The Deceiving

by Jin (Shizen no Teki-P)

  At the same time, I can’t just lie here.

  Summoning all the strength that remained, I managed to stand back up. The effort left me panting.

  Despite all the suffering I had gone through today, all the pain signals my body transmitted into my brain before were gone.

  As I figured, the man standing tall in front of me had a sparkling new knife in his hand.

  Swinging blindly with my fists would be nowhere near enough to dispatch him now.

  In fact, as far as I could imagine, there wasn’t any way I could so much as scratch him.

  But I didn’t need to worry about that. Just stopping him for a few moments would work well enough.

  I glanced at my mother. Tears rained from her eyes as she screamed at me.

  Sorry, Mom. I don’t think you’ll be seeing that jewelry again.

  Sorry I was such a failure. An idiot.

  But I’m gonna stop this guy for you. Long enough that you can get away, at least.

  At the very least, right at the end, I want you to think to yourself: I’m glad I gave birth to him.

  I turned back toward the man, releasing the force in both legs in order to ram my entire body into the enormous frame of the man facing me—

  I tried to, anyway.

  The moment I took a step forward, the man was slammed against the wall.

  My mother had rammed herself against him first—the no-longer-new knife buried deeply in her chest.

  That took me a little longer to comprehend.

  My mother tried to plead something with her eyes, her face twisted in pain, but all I could do was stare dumbly at her.

  It was only when the man removed the knife from her, fresh blood flying in the air, that something snapped in my mind.

  I couldn’t hear anything any longer, but I think I probably shouted something.

  But it couldn’t have been that long of an interval between me leaping at him and him stabbing me in the stomach and stomping me to the ground.

  I lay there, lined up nearly alongside my mother, attacked by the strange sensation of drowning in a frigid pool of blood.

  My mom, through the tears, seemed like she was trying to tell me something through the gag. But, in the end, it never came across.

  I was in an unknown town.

  As far as I could see, there was nothing I could recognize in it.

  There were no familiar colors in the sky above me. The only thing I could see in the inky blackness was a single unnervingly large sphere of some sort.

  Yes. This was night.

  I…or, really, any children like me…didn’t know about the night.

  A world for grown-ups, partitioned away from the day, brimming with light.

  A world just for adults, one I must never set foot upon.

  A world of darkness, one that swallowed up my mother and took her away at regular intervals.

  …I always hated the night.

  The sound of my shoe against the concrete rebounded off the walls of the buildings, echoing tinnily against my ears with each step forward.

  The wind that blew was cold and uninviting, whispering something dark and ominous to me as it breezed past.

  Whenever the miasma of crisp neon in the night entered the corner of my vision, I turned away. It felt like something I must never look at, lest something awful happen.

  It felt gross. Nausea began to take me.

  I was seized by something resembling dizziness as I kept going down the road, not knowing where it would end.

  “Hey, kid, you shouldn’t be here.”

  Suddenly, it felt like someone was whispering in my ear.

  “You’re still a kid, aren’t you? You have no idea what the night is like. Get on back home, okay?”

  “…Like you’ve got a right to say that. What do you know?”

  “Oh, everything. I’m a grown-up.”

  The voice, which seemed permanently attached to my ear, began to gradually enrage me.

  “Stop treating me like a kid!”

  The whispering voice began to emit a shrill, piercing noise.

  It sounded a bit like someone laughing, a bit like a snake sticking its tongue out at me.

  “You’re a hopeless case, aren’t you? You just blundered your way blindly into here. I can tell. So listen. What I’m trying to tell you is, you have no comprehension of the most important thing in the world.”

  The voice was shriller than before. It felt like its lips were practically touching my earlobe.

  “The most important thing?”

  The moment I asked, the echoing steps stopped. I didn’t stop walking, but the sound muted itself out.

  I looked around, surprised, only to find the shimmering neon, the building walls, even the moon floating above whirling around me.

  “What’s happening?!” I shouted. But I could no longer hear my own voice.

  A boundless darkness, a black that no light could shine through. Even my own trembling frame seemed to melt into the void around me.

  “Can’t you see them? The ‘lies’ that infused themselves into this place?”

  I felt like the whispering voice was coming from inside me now.

  “Grown-ups make the lies creep into the darkness. That’s how they protect their own hearts and minds.”

  I couldn’t understand what it meant. I felt boxed in, unable to breathe. Get me out of here.

  “Do you understand, boy? This is the night. A grown-up world you have no clue about.”

  …What are grown-ups?

  Why did my mother ever have to venture into that world…?

  “Do you want to know? If you want to know…you must forget about that pure, unblemished heart of yours.”

  Forget my heart?

  “Yes. In the deep, dark, solitary world of the night, there is no need for a heart at all. All you need are ‘lies.’”

  My consciousness, which I had so valiantly tried to keep intact, finally began to give on me.

  Everything I owned felt like it was being melted into the darkness.

  The final words were the only thing that registered in my dwindling consciousness, seeping into my fading heart.

