotta hurry!”

“It’s not like the sixth floor is going to get away.”

“Yeah, but it won’t come down to greet us either.”

“That’s true . . .”

I followed along as told.

“The sixth floor is the very top one. Tomo-chan lives in the

corner apartment, and there’s a pretty nice view, as views go.”

“Mm, nice view, eh?”

That was one thing I never hoped to see where I was living.

If you opened the window in my place, you got trees.

We called down the elevator and got in.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 6 1

“I wonder if Akiharu-kun’s here yet. Muimi-chan is pretty

much a given, but . . .”

Mikoko-chan was incredibly excited. Seeing her carefree

expression, even I couldn’t help but think about how nice it

must be to have friends. Whether or not it worked for me, it

must’ve been very nice for her.

We got off at the sixth floor. Mikoko-chan raced down the

hallway and stopped in front of the very last door. “Over here,

over here!” she shouted and beckoned. It made me want to ask

if she was just completely oblivious to the looks people gave

her.

She pushed in the doorbell. Ding-dong. The door opened,

and a girl revealed herself.

“Welcome,” the girl—most likely Tomo-chan—said drowsily,

a cigarette hanging from her lips. She was entirely different

than I had expected.

“So, Mikoko. On time for a change, eh?” She wore her long

brown hair in a sauvage—with her hangs long and the rest cut

at wildly varying lengths—and her fashion sense was impeccable:

Her light jacket and jeans combo was very stylish. She

was probably a little taller than me, and was so sickly thin that

if she said she had only one day to live, I probably would have

believed her. It was the perfect match for her slightly crooked

smile.

“Howdy, Muimi-chan!” Mikoko-chan greeted. “Haro haro!”

It seemed this wasn’t Tomo-chan after all, but Muimichan.

“Oops,” she said, finally noticing my presence. Without

a hint of shyness, she gave me a hard study from top to bottom.

“Maybe this is our first time talking, ‘Ikkun,’ “ she said

with a smirk.

“Yeah,” I said apathetically. “Hey.”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 6 2

It seemed my apathy had struck a chord with her. She let

out an exaggerated laugh. It was boisterous, and not very

feminine.

“Well how ‘bout that. You are an interesting guy. I think

we’ll get along.”

“Really.” It was more of a sigh than a response. Not the

kind of thing that warranted such judgment. It was just about

as enthusiastic as my greeting had been. “I don’t think so.”

“Heh, well, we don’t have to get into all that. Just come in.

Stupid Akiharu isn’t here yet. We just called and he was still

at home.”

“Oh my God, he’ll never change. Last time he claimed he

got confused by the time zone difference. That lousy tardyman.”

Mikoko sure was throwing stones at the proverbial glass

house. It was almost impressive. But I wasn’t in the mood to

start teasing her about it, so I stayed silent as I removed my

shoes.

At the end of the short hallway between the kitchen and

bathroom was a single door. It seemed this was one of those

sectioned-off one-rooms. Muimi-chan went ahead of us and

opened the door. The room inside was about eight or nine

mats in size, but the floors were hardwood. By the window

was a bed, and in the middle of the room, a mini-table covered

with cake, snacks, and a row of empty glasses. So this was

more of a drinks thing than a dinner-thing affair after all.

A girl was sitting daintily beside the table. This time it had

to be Tomo-chan. She was even more petite then Mikokochan,

and dressed in a strawberry-patterned one-piece. Her

hair was in pigtails. She gave me a little wave.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 6 3

She was just as shy as I’d imagined. And yet something

about her made me think she probably had a bad habit or two.

It was like there was more than meets the eye—as if her simplistic

form prevented you from being able to see through her.

Thinking about it made me feel as though someone had asked

me for the sum of all integers.

“No, wait.”

That’s all nonsense. Everyone feels that way when they

meet someone for the first time. It wasn’t technically my first

meeting with Tomo-chan, but I didn’t really know her, so it

was only natural that I had this impression.

Hmm. Come to think of it, it did seem as though we had

crossed paths a few times in our general education seminar. I

joined her at the table so that I was facing her, and tossed out

a simple greeting. “Yo.” She looked at me a little crookedly,

then gave me a politely deep bow.

“Thanks for going to all this trouble. Sorry to ask such a big

favor.” Her voice was pretty and calm, with a watery quality.

“I’ve always wanted to have a chat with you, so I hope you

have a good time today.”

I was a little moved by her good manners. It was something

I hadn’t seen much lately (especially in the last day or

two).

“Ahahaha, quick to break the ice, eh?” Mikoko-chan said as

she sat down next to me on her knees. Muimi-chan, in turn,

sat down next to her. This allowed enough room for Akiharukun

to eventually come sit between me and Tomo-chan.

“Ahhh.” Muimi-chan put out her cigarette with her own

finger, then deposited it in an ashtray. “So what are we doing?

We’ve got a brand-new guest here. Should we go ahead and

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 6 4

start? It seems stupid to sit around wasting time just because

of that asshead.”

“Hey, we can’t do that,” Mikoko-chan interjected. “For

something like this we have to all be together! Right, Tomochan?”

“Yup, Mikoko’s right.” Tomo-chan nodded. “You know

he’ll be here soon, so don’t be so impatient. Right?”

“I don’t really care, but...” Muimi-chan gestured towards

me. “What about Ikkun here?”

“I don’t mind. I’m used to waiting.” To be sure, that didn’t

mean I was used to people making me wait. But it would have

been too much of a hassle to start an argument about it, so I

just fed her an easy line.

Muimi shot me an inquisitive look, but “Well, whatever

then,” was all she said. She pulled out a fresh cigarette, then

shot me another look. “Are you an antitobacco kind of guy?”

she asked.

“I don’t smoke myself, but you can smoke all you like.”

“Ah. No, I’m good.” She broke in half the cigarette she

hadn’t even lit yet and deposited it in the ashtray. “I make it a

point not to smoke around nonsmokers.”

“Huh.”

Did that mean Mikoko-chan and Tomo-chan were both

smokers? The fact that she had asked only me seemed to indicate

such. Huh. I was a little surprised.

“Hey! Muimi-chan, you’ll make me sound like a smoker if

you put it like that!” Mikoko-chan objected once again. She

was giving us the puppy-dog eyes. For some reason she

seemed vehemently opposed to me finding out she was a

smoker.

“But you do smoke.”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 6 5

“No I don’t! I was just going with the flow that one time!”

“Ah, right. Gotcha. My fault, my fault.” Muimi-chan gave

her a friendly pat as she threw her little tantrum. Meanwhile,

Tomo-chan watched on in delight.

Huh. It didn’t take long to notice the dynamic here. It was

the good girl, the bad girl, and the regular girl. This made me

Wonder what Akiharu’s role was. He finally showed up at

6:30, half an hour late.

“Sorry, sorry. I thought I’d be here on time, but the train

was crowded and stuff,” he said with good humor.

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Tomo-chan said as she greeted

him with a smile. The good girl.

“The train doesn’t arrive any later just because it’s crowded!

And you live in a boarding house, so you don’t even take

the train anyway!” Mikoko-chan, the regular girl. She had the

nerve to question his lame excuses.

“You think you can get off with a simple apology? You

gotta chug three beers,” Muimi-chan said, passing a beer bottle

over to him. The bad girl.

“Okay, okay. Don’t rush me so much, Atemiya. This is a

birthday, a birthday. Not a mayday. Goddamn I’m a clever

bastard. What the . . . ?” It seemed he had noticed my presence.

He gave a problem-child sneer. “Heh heh, so you really

brought him, Aoii,” he said.

He sat down next to me and said, “Well, good to meet

you,” with a slight bow.

I did likewise.

He had an easy-breezy air about him, with light brown hair

and a taste for street fashion. Maybe it wasn’t uncommon for a

university student to dress like that, but at Rokumeikan in

particular, it was kind of unusual. Judging from his build, it

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 6 6

looked like he was involved in some kind of sport, but I

couldn’t tell which one.

“Umm, what do I . . . wha? Are we all supposed to just call

you Ikkun then?”

“I don’t mind.”

“Really, really? Gotcha. You’re a good guy. Don’t you

think so, Aoii?”

He shot Mikoko-chan a meaningful look. She shot back a

flustered one. “Oh, uh, yeah.” Judging from her response, it

didn’t seem like she thought I was a very good guy at all. Of

course, considering how much I made fun of her, that was

probably only natural.

