by Otsuichi
I poked my nose through the gap, checking the room.
There was a futon laid out on the tatami. There the man was sprawled on his back, sound asleep—his mouth half-open, his throat exposed. He was a giant standing up, and I could never have reached his throat to bite, but when he was asleep, the man’s throat was right under my nose.
I slid my body through the gap in the door, entering the room without a sound. The tatami creaked softly as I walked. Yuka stayed at the door, watching. She looked worried.
I was right next to his head now. He didn’t sense me coming, and it didn’t look like he was going to wake up. His eyes stayed shut. The futon was half over his belly, which rose and fell as he breathed.
Something moved in the corner of my eye. I looked and thought I saw a shadow across the window, behind the curtains.
Yuka noticed my look, and she shot me a puzzled frown.
Was there someone outside the window? Or had the curtains moved on their own? Perhaps it was simply the shadow of the tree. I shook my head and put it out of my mind. I had to concentrate on the man before me.
I looked at the man’s face, and when I remembered how he had hurt Yuka, my heart filled with rage.
I turned back to Yuka, staring into her eyes.
We did not need words. I knew what she wanted, what she wanted me to do. I could see it in her eyes.
I slowly opened my jaws.
I would not hesitate. I had done this many times under the bridge.
I bit down.
My teeth sank into the man’s throat. His skin broke, and blood came out. I intended to bite deep, to tear out his throat, but human throats were much stronger than I had expected. My teeth hit something hard, and they would not go deeper.
The man’s eyes opened and he sat up, but my teeth were still in his throat. My body was pulled upward as he moved.
The man looked at me and shrieked in surprise, but not very loudly—critical parts of his throat were already damaged. He hit me in the face with his fist, but I didn’t let go.
Now the man stood up. I hung from him by my teeth, and he shook himself, trying to knock me loose.
I fell to the tatami and rolled.
There was a moment of silence, like time had stopped.
Red drops were falling toward me where I lay at his feet. I looked up, and he was gingerly touching his throat, looking stunned. Part of his throat was torn away, and a lot of red stuff was falling away from the hole. The man clapped his hand over his throat, but the blood seeped between his fingers.
I stood up and spat out what was in my mouth. It fell into the pool of blood on the futon, the piece of flesh I’d torn from the man’s throat.
When he saw that, his eyes widened, and he fell to his knees, scooping it up. He tried pressing it to the wound, but the red stuff kept gushing out. Soon his hand began to shake, and he dropped the chunk of flesh I had bitten off. The man did not pick it up again. Instead, he looked at me, his face a wreck. He looked furious but also like he was about to cry. His mouth opened wide, and he howled. There was a strange whistling sound mixed in with the noise, but it was still loud enough to echo through the room.
Then the man attacked me. He was very strong, and I almost passed out when he kicked my belly.
Yuka screamed in the entrance, frozen there. She didn’t know what to do.
“Run!” I yelled, but she wouldn’t leave me behind.
The man wrapped his hands around my throat. He pushed me down against the bloodstained tatami, spitting horrible words. Blood and spit flew from his mouth in shocking quantities, splashing on my face.
I bit the man’s hand, and he pulled back instantly, giving me enough time to get up and slip through the gap in the door. Yuka and I ran away together.
The man was bleeding a lot, but it didn’t appear as if he was about to die. A dog would have given up by now, but the man did not crumple. Not only that—he was attacking ferociously.
As Yuka and I ran down the hall, a thunderous noise sounded behind us. The man had flung the sliding door open so hard that it had almost broken.
I was scared. There was no way I could kill him. He was so much stronger than me. I could bite him over and over, and he would just stand up and hit me. And if he killed me, then he would go for Yuka after. I didn’t know what to do.
We ran toward the entrance. The man was right behind us, his footsteps getting closer.
From Mama’s room to the entrance, there was one turn, and then the hall was straight. We could be at the entrance in no time at all—yet that time seemed so very long.
We were almost at the door when Yuka shrieked. Her feet slipped, and she went tumbling. She lay in a heap on the floor.
“Yuka!” I cried, and I tried to stop. But I was running too fast, and my body couldn’t stop so quickly. I knocked aside the shoes in the entrance, slamming into the door. Only then did I stop.
I tried to turn around and scramble back to Yuka’s side—but froze in my tracks.
He was standing next to Yuka, blood running from his throat, glaring down at me. He looked so terrifying. He was saying something, but the words were not intelligible.
He took a step toward me, both hands forward, making sure I could not get away.
I couldn’t move. I just stood there, my back against the door. I couldn’t open the door and leave Yuka there alone.
What should I do? Thinking wasn’t getting me anywhere. Rage and regret rampaged through me. He wouldn’t let me attack him again.
I began to give up.
He had hated Yuka and had done terrible things to her, but I had been too weak to save her. No matter how I went up against him, I was powerless, and things always turned out the way he wanted them to. If I had been stronger, maybe then I could have protected Yuka …
His hands were almost on me.
On the floor, Yuka looked up at me.
