Zaregoto Volume 2 Chapter 1

ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3
My world is the coolest.
Rokumeikan Private University, located in Kinugasa, in Kita
Ward of Kyoto, has a total of three dining halls. Of the three,
the Zonshinkan Chika Dining Hall (lovingly abbreviated to
“Zonchi”) was thought to be the most lively. This was
probably because it had an extensive menu, and it was right
next door to the co-op bookstore.
That day, since I had no class during second period, I went
straight to the Zonshinkan Chika after first period. I’d had no
breakfast that morning—I’d accidentally overslept by a whole
hour—so I thought I might grab an early lunch.
“Man, it’s empty at this hour. Risky business,” I mumbled
to myself, doubting all the while that I was using the phrase
“risky business” correctly. I picked up a tray.
Now, what to eat?
I’m no foodie, so usually I just eat whatever without much
of a fuss. Be it spicy or sweet, I say bring it on. But lately
things had been just a little different.
It was only a month ago that I’d spent a hell of a week in a
place where I’d been served three gourmet meals a day.
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Now, as an aftereffect, my tongue was still stuck in Snootyville.
It had been a whole month since anything had made me
say, “Wow, this is good.” Every time I ate some-thing, it
always felt like something was missing, like some key ingredient
was lacking.
It wasn’t enough of a problem to merit being called a problem,
but I sure was sick of feeling that way. As far as solutions,
I had already thought of two.
The first was fairly simple: Just eat tasty food.
“Can’t hope for that to happen in a school dining hall.”
But that first suggestion was impossible to follow. Not, anyway,
without heading back to that strange, isolated little island.
I won’t say I was totally against the idea, but I certainly
had my reservations.
“So that’s no good.”
Yes, I was talking to myself.
This left one other possible measure, and it was a strongarm
tactic. It was the “beat the child who doesn’t listen” tactic.
Most problems in the world are solved by either giving or
taking.
I made my way to the donburi corner and placed an order.
“Excuse me. Large kimchee bowl, please. No rice.”
The lunch lady gave me a quizzical expression and said,
“That’s just kimchee, son,” but she dished it out all the same.
As if it were nothing, she plopped it in front of me, displaying
an admirable degree of professionalism.
A big, heaping, mountainous bowl of kimchee. I doubt
there was a single tongue in this world tough enough to chow
all that down and still preserve its sense of taste. I nodded
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with satisfaction, placed the bowl on my tray, and settled the
bill.
The dining hall was so empty that I could hardly decide
where to sit. In another hour, the place would be filled up
with students who had cut out of second period early. I was
never a fan of crowds, so I considered myself under a time
limit. I took a seat in the corner.
“Down the hatch,” I muttered, and took the first bite. . . .
This. Was. Awful.
I really had to eat a whole bowl of this stuff? Wasn’t this
what was commonly known as suicidal behavior? What cruel
fate had brought me to this pass? What had I done?
“Is this divine retribution?”
I guess they also say reap what you sow.
From then on, I wielded my chopsticks in silence. If I kept
on talking to myself, people would start thinking I was a
weirdo. And besides, it’s poor table manners to talk while
you’re eating.
And then, just as I hit my limit—my entire head had gone
numb from the tip of the tongue up, I didn’t know what the
hell I was doing, or, for that matter, who I was, or what the
word who meant, and even what the word meant meant . . .
“Yo.”
She sat in the chair across from me.
“Pull that tray back a little, will you?” she said. Then she
pushed my tray toward me and placed her own tray in the
newly opened space. Her tray was laden with a plate of
spaghetti carbonara, some tuna-and-kelp salad, and a bonus
fruit dessert for a grand total of three courses.
Oh, how bourgeois.
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I looked to my right, then to my left. The dining hall was
empty as ever. You could practically call it deserted. So why
had she decided to eat her spaghetti directly across from me?
Probably some kind of dare.
“Oh my God, what is that?! It’s all kimchee!” she exclaimed
at the shocking sight of my lunch. “Wow! You’re
eating a whole entire bowl of kimchee!”
She was wide-eyed, her hands up in the air like she was doing
a banzai cheer. Maybe that was what she was doing, or maybe
she was surrendering. There was also the possibility that she
was just Muslim. Any of these was fine by me, but in reality,
she was probably just surprised.
Her shoulder-length hair had a reddish tint and was done
up in a sort of bob. Her clothes were nothing out of the
ordinary. They were ultra-plain, following the style of so
much of the Rokumeikan student body. All of a sudden, when
she sat down, she seemed much shorter—but then I realized
most of her height had come from her extra-tall London
boots.
She had a young face, so I couldn’t tell if she was my senior
or a peer. Judging by her demeanor alone, it would have
seemed plausible that she was my junior, except that being
that I was a freshman, that was pretty much impossible.
“Hey. Y’know, if you don’t respond, I’ll get lonely and
stuff.” She stared at me with puppy-dog eyes.
“Right,” I finally said. “Who are you?”