  “You must deceive them all, boy.”

  YOBANASHI DECEIVE 2

  Summer was over.

  The stifling heat and the cries of a million insects all vanished somewhere without a trace, leaving me alone.

  I lay flat in my room—really more of a storage closet—continuing to live and breathe, nothing to do today or any other day.

  After my mother was gone, I was passed around from this place to that for a while before winding up here.

  The couple who owned this building I was in were related to my mother, apparently. Not by blood. Really, it couldn’t have been a shallower relationship.

  Two months have passed.

  I, the lone survivor, didn’t even think about dying.

  The experience made me realize that any reason I had for living, or dying, was defined purely on the basis of me having a mother.

  Even if I died here, what would that accomplish?

  No matter what I did, I would never see my mother again. It was all meaningless.

  The only thing that didn’t change was that I was still my mother’s son.

  If I, left alone, did anything to cause trouble for other people—especially dying, most of all—I’d never be able to explain it to her.

  It was nearly impossible for me to stand.

  So I kept living on as the meaningless days passed, one after the other.

  That seemed like the most intelligent approach to take.

  I was lying on my back, staring listlessly at the ceiling, when a chill breeze from the open window pushed into the room.

  If I was sure about anything right now, it was that this couldn’t last.

  I needed to become stronger, I needed to find work, I needed to eat.

  But before all that, I needed to grow up…

  The moment the words “grow up” flashe
d across my mind, I felt like something was squirming around within my heart.

  I sat up with a shiver. It seemed to pass. No pain, no difficulty breathing.

  “What was that…?”

  Maybe I shouldn’t have left the window open.

  If I was catching the flu or something, that was seriously bad news.

  I didn’t have the impression that the landlords here were particularly fond of me.

  Me breaking into a fever would make them scowl at me even more, no doubt.

  If I wanted to be fully prepared, I should probably take some cold medicine or something, shouldn’t I? Hmm.

  I think I remembered them telling me where the medicine cabinet was when they were giving me their very hurried tour of the place.

  I didn’t recall the exact location, but if they bothered to show it to me, they must have intended for me to use it.

  “Hmm…Maybe I should ask.”

  Asking for permission along with confirmation would kill two birds with one stone. Let’s nip this in the bud before it gets worse.

  I stood up and left the room.

  Even the hallways of this place exuded elegant refinement. It was positively extravagant, especially compared to the dingy place I used to live.

  Although, really, it wasn’t like I could expect any kind of regular family here, either.

  Maybe this label of “extravagant” is based on the biases created by my upbringing. If someone told me this place was normal, I wouldn’t have anything to fire back with.

  Still, though.

  I never said it out loud, and I never intended to, but the bits of décor installed here and there, the works of art hung on the front-door hallway—I wouldn’t exactly call much of it in good taste.

  Walking down the hall, I went face-to-face with an ominous-looking bit of sculpture. I couldn’t tell whether it was supposed to represent an animal or something, but there it was.

  Probably some kind of souvenir from one overseas trip or another.

  I knew the sculptor wasn’t at fault for it or anything, but as the person who had to dust it every day, I wished I could have called him up and said, “Couldn’t you have made this a little less intricate?”

  Passing it by, I opened the door to the kitchen and went inside.

  It was almost time for dinner. If the lady who ran the house—I called her my aunt, because I couldn’t call her “ma’am” forever—was there, that would’ve made things simple for me.

  But my aim must have been off. Nobody was around in the kitchen, and judging by the pile of dishes taken out of the dishwasher, dinner wasn’t going to be ready anytime soon.

  “No one, huh…? Hmm. Now what…?”

  I didn’t quite have the nerve to run up to my aunt’s room and ask her where the medicine was. But it made me feel awkward to just sit and wait for her, too.

  Luckily, though, my trip to the kitchen helped jog my memory of the location a little.

  I thought I remembered it being in one of the drawers in the tea cabinet.

  No point obsessing over it all day. I’ll just try opening a few and see what pops out. If I find it, I’ll take a dose and go back to my room.

  I took a step toward the large wooden tea cabinet that loomed large on the other side of the kitchen.

  But—and there’s no reason why I shouldn’t have just ignored it—for some reason, I shot a quick glance toward the pile of dishes.

  Next to the stack of elegantly designed kitchenware, there was a single knife laid on top of a washcloth.

  It was the same type that man used to stab my mother back on that day.

  A shiver ran down my spine as my heart skipped a little.

  It wasn’t the knife that took my mother’s life, of course. This one was well-worn and clearly used, for example.

  I reached out to have a closer look.

  Grabbing the handle and picking it up, I realized the knife had some heft to it.

  It was every bit the equal of the rest of the house’s furnishings. It must have cost someone a bundle.

  “…Geez, Mom. You bought something as nice as this, and you died without ever using it…”

  My mother was remarkably chatty the day she bought that cutlery set.

  She pretty much forgot about it the next day, but at the time, her eyes practically sparkled as she went on about it, like, “I can make some really nice dishes with these” and so on.

