"Peopleare like garbage."

WheneverI saw people gathered, this line from a famous animated movie[1] sprung to mind.And I suspected that there were no shortage of people who shared my sentiment.

Whilethis may not hold true for individuals, when people come together in groups itis due to hatred. They perceive other people as combustible waste and dropbombs in the place of incinerators. In any case, they can"t help their desireto set garbage alight.

Let ussuppose that the ent.i.ty known as G.o.d truly exists. That He is a being thattranscends humanity and gazes out over Earth from above. If we hold that to bethe case, then it follows that chaos and disorder please Him. G.o.d does notdesire tranquility. This is surely because He is displeased when such inferiorcreatures lose themselves in delusions of grandeur. With His invisible hand, heleads humanity to the slaughter. He does this not for amus.e.m.e.nt, nor to staveoff boredom, but because of a visceral disgust, much the kind that you or Iwould feel upon gazing on an outbreak of insects.

Isuddenly noticed that my reverie had delayed me in my task of duplicating thewords on the blackboard, and I began frantically scrawling.

Ireflected upon my irregular thoughts. These thoughts were certainly notdesirable. Perhaps the reason I was having them was because we had beenlearning about how the strong systematically weeded out all others acrosshistory?

Thatwas divergent from my ideals. The strong and the weak certainly did exist. Thatwas why I was determined to become strong and, instead of plundering from theweak, extend them a hand of salvation. To lead them justly. That was the onlymethod by which true peace could be attained.

Whatstood in my way, then, was the kind of evil that would consume mankind inirrationality. I had to destroy it. ...I see, my thoughts just now were theresult of my hatred towards evil becoming misdirected towards humanity itself.

Evil,huh.

I gazedat the seat behind me. It appeared he was absent today, so the seat was empty.It was the seat belonging to a man who could very well be described as evilincarnate.

In mysixteen years of life, I had never met a man so thoroughly twisted as MasatoYahara. The reason for that lay not in his depravity, nor in his stupidity.There were likely countless men more opposed to society and more idiotic thanhim.

Butupon drawing Yahara"s jeers, I recognized wicked nature for what it was. MasatoYahara was quite literally a monster. He consumes people in as direct a way aspossible. His tentacles reach deep within people"s souls. His value system isso warped that the only way he can confirm his own existence is through thedestruction of others.

Therunaway train that is Yahara long since became derailed. And he believes thatby running people over, he can right his course. But such a thing is of courseabsurd. A derailed train cannot find its way back onto the tracks. It willsimply destroy and kill everything in its path, only stopping once it crashesand destroys itself.

If leftto his own devices, he will no doubt continue consuming people. Like a candyhe"s grown bored of, he will chew up and spit out those precious, irreplaceablesouls.

Modern-daylaws are too lenient on such wrong-doers. But even though we all harbor suchfeeling of dissatisfaction, society refuses to change. A rotten human cannot berehabilitated and will continue to rot, and much the rotten orange from a linein a certain school-based drama[2] will rot everything around it as well.

But thefilthy rabble of our world continue wriggling about with nary a care. It"srepulsive beyond belief.

Thusthe strong have a duty to root out evil. In that act, they elegantly save theweak.

Ahh,it"s almost embarra.s.sing how much I love justice, how much I want to become ahero.

On thatnight, I spotted Masato Yahara on my way home from prep school.

In theend, I tested him. It was a test to determine if his life had worth. He failedspectacularly; in fact, he scored zero points.

And soI justly killed him.

Thefirst thing I had to figure out was how to dispose of the body. No matter howjust my actions were, even if everyone approved of them, today"s laws wouldnever acquit a murderer. Thus I had to cover it up.

Becausehe was planning on killing me in the first place, Yahara was kind enough to diein a place where he would not be quickly found. The optimal outcome for mewould be for his death itself not to come to light and for him to simply betreated as a missing person, with n.o.body knowing the truth of the incident.

But itwas difficult to imagine the body going forever without being found. Thisdefunct factory had traces of people coming and going, with lanterns andblankets and such lying around. The people who came and went were likely filthof Yahara"s ilk.

Itwould be best to dispose of the body somewhere harder to come across. If thebody was found like this, it would be treated as evidence of a crime,autopsied, and the entire affair would then be handled as a murder investigation.

Ideallythe body wouldn"t be found, and it wouldn"t become an incident. If I could dumpthe body in the mountains without being seen, I could avoid being caught.

Butbecause I was only sixteen, I didn"t have a driver"s license. I couldn"t thinkof any way to transport my grim baggage without being seen.

Ineeded an accomplice. But who? My parents... even if they acknowledged myjustice, the sight of a corpse would cause them to lose their nerve andrecommend that I turn myself in. Even if they held strong convictions, peoplewho were faint of heart wouldn"t do.

I couldthink of a few adults I respected, but any of them would get cold feet oncethey saw a corpse, and without looking at the big picture would recommend thatI turn myself in. n.o.body had as strong a sense of justice as I did, nor wouldhelping me provide any benefit for them.

I wasat a loss. I couldn"t think of anyone.

Icouldn"t figure out my next step, so with some reluctance I temporarily leftthe scene. If somebody happened upon this place, that alone would be curtainsfor me.

I wipedup the blood from the knife and wiped down the places I had touched with ahandkerchief to get rid of my fingerprints. Thankfully, you couldn"t see thespurts of blood against my black uniform. After leaving the factory, I was ableto make my way to the station without running into anyone.