I was pretty sure this was our first encounter. But I’d
learned one thing in the past month: This weird little pocket
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of space known as a “university” had an unusually large
number of people who were friendly and genuine. These
strange people would strike up conversations with you like
you had been their close friend for the past ten years—even if
you had never seen them before in your life. For a guy like me
who’s bad at even remembering personal encounters, this made
things difficult from time to time.
And surely this girl was another one of those types. Fearing
the hassle of having to deal with a club invitation or,
worse, some religious thing, I went ahead and posed the above
question.
Doing so launched her into an over-the-top shocked pose.
"Hwa?!” she said. “Oh my God! You mean you forgot? You’ve
forgotten? You freaking forgot?! Ikkun, that’s so cold!”
Huh.
Judging from her reaction, it seemed this was not our first
encounter.
“Ohhh. I am shocked. But what are you gonna do, right?
Yeah, nothing, I guess. You’ve just got a bad memory after all,
right? Well, might as well introduce myself again.” She flashed
both hands at me and gave a full-faced grin. “I’m Aoii
Mikoko!”
This might prove to be a painful encounter.
Whether it was our first encounter or not, this was, to be
sure, my first impression of Aoii Mikoko.
Her story was simple. Mikoko-chan and I were classmates.
Not only were we taking the same core subjects, but we were
also in the same foreign-language class. We had met face-to-
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face a number of times, and were in the same group for the
class training camp before Golden Week. We had even been
paired up before in English class.
“Man . . . from this conversation alone, I must seem like a
total nut for not remembering you.”
“I think you are a total nut!” She laughed lightheartedly.
To be able to laugh so cheerfully after someone had entirely
forgotten her existence took a special kind of vacuousness. I
figured she was probably a pretty nice girl after all.
“Normally, I’d find it pretty disturbing that you forgot me
like that. Or rather, I’d be pissed. But that’s just how you are,
right? Like, you don’t forget the stuff that’s really important,
but you forget normal stuff,” she said.
“Well, I can’t argue with that.”
She was exactly right. One time I had even forgotten if I
was right- or left-handed, and found myself in quite a bind
when I actually tried to sit down and have a meal. To top it all
off, when all was said and done, I turned out to be ambidextrous.
"Okay, and what’s happening with you?” I asked. “Why
aren’t you in class?”
“Class? Well, the thing about that is . . .”
For some reason she seemed abnormally happy. But I got
the feeling that “abnormally happy” was her default setting.
To be honest, even though I’d seen her before, I still could not
remember what she was like normally. But either way, it was
hard to be put off by this smiley-faced girl.
“I’m playing hooky.”
“Freshmen really ought to go to class,” I said.
“Aw, come on, it’s boring. Totally boring. What was it
again? Oh, yeah, my economics class. It’s just a nonstop
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stream of jargon. And it’s like a math class. I’m a humanities
person! And you’re skipping class too!”
“I don’t have a class right now.”
“Really?”
“Yep. Fridays I only have a first period and a fifth period.”
She flung her hands wildly in the air again. “Doesn’t that kind
of suck? That’s like six hours of boredom.”
“Boredom isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”
“Hm, I thought boredom was practically the definition of
‘a bad thing.’ Different strokes, I guess.” She began winding
the spaghetti around her fork as she spoke. Unable to successfully
get it all on the utensil, it soon became a matter of
trial and error. I reckoned it would be awhile before the food
actually reached her mouth. Before I knew it, she had put the
fork down and switched to chopsticks. So much for stick-toitiveness.
“Say . . .” I said.
“Hm? What-what?”
"There are tons of open seats.”
“Yeah, for real. I think this place will fill up pretty soon,
though,” she said.
“But it’s empty now, right?”
“You said it. Something wrong with that?"
“I wanna eat alone, so let’s move along now, honey,” I
wanted to say. But then I saw her smile—a vulnerable smile
that showed she couldn’t possibly have imagined she was
about to be completely rejected—even I had to take pity.
“Nah . . . it’s nothing.”
“Hm? You’re a weird guy.” She gave me the pouty lips.
“Ah, but I guess if you weren’t weird, you wouldn’t be you.
Weirdness is like your identity, right?”
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I couldn’t help but feel like I was being inadvertently
insulted. But then again, it wasn’t as bad as completely
forgetting someone you had been regularly interacting with for
a whole month. So I swept the notion aside and switched my
focus back to the kimchee.
“Ikkun, you’re a kimchee fan?”
“Nah, not particularly.”
“But that’s a ton of kimchee. Not even Koreans eat that
much in one sitting.”
“Well, I have my reasons,” I said as I crammed some
kimchee into my mouth. More than half of it still remained in
my bowl. “Not very interesting ones, but still.”
“Reasons?”
“Try to figure it out yourself first.”
“Huh? Oh, right. . . okay.” Mikoko-chan crossed her arms
and began to contemplate my rationale. Of course, figuring
what circumstances could possibly require my eating an entire
bowl of kimchee wasn’t exactly easy. After just a few
moments of pondering, she let her arms drop back down
apathetically. She really was quick to throw in the towel.
“Oh, yeah, by the way, I had a question for you. I thought
this was a good opportunity to ask you. May I?”
“Uh, sure.”