“Well, shall we start?” Muimi-chan said. She seemed to be

the leader of the four. She pointed at me. “Umm, you don’t

drink, right?” she said.

I nodded.

“Oh? What’s this now, Ikkun? You can’t go around being

finicky all the time, you know. Alcohol is a vital component in

man-to-man interactions after all, right? I mean, am I right or

am I right?”

“Akiharu! What did I tell you about pushing your bullshit

opinions on others?! I’ll fucking kill you!” Muimi-chan gave

him the look of death. Her cool, almost dazed demeanor from

a moment ago had sharpened into a knife of fury. “Did you

already forget what I told you last time? Huh?”

Akiharu quivered and tensed with fear. “Uh . . .”

“I’m not lookin’ for an ’uhhh.’ ”

“Sorry.”

“Not lookin’ for a ‘sorry’ either. Why the hell are you

apologizing to me? Huh?”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 6 7

Akiharu-kun’s mouth opened and closed like he was a

suffocating fish. Then he looked over at me. “Please forgive

me,” he apologized.

“Okay, then,” Muimi-chan said with a look of satisfaction.

“Sorry there, Ikkun. He didn’t mean anything by it. Forgive

the guy, will ya?” She had completely returned to her origi-nal

self and smiled back at me. “Did he piss you off?”

“Uh, I don’t really care.”

Atemiya Muimi. She was definitely an ex-delinquent. No,

not even an “ex.” I thought that brown sauvage seemed a little

out of date.

Maybe I should call her Boss.

Meanwhile, Mikoko-chan poured some low-malt beer into

each glass and lined them up in front of everyone. She also

placed a single glass of oolong tea in front of me.

“So who’s going to lead the proceedings? Shall it be Tomochan,

our queen for a day?”

“Yeah, I believe it shall,” Muimi-chan said. “Tomo, let’s

have it.”

Tomo-chan raised her glass a bit reluctantly. “Okay then.

To my twentieth birthday and our new friend.”

Cheers.

I lightly tipped my glass.

“So the thing about friends is that they’re like, eh, you know,

like . . . y’know,” Zerozaki said with a cynical smile. The tattoo

scrawled across the right side of his face wrinkled unpleasantly.

“What do you think?”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 6 8

“You’re actually asking me? I thought this was going to be

some kind of spiel.”

“Hah, don’t expect me to do everything. They say if you

want to figure out your own opinion, you gotta ask others

theirs, right? So let’s hear it. What do you think? What is a

friend?”

“It’s not such a hard question. It's just someone you hang

out with, have meals with, joke around about stupid things

with. Someone who brings you peace. That kind of thing,

right?” he said.

“You got it. Exactamundo. If you look at it that way,

friends are such a simple thing, man, like pie. You hang out,

you eat together, act stupid and feel peaceful together, and

that makes you friends. If you come to each other’s rescue,

you’re close friends. If you smooch each other sometimes,

you're lovers. Oh, what a treasure of life friendship is!” he said

with a sneer.

“So the question here is, how long do these friendships

last? A year? Five years? Ten years? Forever? Until tomorrow?”

“Is your point that even friendships come to an end?”

“My point is that all things come to an end.”

“Well, sure. But without endings, there could be no beginnings.

That’s the vital subtext. If you’re looking to gain something,

you’ve got to be prepared to sacrifice one-third of it. If

you want a payoff, you've got to take a risk. If you can’t do

that, you’re better off just living with what you’ve got.”

“Gahaha. I guess you must be that type.”

I had no need for things I would just lose in time. If it was

just going to end anyway, it didn’t have to begin. I had no

need for pleasure if it came accompanied by pain.

“Why? Are you any different?” I said.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 6 9

If it meant never being sad, I didn’t have to be happy.

If it meant never fading, I didn’t have to succeed.

Evolution loaded with risk was a waste of time.

“Eh, but in reality, that's all true whether you’re after

something or not,” I said.

“No doubt.”

Zerozaki laughed. I didn’t.

Be that as it may.

Three hours had passed since the party began. I won’t get

into what happened during those three hours. Nobody particularly

wants others to see what they’re like when they’re

drunk, and they certainly don’t want to have the details relayed

from person to person.

No matter how people feel while they’re drinking, it’s inevitable

afterward that good old shame comes to pay them a

visit. It's difficult to determine which is real: the person you

are under the influence of alcohol, or the person you are when

you’re sober. But one thing's for sure: A wild night spent in

good fun isn’t something you want to try to recount later on.

It’s one of those “unpaintable scenes” like Urashima Tarô

talked about.

Still, if I were to dare to share a little vignette of the

evening’s festivities just for kicks, it would go something like

this:

“So whaddaya call a rock made of oxygen and nitrogen?”

“Quartz! Gaaahahahaha!”

“That’s like a two-hundred shot barrage from a watercooled

heavy machine gun, only it’s an assassin squad!”

“Shit, that aside, it’s hot today. Why is it so hot in the middle

of May? Is it global warming? Is it the greenhouse effect?”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 7 0

“What?! Listen here, chump, if you want to complain

about the summer heat, you answer to me! Bring it!”

“Are you the one they caught in Catcher in the Rye?!”

“It's a tropical night, that's what it is.”

“Then I guess that makes me a tropical fish!”

And so three hours passed.

At present, Mikoko-chan, Akiharu-kun, and Tomo-chan

were playing PS2. It looked like a racing game. Realistically

depicted four-wheeled machines sped around the narrow onscreen

circuit.

Huh. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it tantalizing, but there

was something rather pleasant about watching them all so

fully immersed in their fun. It looked like they were willing to

share some of that happiness with me, and somehow that

made me surprisingly lonely.

“Well, I guess even this is—”

Someone slapped me on the shoulder. It was Muimi-chan.

Apparently a heavy drinker, she didn’t seem any different

from when she was sober, even from a bystander’s point of

view.

She didn’t call herself Boss for nothing. Not that she called

herself Boss at all.

“Wanna go outside for a bit?” she said, pointing toward the

entrance. “Let’s go to the convenience store.”

“What about Mikoko-chan and the others?”

“We can just let ’em be. They don’t know what’s going on

right now anyway.”

She was right about that. I nodded and left the room with

her. We got back into the elevator, traveled down to the first

floor, and exited the building.

“Is the convenience store close by?”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 7 1

“Eh, it’s a bit of a walk. But c’mon, let's walk a little bit.

It’ll help me sober up.”

“You don’t really seem drunk though.”

“Maybe not on the surface, but I’m pretty far gone. It feels

like my brain’s flipped upside down so my cerebrum and cerebellum

are switched. Right now I wanna kick the crap outta

that sign.”

“Just don’t kick the crap out of me.”

“I’ll try,” she said with a little laugh. She shook her head

and looked up toward the sky.

“Doesn’t really feel like a birthday party,” I said. “I wonder

if this is really enough to make Tomo-chan happy. She’s still

drunk now, but I wonder if she’ll get depressed about it later.”

“Yeah, I wonder . . . But it’s still better than being depresssed

from the very beginning. Yeah. It’s all good. You

don’t need a good reason to get wild. Ahh . . . I’m groggy.”

“You look pretty exhausted, Muimi-chan.”

“Well, that’s what I get for hanging out with those guys.”

My sentiments exactly. Mikoko-chan was spunky enough

to begin with, but when she was inebriated she was four times

as bad. Then there was Akiharu-kun, and even Tomo-chan

was getting pretty rowdy.

“Man, if you think about it, I guess being able to hold your

liquor so well puts you at kind of a disadvantage. It must be

hard to follow along with the mood.”

“Exactly. I mean, it’s still fun, so it’s no big deal.”

“You think it’s okay to leave those three drunks in a room

unattended?”

“They’re not kids. They’ll be fine. Actually, it's probably

more dangerous to be walking around outside in the middle of

the night,” she said.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 7 2

A good point. We were in the midst of the Kyoto Slasher

serial murders. So that was why she bothered taking me along

with her. I may look scrawny and unreliable, but I’m still a

guy, in a manner of speaking.

“What a messed-up world, huh? What could be enjoyable

about chopping up a human being?”

“Well, different strokes, I guess.” I tried to brush off the

topic. If I was thrust into a conversation about it, there was a

chance I would let my tongue slip. It wasn’t that Zerozaki had

told me to keep my mouth shut, but it sure wasn’t the kind of

thing I wanted everyone and their mother to know about.