All init, it was quite a mental burden on me. As soon as I got home and layed down onmy bed, I slept like a log.

I wokeup. Instantly, the gears in my head began turning. The first thing I did wascheck on my smartphone to see whether or not Yahara"s body had been discovered.I checked a number of news sites, but there didn"t appear to be any articlesindicating as such. A real-time search didn"t show any traces either.

Afterdescending the stairs and offering rushed greetings to my family, I hopped inthe shower. As I lathered my hair, I racked my brains for a way to dispose ofthe unfortunate corpse.

I coulddismember it. But while that was the conventional way to transport a body, Iwasn"t exactly inclined to. Even if it was originally the monster that wasYahara, it was unmistakably a human body. The psychological burden would likelybe substantial. And in the one-in-a-million chance the body was discovered, thefact that it could no longer pa.s.s for an accident was another strike againstthis method.

So Iwas back to wanting to transport the body as it was to somewhere peoplewouldn"t find it, then disposing of it. That conclusion hadn"t changed.

Therewas no school on Sat.u.r.days, so I ran searches for terms related to the incidenton my phone while watching the news in the living room. It was odd for me to befiddling with my phone instead of studying, so my family seemed somewhatsuspicious, but I doubted they suspected me of murder. I needn"t pay them muchmind.

Iwanted to transport the body by vehicle, but I still couldn"t come up with anaccomplice. Although it was of course too late at this point, events alreadyproceeding as they were, I began to regret having killing Yahara. If I hadkilled him in a more thought-out manner, I could have avoided this whole mess.

Thenext time I have to kill someone, I"ll make sure to think it out first.

SomeoneI have to kill, on the same level as Masato Yahara. I wonder who that could be?

"―"

Withthat thought fresh in my mind, I thought of a partner. Returning to my room, Ibegan to think of ways to sway him to my side. At the moment, he and I hadessentially no common ground.

Butthen I thought of an extremely simple method.

I spentthe rest of Sat.u.r.day preparing, and then it was Sunday. At three in theafternoon on the dot, I stood in front of a local convenience store. I enteredthe shop, and after a few uses of the ATM had successfully withdrawn a millionyen[3]. After consistently saving my allowance and my New Year"s money, that sumamounted to my net worth.

Notseeing the man I was searching for, I headed outside and was greeted with thesight of my target wearing the shop"s uniform and listlessly taking out thetrash. He didn"t seem to be on break, but he was smoking regardless. Because Ilived nearby, I happened to know that he would be working part-time at thishour on Sundays.

"Yamazaki-senpai."

RyuusukeYamazaki turned to me while holding his cigarette in his mouth, his expressionsullen. At any rate, it looked like his vulgar blond hair was taking a fewpoints off his IQ.

"Whothe f.u.c.k are you?"

"I"mShuuichi Akiyama, the representative of cla.s.s 1-2."

"No,like, who the f.u.c.k are you? What business would a high and mighty cla.s.srep like you have with someone like me? Don"t f.u.c.kin" tell me you"re gonna ratme out to the school for smoking."

Ignoringhis idiotic question, I got straight to the point.

"Iheard that you know how to drive. Do you have your own car?"

I hadseen him drive a black station wagon to get her, but I wanted to confirm itjust in case.

Likelyexcited to brag about his car, Yamazaki"s face lit up.

"Yeah, I"mworking here to pay "er off. ...What"s your deal, you like my car? You wanna gofor a ride in the pa.s.senger seat, huh? Sorry man, that seat"s reserved forchicks who put out. I"m not into that f.a.g stuff."

Notwanting to play along with his vulgar banter, I pulled out the million I hadjust withdrawn and handed it to him. At the sight of such a large quant.i.ty ofcash, Yamazaki"s eyes went wide.

"Wha...You...! The f.u.c.k"s this cash for?"

Hisreaction was exactly what I expected, and I struggled to stifle my laughter.

Withhis mouth hanging open and a stupid expression plastered on his face, Yamazakididn"t even wait for a proper explanation to begin counting the bills. With hisglittering eyes and his agitated, wild breathing, he was the very image of aswine unable to contain itself at the sight of slop. Unable to defy his brain"snewfound addiction, he would no doubt act exactly as I needed him to.

"I havea favor I need to ask of you. Would you be willing to undertake it?"

Yamazakistopped the car in the parking lot of a defunct convenience store near the siteof the factory. I was slightly concerned about being seen, but thanks to thevarious illegally-parked cars we weren"t exactly conspicuous. If we didn"t staylong, I doubted it would be a problem.

"SoAkiyama, you"re really gonna pay me a mil for one day"s work? Also, where theh.e.l.l are we?"

Afterstopping the car, Yamazaki was understandably on guard as he surveyed the area.

"Ididn"t lie. More importantly, did you prepare everything I asked you to?"

Wantingto avoid creating links between myself and Yamazaki, I hadn"t told him my phonenumber or LINE ID. He seemed like a somewhat careless man, so I was concernedhe hadn"t bought everything I had requested.

"Yeah,it"s all in the trunk. Whatcha gonna do with all that?"

Iverified the contents of the trunk. Inside was a large black vinyl sheet, aroll of cloth tape, and some rope. Tools to transport a corpse.

"Everythingseems to be in order. We"ll be carrying it all to the site of that factory."