Wasn’t the phrase “a good opportunity” usually used for
something that came up by chance? As far as I knew, Mikokochan
had come here and sat down in front of me of her own
volition.
Or maybe that was beside the point.
She was wearing the same smile when she posed her
question. “Ikkun, you know how you didn’t come to school
for a while in the beginning of April? Why was that?”
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“Uh . . .” My chopsticks stopped moving. The bits of kimchee
they held plopped back into the bowl. “Uh, well . . .”
I must have had a troubled look on my face, because
Mikoko-chan was quick to start waving her hands around
frantically and say, “Oh, if it’s hard to talk about it, don’t
worry. I was just wondering, that’s all. It’s like, Unsolved Mysteries
Featuring Mikoko-chan.”
“No, it’s not hard to talk about. It’s a simple story, really.
I was just on a vacation. For about a week.”
“Vacation?” She blinked at me like a little forest animal.
Her expressions were also easy to read. It made it easy for me
to talk to her—she was a great listener.
“Vacation? Where’d you go?" she asked again.
“Out to some deserted island in the Sea of Japan, kind of
by accident.”
“By accident?”
“Yeah. A big accident. Anyway, that’s how I got myself
into this kimchee-eating situation.”
She scratched her head, which was probably a natural response.
But I am a fundamentally lazy person, so I couldn’t
be bothered to explain all the details. Or rather, just how the
hell would I?
“Anyway, just a vacation. Nothing particularly deep.”
“Huh. You don’t say.”
“What did you think it was?”
“Oh, nothing . . .” She blushed a bit. “I just thought maybe,
uh, like you hurt yourself somehow and had an extended
stay at the hospital or something.”
How and why such an idea would occur to her was a mystery
to me, but then again, for someone to suddenly take a
week off just after entering a university, there weren’t really
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any other plausible explanations that came to mind. At the
very least, it was a more likely explanation than “I was just on
a vacation.”
“I see. Sort of like a delayed graduation trip.”
“Yeah, something like that. I couldn’t get a reservation, so
it ended up eating into April,” I said with a shrug, but of
course the real facts were totally different. The very idea that I
had “graduated from school” was something I hadn’t
experienced since elementary school. I’d certainly never been
on a “graduation trip.” But all of the circumstances surrounding
what had happened would have required a pointlessly
long explanation, and it wasn’t exactly the kind of thing
I wanted to talk about at length anyway, so I just went with
her interpretation.
“Hmm . . .” She gave a sort of half-convinced expression.
“So did you go alone?”
“Yeah.”
“Gotcha.” And then, just like that, the cheerful smile was
back. It was as if all confusion had been cleared. It was like she
really didn’t put on any façades. She was so straightforward
with her emotions that I almost envied her.
Well . . .
Not really.
“So, Mikoko-chan . . . Why are you really here?”
“Huh?”
“You have something to say, I assume? I mean, considering
you came and sat right here when there’s a whole roomful
of empty chairs.”
“Huh.” She narrowed her eyes and lowered her gaze a bit,
down to my chest. “So I can’t sit with you unless I’ve got
something specific to say to you?”
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“Huh?” This time it was my turn to scratch my head.
She continued talking in the meantime. "I mean . . . am I
bothering you? I just saw you when I was walking by, so I
thought maybe we could eat together.”
“Ah, gotcha.”
So she’d just wanted someone to eat with. I was the type
who preferred doing personal things, like eating, alone, but
there were plenty of people who viewed mealtime and talk
time as one and the same. Surely Mikoko-chan was one of
them. But having unexpectedly decided to skip class, she
couldn’t find a friend to eat with, so she went ahead and
struck up a conversation with the first acquaintance she
happened to see—me.
“Well, if that’s all it is, it’s fine by me,” I assured her.
“Thanks. That’s a relief. I don’t know what I would’ve
done if you had said no.”
“You don’t?”
“Hm? Yeah. Maybe something like this,” she said, pretending
to hold the edges of her tray in both hands. Then she
twisted her wrists in a sudden cracking motion. “Like that.”
“I see . . .” Even if she was just joking, I was a little relieved
I had refrained from saying no. I wouldn’t have put
such a reaction past her, in reality. Someone who expressed
happiness so freely might express anger just as freely.
“Well, I guess I’m free anyway. As long as you just want to
talk,” I said.
"Thanks.”
“So what are we talking about?”
“Oh, umm . . .”
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As I prompted her onward, she began anxiously scraping
her chopsticks together. She was probably trying to think of a
topic.
I may have forgotten who she was, but surely in the past
month it seemed like she’d at least managed to grasp the surface
of my personality. So just what kind of topic would she
broach with me? Me, who was so ignorant, and so lacking in
common sense, that I used to think soccer was baseball played
with your feet? I was strangely interested to find out, as if I
were watching it happen to someone else.
She clapped her hands as if she had suddenly thought of
something. “Don’t you think the world’s gone crazy?” she said.
“Huh? In what way?”
“I mean . . . er, you know, the prowler. Even you must
know about it.”
Even me.
Even me—the phrase was pretty enraging. Except that it
happened that I had no idea who the hell “the prowler” was.
“Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot! Of course I know!” An
angry outburst like that would have been fairly justified, but
"Shut up! How the hell am I supposed to know what that is,
stupid?!” just didn’t have the same ring of validity to it.
“Hm? What’s wrong, Ikkun?” she asked.
“Ah, nothing. What’s ‘the prowler’?”
Obviously I wasn’t looking for the dictionary definition,
one who prowls. She gawked at me in amazement.
"You’re kidding, right? Is this a joke? Ikkun, it’s been all
over the news. There’s no way you could have missed this
if you live in Kyoto.”
“There’s no TV in my house, and I don’t get the paper
either.”
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"What about the Internet?”
“Oh, I don’t have a computer. Don’t really use the ones on
campus much either.”
"Oh my God, Ikkun is a caveman!” she said, sounding almost
impressed in a way. “Is it some sort of ethical policy?”
“Maybe it is, in a sense. How do I put it . . . I don’t like
having possessions.”
“Cooool! You’re like an ancient philosopher! Wow!” She
clapped her hands with joy. I seriously doubted I would have
gotten the same reaction if she knew it was actually for a
practical—and completely lame—reason: My room was just
too small.
I mean, newspapers take up a lot of space.
“When you say ‘if you live in Kyoto,’ do you mean this
‘prowler’ thing is going on here?”
“Yeah, that’s right. It’s made a pretty big splash. ‘Panic in
the Old Capital!’ Some places have even called off field trips.”
“Wow . . . too bad for them.”
“Six people have been murdered! And it’s still going on
right now! With no known suspects!” She had become all riled
up, and there was a hint of excitement in her voice. “He stabs
them with a knife and then flings their guts all around and
stuff! Freaky, huh?”
“. . .”
Let’s set aside the fact that we were in the middle of
eating. After all, I was partly responsible for the fact that the
conversation had veered in this direction. But what did it say
of this girl that she was able to discuss the murder of others
with such absolute glee?
It’s scary how detached people can become.
“Six people, huh? Is that a lot?”
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“Yeah it’s a lot! It’s a hell of a lot!” She almost sounded
boastful in a way, as if she were the one doing the killing.
“Maybe not overseas, but serial killings are rare in Japan! It’s
become quite a sensation, you know.”
“Huh. So that’s why there are patrol cars circling around all
over the place.”
“Yeah. There are people from the mobile police force in
Shinkyôgoku. Makes me think of the Gion Festival.” She
chuckled to herself for some reason.
“Wow, go figure. I didn’t know anything about this.”
As I nodded along with her explanation, somehow I knew
Kunagisa would definitely get a kick out of this. Kunagisa, for
those new to my story, is the short version of Kunagisa Tomo,
one of my few friends. That is to say, my only friend. Kunagisa
Tomo was a nineteen-year-old electronic and mechanical engineering
professional shut-in of the mysterious variety, with
blue hair and a passionate interest in collecting information on
just these types of incidents.
Unlike me, she wasn’t constantly in the dark about what
was going on in the world. In fact, she was essentially an
information-collecting expert, and she was probably already
well aware of this prowler case without my having to say anything
about it. In fact, she was probably already taking action.
“So when did it start?”
“Around the beginning of May, maybe? I think that’s right.
Why?”
“Oh, I was just asking.”
I put the last piece of kimchee in my mouth. My tongue,
or rather the entire inside of my mouth, was completely
mangled. I would probably never take food for granted or say
"this tastes bad” again. If you thought about it, the fact that a
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single bowl of kimchee could so easily destroy all my principles
didn’t say much for my taste buds. Or maybe it was more
of a stomach issue.
“Well, I’m done. See you again sometime.” I put down my
chopsticks and began to get up from my seat.
"Ah! Hold on! Hold on, will you?! Where are you going?!”
Mikoko scrambled to stop me. “Wait a minute, Ikkun!”
“What do you mean, Where am I going’? I’m finished
eating so I figured maybe I’d drop by the bookstore.”
"I’m not done!” I took a look at her tray. Indeed, more than
half of her food was left.
"But I am.”
"Don’t make me sad. Stay with me till I’m finished.”
“Why should I have to do a pointless thing like that?” . . . is
exactly the kind of thing I’m not tough enough to say. I’m
more of the go-with-the-flow type.
“Okay. I’m free now anyway.” I didn’t have anything
urgent to do, and it wasn’t like I was full yet, either.
I figured I might as well eat some real food while I was
there. “Wait a minute. I’m gonna go buy something.”
I approached the register from the opposite direction
(which was against the rules) and took a look at the menu on
the wall, pondering whether I should order the beef bowl.
Geez, it was more expensive than Yoshinoya. Maybe something
else was the way to go.
“Kimchee again?” the lady at the counter interrupted
lightheartedly as I was trying to decide.
“Yes.”
Oops.
I had up and said it.
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“No use crying over spilt milk.” Or wait, was this more of a
“hindsight-is-always-twenty-twenty situation”?
A few dozen seconds later, I received another heaping
bowl of kimchee (this time the lunch lady gave me a little
extra) and sat back down in front of Mikoko-chan.
"What the hell? Am I supposed to be following along with
something here?” she said.
