Vigil Before the Murder
A murder had taken place in front of the mansion.
My memories after going out for a walk that night were hazy.
Yet when I pieced those murky fragments together, what I had done became all too clear.
Like SHIKI, I had a weak constitution when it came to the scent of blood. Just seeing it was enough to cloud my mind.
The flow of blood from this corpse was especially beautiful. The stone path leading to the mansion resembled a maze fractured into countless branches. The red lines racing through those gaps held an elegance I had never witnessed before.
But that was my undoing. Feeling a presence behind me, I turned my head and found someone staring straight at me. It was Akagawa Tohru.
Why had he been there? I couldn’t understand it. At the time, I felt no need to question it.
Yet the moment our eyes met, a cold sensation crawled up my spine. The heat that had been rising inside me froze over, turning unpleasant. I went straight back inside the house.
The discovery of the incident seemed to happen much later. The police came, but the family sent them away. I vaguely recall hearing a request for cooperation in the investigation.
Had he said nothing? My name never came up in their conversation. If that was the case, then the person I saw must have been a dream. After all, that strange classmate had no reason to shield a murderer.
The thought sent a sharp ache through one side of my chest. This feeling was new to me. Had something gone wrong with my body? It was a kind of pain I had never experienced in sixteen years of life. My mood sank.
“SHIKI.”
Even when I called out, no answer came.
SHIKI and I were out of alignment. The gap grew wider every day. Even if I surrendered the body to SHIKI, the right to decide remained mine. So why were the memories misaligned?
Was I, too, going insane like the others who carried the Ryougi blood?
“A mentally ill person who is aware of their own illness is nothing but a fake.”
To someone truly insane, the world around them simply looks wrong. They never doubt themselves. I had been a little like that too. So why had it taken me until now—sixteen years later—to notice the difference between myself and everyone else?
Because of whom?
“Miss. May I come in?”
Akitaka knocked on the door and spoke.
“Come in.”
It was right before bedtime, so he only opened the door and remained outside.
“It appears someone is lurking nearby, keeping watch over the house.”
“I heard Father drove the police away.”
“Yes,” Akitaka nodded.
“It is not the police. Tonight it seems to be someone else…”
“Do as you please. It has nothing to do with me.”
Akitaka would never normally have brought this up. He had been attending me far longer than I remembered. Yet today he was strangely persistent.
“The one watching appears to be one of your classmates, Miss.”
I rose from the bed. I walked to the window that overlooked the distant gate, parted the curtains slightly, and looked outside. A dense bamboo forest filled my view. Not far from the gate stood a boy who looked equally terrible at hiding and at surveillance.
A metal container that had to be a thermos lay on the ground. The boy, clearly flustered, snatched it up only to drop it again in shock.
When he picked it up once more, it seemed nothing remained inside. He was holding it upside down and shaking it.
“What is he doing?”
The words slipped out as something suddenly surged inside me. The boy turned his head and looked this way in an instant.
Only then did I remember his ability. The power to read another person’s emotions through their words. The family’s investigation had only produced the theory that he could learn people’s thoughts through certain actions. After school one day, when SHIKI had asked about it, he had revealed everything with ridiculous ease.
“My ability? If I hear someone speak, I can tell how they’re feeling. As long as I can hear the words, I know the emotion for sure. Sometimes if it goes out of control I can even pick up emotions without hearing anything. It’s a pretty tiring power, isn’t it?”
He had been far too honest. He carried an unpleasant past. Rejected in his hometown, abandoned by his family. At twelve he had moved to Mifune City alone. His middle-school records were so different from the person he was now that I had instinctively questioned their accuracy.
He had lived in complete isolation, pushing others away and never approaching anyone. He spent his days quietly with no incidents and eventually entered the current school.
Even though his ability was the reason he had been cast out, he showed no reluctance in revealing it. When SHIKI asked why, he answered, “Because it’s you.”
He waves at me.
I closed the curtains.
“If you give the order, I will send him away.”
“There’s no need. Leave someone like that alone.”
I returned to the bed and lay down. Akitaka left the words “Please rest comfortably” and closed the door.
I had turned the lights off. The season permitted no insect songs. Even lying with my eyes closed, sleep refused to come.
In the end I rose again and looked outside. Akagawa Tohru was still in the same spot. Something new had appeared. A brown tent. He had set up a small folding fishing chair in front of it and sat there blankly.