“I can’t understand it at all,” she said. “I mean, I’ve been

around for twenty years now. Even I’ve thought to myself

before, ‘I oughta kill that bastard.’ Actually, it happens a lot.

Even nowadays. Like, ‘this person would be better off dead.

Killing him would serve the greater good.’ ”

“. . . .”

“But what's up with these random killings? I can’t understand

the idea of finding pleasure in the act of killing itself.”

“In general, they say serial killers who choose their targets

at random are fueled by resentment. So it’s just like when you

say to yourself, ‘I oughta kill that bastard,’ ” I said.

“Really? But then the killings aren’t random.”

“It’s a little different, though. In this killer’s case, he resents

the victims simply because they happened to walk by. He resents

the world as a whole. He hates the world that surrounds

him, a world that, for him, is as vague and nebulous as the air.

And so his killings appear to be random.”

“Hmm . . .” She nodded, but to be honest, I was only speculating.

I had no idea why he was committing acts of murder.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 7 3

We had only talked about stupid, irrelevant things the previous

night, and never touched upon the topic of his motives.

We were probably saving the best for last, childish as that

may sound.

“It’s just nonsense, though,” I said.

Muimi-chan scratched her head at me.

While we were talking, we eventually reached the convenience

store. She entered ahead of me and quickly made her

way to the liquor section.

“You're buying more alcohol?”

“Nah, there’s already plenty of that. Let’s get some Pocari.

Gotta sober those guys up or they won’t be able to get home.”

“Ah, gotcha.”

We put three two-liter bottles of Pocari sports drinks in a

basket, picked out two or three types of snacks, and proceeded

to settle up at the register. Maybe I should’ve expected this,

but I ended up carrying everything.

As we left the store, Muimi-chan pulled a cigarette from

her pocket, stuck it in her mouth, and lit it with a coollooking

Zippo, all in one fluid motion.

“Ah!” she said and immediately went to extinguish it with

her finger.

“I don’t care if you smoke one. We’re outside, anyway.”

“Really?”

“Well, I guess it’s rude to smoke and walk at the same

time, but since it’s night and nobody’s around, it’s probably

fine as long as you don’t litter ashes everywhere.” And, indeed,

there was no one around who'd object to her blowing smoke

everywhere as she walked.

“Well . . . nah, it’s okay. I’ll stick to my decision.” She went

ahead and snuffed it with her finger. Then she curled up the

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 7 4

cigarette butt and put it in her pocket. It seemed she wasn’t

the littering type. I was a little impressed: For a college student,

she had above-average morals.

“If you don’t mind my asking, isn’t that hot?” I said.

“Not really. I’m used to it,” she said with a slightly bashful

smile. “There was this Mafia boss bad guy in a movie I used to

like, and he did the same thing with cigars. With the palm of

his hand, like this. It was cool, so I started imitating it.”

“Huh.”

“Looking back, I just thought the actor was hot, but it’s a

habit now. Anyway, that aside . . . Ikkun, let’s talk seriously for

a minute.” Her expression immediately grew serious, changing

as abruptly as a circuit switch. I couldn’t help but be a little

surprised. “It's pretty tough keeping up with Mikoko's hyperness,

huh?”

“Not particularly.’’

“Huh,” she said. Her expression grew all the more serious.

She hesitated for a moment. “What do you think of her?” she

asked me.

“What do I think?”

Judging from her expression, she wasn’t looking for some

halfhearted bullshit answer.

But I couldn’t figure out what that question was supposed

to mean. I didn’t really think much of anything about her.

“Well, I think she's got a little bit of red in her hair. She's

around five feet tall, and may or may not weigh as much as

one hundred ten. From the way she acts, I’d guess she’s a type

B, and her astrological sign is probably one of the beasts. She's

got a kind of koala-ish feel in general.”

“Did you really think I was looking for a half-assed answer

like that?” she asked.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 7 5

Whoops. Delinquent mode. Why oh why do I so love stepping

on land mines, I wondered. I broke eye contact with her.

“I dunno. I mean, she’s a nice girl, I guess. Sure she’s a little

overly hyper, which can be exhausting, but I know a girl

who’s even worse than her, so it doesn’t particularly bother

me.”

“Huh. How neutral of you.”

“Well, I don’t like making waves.”

“Is that a fact?”

She paused for a moment, then gave me a sort of sidelong

glance.

“You’re kind of a slimeball, aren’t you, Ikkun?” she said.

“I’m self-aware.”

“Self-aware, huh? I wonder. I wouldn’t know. Anyway, let

me give you a word of advice.” She took a step ahead and

turned to face me directly. I had no choice but to stop. The

apartment building was still about a hundred feet away. Surely

the others were still inside racing. Muimi-chan ran her fingers

through her sauvage hair and shot me a direct glare.

“Mikoko and I have been friends since we were just little

brats.”

“Huh.”

“If you hurt her, I’ll never forgive you.”

I scratched my head a bit. Why was she telling me this?

Could it be that she was mad because of all the times I had

teased Mikoko-chan up to now? It didn’t seem like the kind of

thing to take so seriously, but Muimi-chan sure didn’t seem to

be joking, so I answered with a shrug.

“It’s okay. Despite how it seems, I’m actually nice to my

friends.”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 7 6

She blinked her narrowed eyes at me. “Hahahahaha!” she

laughed. A moment later, she spun back around. “I stand corrected.”

She recommenced walking. “You're just clueless.”

It felt like a terrible insult, but at the same time, it was

probably the most accurate description anyone had ever applied

to me in all my nineteen years, so it was hard to get mad.

We returned to the room to find that the others were indeed

still racing. Surprisingly, Tomo-chan was apparently the

most skilled. Mikoko-chan was a lap behind.

“Yo! Guzzle down this Pocari, you goons! You drunken

bitches!”

For some reason Muimi-chan had suddenly gone berserk,

smacking the “drunken bitches” in the heads with Pocari.

Being hit in the head with a full plastic bottle should have

been fairly painful, but they were so thoroughly numb with

drink they didn’t even seem to mind.

I don’t like noisiness. I hate boisterousness. Loud situations

irritate me.

But on occasion, like maybe once a year, maybe these

things are kind of nice. Or so I thought.

I was wrong.

It was past eleven p.m.

“Well, thanks for tonight,” Muimi-chan said as she rose to

her feet. “Akiharu, take me home.”

“Aw, why?” Akiharu whined. He shot her an aggravated

look; he was sprawled out in the comer of the room. “Just go

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 7 7

yourself. I’m gonna rest a little before I go. Your place is far.

My place is in the opposite direction.”

“Are you a man? Don’t tell me you’re not even worth a

ride home.”

“Tch . . . fine.”

He stood up, still looking aggrieved, as if he knew there

was no point in objecting. His eyes shifted over to Tomo-chan.

“Well, here's your birthday present,” he said, pulling a package

out of his bag.

“Ah . . . Muimi-chan said. “That’s right, you give presents

on birthdays . . .”

“Hm? What’s that you say? What? Come again, Atemiyasan?”

Akiharu-kun said with the glee of someone who had just

defeated an ogre. “Don’t tell me that you forgot to get your

dear friend a birthday present! Oh my goodness, I cannot

believe it! Is this a joke?! Ohh, what to do, what to do?! For

the love of God, tell me, what to do?! Huh? Huh?”

“Cram it, oaf. Isn’t my smile enough?” Muimi-chan said

sulkily and headed toward the entrance.

“Hey, wait up! Don’t get mad so easily! What are you, a

kid?! Ahh, here we go. See ya at school, Emoto! Adieu! Let’s

hang out again soon, Ikkun!” Akiharu-kun gave a light wave

and chased after Muimi-chan.

“Bye-bye. See ya again,” Tomo-chan said as she waved

sluggishly back. As soon as the two had left, her hands went

for the present. She undid the ribbon and neatly opened the

wrapping paper.

“I wonder what it is. Ikkun, what do you think it is?” It

seemed the alcohol was mostly out of her system. Her cheeks

still had a bit of red in them and her voice was a little shrill,

but her personality seemed to have returned to its default

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 7 8

setting. “I’m a little excited. This kind of thing always makes

me giddy.”

“Well, it’s probably not yatsuhashi, at any rate,” I said. Incidentally,

the yatsuhashi I had brought had already been

evenly divided among the stomachs of all five party members.