“Don’t worry about it. So what were we talking about?”
“Hm? Uh, what was it? I forgot."
“Gotcha. Well, then you want to talk about class?”
She shook her head firmly.
“Why? There were some things I didn’t really get in first
period today, so I was thinking maybe we could go over it
together. It’s a required class for freshmen, so you must have
gone, right? If you ask me, the professor’s inability to explain
things properly is to blame, but what do you think?”
“What do I think?’ I think that there isn’t a boy alive who
brings up something like this to a girl when there isn’t even a
test coming up!”
I was only kidding, but she seemed seriously put off by it.
“What’s the matter? You don’t like studying?”
“Nobody likes studying.”
“That sounds debatable to me. But if you hate studying,
why did you go to college?”
“Ah, that’s a forbidden question. If you ask that, it’s all
over. I mean . . . everyone’s like that, right?”
It seemed I had inadvertently touched a soft spot, and she
suddenly seemed a bit melancholy. Come to think of it, it
seemed to me that someone had once said Japanese universities
weren’t a place for people who wanted to study, and
that college was just a time to prepare for entering society.
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“Heh, that’s one way to put it.”
“Do you like studying?” she said.
I shrugged.
Of course not.
In fact, I hated it.
“But it’s not bad for killing time. Or as an escape from
reality, rather.”
“Usually studying is the reality.” She gave a heavy sigh.
Then, as if shifting her focus back to her meal, she picked at
her salad for a while in silence.
Hmm. Was a plate of spaghetti, a large salad, and a dessert
really a normal-size portion for a girl under the age of twenty?
I didn’t know anybody fit to use as a standard for comparison—everyone
I knew was either incredibly finicky, ridiculously
gluttonous, or always fasting or something—so I had no
standards for judgment. But seeing as Mikoko-chan was neither
too slim nor the opposite, perhaps it was, at the very
least, an appropriate portion for her.
“Umm, it’s hard to eat with you staring at me like that,”
she said.
"Oh, sorry.”
"S’okay.”
She resumed eating. When she was nearly done, she began
looking my way in a sort of probing fashion. Really, she had
been peeping up at me every so often the whole time, but
now she had suddenly become obvious about it, making eyes
at me like there was something she wanted to tell me.
And indeed, that proved to be an accurate speculation.
As if she had at last made up her mind about something,
she placed her chopsticks down without finishing her dessert.
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She gave a bit of a playful smile as she leaned her body
forward, bringing her face close to mine.
"So, Ikkun,” she said.
“Yeah . . . ?"
“The truth is, I may or may not have a favor to ask you.”
"You don’t.”
“I do.” She leaned back again in her seat. “Are you the kind
of guy who might be free tomorrow?”
“If you define free as not having any plans, then I sup-pose
I’m more apt to say yes than no.”
“Yeah, kind of hard to follow you.”
“That’s just how I am,” I responded as I chewed my kimchee.
“To put it more simply—I’m a free dude.”
“Really? You’re free? Oh, good!” She pressed her hands
together in front of her chest with a look of true joy. To cause
someone such teary-eyed happiness just by not having plans
on a Saturday seemed a bit much.
More important, this didn’t look good. I had the distinct
feeling I was about to get dragged into something.
“I see, I see, so if I’m free, something good happens to you,
huh? One hand washes the other. It’s also kind of like the
food chain. A magnificent circuit, if you will,” I said.
She wasn’t even listening. "Yeah. So anyway, if you’re free
tomorrow, I was hoping we could get together!”
Her hands still pressed together, she tilted them to the side
a bit as if to emphasize her request. It was such an earnest,
imploring pose that it almost felt like foul play. There was
scarcely a male life-form alive that wouldn’t have surrendered
to it. They would want to surrender.
Nevertheless, I refused without mercy.
“No,” I said.
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“Wha?! Why?!” she shrieked. “You’re free, right?”
“Well, yeah. But it’s like I said, I don’t dislike boredom.
Sometimes people like to just spend the day doing nothing,
right? Everyone feels like that sometimes. Everyone wants to
escape the hustle and bustle of the world sometimes, to free
themselves of the hassle of dealing with other people.
Everybody has a right to time to contemplate their own lives.
I just happen to have more.”
“But-but-but! How can you just refuse without even
hearing me out?! That’s crazy! It’s like a bunch of eighth
graders forming a band, but they all end up playing bass!”
It was a pretty great analogy.
On close inspection, it was apparent that she was about to
cry. That is to say tears were already brimming in the corners
of her eyes. This was not a desirable situation.
I looked around. It was about time for the dining hall to
start filling up, and students began trickling in, their numbers
gradually increasing. At this point, I wanted to avoid standing
out (by, say, making a relatively hot girl cry) as much as possible.
But come on, who cries just from one little rejection?
“Okay, okay, just calm down. I’ll hear you out. Come on,
have some kimchee.”
“Okay,” she said, sniffling.
Doing as suggested, Mikoko-chan placed some kimchee in
her mouth. “Uwa!” she peeped, and then the tears really
started flowing. It seemed she wasn’t much for surprises
(which I kind of knew).