  Thinking about that subjected me to a sudden onrush of loneliness.

  My mother’s face, her voice, her scent floated into my mind, as fresh as new.

  Mom…

  “Yaaaaggghhh!!”

  The scream threw me out of my trance.

  Turning my head, I saw my aunt at the edge of the kitchen, just about ready to start with dinner.

  Her face was taut, like a ghost just crossed her path. Abject fear was written across it.

  Oh, no.

  The sight of me holding a knife must’ve startled her.

  “Oh, I, I’m sorry! I was just looking at it a little!”

  Hurriedly, I placed the knife back on the washcloth and held my palms out at my aunt, virtually in self-defense.

  I had no intention of attacking her at all, of course, so this seemed like the best plan of action.

  Hopefully, this would calm her down a bit. I didn’t want to give the wrong impression and have her call the police on me. That would be bad.

  But.

  Not only did my aunt not breathe a sigh of relief—her face grew even paler, more pallid, as she began to tremble.

  Something was clearly wrong with her. I had no idea what was paralyzing her with fear so badly.

  Just as I opened my mouth, searching for some way to defuse the situation, my aunt began speaking in a half scream, half gibber.

  “Wh-why, why are you…?! Do, do you have some kind of grudge against us?!”

  A grudge…? I had no recollection of anything like that.

  If anything, I was honestly glad they gave me free room and board.

  “No, I…Um, if you could just calm down a sec…”

  I still couldn’t fathom my aunt’s behavior, but in a valiant attempt to ease this misunderstanding, I took a step or two toward her.

  I was still waving my open palms left and right at her. I couldn’t have possibly looked hostile to anyone…

  “Ahh—aggghghhh!! G-get away from me!”

  The effort was in vain. With a crazed shriek, my aunt made a flying dash for the hallway.

  “Ahh! H-hey, wait a minute!”

  I wasn’t sure my aunt heard me as she opened the front door and ran off to points unknown.

  The only thing that echoed across the elegant manor was the loud slamming of the door behind her.

  Ah, crap. Crap, crap, crap.

  This was getting way out of hand.

  I had no intention at all of doing…whatever I did. This had to be some kind of gigantic mistake.

  “Wh-what should I do?! Ahhh…”

  I stood there for a minute, shaking my head at myself, hand to my temple. This inexplicably failed to reverse the course of time.

  Great. Why did I have to go and do something like that again?

  I should have just stayed there, in my room, and been a good kid.

  If I didn’t think about something as stupid as taking some medicine as insurance against the flu, none of this would have ever happened…

  I shot a cold stare at the knife, ruing its very existence.

  It was that thing’s fault, too.

  How much grief is it going to put me through until it’s happy?

  Something about the elegant blade, glinting in glee at my misery, made me want to scream with anger.

  I knew it wouldn’t accomplish anything, but I swiftly took up the handle again.

  Let’s just throw this away somewhere. No—it’d be better for me if I sold it off. My mind ran circles around itself for a moment before I caught sight of the blade’s mirrorlike surface.

&
nbsp; “…Huh?!”

  I was astonished. The impossible sight before me made me drop the knife at once, sending it clattering to the floor.

  I brought a hand up to feel my face. Nothing seemed wrong with it. There was no way to confirm what I just saw unless I took another look.

  Out of the kitchen I fled, passing by that tacky sculpture again as I tore into the bathroom.

  The moment I made it in, I found myself in shock once more at the sight in the mirror above the sink.

  “Wh-why?”

  The sight before me wasn’t the familiar one I knew. It was my mother, in the flesh.

  If this were me being reunited with my real mother, I would’ve immediately flown into her arms.

  But that could never happen. My mother was dead.

  It was strange, though, how coolheaded my mind was when faced with this bizarre sight.

  I approached the mirror, giving myself a pinch on the cheek.

  The face itself was beyond a doubt my mother’s, but the feedback my fingertips gave me indicated something else.

  I spent a few more moments staring at the mirror.

  Opening and closing my mouth a few times, I saw my mother make the exact same motion in the mirror.

  There was no denying it. It was me.

  What could have caused this? I had no clue whatsoever. But here I was. In the form of my mother.

  The moment the thought struck me, I heard the gears begin to click together in my mind.

  Is this what my aunt saw before she screamed her head off and bolted?

  Well, no wonder she was acting like that.

  Just when she went down to the kitchen for dinner, she saw her dead relative standing there, well-polished knife in “her” hand.

  I couldn’t blame her for running. If that were me, I would’ve hugged her, but…

  But what was I going to do now?

  Staring at the mirror and whispering “I’ve been dying to see you” was both nonproductive and more than a little creepy.

  I needed to regain my original looks as soon as I could.

  My aunt was probably summoning the authorities right now. I didn’t have the time to stand around here, looking like (also, at) my mom.

  Then again, would the police really come running if a hysterical woman went up to them and said, “My dead half-sister-in-law (or whatever it was) is in the kitchen with a knife!”?