"...Nocomplaints here, I guess."

Althoughhe had some misgivings, the million yen sapped his desire to object and hewalked inside the building.

"f.u.c.k,it stinks in here!"

Just asYamazaki said, the moment we stepped inside we were greeted by a smellreminiscent of a mound of rotting fish. It was so like Yahara to resemble trashto the end. Of course he would stink if he rotted — and as soon as that thoughtcrossed my mind, I reflected. I left the corpse here all this time, but due tothe smell the odds of it being discovered were higher than I had projected.

"Wait,that"s-"

Thebody was lying there, wrapped in blankets. The blankets were stained red withblood.

"It"s acorpse."

Yamazaki"sface initially contorted, but eventually settled into a vulgar grin.

"Iget it. Now I get what you"re havin" me do."

On theoff chance that he had gotten cold feet when faced with a corpse, it wasthinkable that he would reject my request. Showing him the cash up front was acountermeasure against that. While people can put up with losing an opportunityto gain something, they exhibit extreme resistance to giving up something theyinitially thought was theirs.

But itseemed my fear had been unfounded.

"Makessense that you"d pull out that mil, then. h.e.l.l, you"re practically gettin" offcheap."

Ihadn"t been expecting him to suggest I turn myself in. So that was hisresponse, hmm. He didn"t examine my complexion, nor did he take interest in thecorpse itself — his first instinct was to try and wring more money out of me.

Thankgoodness he was so faithful to his desires.

"Youthe one who offed him?"

"Thatwas the result, yes. It was legitimate self-defence, but there isn"t anybodywho can verify that."

"Igetcha, I getcha. So you got no choice but to hide it."

Thecorners of his mouth upturned, Yamazaki drew near the corpse with no sign ofhesitation. To my surprise, he turned over the blankets himself. His lack ofresistance made me doubt whether or not he might be a psychopath.

"Huh?...Yo, Akiyama! This f.u.c.ker"s Masato Yahara!

"Thatis indeed my cla.s.smate Masato Yahara. You can piece together why I had to comeall the way out here, I gather?"

"Thisguy jumped you, and when you fought back he ended up eatin" it, something alongthose lines, right? d.a.m.n, I always had him pegged for one of those guyswho wouldn"t die even if you killed "em, but he up and died pretty d.a.m.n easily,huh?"

"Didyou and Masato Yahara know each other?"

"Nah, Ijust heard that he was one bad motherf.u.c.ker and steered clear of him. Y"know,there were those rumors that he took down a whole gang and that he was theleader of some prost.i.tution ring. And I heard that one of my senpai"sfriends tried to get up in this guy"s business for being cheeky or some s.h.i.t,and this guy almost stabbed him."

I wasa.s.saulted by waves of repugnance. It would appear my decision to kill him hadbeen correct.

"Sowhat"s up next, boss?"

"First,we"ll conceal the body in the blankets and vinyl sheet and carry it out. We"lltake the weapon with us too. I"m pretty sure I wiped off all the blood already,but I"ll double-check so that on the off chance there"s any left I can wipe itoff. Once all that is finished, it shouldn"t be possible for anyone to narrowthe scene of the crime down to this location."

"Otherthan me, that is."

Iwondered if that was a veiled threat.

"Hehheh."

Withoutthinking, I laughed inwardly.

Hereacted just as I suspected he would, without a micron of deviation.

Ahh,thank goodness.

ChoosingRyuusuke Yamazaki as my partner truly was the right decision.

Once wehad loaded the body into his trunk, I left the transportation and disposal toYamazaki and headed home. After travelling by train, bus, foot the previousday, I had found an ideal disposal site deep in the mountains. If Yamazakifollowed my instructions and dug a hole and buried him in it, it was unlikelyYahara"s corpse would ever be discovered. Leaving that task to Yamazaki alonecaused me no end of anxiety, but it was less dangerous than me being seen inhis car, so I didn"t have much choice. In a perfect world, n.o.body would thinkthat Yamazaki and I had any relationship.

But oneof my calculations was off.

I hadunderestimated how incompetent Yamazaki was.

Oneweek had pa.s.sed since Yamazaki took the body up into the mountains. It wasMonday morning, and as had become a habit for me I was scrolling through areal-time news feed on my phone when my drowsiness was blasted away. There wasa posting about a body beingdiscovered in the aforementioned mountains. Leaping from my bed, I ran into theliving room and clung to the television. The news was reporting that MasatoYahara"s body had been discovered by a hiker. I listened in shock as theannouncer described how his ident.i.ty had been confirmed by the student ID cardin his pocket.

Ryuusuke Yamazaki.Not only did that incompetent not bury the body, he even ignored my order tostrip it. And on top of that, he left the student ID? How incompetent could oneman be? If he had thought about it for half a second, he"d realize just howproblematic that was! Even if dumping a body was a crime, just how overactivewas this guy"s sense of danger?

"Shuu! You lookawful, what happened?"

My mother shouted ina shrill soprano. As always, her voice rattled around in my head.

Franticallycontrolling my breathing, I spoke with feigned composure.

"It"s nothing toworry about, Mother. ...I"ll be heading to school now."

But my voice wastrembling. Just as my mother had pointed out, my face was white as a sheet.

"Don"t be ridiculous!With you looking like that, there"s no way there"s nothing wrong!"