“Ahh, hot . . .” she cried out.
“Well, it is kimchee. It wouldn’t be kimchee if it wasn’t
spicy.”
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 2 2
They say there’s also sugar-preserved kimchee, but I always
went with spicy, so I had never seen it. I wouldn’t mind if I
never did, either.
“Ohh, you’re terrible. You’re so mean. . . . Now, what
were we talking about?”
“That prowling killer?”
“No! We were talking about tomorrow!”
Bam! She slammed her hand on the table. It looked like she
was seriously a little mad now. Maybe I had gone too far, I
reflected.
“Umm, do you know Emoto-san?”
“Whether I know her or not, I don’t remember her.”
“She’s in our core subject classes. Her hair is like this.” She
stuck her fists to the sides of her ears, but even with this
striking pose, “Emoto-san” and her hairstyle remained firmly
beyond the grasp of my imagination.
“She’s a pretty noticeable girl. She’s always wearing shiny
things.”
“Huh. Well, I don’t really look at people much. What’s her
full name?”
“Emoto Tomoe. That’s the tomo from wisdom and the e
from blessing."
Interesting name. Sounded like it could do a headstand and
start running around upside down. It felt like it rang a bell, but
I couldn’t put my finger on it. I didn’t want to just toss out
some answer like, “Oh yeah, yeah, I know that chick. She’s
the one with the contact lenses, right?” There was always the
chance that Mikoko-chan would throw it right back in my
face, like, “I tricked you! There’s nobody like that in our class!
Ahahaha, looks like the pants are on the other leg now! Nyanya-nya!”
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 2 3
And then the egg would be on my face, my fraudulence
exposed. Not that Mikoko-chan would do something like that.
“Her nickname is Tomo-chan.”
“That’s not gonna work for me.”
“Huh? Why not?”
“No reason. Just my own personal thing.” I shook my head.
“Sorry. I don’t remember at all.”
“Figures,” she said, laughing. “But if you didn’t remember
me, I guess it goes without saying that you wouldn’t remember
her. If you did remember her, I’d be a little shocked.”
I didn’t quite follow her reasoning, but as long as my lack
of memory made her avoid feeling terrible, I guessed it wasn’t
totally worthless. Something definitely seemed off with the
logic there, though.
“Well, okay. How about Atemiya-san? Atemiya Muimisan?
I call her Muimi-chan.”
“Another classmate?”
She nodded. "Then there’s Usami Akiharu-kun. Akiharukun
is a guy, so you must remember him, right?”
“My memory functions in a gender-neutral environment.”
“But you sure don’t seem like a feminist.”
She let out a big, unintentionally exaggerated sigh. It was
like I had done something wrong. But it was my memory’s
fault, right?
“Anyway, so Tomo-chan, Muimi-chan, and Akiharu-kun.
We’re all going out tomorrow night for a little drinking.”
“Huh. What’s the occasion?”
“It’s Tomo-chan’s birthday!” For some reason she seemed a
tad boastful. It was hard to deny her adorableness as she sat
there with her hands on her hips, chest stuck out. “May fourteenth!
Happy twentieth!”
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 2 4
If this Tomo-chan was a classmate, that meant she was a
freshman. Maybe she had entered college a year late. Or
maybe she was a returnee like me. It didn’t really matter.
“I’m only nineteen, by the way. My birthday’s April twentieth.”
“Huh,” I said.
I didn’t really care.
She continued. “Umm, so anyway, tomorrow’s Tomochan’s
birthday, so we figured we’d throw a really light, casual
kind of party.”
“Huh. Seems like an awfully intimate group for a party.”
“Yeah, well. We all like the rowdy atmosphere thing, but
nobody wanted there to be a ton of people, so what are you
gonna do?”
“Ah. Then four people is pretty appropriate, huh.”
“Huh?” She looked surprised.
“A fifth person would throw off the balance.”
“Huh? What?”
“Well, say hi to everyone for me. And happy birthday to
you.”
“It’s not my birthday! Hey, wait, I mean don’t just get up
and leave! You don’t know the other half of the story yet!”
“Well, they say knowing is only half the battle,” I said.
“That’s not what that means!”
She grabbed me by the sleeve as I started to leave and
forced me to sit back down. But even if the conversation was
only half-over, I could more or less tell what was coming next.
“Okay then. So now you’re going to tell me to partake in
this drinking party . . . or birthday party, rather. Right?”
“Gah! Wow, that’s exactly right.” She flung up her hands
in surprise, but this time it reeked of phoniness. Maybe it
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 2 5
wasn’t that she didn’t put on any façades; she was just a lousy
actress. “Amazing, it’s like you’ve got ESP or something,
Ikkun.”
“Let’s not go there. Not a good subject.” I let out a light
sigh. “How did all this come about? I don’t even know these
people, right?”
“Yeah you do. They’re your classmates.”
Ah, right.
Maybe I had amnesia. I was never good at remembering
people, but lately it had gotten particularly bad. These three
classmates aside, there wasn’t a single person in all of Rokumeikan
University whom I had a clear picture of.
But there was a more likely explanation: that it was simply
the result of my apathy toward other human beings. It had
nothing to do with my mind’s functionality. It wasn’t a defect.