“Sorry,” I whispered. All I could do was hang my head, turning my eyes away from poor Yuka and waiting for the man’s hands to close around me.
The lights were off, but the morning light came in through the windows, dimly illuminating the room. My head down, I watched the shadows of the man’s hands coming toward me, down the step from the hallway into the entrance, closer and closer.
I’m sorry I couldn’t save you …
Following the shadows of his hands was a line of blood dripping from his throat. It dripped down the step and into the shoes.
I wish we could play together again …
The shadows of the man’s hands reached my shadow. I kept my head down, not moving, but the man’s palms were on either side of my face. I could see his red-stained hands out of the corners of my eyes. His shadow fell over me, like the sun had set and darkness had come.
Yuka …
Tears fell from my eyes.
As they did, I heard something behind me. There was a door behind me, and I heard the sound of shoes on the other side of it. There was a squeak, and then something metal fell onto the floor at my feet.
With my head down, I could see it clatter into view. It gleamed, even covered by the man’s shadow.
The hands on either side of me stopped, taken aback by the sudden noise. There was a silence, like time had stopped.
The sound of shoes came again, but this time, they were moving away. There was a slot in the door for newspapers, and the thing at my feet had been dropped through it. The squeak had been the slot opening.
I knew it was the one who had been following Yuka and me, the shadow I had seen through the window earlier.
I had been dimly aware of his presence, which was why I moved before the man did now. That momentary advantage determined our fates …
†
Eventually, the girl and the dog burst out of the gate and ran off, heading away from the corner where I was hiding. They never noticed me there.
When they were gone, I went back to the house. The front door wasn’t locked. Inside lay the man’s body. He was sprawled on h
is back, and I could clearly see the knife handle sticking out from his heart. There was a trail of blood leading down the hall, and there were red stains all over the entrance. I examined him, being careful not to touch anything. I didn’t know who he was, but I guessed he was the girl’s father. Did she have a mother? I took a photograph and left the scene. I considered taking the knife, but then I decided to leave it there—it seemed like this was where the knife belonged.
As I left, I wiped the door handle with my sleeve, not wanting to leave fingerprints.
I went home, where I found Sakura watching television and doing homework.
“Where’d you go?” she asked.
I told her the convenience store, and then I ate my breakfast.
After, I went back to the girl’s house. As I got closer, I could feel a buzz in the air. When I turned the corner and came in sight of her house, I knew why. Someone had called it in, and the police were there, with a crowd around them, watching.
The red lights on the patrol car shone on the wall of the house. The people in the street were pointing at the girl’s house and whispering; they must’ve been neighbors—housewives in aprons and middle-aged men in pajamas. I stood behind them, looking up at the house, listening to their hushed voices.
It sounded like the woman who lived there had come home to find a man she knew lying in the entrance with a knife in his chest. From this information, I learned that he had not been the girl’s father after all.
Casually, I struck up a conversation with a woman in an apron. I asked about the people who lived there. Even though she didn’t know me, she answered happily, her excitement overcoming her suspicion.
Apparently, a woman lived there with her daughter and a dog. There was no father; there had been a divorce. The girl refused to go to school, instead spending all her time alone in the house with the dog.
According to the woman in the apron, the girl and dog were missing, and nobody knew where they were.
I turned my back on the crowd and walked away. A block away, I passed some kids on bikes, pedaling toward the crime scene like they were on their way to a festival.
†
A set of concrete stairs led from the bridge down to the bank of the river, which was covered in a sea of grass.
It was a beautiful day, and I could see my shadow clearly as I went down the stairs. The grass shone green in the sunlight, and the wind sent ripples across its surface.
When I reached the bottom of the stairs, all I could see was grass, as tall as me. Looking up, I could see the underside of the massive bridge and the blue, cloudless sky.
I pushed my way through the grass until it suddenly opened up before me, and I came out into the clearing. A golden retriever was sitting in the center of it.
The girl was nowhere to be found.
The dog wasn’t tied up or anything. It just sat like a statue, surrounded by the wall of grass, as if it had known I would come. It had distinguished, wise eyes. A beautiful dog, I thought.
I had thought the girl and her dog might be here, but I had been only half right.
I went over to the dog, putting my hand on its head. The dog didn’t seem scared, and it allowed me to touch it.
There was a piece of paper stuffed in its collar, which I pulled out.
“To the person who gave me the knife,” it said.
Apparently, it was a letter from the girl to me. The girl had noticed me, and she had guessed I might come here.
The letter was torn out of a notebook and written in pencil. It must have been written on the stairs, and the letters were hard to make out.
I read it. It was scattered and incoherent, but I could follow the general idea. She mentioned why they had been kidnapping pets and why they had been doing what they did under the bridge. She explained about the man’s violence and thanked me for giving her the knife. It was a very childish letter, but I could tell she had worked hard on it.
At the end, she asked me to take the dog. It must have taken her a very long time to write that. It had been erased several times, and it must have been hard for her to write. But I knew she had guessed the dog would be put down if she took it with her.