In reality, I wasfighting back fury. Fear and anxiety were secondary. Contempt. Hatred.Resentment. Such emotions were the cause of my trembling.

All that filth can dois weigh down the excellent, it seemed. Far beyond being useless, they werehindrances. Their very existence soiled the earth.

"Shuu... You"restaying home today."

Upon seeing myabnormal condition, my mother, who would normally insist I go to school even ifI had a fever, commanded me. While this was odd in and of itself, it wassurpa.s.sed by the suspicion I would no doubt arise if I didn"t attend schooltoday.

I took a deep breathto settle myself.

Visions of thatdefunct factory invaded my mind. Ever since I stabbed Masato Yahara, I couldn"tbreak my mind free of that place. It was like it was binding my soul against mywill. Why should I, who acted in accordance with justice, have to go throughall this?

Suddenly, my mind wasplunged into black and white and I was a.s.sailed with pain deep within my eyes.Black and white particles crawled along my skin and penetrated my pores,filling me with an itching sensation as they violated me.

Ahh, back at thatfactory there was a press I couldn"t figure out the purpose of. What was itcapable of crushing? What was it capable of crushing?

What did it want tocrush?

A gigantic press. Apress to thoroughly crush them. A press to thoroughly crush their eyeb.a.l.l.s andtheir bones and their nails and their organs and their genitals and their bloodinto pulp. We could collect up that formless meat with bulldozers. Splat, splat,splat. We could intentionally do it loudly. The noise is pleasantly obscene,after all. Splat, splat, splat. We could envision their soundless screams as wegleefully make meatb.a.l.l.s from their meat. Perhaps the meatb.a.l.l.s would be black,or red, or pink. It would be cannibalism. We would force-feed them themeatb.a.l.l.s. While crying, they would break out into a mad dance at how deliciousthey were. They"re delicious, aren"t they? All squishy and sticky and squishy.While making vulgar noises, they would feast. While descending into madness,they would feast. Once they realized what the meatb.a.l.l.s were made of, theywouldn"t even wait for the press before consuming their comrades. They would beso tasty they wouldn"t be able to help themselves. They would be unable to helpthemselves when faced with their desires. They would be eaten alive. They wouldscream in pain. n.o.body would save them. People like them have no empathy, sothey can"t comprehend the pain of others. I would laugh as I gazed out uponthem. Meatb.a.l.l.s. In the end, you filth were nothing but meatb.a.l.l.s. Just likethe giant meatball there, you all are nothing but bundles of meat. Bundleswithout souls. The final survivor of the cannibalism would cry out. Where arethe delicious meatb.a.l.l.s? He would ask me. Please bring me more! Please bring memore meatb.a.l.l.s! He would entreat me. And I would point to where the meatballwas. And he would eat the meatball I was pointing at. He would eat it withgreat relish. He would eat with delight, he would eat with madness. He wouldeat his own meat. He would eat himself. I would clutch my stomach and laugh.Indeed. All you people do is consume yourselves. I would point that out out ofkindness. I would point out what kind of beings you are.

"Shuu!"

My mother"s shoutbrought me back from my world of delusions.

"Itlooks like you"re right, I"d better stay home today..."

Afterwhispering that, I tottered back to my room. I couldn"t walk straight. And asif I had released too much energy in that last vision, I couldn"t thinkstraight either.

As Ilayed on my bed, I took deep breaths to settle down my heart. But theelectrical signals in my brain were going haywire, and I was so itchy Ipractically scratched my head off.

Icouldn"t settle down. The grotesque images wouldn"t stop.

Athousand knives. A shower of blood. Flesh warped like clay.

I shookmy head to try to drive out the delusions. If my mind went blank, they wouldget inside me!

—Getinside me?

Wouldn"tthat imply that they weren"t my thoughts in the first place?

I couldsense it myself. The fact that these thoughts were both dangerous and abnormal.That they were undesirable. So why wouldn"t they stop?

Ididn"t know. I myself didn"t know.

"Hehheh heh..."

Suddenly,I could hear laughter. Contemptuous, disparaging laughter.

"Man,how defective are you? You don"t know?"

Leapingout of my bed, I scanned the room.

I wasat a loss for words.

Wherewas I? What was going on?

It feltlike I was standing atop the heart of a tremendous beast. Everywhere I lookedwas reddish-brown and pulsing. Magma that smelled of blood was spurting. Itsmelled like something was decomposing, too. The air was filled with refuse,making it impossible to see clearly. Something important to the world wasclearly stagnating.

Ahh, itwas so unsightly it make me sick.

And yetsomething strangely excited me. My breath grew wild, and I wanted to leap inthe air.

I see,this must be that factory. Is this real? Is this a delusion? I don"t know. Theboundary between the two seemed vague.

"You"vedone yourself a pretty good job of crushing us, I see."

MasatoYahara stood in front of me. His entrance was abrupt, but to me it seemed likethe most natural thing in the world.

"Icrushed you. Certainly, I did crush you. But what of it? All of this is simplya delusion."

"Adelusion, huh? Quite the f.u.c.ked-up delusion you cooked up there. Weren"t yousupposed to be all upright and clean handed and s.h.i.t?"

Yahara"sface contorted into a sneer.

"...Shutyour mouth, meat-man. If this is the world of my delusions, everything shouldgo according to my whim. I"ll simply crush you into delicious meatb.a.l.l.s."