“Judging from the size, it's probably an accessory or something.”

“Yeah, maybe. Oh, it’s a neckstrap. Pretty cool, huh?”

It was a capsule-style neckstrap with a liquid center. It

didn’t really look like a girly item, but as Tomo-chan had said,

it was pretty cool.

“Heheheh, it’s just what I was hoping for,” she said gleefully

as she immediately tried it on. “How does it look,

Ikkun?”

“It’s a good match,” I said, but I didn’t really know.

My eyes made their way from the gushing Tomo-chan over

to Mikoko-chan, who was snoozing in the comer. She looked

so peaceful that I couldn’t bear to wake her. Perhaps she was

planning to just spend the night at Tomo-chan's place.

“Hey, Ikkun,” Tomo-chan said, suddenly straightening herself

out. “I want to say thanks again for coming all the way out

here today.”

“I don’t think it’s the kind of thing you have to thank me

for.”

“But you don’t like doing this kind of thing, right?”

Her question was a little awkward, but it also came out as

if it was something totally normal to her. She delicately raised

her face to view my expression.

It was like . . .

She was looking through me.

Like she was looking at my brain from the inside.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 7 9

“Uh, no, I . . .”

“You don’t like opening up to other people, right?”

“It's all right. I don’t hate it. I actually kind of like goofing

around with everyone like chums.”

“That’s a lie.”

“It’s the truth.”

“It’s a lie.”

“Yes, it is.”

She snickered at me. But her eyes weren’t smiling. They

actually looked rather sad and lonely. The strange combination

of expressions had me puzzled.

What was wrong? What reason could she have for looking

so sad when she had spent her birthday surrounded by

friends?

There shouldn’t have been anything wrong.

Supposing there was . . .

“Mikoko-chan . . .” she said, casting a glance over at the

slumbering Mikoko-chan. “She’s really a great girl.”

“Yeah,” I responded. I was being unusually direct—by my

standards, anyway. “I bet she is.”

“I wanted to be like her.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“But I couldn’t.”

“Uh-huh.”

She cast her eyes downward.

“And now here I am, twenty years old, still unable to be

like her. I’m sure it’ll go on like that. No matter how many

years pass, no matter how many decades. I’ll never be like her,

until the day I die.”

“What’s wrong with that? Everyone’s different.”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 8 0

“Say, Ikkun,” she said, looking up again. “Have you ever

felt like, as a human, you’re damaged goods?”

I had no idea how to respond.

“I have.” She was smiling. It was the saddest smile I had

ever seen.

“Everybody does . . .” The words just came out. Whether

they were really from the heart, I didn’t know. They were just

words of comfort. I was probably just saying words I didn’t

really mean so as to not have to see Tomo-chan look so sad.

What a slimeball.

How comical.

How terribly unseemly.

“Everyone feels like that sometimes, I suppose. Nobody’s

perfect, after all. We’ve all got our strong points and our weak

points. That’s what makes us human.”

“Yeah, I know. Even I know that, but you probably understand

that that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about

something more finite, I guess, or more lethal, like a fatal

wound, I guess.”

Boom.

The words shook me.

“It’s kind of like that.”

“. . . .” So this was the real reason I couldn’t read Emoto

Tomoe very well. Perhaps this was really it.

In other words, a long time ago . . .

“There’s another me right here,” she said, pointing over her

own right shoulder. “When I get all rowdy and have fun with

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 8 1

Muimi-chan and Akiharu-kun and Mikoko-chan and you like

this, that part of me is just watching on, sighing. It’s looking

down on me with cold disdain as I have my fun, saying ‘What

you’re doing won’t amount to anything.’ ”

“Sighing,” she said. “I know I’ll probably never be like

Mikoko-chan until the day I die, but maybe I’ll be able to

once I really do die. If I’m reincarnated, I want to come back

as Mikoko-chan. I want to be able to laugh with complete innocence

like her, to get mad when I want to be mad, to cry

like crazy when I’m sad. That’s what makes a great life.”

“I . . .” This time I was speaking from the heart. “I don’t

want to be reincarnated. I want to just hurry up and die.”

“I’ll bet,” she said with a gentle smile.

Mikoko-chan woke up around one hour later.

“Uhhh.” She shook the sleep out of her head. She still

looked pretty tired.

“So what’re you going to do?” I said. “I’m going home. Are

you going to stay the night?”

“No, I’ll go . . .” She rose to her feet in a daze. “It's okay,

I've sobered up. Give me ten more seconds.”

“Sure. I’ll take you home, then.” I was at least worth a ride

home, I wanted to emphasize, but she didn’t seem to get it.

She had been deeply immersed in sleep when Muimi-chan

left, so that made sense.

“Well, bye-bye, Tomo-chan.”

“Yep. See ya later.” She gave a little wave.

I took my bag and headed toward the entrance. I sat down

in the doorway and put on my shoes. They had messy laces, so

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 8 2

putting them on was always much more of a hassle than removing

them. Situations like these were an irritating waste of

time. Meanwhile, Mikoko-chan seemed to be having problems

with her own footwork, and a clumsy clopping noise could be

heard through the door separating us.

It probably wasn’t something to worry about. She appeared

in the hallway outside the entrance shortly after me.

“Ohh,” she moaned, rubbing her head. “My head hurts . . .

It’s spinning. It's like a murder at a convenience store, only the

murderer is wearing Rollerblades.”

“I have no idea what you’re saying. Are you sure you don’t

want to stay here for the night? There’s no need to overexert

yourself.”

“It’s okay, I can go.”

She hobbled down the hall on unsteady feet. I gave a shrug

and followed after her.

“So did you have fun?” she said once we were out of the

building.

“Eh, I guess. But I think I'll pass next time.”

“Don’t say that. Let’s do it again! With everyone! When’s

your birthday?”

“March.”

She looked defeated. “Mine’s in April. Ohh, I guess I

should’ve invited you sooner.”

“So where’s your place? I’ll take you back.”

“Near Horikawa. Horikawa Oike. But we’ve got to go to

your place first.”

“Why?”

“My scoot . . .”

Come to think of it, she had come as far as my place on

her bike.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 8 3

“Can you drive?”

“Sure . . .”

‘Okay then.” Obviously she was in no condition to drive,

but if she said she could drive, who was I to stop her? When

the time came, she could just call a taxi if she had to.

We took Nishiôji Street up to Nakadachiuri and broke east,

when for some reason, David Bowie music started playing

from somewhere. Thinking it was a nearby guerrilla concert, I

was a bit taken aback, but it turned out to be Mikoko-chan's

ringtone.

“Hm?” She pulled her phone out of her purse. “Hello? This

is Mikoko-chan, the spunky and energetic girl of Lake Ashi!

Hm? What? Tomo-chan?” It seemed it was a call from Tomochan.

“Yeah. Yeah . . . Yeah, he’s here with me right now.

He's walking right in front of me. Sure, I guess. Okay, I'll pass

it over.”

She passed me the phone. “It’s Tomo-chan. She wanted

me to give you the phone.”

“Me? Why?”

“. . . . ?”

I must have forgotten something at her place. I scratched

my head as I took the phone. It was more than a little smaller

than my own phone, so it felt kind of awkward.

“Hello?”

“. . . .”

“Hello?”

“Ikkun.”

A voice.

It was quivering, like she was afraid of something. It

could’ve been partially the phone’s fault, but something in her

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 8 4

voice was obviously different from when we had spoken moments

earlier at her place.

“Tomo-chan?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s wrong? Did I forget something? I’ve got my bag

here.”

“No, it’s not that. Um . . . I forgot to tell you something

earlier.”

Forget to tell me something?

“Yeah, what?”

“Never mind. See you.”

Click.

Suddenly the call was cut off. Beeeep. Beeeep. Beeeep.

Beeeep. After four rings, I took the phone away from my ear. I

scratched my head, stared at it for another three seconds, then

handed it back to Mikoko-chan. “Thanks.”

“Sure,” she said, taking it. “So what’d she say?”

“Nothing. I don’t know what that was about.”

“Huh?”

She gave me a confused expression, but I was the one who

was confused. Tomo-chan wanted to tell me something? Why

would she start and then stop like that?

“What? I wonder what it was. Maybe it was a secret or

something. Did you guys have some kind of secret talk?”

“No, nothing like that, but . . . oh yeah, Mikoko-chan.” I

switched trains of thought. “Is there somebody right here?” I

said, drawing a circle with my finger over her right shoulder.