It wasn’t that some essential part was missing, either.
It was just that I was, from the very start, a broken thing.
“Could it be that I’ve just forgotten, and that I’m actually
good friends with these three people? Even I wouldn’t forget
something like who my friends are, I think.”
Mikoko-chan’s expression grew a little sad. “I don’t think
that’s the case,” she said. "You probably haven’t spoken much.
I mean, you’ve always got this narrow-eyed scowl as if you’re
thinking really hard about something or filled with contempt.
Even now. It makes you kind of hard to approach. It’s like
you’ve got a wall in front of you. Or your AT field is fully
operational. And in spite of all that, you always sit directly in
the middle of the classroom.”
I wanted her to leave me the hell alone. I wanted to tell
her not to bother talking to me if that was how she felt. But I
didn’t.
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 2 6
I finished my kimchee. As it turned out, two bowls ended
up being pretty excessive, and I felt dreadful fullness in my
stomach. I probably wouldn’t be having kimchee again for a
long time.
“But you and I are friends, right?” she asked.
“Are we?”
"Yes!” She slammed both hands on the table again. It
seemed she had a habit of hitting nearby things when she got
emotional. I’d have to remember to stay out of range of those
slender arms if I was going to make fun of her. That is to say,
I’d have to stay out of range when I made fun of her. Maybe it
was better to pick on her over the phone.
Er, I mean, why was I planning ways to harass her?
“And, so, naturally, I tell my friends about you sometimes,
right?”
“I guess.”
"And then my friends think, ‘Man, for a guy who’s always
got such a crummy face, he seems kind of cool,’ right?”
“I guess it’s possible.”
“So it’s not so strange that they would want to try being
friends with someone who seems kind of cool, even if he is a
weirdo. Right?”
“Yeah, I guess we all have temptations.”
“So that’s what I’m saying,” she said.
“What is?”
“That.”
She peered up at me with eager, expectant eyes. I pretended
I was drinking tea in order to escape her gaze. But a single
cup of tea sure wasn’t going to be enough to revive my
paralyzed mouth.
"Huh. I understand,” I said.
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 2 7
“You do?”
“It’s a good opportunity and all, so I think I’ll go spend the
night at my parents’ place tomorrow.”
“Don’t make plans’ You didn’t even go home during
Golden Week!”
She slammed the table again. I was a little disturbed that
she knew what I had been doing during Golden Week, but
then again, maybe I had told her and forgotten.
“But you know . . . it’s almost Mother’s Day and stuff.”
“That was last week! And besides, you’re not the kind of
guy who would go out of his way to show devotion to his
parents!”
That was rather harsh. And even if she was right, did she
believe that a seventeen-year-old guy who wouldn’t even go
out of his way for his parents would be any nicer to someone
who was just a classmate? Maybe she was so worked up she
didn’t realize what she was saying anymore.
“Come on, I’m begging you. I already told them I’d bring
you. I’ll lose face.”
“It seems like there’s a misunderstanding here, so let me
clear things up—I’m not the kind of guy you can have fun
talking to. They say I’ve got about as much pep as a storm
cloud.”
“Wow, that’s as disappointing as hearing about two budding
young authors, only one’s poison ivy and the other got
eaten by tent caterpillars." She looked a little somber as she
chewed her lip. “Come on, Ikkun. Do it as a favor to me. I
know it’s selfish of me, but hey, I’ll even pay for drinks.”
“Sorry, I’m not a drinker.”
This was true.
“Why not?”
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 2 8
“I once drank a whole bottle of vodka in one go.” I didn’t
dare tell her how things ended up after that, but at any rate,
ever since then I had sworn off alcohol. I may not be such a
smart guy, but I’m not so dumb that I don’t learn from my
experiences either.
“Wow, not even the Russians do that.” She was truly surprised.
“I see. . . . So you can’t drink. Hm, now what?”
She immersed herself in thought once again. It seemed she
had a firm understanding of what it was like for a non-drinker
to show up at a drinking party. Perhaps she was a lightweight
herself at least to some extent.
Nevertheless . . .
I wasn’t so cold-blooded that I felt nothing for this girl sitting
before me, looking so deeply troubled.
Dammit . . . I get dragged into things so easily. Going along
with something out of pity was one thing. But getting dragged
in just because the situation presented itself was totally lame.
“Okay, okay. As long as you’re okay with me just sitting in
the middle of the room scowling.”
“Hmm, I guess that would be an awful bother for you, but
you know, I think . . . Wait, you mean you’ll go?” she said.
She shot her body forward. Maybe it’s a rude analogy, but
she was like a dog who had just had food tossed in front of it.
A cat would have approached it with some caution, suspecting
the possibility of a trap, but Mikoko-chan was completely unguarded.
She may have physically resembled a cat, but she
was definitely more like a dog in personality.
“Is it really okay? Will you really come?”
“Yeah, it’s fine. I’m free anyway.”
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 2 9
Even I was a little appalled by my own bluntness and
wondered if I couldn’t have put it a little more nicely. All the
same, she shrieked with joy.