"Heh...Just f.u.c.kin" try, I dare you."

He putup no resistance, and I dropped the ma.s.sive press on him. Splat! The sound ofsomething soft being crushed rang out, and the vicinity was painted red. It wasover too soon.

Mybeing crushed was over too soon.

"Why?"

Therewas no consistency or anything in my mental image. Yet I ended up beingcrushed. Despite no longer having vocal cords, I whispered "why?" one moretime.

"It"sone f.u.c.ked-up delusion, right?"

Why,even though it was a delusion, had it come to such a grotesque end? Why wasMasato Yahara standing there as if it were natural?

"Itcan"t be...!"

Ifinally understood the meaning of Yahara"s words.

"Yougot the feeling that you were being violated a minute ago, right? It"s simple. Idon"t have a body, so it"s easy as h.e.l.l for me to get inside you."

Yahara"sdiscontent sneer didn"t fade.

"Thisain"t your delusion. Your thoughts ain"t your own. You ain"t even yourself anymore."

I wasno more than a piece of meat now, and he trampled me underfoot.

"I"min control of this world now."

Iopened my eyes. I felt awful. I had an unpleasant dream, but I couldn"tremember what it was about.

Why wasit, I wondered? I was certain the dream had been unpleasant, yet I felt oddlyrefreshed. It was like the exhilarating sensation you got after overcoming anasty fever. But it was clear to me that I had lost something in exchange forthat exhilaration. I had lost it entirely. And I could never get it back.

Butthat was fine. I had been freed from a needless attachment. People werecreatures that feared change, but that reaction was no more than an unthinkingdismissal.

Mystrict adherence to ethics vanished.

Ahh...it welcomes me.

It wasopening in front of me—

—a newworld.

Perhapsthat odd dream was a gift from G.o.d? From then on, everything I did wentperfectly. Solving problem sets, my reading comprehension, advancing projects Iwas working on, everything was going brilliantly. My ability to concentrate wasclearly improving as well. Not letting it get mixed in with the noise, norgetting distracted, I could immerse myself in a single task.

It waslike I finally had my priorities all in order. It wasn"t anything conscious.But it felt like I had built a solid set of unconscious rules.

It wasafter school. The cla.s.sroom was illuminated by the setting sun, making mycla.s.smates" shadows stand out. But I could no longer make their faces out fromeach other. My mind shirked its duties, deciding that this point was of littleimportance.

Amongstthem, one person"s face remained clear.

I hadto verify his character.

"Hiiragi,I have something I would like to ask you. Could I have a moment of your time?"

KoutaHiiragi. As far as I knew, he was Masato Yahara"s one and only friend.

Fromhis appearance he was the epitome of normality, far removed from the kind ofperson I was obligated to eliminate. But his closeness to Yahara meritedcaution.

"Whenhe was still with us, would it be correct to say that you were the one who withthe closest with Yahara?"

I beganprobing him. If he was of the same breed as Yahara, it naturally fell upon meto cull him.

"Iwonder, was it true that Yahara was involved in some rather unwholesomeaffairs? Well...I refer to affairs in the broad sense, by the way. Perhaps thatalone makes it not unusual he was involved in this incident. There were variousthings published about him in those periodicals, weren"t there? Were youcompletely unaware of all that?"

"Iknew about the stimulants. But he never mentioned anything about any gangs orprost.i.tution rings or anything. He didn"t show any signs of being involved withthem, either. I"m pretty sure that"s all just misinformation."

"Perhapsyou weren"t close enough to Yahara to involve you in things like that? Are yousaying that he never to bring you into his group of delinquent companions?"

"Prettymuch. He didn"t involve me in sketchy stuff like that. He never even ate lunchwith me, let alone tried to get me to smoke or anything. If we were around eachother we"d chat, if the timing worked out we"d walk home together. But hedefinitely never tried to coerce me, and he never invited me anywhere. That wasabout the extent of our relationship. I"m sure that if I ever stoppedwanting to spend time around him and started avoiding him, he wouldn"t have somuch as spoken to me."

Iscrutinized his words, but other than the fact that he had kept silent aboutthe stimulants nothing he was saying seemed particularly problematic. However,there remained the possibility that he was playing dumb so as not to fall undersuspicion.

Furthermore,the fact that had adored Yahara was clear.

Myinitial conclusion was that there was no need to prioritize marking him.Something along those lines.

"So,why do you ask?"

Aphrase floated to the front of my mind.

Itwould not be so strange for you to be killed as well.

Hemight be evil enough to warrant elimination.

Indeed,it was imperative that I identify those people that warranted elimination. Thatwas the decree I had been given upon killing Masato Yahara and evolving pastthe ordinary.

Butputting that to words would be problematic. Although I had utmost faith in mysense of justice, I was under no pretenses that the rest of the world wouldaccept it so readily. Long ago, Galileo was put to trial for his advocacy ofthe heliocentric model.

"I suspectthat the reason that Yahara was killed was the fact that he was sticking hishand in dangerous places. Following that reasoning, I felt it was possible thatyou, as his friend, might be in danger of meeting a similar fate. Am Imistaken?"

It waspossible he would misconstrue my reply, so I followed up with my true feelings.

"Infact, I was thinking—that it would not be so strange for you to be killed aswell."

Hiiragiwasn"t the sharpest tool in the shed, so I thought it unlikely that he wouldpick up on my true goal.