“Huh?”

She raised a dubious eyebrow at me. Naturally.

“I mean, do you get the feeling someone is right there,

looking down on you?” I asked.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 8 5

“I don’t think so, but . . . why?”

“Eh, if you don’t feel it then don’t worry about it.”

“If somebody was there, it'd be pretty scary,” she said as

she imagined it. “But as for in here,” she said, pointing to her

own heart, “there is somebody.”

Huh. I nodded. Judging from her bashful smirk, she must

have been talking about her boyfriend.

In about ten more minutes, we had arrived at my apartment.

In the apartment parking lot, there was only a single

bike, so it must have been hers.

“Whoa, it’s a Vespa.” And a white vintage model, no less.

This girl called her Vespa a “scooter”? A Vespa is a Vespa,

and only a Vespa. Calling it a scooter was, to me, an insult.

And not just your everyday insult—it was the ultimate insult,

which threatened to shake my very existence. Everyone has

one thing that they’d sacrifice their own life for, that they'd

trade the world for, and to me, this was that thing. I wanted

to shout at Mikoko-chan. I angrily turned to face her.

“. . . .”

She was sleeping.

“I’m speechless.”

She was sleeping standing up. She had been awfully quiet

for a while. Was it possible that she had been sleepwalking?

She probably had been. This was the power of the human race

pushed to its absolute limit. I gave her a few taps on the

cheek, but she refused to wake up. I had the urge to start

stretching her face, but it seemed that there would be no way

to explain my way out of it if somebody happened to see us,

so I restrained myself.

“I wonder if I could just leave her here . . .”

If not, there were only two options.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 8 6

“Hup,” I groaned as I lifted her onto my back. She stirred a

little bit on the way, but didn’t wake up. Likely because she

was so short, she was actually quite light. Or maybe all girls

were like this.

With her still on my back, I entered the apartment, then

made my way up the stairs to the second floor. I clomped my

way down the boarded hallway to the room next to my own.

I knocked lightly.

“Yeah, wait one moment,” an answer came from inside.

Miiko-san soon appeared before us. She was dressed in yet a

different set of Japanese summer casual wear, which was red

this time. I was pretty sure this was the outfit with the word

Treachery printed on the back.

“Yes?” she said, eyeing the girl on my back suspiciously.

“You’re still under legal age, right?” she said after a moment's

thought. “Well, of course I'll let you hide out here, but speaking

purely out of kindness, I suggest you just turn yourself in.

Japan has a pretty capable police force. Not likely that you’ll

be able to escape.”

“Oh, it’s nothing like that this time. Er, this girl’s a classmate.

Looks like she drank too much and passed out. Would

you be willing to let her spend the night?”

“Huh?” She put her hand to her chin and thought for a

moment. “Why don’t you just put her up yourself?”

“Eh, but I mean, as you can see, she's a girl. And it sounds

like she’s got a boyfriend, so I can’t just have her sleeping over

in my place, right?”

“Huh. Well, if that’s how it is, I guess I don’t mind. But

what is given today I will one day receive. To ignore thanks

where they’re due is a dastardly deed.”

“I gotcha. Want to go antiquing again?”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 8 7

“Yes. Okay then. So what’s this girl’s name?”

“Mikoko-chan. Er, last name is Aoi, I think.”

“Aoi Mikoko? Heh, strange name,” Miiko-san said, taking

Mikoko-chan from me. Everyone should have a neighbor as

dependable as her.

“Well, I’ll be on my way then.”

“Mm. Get some sleep. You’d best not make yourself out to

be some afternoon-sleeping lollygagger.”

“Huh? I never sleep in the afternoon.”

“Is that so? Well, just forget that then. Good night.”

“Good night.”

I bowed and returned to my room, where I laid down my

futon and curled up on it.

“Time to sleep.”

And so the day ended. Saturday, May fourteenth. No, it

had already passed zero o'clock, so it was Sunday the fifteenth.

So at zero o'clock twenty-four hours later, it would be

the sixteenth. The next zero o’clock would be the seventeenth.

Zero o’clock.

Zerozaki.

Wondering if that human failure was currently killing his

seventh person or had perhaps already dismembered his

eighth, the damaged goods gradually fell into a slumber.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 8 9

No more.

I don’t want to think anymore.

When I awoke to a knocking at the door, it was already past

eight o’clock.

I brushed the hair out of my face with both hands and rose

to my feet.

“Uhhh.”

I opened the door to find Mikoko-chan. Her usual hyper

greeting had been replaced with a shy look of apologetic embarrassment.

“Did I wake you?” she said meekly.

“Eh. It was time to wake up anyway,” I answered as I

stretched out. “Morning, Mikoko-chan.”

“Good morning, Ikkun. Um . . . I’m sorry about yesterday.

I sort of, er . . . it looks like I fell asleep.”

“Eh, forget about it. Just be sure to thank Miiko-san.”

“Ah, right.” She nodded after a moment of ambiguous

hesitation.

“Isn’t she a good person?”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 9 0

“Well, yeah, she is, huh? Kind of cool, I guess you could

say. So is she the ‘swordswoman freeloader’ you were talking

about?”

“Does she look like a thirteen-year-old little sister?”

“No, I guess not.” She awkwardly broke eye contact with

me and gave a brief pause. “I don’t know if it’s because she

practices sword fighting, but her clothes were kind of weird.

Sort of Japanesey, but like the kind of thing you’d wear to a

festival.”

“You mean her jinbei?”

“A djembe? What’s that?” Evidently Mikoko-chan had

never heard of it. “Oh, you mean like a jinbei shark?”

“Uhh, well, yeah. Have you ever seen the pattern on the

back of a jinbei shark? It’s just like they’re wearing that same

type of clothing. So we ended up naming that kind of Japanese

clothing jinbei, after the shark.”

“Ahh. You sure know a lot, Ikkun,” she said. “I’ll have to

teach that to Tomo-chan and the others.”

Yep. And if Tomo-chan and the others weren’t as cruel as

me, they would probably teach her the truth. Why did I tell

such meaningless lies? Perhaps it was time I gave that some

serious thought.

“So anyway,” Mikoko-chan said, changing the subject. “Are

you and that girl—Asano-san—are you two close?”

“She’s saved me from starvation a few times. But then I

saved her from being crushed under a pile of antiques, so

we’re even Steven. Those yatsuhashi you had yesterday were

from her too.”

“Huh,” she said with a complicated expression. “You know,

I don’t really like yatsuhashi.”

“Huh? Oh, you don’t say.”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 9 1

“Too sweet.”

“Huh. Miiko-san likes sweet stuff.”

“Well, I don’t.”

For some reason she was getting a little serious. I scratched

my head at her, not sure where she was going with this.

“Well, that’s fine. So what are you going to do now?” I

said.

“Oh, er, I’ve got this,” she said, pulling a pink, wrapped

present from her purse. “It’s Tomo-chan’s birthday present.

Forgot to give it to her. Big mistake, huh? I should’ve given it

to her before we all got drunk. I got carried away trying to get

things going.”

“Hm. Well, why not go give it to her now? She should be

home.”

“Yup, that’s the plan.” At last, she showed her trademark

smile. “Well, thank you. Let’s get together again.”

“We’ll see.”

“Why do you say stuff like that?! Let’s do something!”

“Just kidding. Fine by me. If I’ve got time, I’ll spend as

much of it with you as you want, so please invite me again,” I

said.

I only said it to be polite, but seeing Mikoko-chan’s face

light up, the guilt kicked in. Thinking she’d probably burst

into tears or rage if I said “just kidding” again, I just said, “See

you next time,” instead.

She gave a big, energetic nod and spun on her heels.

Something came to mind. “Hey, Mikoko-chan. Let me just

say one more thing.”

“Hm? What is it?”

“Call a Vespa a Vespa. Calling it a scoot is just offensive, so

knock it off.”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 9 2

“Wow, Ikkun giving an order?! It’s like a first-rate school

where you can wear your own clothes, but all the students

show up in uniforms anyway!”

“You got it or not?”

“Wow, you’re as scary as Muimi-chan . . .”

She seemed to seriously be a little scared. But I had to say

it firmly or she wouldn’t get it.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll be careful from now on.” She made

her way down the hall. When she reached the comer, she

turned back around. “Hey! I’ve got something I want to say to

you too!”