Wearing a thick mountaineering jacket, he exhaled white breaths. He was not an opponent to underestimate. The Akagawa I had seen that night had not been a dream. He was staying here, watching me. I could not guess his true intention, but it was probably to uncover the murderer’s identity.
If I kept watching him any longer I would be noticed again. I closed the curtains once more.
The fact that his surveillance did not bother me only made me angrier. Biting my nails did nothing to improve my mood.
The insane plan of living in the bamboo forest beside Shiki’s mansion to keep watch over her was revised after only one day. It was because Shiki had resumed attending school. I had been chewing cup ramen when she emerged from the gate and headed to class. The moment I saw her I packed everything and followed. That was how I ended up here.
I arrived at school radiating pure exhaustion. Most of the class had already arrived.
“Hey, Mikiya. Thanks a lot for that idea of yours.”
“Akagawa, did you go mountain climbing last night?”
Bits of grass still clung to me, my hair was a mess, and my face and hands felt like ice. I looked like a walking corpse.
“I just felt like enjoying winter camping, that’s all.”
That was how it was. The bell rang for the start of class and I collapsed onto my desk.
When lunch arrived, Mikiya shook me awake. I must have looked dead on my feet, but he said Shiki had been giving me a strange look. I thanked him, wiped the drool from my face, and climbed up to the rooftop.
“Shiki… that sandwich today is pretty unique, huh…?”
She was eating a tomato sandwich. Since I couldn’t imagine the taste at all, I threw out the first thing that came to mind. Her reply was that it had no flavor.
I couldn’t pull myself together, so I lay flat on the rooftop floor. I might have asked if I would fall asleep, but the current weather was at its worst. The subzero cold carried the certainty that sleeping meant death, so I couldn’t possibly doze off.
“Akagawa. On the night of February third…”
“Whoa, whoa. Shiki, we can’t talk about that.”
I brushed her words aside. She looked dissatisfied.
“You were definitely there.”
It was SHIKI’s tone. But the person beside me now was Shiki. The mismatch felt awkward.
“Be clear. Why didn’t you tell the police?”
“I didn’t see anything.”
I took a moment to organize my thoughts.
At first I had suspected Shiki. I soon stopped. What evidence could prove her innocence? What reason was I trying to attach? The real reason I wanted to watch over her was not that.
I looked inward.
“Shiki was simply there, and I saw nothing else.”
Shiki said nothing. Lying down, I couldn’t see her face clearly.
“To be honest, I don’t really understand it myself. I’m trying a little. So that someday I can understand you. In my world where there is only me.”
That was all. Even if Shiki herself suspected her own hands, I believed in her. The reason was simple. I had fallen completely for the girl named Ryougi Shiki. She was like looking at my own past. I wanted to become the understanding person she had never had.
Becoming someone’s strength had been my lifelong wish.
He had ended the all-day stakeout. Instead he began watching from eleven at night until three in the morning. Thanks to that, I could no longer take my nightly walks. The surveillance had continued for two full weeks.
His figure visible beyond the curtains. Sometimes he exercised, sometimes he performed a one-man play, sometimes he simply sat in silence.
I bit my nails.
I had finally realized the truth. He was not trying to expose the murderer. To him, believing in me was the most natural thing in the world. From the very beginning he had been certain I would not go out walking at night, and so he stayed there.
He was there to confirm my innocence. Not for the world’s judgment, but to prove his own belief for himself.
That was why, when dawn came without incident, he would smile with genuine happiness.
Truly believing that the real murderer was innocent.
“Honestly. What a foolish man.”
I mutter the thought. When I am with Akagawa, my heart somehow feels at ease, and without realizing it my words grow clumsy. When I am with Akagawa, emotions I do not recognize rise and then vanish.
It gives me the illusion that I could step into that other world.
But that is a world where I must not exist. A world where Ryougi Shiki who carries murderous impulses cannot be. A world impossible for someone as abnormal as me. A world where a person capable of reading emotions should not exist either.
Even so, he drew me toward him. He planted the hope that I, too, could live in that ordinary world. He made me believe that if we were together, it might be possible.
I who had raised the murderer called SHIKI. That boy who forced me—a mentally ill person—to recognize my own illness.
“Why… for a foolish man like him… do I…”
Even now his clumsy, pure confession appears in my dreams. Each time I knock him down and press a knife to him. The dream ends without reaching any conclusion.
But it cannot be helped. The existence known as Shiki.
In the end, I could not refuse to dream.