Butcontrary to my expectations, Hiiragi reacted to my words.

"...Whatmakes you s.p.a.ce out so?"

"I,I"m not-"

Perhapshe was more clever than I gave him credit for? Was he simply a.s.suming a facadeof mediocrity? Had he been hiding the fact that he was of the same breed asYahara, that he was a person that I needed to eliminate?

Itseemed that my guard had been too lax a moment ago.

In anycase, it would be best to end this conversation peacefully, in order to keep upappearances. But the moment I thought to make preparations to depart, somethingunthinkable happened.

"Oy, isAkiyama around?"

Thatincompetent loudly called out for me.

Youhave to be joking. After all the warnings I gave him about avoiding been seentogether, for him to brazenly show up like this... My opinion of him asincompetent remained unrevised.

But Icouldn"t simply ignore him. Leaving Hiiragi with some empty words, I headed toYamazaki.

Sayingthat he wanted to go somewhere away from others, Yamazaki lead me to theaudiovisual room. Normally the door would be locked, but Yamazaki threaded awire into the keyhole and the door opened in no time. The long desk was alreadyadorned with open snack wrappers and empty bottles, so I conjectured thatYamazaki and his compatriots made frequent use of the room.

Standingin front of a large projector, Yamazaki spread his hands like a politiciangiving a speech.

"Let"schat about my circ.u.mstances a bit. My mom and I live alone. She gottricked by some jacka.s.s who ghosted her, and had me when she was justseventeen. Around that time, her folks, meaning my gram and gramps, cut tieswith her, so she had to raise me all by her lonesome. She"s running f.u.c.kin"ragged, man, she mans a register at a supermarket in the afternoon and has towork a nightclub in the evenings. I just wanna treat her, you feel me?Like, I wanna take her out for barbeque or somethin". That"s where I"mcomin" from."

A storythe world could do without hearing.

"Wouldyou mind if I helped you cut to the chase? To put it plainly, you"re lookingfor more money, correct?"

"d.a.m.n,you catch on quick! That"s our favorite cla.s.s rep for ya"!"

I couldtell from his reaction to seeing the corpse that he would eventually try toextort more money out of me. Here it was.

Ofcourse, I had no money left. The million I had already given him was my entirenet worth, the result of years of scrimping and saving.

"Yamazaki-senpai.I do not have any more money."

"Oh?"

"Andalthough it pains me to point out the failures of another, the body wasdiscovered because you failed to follow my instructions and bury it properly.While we both have our dissatisfactions, shall we simply call it good at that?"

"Thef.u.c.k? You got any d.a.m.n proof I didn"t bury it right? Who knows, maybesome wild animals dug it up or somethin"? And besides, there"s no need to getyour panties in a bunch. If they can"t figure out where the guy was offed,there"s no way in h.e.l.l they could pin it on you."

Hadthis man never heard of crisis management?

"Well, Iguess if I hadn"t transported it for ya they"d have figured you out in aheartbeat. And now I gotta deal with all this guilt and s.h.i.t. It"skeeping me up at night, man. The f.u.c.k kinda person are you, tellin" me to godump poor little Maa in the mountains. f.u.c.k, now I feel like turnin"myself in."

"Senpai,we would both be in a deal of trouble of the truth of the incident came out.Dumping a body is a serious crime, you know."

Yamazakilaughed mockingly.

"Don"tmake me f.u.c.kin" laugh. Yeah, I"d be in some trouble. But who gives as.h.i.t about that. But you absolutely can"t let the truth get out. That"s theonly thing you can afford to give a s.h.i.t about. Even if it"s the tiniestf.u.c.kin" chance, you can"t ignore it."

Apparentlyhis cunning was the only thing this man was good for. As he surmised, myprevious words had been a hollow threat. It was like telling a man holding youat gunpoint that he"d go to jail if he shot you. It went without saying who hadthe initiative.

"...Howmuch do you want?"

"Anothermillion, for now."

Fornow.

Thosewords stuck in my head, words that indicated that more demands would eventuallybe forthcoming.

"Do youreally think a high schooler like myself could quickly come up with a sum likethat?"

"Yousay some funny s.h.i.t, man. The h.e.l.l"s that got to do with me?"

Thebell rang. Yamazaki smirked as he thumped me on the back.

"I"mcountin" on ya, killer."

Aftersaying that, he raised one hand and left the audiovisual room.

Thesound of the door closing echoed throughout the room, cutting through thesilence. The silence in the room felt like it was reproaching my own silence,so I forced my mouth open.

"Haha..."

My joyleaked out.

Andwhen it did,

"Ahahahahahahahahahaha!"

It wastoo funny.

"Theh.e.l.l does that have to do with him? The h.e.l.l does that have to do with himindeed!"

Yamazakihadn"t doubted me in the slightest. He hadn"t doubted that he was on the sidedoing the taking. A million yen? There was no way I would pay such a sum.Yamazaki said some amusing things. I absolutely couldn"t let the truthget out. That was the only thing I could afford to give a s.h.i.t about.

Quiteso.

Nothing,least of all money, has anything to do with a man who is about to die.

I haddecided on it from the very beginning. When I couldn"t find a n.o.ble individualto request transportation from, when I couldn"t find an accomplice, I realizedsomething.

As longas the transporter was also someone I could eliminate, I wouldn"t have anyproblems.