“Huh? What?”

She took a big breath. “My last name is Aoii! Not Aoi! I

told you not to forget!”

I wanted to tell her I knew that, but then I realized that I

had introduced her to Miiko-san as “Aoi Mikoko.” Miiko-san

was the kind of person who was hard to correct once certain

information had entered her brain (thanks to me, she still believed

Shakespeare was a flavor of a McDonald’s McShake), so

she had probably spent the morning calling her “Aoi” over and

over. Well, maybe not that many times.

To me it didn’t seem like the difference between Aoi and

Aoii was such a big deal, but I decided that was probably fairly

rude. Japanese are as proud of their last names as Italians.

“Okay. I won’t forget again. I promise.”

“Okay then. Also . . .” She turned halfway back around. “I

don’t have a boyfriend,” she said softly, then quickly made her

way down the stairs as if trying to escape.

“Huh?” I probably looked more than a little confused.

Er . . .

What was that about?

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 9 3

She had probably heard that from Miiko-san as well. I did

seem to remember having that kind of conversation with her.

Something about Mikoko-chan not being able to stay in my

room because she had a boyfriend. But Miiko-san, she . . .

“I don’t go around regurgitating every little detail like that.”

Whoa. At some point she had appeared in front of me.

“Looks like we’ve got a couple people yelling in this dilapidated

apartment. Never mind that everyone can hear you

from their rooms; if you shout like that, the whole building’s

gonna come down.”

“Heh . . .”

“Now then, I have to go to work. Let’s hope that classmate

of yours learns to mind her p’s and q’s,” she said, and shuffled

her way down the hall. There was something frightening

about the fact that Rage was written on the back of her blue

jinbei. Maybe she and Mikoko-chan hadn’t gotten along so

well. Their names were sort of similar and all.

But in that case, the name thing seemed kind of dubious.

“Maybe she was actually awake last night . . .”

Sleeping while standing up is one thing, but walking

around while asleep isn’t all that easy. The power of the

human race pushed to its absolute limit isn’t something you

see every day. Maybe Mikoko-chan had actually been awake,

how lucid she may or may not have been at the time notwithstanding.

Maybe that was why she knew I had mistaken her

name and said she had a boyfriend.

She probably just didn’t want to bother with making the

trip home. But then she could’ve just said so without pretending

she was asleep. Some people sure do strange things, I

thought as I went back inside.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 9 4

Now then.

It was precisely that evening when the story started getting

altogether tiresome.

As I was alone in my room reading a fat book I had

checked out from the school library, a wild knocking came at

my door. Now, it’s only natural to be irritated when someone

interrupts your valued quiet time like this, but having become

rather accustomed to this kind of thing by now, I wasn’t particularly

angry. Wondering if it was that damned fifteen-yearold

brother coming to ask for money again, I opened the door.

“Oh.”

It was an older guy and a girl I had never seen before.

There was something particularly peculiar about the guy.

He was probably in his mid-to-late thirties, and not so much

tall as long-legged. Moreover, he had his hair slicked back.

Stranger still, even in this heat he was dressed in a black suit

and tie. It was a disturbingly bizarre way to be dressed. He

even had sunglasses on. If he had been a foreigner, I would’ve

been afraid it was the MIB here to erase my memory.

The woman, on the other hand, was dressed in a slightly

more normal suit and tight skirt. She had straight, black hair,

and was relatively pretty. But the look in her eyes was not ordinary.

Without a hint of the reservation normally expected

when meeting someone for the first time, her eyes met mine

with a penetrating, gouging gaze.

She took a step forward. “Have a look,” she said, flashing

me a police badge. “I’m Sasa Sasaki of the Kyoto Police First

Investigative Division.” It was the kind of name that threat-

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 9 5

ened to make you bite your own tongue. Her parents must

have been awfully whimsical.

“Oh. Hey.”

I gave a little head bob for the time being. The woman—

Sasaki-san—seemed a bit surprised by my reaction. Maybe I

should’ve shown more surprise myself, but it didn’t take more

than a glance to tell that these two were obviously police officers.

The thought of these two stone-faced individuals being

anything other than police officers was, to me, unimaginable.

The male officer chuckled to himself a bit and showed his

own badge, “Ikaruga Kazuhito from the same division. Mind if

we come inside for a bit?” It was essentially coercion in the

form of a question. As a kid, I naturally felt the urge to defy

this coercion, but it didn’t look like this Kazuhito-san would

let it fly.

“Oh, uh, well, sure. It’s small, though.”

I invited them into the room. They seemed surprised to

find that the inside of the room was just as small as I’d said,

but they passed it off with an impressive coolness. If I was

their boss, I would’ve given them a raise. Of course, not

being their boss, I didn’t give them squat.

“Please have a seat over there,” I said. I poured water into

two cups and placed them in front of the pair. Just as Mikokochan

had the day before, they ignored this completely.

“Allow me to be frank,” Sasaki-san said, eyeing me firmly.

“Emoto Tomo-san is dead.”

“Oh.” I prepared myself a glass of water and sat down

across from them. “Is that right?”

“ ‘Is that right?’ Is that all you have to say?” Sasaki broke

her poker face for the first time.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 9 6

“Oh, well, I’m not much for expressing emotion. I’m totally

shocked on the inside, so don’t pay it any mind.”

That and, by this point, I was becoming kind of used to

this sort of thing.

But I really was shocked. This was half because Tomoechan

had been killed, and half because the instant I had seen

these two outside my door, I had guessed they were here to

talk about Zerozaki.

I was half-relieved, half-stupefied. It was like a contradicttion

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of emotions swirling around in my gut.

“Umm, is it safe to assume that since there are detectives

oil the case, she didn’t die under ordinary circumstances? Not

to mention that you’re from the First Investigative Division.”

Considering the kinds of cases First Investigative Divisions

usually handle.

“That’s correct.” Sasaki-san nodded. The seriousness of her

expression was pure and undiluted.

“So was it, by any chance, the ‘prowler’?”

She shook her head at my inquiry. “No.”

“Oh, really.”

It was like something had deflated. Part of me was relieved.

I couldn’t help but wonder why, but I quickly switched trains

of thought.

“What happened, then?”

“Her body was found this morning. She had been strangled

to death.”

“Strangled?”

Strangulation.

Emoto Tomoe.

Murdered . . . ?

I felt my heart going cold.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 9 7

Just how many people had I seen die? How long had it

been since I stopped counting dead friends? My first encounter

with death was before I could even remember.

“It’s been about a month since the last one, huh? That’s got

to be a new record.”

Sasaki-san gave me a sideways look. It was entirely different

from the kind of sideways looks Mikoko-chan gave me, a

purely intellectual pose completely devoid of any adorable

charm. Then again, in my whole life, I had never seen a pose

that was both intellectual and adorably charming, whether it

be from a male or a female.

“Did you say something?”

“No, just talking to myself. I do that a lot. They say I’m just

a nineteen-year-old soliloquy that can dress itself and walk

around.”

Although Sasaki-san looked satisfied with this answer, she

didn’t crack so much as a smirk.

Suddenly I noticed that Kazuhito-san had been closely

monitoring my expression. I kept quiet.

Interesting.

That explained the need for sunglasses. Sasaki-san was in

charge of doing the talking. Kazuhito-san was the observer. It

was marvelous nonsense. A true masterpiece.

It seemed I was a prime suspect.

“I guess that makes sense. I was with her all night.”

“Did you say something?”

“No, just your plain old, everyday nonsense.” I sat myself

up straight. Not that I was nervous, but maybe it was time to

start getting a little more serious. “So if she was killed, who

killed her?” I asked.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 9 8

“That’s currently under investigation. To tell you the truth,

that’s the reason we’ve come here today,” Sasaki-san said.

“Then tell me,” I wanted to say, but I refrained from provoking

her.

“You were in Emoto-san’s apartment from about six in the

evening to midnight. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Just to check, would you tell us the names of the other

people present during that period of time?”

“Umm.” Good luck, memory. “Emoto Tomoe-san, Atemiya

Muimi-san, Aoi . . . no, Aoii Mikoko-san, and Usami Akiharukun.

And then me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“You arrived with Aoii-san. Is that correct?”

“Yes. Aoii-san first came to my place—here, I mean—

then we went to Emoto-san’s place together. It was around

six p.m.”

“More specifically? Was it before six or after?”