I put the letter in my pocket and looked at the patient retriever. It had a collar but no leash. I wondered how I would get it to come with me or if I should just leave it there.
Yesterday, the girl had beckoned to the dog and it had come, so I tried the same, and the dog obediently followed me.
It followed me all the way home, walking right behind me. I figured I’d forget about it if it turned away, but it never did.
My parents weren’t home, but Sakura was in front of the TV doing homework. When she heard the dog come inside, she turned around and yelped. I told her it was ours now. She was surprised, but she got used to the idea quickly; it was far less shocking than finding corpses. She began thinking up names for the dog, but I stopped her. I had heard the former owner call the dog by name under the bridge, and the same name had been written in the letter. I told her the dog was named Yuka.
I remembered peering in the window of the girl’s house that morning. I had done so just as the girl bit down on the man’s throat. At first, I had no idea what was going on—but now that I’d read the letter, I understood. The dogs the girl had fought and bitten to death under the bridge had all been practice, preparation for killing that man.
I left Yuka with Sakura, sat down on the sofa, and read the letter again. It was written in pencil, and she had pressed very hard, like most children did. I had to puzzle it out one letter at a time. It was clear she worshipped her dog.
I thought back on the night before. That girl had occasionally looked at the golden retriever before acting. Not wanting to get them dirty, she’d removed her clothes before fighting the dog.
She talked about the dog like it was the voice of God. In the letter, she claimed to understand Yuka’s words clearly.
“How did we get this dog?” Sakura asked.
I told her it had belonged to a friend of mine, but the stepfather had hated dogs and had been mean to it, so the friend had asked me to take it in. It wasn’t far from the truth. The girl’s letter had described how her mother’s boyfriend had hurt the dog and how she had been driven to kill him because of it.
“Who could be mean to a dog like this?” Sakura exclaimed, indignant. Yuka tilted her head, looking up at Sakura with deep black eyes. I couldn’t tell if Yuka knew as much as the girl said she did. That girl might simply have been seeing her own reflection in Yuka’s eyes.
My cell phone rang. It was Morino. I left the dog with my sister and went upstairs. Morino told me about a murder that had happened right in our neighborhood.
“We were on that road the other day! It happened right where we were! The wife found the man just inside the entrance.”
“Yeah,” I said. I explained how there had been teeth marks on the man’s neck, a trail of blood from the bedroom to the entrance—and how the knife that had ended the victim’s life had been handed over to the killer by someone else.
“How do you know all that?”
“You see, the girl we passed that day is the killer,” I said, and I hung up.
I liked watching criminals, but I had a rule: I was always a third party, and I never got involved. I had broken that rule this time. I’d seen the girl and dog run toward the door, the man coming after them. And before I'd known it, I’d given the knife to the girl.
I didn’t consider this a bad thing. It didn’t bother my conscience at all—presumably because it hadn’t been my will. I believed the knife had seen the future, and the knife just wanted it to happen.
†
A few hours later, the missing girl was found wandering aimlessly, and she was taken into protective custody. There was blood on her mouth and clothes, and she’d been found alone, in the middle of nowhere.
I learned of this via a message to my phone from Morino, a message I read in my darkened room. My room was quiet—I never list
ened to music—and I could hear Sakura happily playing with the dog down below.
I closed my eyes and imagined how the girl must have played with the dog under the bridge, on a hot summer day, with the green grass all around them.
i
I have a classmate with the family name Morino whom I talk to occasionally. Her given name is Yoru. If you read the names together, you get Morino Yoru, or “the woods at night.” Her hair and eyes are both jet-black. Our school also has black uniforms, and Morino always wears black shoes. The only color anywhere on her is the uniform’s red scarf.
The name Yoru matches Morino’s black-clothed figure perfectly. Her commitment to the color is so great that I imagine if the darkness of night were given human form, then it might well look like her.
In direct contrast to all that black, her skin is pale like the moon, as though it’s never known the sun. There’s no flush of health; she seems to be made of porcelain. There’s a small mole under her left eye, and she has a mystic air, like a fortune-teller.
I once saw a girl with a similar air in a movie, a movie that opened with a couple drowning. The rest of the film depicted their attempts to adjust to life after death. The leading ghosts were invisible to normal humans—but eventually, they found a girl who was able to see them. That girl was the heroine of the movie, and her name was Lydia.
“I’m basically half-dead myself,” Lydia had said, explaining why she was able to see the ghosts. “My heart is filled with darkness.”
Lydia wore all black and was sickly pale. She preferred staying indoors and reading to playing outside, and she seemed very unhealthy.
Some people began calling people like her “Goths.” Goth refers to a culture, a fashion, and a style. If you search for Goth or “gosu” online, you’ll find any number of pages. Goth is short for Gothic but has little connection with the European architectural style. It has much more to do with the Gothic horror novels popular in Victorian London, like Frankenstein or Dracula.
It seems fair to call Morino a Goth. She frequently expresses an intense interest in torture methods and execution devices, and a fascination with the dark side of humanity is a common characteristic among Goths.