Yamazaki,the finest sc.u.m known to man, was the last piece of evidence I needed todestroy. There would be n.o.body left who knew the truth.

But forhim to mistake himself for being in a commanding position, oh, how precious Icould laugh.

RyuusukeYamazaki.

Youwill fall into the hole I dug and die.

It"sthat factory. I was at that defunct factory again.

Just likelast time, I exterminated him. I wielded a knife with the intent to kill him.

Nothesitating with the knife, he provoked me by stabbing at my heart. But thatwasn"t enough to cause me to draw back. I had resolved to kill him from theget-go.

Ithrusted back and stabbed him in the chest.

Therewas almost no resistance. But I could sense that it was the real thing. Humanflesh was softer than I had expected, and it gave surprisingly littleresistance.

Iquietly drew the knife from Yahara. Blood spurted out. The blood got on myface, covering up my sight. The warm liquid was sticky and unpleasant.

Yahara"sbody toppled to the floor.

"Youneeded to be eliminated. The world would be better off before you committed asin that could not be undone."

"Isthat so?"

"What...?"

Hiswound should have been fatal, but he simply stood back up as if nothing hadhappened.

"What,you don"t follow? I"m saying you ain"t able to do stuff like that."

Althoughhe was still dripping with blood, Yahara looked down on me.

"Justshut up and die already, d.a.m.n you!"

Istabbed him again. Actually, unsatisfied by his flesh"s give, I stabbed himover and over.

ButYahara just stood up again and again, laughing like a madman all the while. Heseemed completely unfazed by his countless wounds.

"Quitmessing with me... Why won"t you die! Just die! Die! Die!"

Stab.Stab. Stab.

Rise.Rise. Rise.

"Why...why, G.o.dd.a.m.nit!"

Nomatter how many times I stabbed him, Yahara refused to die. He was vomitingblood, his bowels were hanging out, yet he just kept gazing at me with hisprotruding eye and sneering.

"Youcan"t kill me. Not as long as you"re alive, anyway. That"s just how it works."

Hespoke with his tongue hanging out and pointed at me.

I gazeddown at myself in suspicion.

"Wh-!"

My bodyhad been ripped to shreds. Similar to Yahara"s... no, exactly like Yahara"s.

"Why?Why is this happening to me! What did you do to me, Yahara?"

"Wait, Idid something? Heh... I didn"t do jack s.h.i.t, man."

"Then...then what"s going on? Why am I covered in wounds?"

"Wellhot d.a.m.n. You still don"t know what"s going on? Who"s the one holding the knifehere? Who"s the one stabbing away? Who"s the nutcase here?"

It wentwithout saying, it was—

"Right,it"s you. You"re the one f.u.c.king yourself up."

Yaharacaressed my cheek with a blood-soaked hand.

"C"mon,brother. If you wanna kill me, all you gotta go do is drag your sorry a.s.s tothe top of a cliff and take a dive."

Once Irealized the meaning of his words, my dumbfounded face must have been quite thesight. Unable to hold it in, Yahara clutched his viscera-drenched stomach andgave a booming laugh.

"Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!"

He keptlaughing.

"Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!"

BeforeI realized it, I was laughing too.

It wasso funny I couldn"t help but laugh.

It wasthe same thing, after all.

Yaharalaughing and me laughing were the same thing, after all.

Ourvoices overlapped and joined into one. They were the same from the very start.There was no way Yahara, who didn"t have a body, could laugh, which meant thatI was simply laughing by myself.

If youput the two of us side-by-side in a mirror, we were reverses of each other. Wewere like opposites. But when looked at from the right angle, opposites wereactually identical. It was like how hatred, the opposite of love, was closeenough to its counterpart that they could practically be called the sameemotion.

Blackand white a.s.similated with each other.

Inrecognizing that, I made it my strength.

I hadaffirmed who I was.

I founda suitable "stepping stone," so I set my plan into action. It wasn"t somethingI had planned, but rather a stroke of good fortune. My mind was clear, and Iwasn"t about to let a chance like that slip away from me. All that was left todo was fasten a rope to the roof and place Yamazaki atop the "stepping stone".

Exaltedat this favorable turn of events, I was beginning to make my way home when Ispotted something that surpa.s.sed all my expectations.

Igasped reflexively.

Wasthat Kouta Hiiragi and Ririko Matsumi having a conversation?

RirikoMatsumi. One of the people I was cautious around. While she wasn"t exactlyevil, she was an inorganic substance whose existence held no meaning. Becauseshe was inorganic, she couldn"t interact with humans.

But evenin the face of such an inorganic ent.i.ty, Hiiragi was speaking to Ririko Matsumias if they were old friends.

Whatexactly was going on here?

Thiswasn"t something I could simply overlook. I rushed over to Hiiragi and askedhim about his relationship with Ririko Matsumi.

"Idon"t know about close, but we"ve talked a few times."

He"stalked with that inorganic substance "a few times"? How was that even possible?

An oddsense of unease washed over me. The fact that Hiiragi was abnormal in thatregard was a conclusion I arrived at not from reason, but from instinct.

"Dohave a habit of getting involved with people like her?"

Concealingmy emotions, I dug deeper.

""Peoplelike her"?"

"Forgivemy wording, but people with problems. Ririko Matsumi, Masato Yahara, andperhaps we should count Miki Kouzuki as well."