“Before.”

She was barraging me with questions. The limitations of

my mind’s processing speed had been surpassed long ago, and

my head was spinning.

“So all of the guests were there at that time . . ."

“Please wait a minute,” I interrupted. “I can’t settle down

and focus if you keep throwing out questions one after another

like that. I think I mentioned that, but this all has me a

little mixed up.”

“Oh, sorry about that,” Sasaki-san said. It was the most

unapologetic apology of all time.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 9 9

I spent the next hour responding to her assault of

questions, divulging every last detail of the previous night’s

events. The things we talked about during the party. The

atmosphere of the party. My going to the convenience store

with Muimi-chan. Returning. Akiharu-kun and Muimi-chan

leaving at around eleven o’clock. Akiharu-kun giving Tomochan

a present just before that. The neckstrap. My talk with

Tomo-chan after that. Leaving the apartment with Mikokochan

in tow. The phone call from Tomo-chan around the time

we reached Nishiôji Nakadachiuri. Leaving Mikoko-chan with

Miiko-san because she appeared to be sleeping (whether it

was the truth or not, I didn’t know). And then, sleeping.

Mikoko-chan’s short visit in the morning. The rest of the day,

which I spent reading.

I didn’t bother mentioning the intense pressure of having

Kazuhito-san peering over Sasaki-san’s shoulder the whole

time when she was already plenty scary on her own. We were

just sitting and talking, but I felt like I had wasted a great deal

of energy. And then there was Sasaki-san’s brilliant last line.

“Okay, so far this pretty much matches what we’ve already

heard.”

Boy, she was super.

The string of questions seemed to have come to an end for

the time being. “Hmm,” Sasaki-san said with a perplexed look.

But something about it seemed like an act. If Mikoko-chan

could be called a person of no façades, this woman, on the

other hand, was a person of nothing but façades, to the point

that they appeared to be her true personality. She certainly

wouldn’t be the easiest person in the world to deal with.

“So how about that phone call?” she said with a finger to

her temple. “She really didn’t say anything? According to

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 0 0

Aoii-san, Emoto-san specifically asked her to pass you the

phone, from which one could deduce that she had something

to say to you.”

“She began to say something, but she didn’t. She just said

‘never mind,’ and hung up.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“And it was definitely Emoto-san on the phone?”

“Yes. I never mistake voices of people I know.”

She exchanged glances with Kazuhito-san behind her. It

looked like they were done questioning and about to be on

their way, but I couldn’t just sit idly by in silence.

“Umm, Sasaki-san, may I ask a question?”

“Huh?”

Her poker face broke down once again, naturally. Having

had a younger boy suddenly address her by her first name, it

would’ve been stranger if she hadn’t been surprised.

“Something’s been bothering me.”

“Uh-huh . . .” She exchanged another glance with Kazuhito-san.

He responded with nothing more than the slight

drop of his jaw. Apparently a sign of consent; Sasaki-san

turned back toward me. “Okay.”

This consent was most likely not spurred by sympathy for a

boy whose classmate had just been murdered, but by the

mean-spirited notion that they could use my question to see

into me. Not that I cared.

“Um . . . by any chance, was Aoii-san the one who discovered

the body?”

“That’s correct,” she answered coolly, providing no further

explanation. It seemed they had no intention of telling me

anything more than necessary to answer my questions. Of

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 0 1

course, they probably wouldn’t answer all of my questions

either.

So I was right, after all. She had gone to drop off Tomochan’s

birthday present, but there had been no answer. She

tried calling, but nobody picked up. The door to the building

had an autolock, but surely that was easy enough to get

around. All she had to do was follow one of the residents

inside. In that sense, it hardly even passed as a lock.

Hmm . . .

Mikoko-chan.

How must she have felt at that time? She was always so

full of emotion. What could she have possibly felt at a time

like that?

“Maybe I should’ve gone with her. . . .”

But then again, how could I have known? Besides, I wasn’t

sure I would’ve been much help even if I had gone along. I

wasn’t worth that much. I might have ended up just making

her angry.

“Is that your only question?”

“No, I’ve got a few more. What was the time of death?”

“We’ve determined that it was sometime between eleven

p.m. on the fourteenth and three a.m. on the fifteenth.”

“In that case . . .” Mikoko-chan and I had left her apartment

at midnight, which meant that the crime must have

occurred between midnight and three a.m. “Er, and you say

she was strangled, correct? There wasn’t a knife involved or

anything?”

“That’s what I said.” She narrowed her eyes at my mentioning

of the word knife. Of course I didn’t tell her, not even

with my eyes, that I knew a certain knife-wielding killer.

“Was it a rope?”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 0 2

“It was a thin piece of cloth. She most likely died instantly

from vascular compression. I doubt she suffered much.”

This was most human thing Sasaki-san had said so far. But

to me, whether Tomo-chan suffered or not was relatively

trivial. Either way, she was dead.

I knew what it was to die. It isn’t death that people fear:

It’s nothingness. Pain is nothing more than a peripheral addon,

despair nothing more than decoration.

“Um, have you already gone to see everyone else?”

“Everyone eke?” Sasaki-san replied, even though she knew

damn well what I meant.

“Everyone who was gathered at Emoto-san’s place last

night. Usami-kun, Atemiya-san, and Aoii-san.”

I asked this without any particular expectation. I figured

she probably wouldn’t even answer. But to my surprise, she

answered immediately.

“Yes, we have,” she said. “We’ve finished questioning all of

them. Your address was a little hard to find, so we ended up

coming here last.”

“What was everyone doing during that window of time

when Emoto-san was killed?”

One more step. I cautiously took another step forward.

Sasaki-san’s lips curled up into a vague smirk. “Usami-san

and Atemiya-san say they spent the night singing karaoke in

Shijôkawara-machi. As for Aoii-san, well, it probably goes

without saying.”

It did. Mikoko-chan was staying with Miiko-san in the

room next door. I felt a little relieved. If you could believe

Sasaki-san’s claim, that meant that the top three suspects all

had alibis. Akiharu-kun and Muimi-chan could only account

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 0 3

for each other, so their alibi wasn’t exactly watertight, but it

was enough to loosen any suspicions toward them.

I felt the pressure of Kazuhito-san’s gaze grow even

stronger.

“Tch . . .”

How unseemly.

Much too late, I broke eye contact with the two of them.

Dammit. They had set me up to feel at ease. They had

caused me to let my guard down. I had been careless. These

two detectives aside, you were never supposed to let your

guard down around a police officer.

Shit . . . what had they seen?

“Is that all, then?” Sasaki-san asked without a hint of

change in her tone.

“Oh, no. One more.”

If I had ever known failure, surely this was that time.

Kazuhito-san’s penetrating gaze was minute subtlety compared

to what I was about to face.

But it was a subtlety that had flustered me enough to ask a

question I didn’t even have to ask, a question that I shouldn’t

have asked.

“Who do you suppose did it?”

It was a question that had already been answered. And I

had gone and repeated it.

“That’s currently under investigation,” Sasaki-san answered

with a meaningful gaze—and the smile of a predator who had

just bagged its prey. She rose to her feet. “Pardon us for intruding

for so long. I think we’ll be back again later to talk

more,” she said, placing her calling card on the floor. “If you

remember anything else, please give us a call.”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 0 4

I took the card in my hand. It gave a number for the prefectural

police as well as her own cell phone number.

“Well, take care, Mr. Student,” Kazuhito-san said with a

smirk, and began to make his way out of my room.

Interesting . . . so he was the real faker. I had committed

such a fatal misstep that I didn’t even deserve to call myself a

passive bystander anymore. I had completely mixed up the

roles of the two detectives.

In other words, it was Kazuhito-san who was rushing me

along while Sasaki-san had been absorbing everything I said.

And what’s more, Sasaki-san had purposely let down her

guard and invited me to attack.

The gall. The utter audacity.

“Oh, by the way,” Sasaki-san said as if just remembering

something. “About your alibi. For the time being, it’s been

confirmed by your neighbor, Asano-san. She said you can hear

people walking down the hallway from inside the rooms.”

She flashed me a refined smile. This was essentially a

checkmate. No, this didn’t even make for a match.

She even had the nerve to throw in this little scrap of

compassion at the end there.

Well, son of a bitch.

I don’t know if it was because I hadn’t dealt with them for

a long time, but I had completely underestimated the Japanese

police. Did my arrogance know no bounds? Who the hell

did I think I was?

