Book Girl and the Captive Fool (10 page)

Akutagawa’s house was a Japanese-style building in a quiet residential neighborhood thirty minutes away from school by bus and then another ten-minute walk.

The day after the incident, Tohko and I went over to his house.

The chisel had sliced Igarashi in the chest and throat, and after being treated at the hospital, he was convalescing at home. His wounds hadn’t been serious considering how much blood he’d lost, but he wasn’t saying a word about what happened.

Sarashina had evidently taken quite a shock, and she had stayed home from school as well. Akutagawa had been ordered to stay at home for a while by the head teacher.

Everyone in class had found out about the incident, and the class was already abuzz about it first thing in the morning.

Takeda and Tohko came to my class to see how things were going, wearing gloomy expressions. So did Kotobuki, who had leaned against me trembling yesterday.

“So Akutagawa didn’t come today?”

“I still can’t believe he would stab someone.”

“They’re saying that… Igarashi called him out to talk about Sarashina, and they fought, and then Akutagawa stabbed him.”

“Yeah. But what was Akutagawa doing with a chisel?”

“That’s a good question! That’s weird. I don’t think he took anything with him when he ran out of the auditorium.”

“… I wonder what he’s doing right now.”

“And what are we going to do about the play?”

Kotobuki and Takeda drooped. Trying to cheer them up, Tohko said, “After school, Konoha and I will go to his house.”

I couldn’t mount a protest against that.

I stood next to Tohko at the gate, which was adorned with an inked sign reading
AKUTAGAWA,
and looked up at the house.

“His house is magnificent.”

“… Sure is.”

To be honest, I was overcome by a desire to turn right around and go home.

Even if we saw Akutagawa, I had no idea what we would talk about or what we should tell him. My whole stomach was knotting up.

I didn’t want to do this… I didn’t want to go any farther.

But Tohko went briskly through the gate, and walking across the rocks that were sunk into the ground, she went to the front door and pressed the intercom.

“Yes, who is it?”

A young woman’s voice answered. Tohko told the girl that she’d come to see Akutagawa and the door opened, a pretty girl’s face appearing behind it. She had dyed brown, shoulder-length hair and wore jeans. She looked around twenty years old.

I moved up beside Tohko to greet her, and she introduced herself. “I’m Kazushi’s oldest sister, Ayame.” Then she smiled
awkwardly. “Thank you for thinking of him.” His family must have been upset by what happened.

“Wait here, I’ll go get Kazushi.”

She went up the massive wooden stairs.

“Kazushi, you have visitors. Can you hear me?”

There was the sound of a door sliding open, and Ayame’s cries pierced my ears.

“What are you doing, Kazushi?!”

Tohko pulled her shoes off and went inside, then ran up the stairs. I went swiftly after her.

Ayame stood frozen in front of the open door to a room, her face colorless.

The twelve-foot-square, traditional-style room was in a horrifying state.

The many awards hanging on the walls, the sliding door, the shutters—all were cut up, lengthwise and at angles. Books, notes, and schoolbooks were tossed all over the floor, the marks of wild cuts from a blade left on their covers and pages.

Then there were what must have been homemade cookies or cupcakes scattered everywhere with their crumpled-up wrappers and cute red or pink ribbons beside them. The surfaces of the cakes were spotted with a purple mold that looked like blood pooled in a corpse.

I felt sick and clamped down on my throat.

In the center of the room, Akutagawa sat dressed in a shirt and slacks.

His eyes were devoid of spirit like those of a dead fish, his half-open lips were dry, and he had a tight hold on a folded-up box cutter in his right hand. Blood was dripping from its tip.

The sleeve was rolled up on his left arm, exposing several cuts with fresh red blood flowing from them. A pink rabbit doll lay unceremoniously beside him as he sat in a daze, its head and limbs cut off, soaking up the blood that dripped onto it.

“Kazushi, what—what have you done?! Your arm is bleeding.”

Ayame’s voice was shaking.

Akutagawa murmured, his eyes still dry, “I cut myself… just to see. It’s so easy to cut through… human skin.”

Ayame’s face tensed in horror.

“W-we have to bandage it.”

She reached out to him hesitantly, but Akutagawa swatted her away. His listless face twisted ominously, and a cracked voice broke from his blue lips.

“No! This is my atonement!
Kanomata still hasn’t forgiven me! Kanomata’s wounds still haven’t healed!
”

A jolt went through Ayame, and she froze. Tohko moved past her and took hold of Akutagawa’s hand—the one that held the box cutter.

It was so sudden, I couldn’t stop her. Akutagawa looked up at her in confusion.

“What are you doing here?”

“Because you’re making your friends worry.”

His grip slackened in surprise, and she took the blade from him.

“Hold onto that, Konoha.”

She stretched an arm out to give it to me, and I hastily accepted it.

“Ayame, bring a bowl of water and some towels! And Konoha, you call a taxi!”