"It"snot like I"m intentionally hanging out with weird people..."

"Butyou"re awfully close to a number of them. And you don"t seem to be particularlyclose to anyone else."

"Imean, it"s true that I don"t have many close friends..."

"Andyou say that you don"t seek those kind of people out deliberately? If that"sthe case, then perhaps you hold some sort of fascination from theirperspective?"

Hiiragiwas the kind of person who seemed harmless at a glance. His interactions withMasato Yahara initially put me on guard, but if it hadn"t been for that Ilikely wouldn"t inspected him at all.

Butthat was exactly why it was such a serious problem.

If itturned out that Hiiragi was truly a man who needed to be eliminated like Yaharaor Yamazaki, then that meant that a problem individual was hiding withinsomebody I couldn"t currently get a read on. If that was the case, then thatmeant that the range of people I needed to kill was much wider than I thought.There would be no end to them.

Howlong would I have to carry this purge out for?

Suddenly,Hiiragi realized that I was looking at him with wide eyes. That wouldn"t do. Myemotions were showing.

Iexhaled and calmed my expression.

"Iapologize. It would appear I"ve said some rather untoward things. Please forgetI said any of that. I guess the incident has just made me a littlehigh-strung."

If Iwas simply high-strung, how high-strung should I be?

Thefirst thing I needed to consider was why Hiiragi had gotten so close withYahara. There were as many detriments to being around him as there were starsin the sky. As a matter of fact, Hiiragi had earned the trepidation of hiscla.s.smates, and had been unable to make any close friends since. And byspending time with a delinquent, he found himself in the teachers" bad books aswell.

But inspite of all that, he had gotten close to Yahara. Such a thing would beunthinkable would proportionally large benefits.

Occam"srazor would dictate that there was some manner of utility value in thatrelationship.

—Utilityvalue. Was he was interested in the stimulants? Was he interesting in sleepingwith women Yahara could provide him? No... a man with desires so base wouldhave been outed as evil in an instant. The fact that he was not obviously evilwas the problem.

Whatother benefits could there be, then? What could Masato Yahara even be used for,save stirring the flames of his homicidal urges in order to have him killsomebody? And n.o.body save a demon would wish for—

—wait,have him kill somebody?

Wasthat line of thinking truly so irrational as to be worthy of immediaterejection? At any rate, I myself was on the brink of being killed. That was theunwavering truth.

...Whatif, and this is only a hypothetical, what if it was possible to manipulateYahara"s actions?

I hadto remember the scene I had just seen. Kouta Hiiragi was talking familiarlywith the machine girl, Ririko Matsumi. He was even going out with theself-proclaimed magus Miki Kouzuki. Was it possible that the two of them hadbeen teaching him ways to manipulate others? Was I leaping to conclusions?...But even if it wasn"t to that extent, the fact that Hiiragi"s circ.u.mstanceswere peculiar was true beyond a doubt.

Indeed,something about Kouta Hiiragi was clearly making me uneasy. There was somethingabout him that was different from other people.

"I"mworried about you, Hiiragi."

Withthose words, I tested Hiiragi. If he was the kind of person I needed to worryabout, he might understand what I truly meant.

Iprayed that Hiiragi would take my words normally. I didn"t want to believe thatthere was a strain of evil in this world so wily that I couldn"t immediatelyidentify it.

Butmuch to my regret, Hiiragi"s face scrunched up at my words" disagreeablenature. He had clearly picked up on their implication.

"Whatdo you mean by "worried about"?"

Perhapstrying to trick me, he asked an innocent-sounding question.

"Hmm? Imean that I"m worried about you getting caught up in this incident, of course.What else might I mean?"

Iconsidered Hiiragi"s reactions up until this point. It seemed likely that hepossessed powerful mind-reading abilities. There were too many things thatdidn"t make sense otherwise.

Now,let"s examine the facts once more.

Wouldit have been possible for Hiiragi to have been manipulating Yahara?

Theanswer was that it would. Given his level of mind-reading ability, it would bepossible to antic.i.p.ate how the other party would react to what you did andsaid. If you applied this knowledge, you could intentionally say and do thingsto influence the other party.

Iwasn"t sure as to what extent this ability could accomplish. But there was onething I was sure of.

KoutaHiiragi would have been capable of meddling with Masato Yahara"s murder.

Themotive was straightforward. When possessing that much power, it would be onlyhuman to want to test it. And it went without saying that manipulating adeviant like Yahara would be far more entertaining that manipulating an averageperson.

Hiiragiwas putting his revulsion towards me on full display, so I asked him aquestion.

"What"sthe matter?"

"...Ihave to get going."

He leftwithout answering, practically fleeing. He might have caught a glimpse at mythoughts just now.

Ididn"t know the degree to which Hiiragi had influenced Yahara"s actions. Butthe conclusion was clear.

—Thefact that I was almost killed was Hiiragi"s fault.

Adifficult wrong to forgive.

Avillain I needed to eliminate.

"...He"snext."

AfterRyuusuke Yamazaki, the next person I would eliminate was Kouta Hiiragi.

Nowthen, a decision becoming reality warrants but a short digression.

Thatnight, Ryuusuke Yamazaki fell from the school roof and died.

He diedbecause he had to die.

That"sall there was to it.

As Iemotionlessly watched Yamazaki"s fall from the school parking lot, I consideredhow best to corner Kouta Hiiragi.