It was the first time I had felt such defeat since my run-in

with that redheaded private contractor.

I chewed my lower lip. “Kazuhito-san,” I said to him as he

was leaving.

“Hm?” He looked back.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 0 5

“If you were better-looking, you’d be a dead ringer for

Matsuda Yûsaku.”

“Guess that means I’m not a dead ringer for Matsuda

Yûsaku.”

It was a bull’s-eye answer. My last hopeless jab at him had

been a big whiff, and with that, the two detectives were on

their way. I cleared away the cups and plopped myself onto

the floor.

It had been a decisive defeat. I hadn’t felt this sensation in

a month, and I hadn’t felt it this strongly in a whole year. But

in this case I could just abandon the emotion. When you

thought about the fact that someone had just died, it was all

too trivial.

“Tomo-chan . . .”

I tried whispering the name aloud. The first thing to come

to mind was our conversation from the previous night.

“Have you ever felt like, as a human, you’re damaged

goods?”

Now, now, Tomo-chan, that’s not the sort of thing one admits

out loud, isn’t it?

It’s better to not know things; it helps us go on living. As

long as we’re not too aware of ourselves, we can live in happiness.

You might compare us to an airplane that’s lost its

engine and wings. We’re nothing but insignificant nobodies

who can only soar like crows who can’t call out. Once you

start questioning things, it’s all over.

It’s not about denial. It’s about ignorance.

“You can get killed asking questions like that.” As someone

with experience, it wasn’t my job to just dish out empty

words of condolence. “If you put your mind to it, it’s only

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 106

natural . . . whether you’re a person like us or not . . . Or rather,

if you don’t put your mind to anything, that is.”

Having realized these things myself long ago, I was now a

person living without purpose, just as Tomo-chan had been

living a life without meaning.

I closed my eyes.

And I opened them.

“Well, so much for mind over matter.”

I swiftly rose to my feet.

Now then.

What to do now? There was nothing I was supposed to do,

but plenty of things I wanted to. For me, this was a fairly rare

condition.

First, I took out my cell phone. I checked the call history,

then began to dial Mikoko-chan’s number. But halfway

through, I stopped myself.

“Seriously, who the hell do I think I am?”

This was utter and complete nonsense. If I did call Mikokochan,

what did I possibly have to say to her?

So I put off calling her. At that moment, I just didn’t have

the right words to say to her.

“In that case . . .”

First things first. I cleared my phone and began reentering a

phone number. It was the one and only phone number I knew

by heart. With the phone at my ear, I tried to remember how

long it had been since we’d talked.

She picked up immediately.

“Ohhh! Ii-chan! A long time indeed, old friend! Do you

still love me?”

Her hyperness dwarfed Mikoko-chan’s by a factor of about

twelve; unlike Mikoko-chan, once you removed her stopper,

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 0 7

the gushing would never end. If you let her alone, she would

shoot all the way up to Heaven like the Tower of Babel.

“What oh what oh what oh what is wrong? You never call

me! This moment is monumental! It’s the Himeji Castle! It

must be a diversionary tactic! Hyaooo! I wanna take a photograph

to record it, but a photograph can’t capture sound so

there’d be no point! Therefore, commence audio recording!”

“You don’t have to bother with the audio recording.”

I made an effort to keep my cool.

Muimi-chan had asked me if it was tough keeping up with

Mikoko-chan’s hyperness, but as I had told her, compared

with Kunagisa, Mikoko-chan was pretty much a piece of cake.

If Mikoko-chan was happy-go-lucky, then Kunagisa Tomo

was happy-go-crazy.

“Tomo, are you free much these days?”

“Nope! More on the busy side. Extremely occupado. My

processing power is facing an imminent meltdown! Emergency

memory expansion! Defrag imperative! I’m going to freeze!

Oh my God, it’s happening! It’s happening! Present progressive

form! Please reboot!”

“Is it this Kyoto prowling serial killer case?”

“Bingo! Wowww! You’re like Maki-chan! Or the red contractor!

Kyahahahahaha! Return of the ESP! And forever!

Mankind’s strongest! This is the end!”

“Sorry, Tomo, could you dial it down a notch?”

“Huh? What’s wrong? Well, whatever. Yep, it’s the Kyoto

prowling serial killer case! But you know what? It’s not going

the way I expected! This darn case! Hurdles! Serious hurdles!

Surely the killer is the reincarnation of Dread Jones! Wahaha!”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 108

“Let’s make a deal, Kunagisa Tomo,” I said. “I’ll give you

some information on this Kyoto prowler case. You’ll give me

information on a certain murder that’s come up.”

“Huh?”

She thought for a moment. I knew she wouldn’t ask me

why I had information on the prowler case or why there was a

murder case I was interested in. I believed in her, and she

trusted me.

Unnecessary explanations.

Excess clarifications.

Wasted words.

Inane questions.

Distracting chatter.

The very best thing about Kunagisa was that she had no

use for any of these things.

“Ehh, I don’t like this word deal, Ii-chan.”

“How’s bargain?”

“Awful.”

“Pact?”

“Almost there.”

“Conspiracy?”

“Not technically wrong, but something’s off.”

“Well, then what about a mutual complementing of each

other’s attributes?”

“Yeah, that’ll do,” she said happily.

Give or take.

At this point, I still hadn’t decided which.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 109

After finishing my call with Kunagisa, I went to visit Miikosan

next door. I knocked on her door.

“Yo,” came her response. Several seconds later, the door

opened. As usual, she was dressed in a jinbei. It seemed to me

that if she was going to take such an avid interest in Japanese

clothing, she ought to get herself a nice, pretty kimono. It definitely

would’ve looked good on her.

“Can I help you?”

“Oh, I just wanted to thank you. They said you vouched

for my alibi.”

“I didn’t do anything remarkable. I just told the truth.”

“Yeah, but I created an unnecessary burden for you.”

“I don’t care. Happens all the time . . . but you’ve certainly

dealt with your own fair share of nuisances, haven’t you?” She

sounded more amazed than concerned. “You’re like the man

of a thousand disasters. So what about that girl? Based on

what the authorities were saying, it sounds like she was involved

as well.”

“Well, in a manner of speaking . . .”

“Gotcha,” she nodded. “Well, then, how do you intend on

thanking me?”

“I’ll treat you to tea.”

This was literally an invitation to go have real tea at a teahouse,

not just a regular coffee shop. It was sort of a Kyoto

thing, or maybe just a Miiko-san thing.

“Does that come with dango?” Dango—those tasty rice

flour dumplings—went really well with green tea.

“It even comes with hiyashi shiruko.” Yes, and sweet red

bean soup, too!

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 1 0

“Where at?”

“The Oharame-ya in Gion.”

Miiko-san’s eyes immediately lit up. “Hold on, I’ll get

ready.”

She shut the door. For what it was worth, she was considerate

enough to change into normal clothes if she was going

out with somebody else. That level of thoughtfulness made

her a pretty rare specimen in my circle of acquaintances.

“And I’m back.” A minute later she was ready to leave. She

handed me a car key. I flipped it over once in the palm of my

hand before clutching it tight.

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?”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 111

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 don’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

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 112

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 waiting: 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.

“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

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 113

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

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 1 4

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.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 115

“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.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 116

“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

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 1 7

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

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 118

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 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

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 119

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. In 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.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 2 0

“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 the him

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 it 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 depress you? It’s like looking into the

mirror and saying, ‘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

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 2 1

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 said.

“Well, it’s just that a classmate from my university was

murdered recently.”

“Murdered? Your classmate?”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 2 2

“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 you 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 said, sounding not particularly

interested. Figuring there was no need to keep it a secret,

I proceeded to tell him everything I had heard from Sasakisan.

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?”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 2 3

“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.

“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 eastwest

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

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 all-nighter.

“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.”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 2 4

“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 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.”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 2 5

“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

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 2 6

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 convinced 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.”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 2 7

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.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 2 8

“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 whose 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.”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 2 9

Suddenly a doubt rose in my mind. I thought of Sasakisan’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 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.”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 3 0

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 Sasakisan

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 autolock 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?”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 3 1

“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 said.

“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?”

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 3 2

“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 strips 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.”

“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 said

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.

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 3 3

Afterward, I once again began inspecting the area around

the tape.

“Hm.”

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’ll 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?

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 1 3 4

“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