Why did the two of us meet?

When I was little in that small classroom.

What I really wanted to cut apart was myself, was you, as we used to be.

You for ordering me to do things that were wrong.

You for never opening your heart to me.

You for continuing to deny me.

I want to cut you into ribbons with a knife.

I want to cut at you until your white face is bloody, until marks are carved all over your skin, until the flesh beneath is weeping pulp.

I want to cut off your legs, your arms, your hands, your fingers. I want to peel off your skin.

Then maybe I would be at peace at last.

Can I go to where you are, Mother?

While Akutagawa was being treated in the hospital, Tohko and I waited with Ayame on a sofa in the lobby.

“Thank you. I’m so glad you two were there.”

Ayame’s face was pale.

All I’d done was call the taxi; Tohko had been the one to wrap Akutagawa’s arm in a towel and stop the bleeding and to force him into the car.

“I wonder what’s wrong with Kazushi. I wonder what’s happened to him—,” Ayame whispered hoarsely. “He’s always been a good student and always been much more serious than we were. He never argued with our parents, and we never argued among ourselves. But now he’s…”

Tohko gently asked, “Something seems to be bothering Akutagawa. Do any of you have any idea what?”

Ayame’s pretty face, which so resembled Akutagawa’s, twisted up, and she looked like she was about to cry.

“If anything was bothering him, Kazushi never… told us or asked us for help.”

Her voice was sad. Tohko’s face fell, too.

“Do you know who this Kanomata he mentioned is?”

Ayame’s shoulders trembled at that question. Her dewy eyes became unsettled.

“If you don’t mind, could you tell us about it?” Tohko urged, and Ayame began whispering in a small voice.

“Kanomata was a girl in Kazushi’s fifth-grade class. But in the second term, something happened and she changed schools.”

“What happened?”

Ayame searched for the words, seeming to find it difficult to speak about.

“She was bullied terribly by her classmates. They would cut up her textbooks or her gym clothes… and then during art class, she cut one of the kids who was bullying her with a chisel.”

A chisel?!

I gasped. Tohko’s eyes widened, too.

Ayame bent her head and tensed her hands, which she kept folded in her lap, with the pain of the memory.

“Kanomata changed schools right after that, but… that day the teacher told Kazushi in front of everyone, ‘It’s your fault this happened.’ He didn’t tell any of us about it, so when we heard it from someone else much later, we were shocked. That person’s little brother had been in Kazushi’s class.”

“What did the teacher mean, it was all Akutagawa’s fault?”

“… I don’t know.” Ayame shook her head. “I heard that Kanomata started getting bullied because Kazushi lied to the teacher, but… it was more than six months after it happened, and I’ve never been able to ask Kazushi about it. And then right after all that happened, our mother was hospitalized. Her health had been in decline for a while, and she’d been in and out of hospitals, but this time they didn’t know when she’d be able to go home, and…”

Ayame’s voice grew fainter and fainter.

“I guess Kazushi thought it was his fault that mom was so sick.
Because her health started to deteriorate after she gave birth to him. He tried not to cause any problems for her, and he learned to do everything on his own and never revealed his problems to anyone.”

My chest… It felt so tight.

The Akutagawa I knew was a top student, serious, always serene, and a great guy that everyone trusted. Had Akutagawa made himself that way on purpose for his mother?

“So after the teacher said that to him, and then Mom went into the hospital for so long, I think Kazushi had a really hard time with it. But all of us had our hands full with Mom and our own lives, so we didn’t have time to worry about Kazushi. He was very mature back then, but he was still only an eleven-year-old boy in fifth grade.”

I could see in Ayame’s drooping expression how sorry she felt for what had happened to her little brother. My chest hurt even more, and my throat tightened.

I couldn’t hear any more of this.

An insidious anxiety spread through my heart.

Once I heard the story, I could never pretend that I hadn’t.

“When I heard that Kazushi had slashed someone with a chisel, it reminded me of the incident in elementary school. And when Kazushi said Kanomata’s name today, I felt like I was being hit over the head… It’s been affecting him this whole time, I just know it.”

Tohko drooped. She heard Ayame out with a pained look on her face.

Just then, Akutagawa returned, a bandage wrapped around his arm.

“Kazushi!”

Ayame ran over to him.

Akutagawa’s face was unnaturally still.

“Sorry to worry you. The cuts weren’t serious. They said they’d heal soon.”

Ayame’s voice broke at how calm he was. “I can’t believe you—you’re supposed to be an honor student. How can you just say sorry for that? I just—I can’t—”

As Ayame started crying, Akutagawa put an arm around her gently. Even though Akutagawa had been the one to cause all the commotion and had been taken to the hospital, it was as if their positions were reversed. His arm still around Ayame’s shoulders, he bowed his head to us.

“I put you two to a lot of trouble, as well. The school still hasn’t decided what they want to do, and things are kind of hectic right now. Could we talk again some other time?”