“Waaah! Thank you!” She smiled innocently.
I replied by downing the rest of my tea. At some point she
had finished her dessert as well, so it was time I really should
start to leave.
“Ah, wait a sec. Let me know your phone number. I’ll call
you.”
“Hm? Ah . . .” I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket.
“Okay, it’s . . . uh, I forgot.”
“Figures. Okay, then I’ll give you mine, so dial me.”
I entered her number as told and sent it. A ringtone
emerged from her little bag. David Bowie. She had surprisingly
great taste.
“Okay, got it. Hey, Ikkun, your phone doesn’t have a
strap.”
“Ah, yeah. I don’t like that girly stuff.”
“Are straps girly?”
“Well, I’m no expert or anything, but they’re definitely not
very manly.”
“Mmm, guess not,” she said with consternation.
“Well then,” I said, stepping away from my seat with my
tray. “See you tomorrow, Mikoko-chan.”
“Yep! Don’t you forget about me again!”
She gave me a big wave, to which I responded with a small
one as I made my way out of the dining hall. After returning
my tray and silverware, I headed straight to the co-op bookstore.
Of course, being a university bookstore, its main selection
consisted of academic texts, and its recreational reading
selection was fairly limited. But on the plus side there was a
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 0
10 percent discount on everything, and for some reason (I
wonder why) this particular bookstore had an unusually large
selection of magazines, so it got fairly crowded.
I made my way to the novels section and picked one out.
Wait. Huh? Something had occurred to me.
"Wait a minute. Did Mikoko-chan call me ‘Ikkun’?”
Now that I looked back on our encounter, that nickname
she used seemed to stand out. I hadn’t even noticed when
she’d used the nickname—but I didn’t think anyone had ever
addressed me with such an overly familiar nickname in the
past. I thought about it for a moment, but I couldn’t remember.
I had no specific memory of her calling me that before,
but then again, I didn’t remember her not calling me that,
either. After all, I hardly have any memory of Mikoko-chan
herself, much less a trivial thing like what name she called me.
“Eh, whatever.”
Either way was fine by me. Satisfied with that notion, I
began reading the novel inside the store.
Yup.
No big deal.
Hardly a life or death situation.
All was well with the world.
Even if Heaven was empty.
What is a fatal wound?
Cutting off someone’s head.
Yeah, obviously that’s one.
Crushing someone’s heart.
Again, obvious.
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 1
Destroying someone’s brain.
Naturally.
Stopping their breathing.
That’s another good method. Pretty final, too.
But when I say "fatal wound,” I’m not referring to these
trivial sorts of things.
I’m thinking of something else. A fatal wound is an impact
so intense, so devastating, that you fall into a state where
you’re no longer a human—even though you are. You’re no
longer able to lead a life even though you’re living. It means
being ground to bits after falling victim to a relative paradox
created by reason itself.
That is a fatal wound.
In other words, failure.
The key here is the fact that even after a profound failure,
we go on.
The world is brutally tepid.
It’s so kind that it’s cruel. It’s a devil’s Heaven.
To put it plainly, you don’t die by making a big mistake.
Or maybe I should say you can’t die.
Yeah, you don’t die.
You just suffer.
You simply suffer in agony.
And you go on. Forever, wherever.
Meaninglessly, you just go on.
Life isn’t a video game, not because there’s no reset button,
but because there’s no Game Over. Even though it was
"over” long ago, tomorrow shows up anyway. Even when night
falls, morning comes again after it. When winter ends, spring
rolls in. Life is wonderful.
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 2
It’s an absolute paradox—even though you’ve taken a fatal
blow, you can’t die. It’s like asking what a person sees when
he looks backward while traveling faster than the speed of
light. An unthinkable question.
Even though the potential to be you has long since been
cut off, you go on. You do it all over, again and again. You
redo your life again and again.
But it’s like making a million crappy copies, and each time
you make one, your “self” gets a little bit shoddier.
And eventually you get to thinking . . .
Am I really me, or . . .
. . . did I become something else
long ago?
Have I devolved?
Just as the central figure in an incident can’t all of a sudden
become just a disinterested bystander, you can’t become your
own spectator.
And that, my friends, is what’s truly fatal.
“In other words, it’s like mind over matter . . .” I muttered.
As I pondered these fruitless ponderings, I was trying the new
McDonald’s burger. The five hundred twenty-five yen value
combo.
The kimchee must have worked, because my sense of taste
had returned to normal. A McDonald’s hamburger tasted
pretty luscious again. After all, as a Japanese person, there was
no way I could have gone on with my life if unable to enjoy
McDonald’s.
The time was 7:30 in the evening.
The place: Shijôkawara-machi, Shinkyôgoku Street.
After fifth period had ended, I decided I wanted to see
those mobile police Mikoko-chan was talking about for
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 3
myself, and my feet had taken me this far in an effort to kill
time.
Next to the tray with the hamburger on it was a single
magazine. What they call a “weekly infozine.” I had bought it
at the co-op, and on the cover it said, “Feature Story: Jack the
Ripper Resurrected in the Devil’s City!”
“Pretty tasteless.”
The ridiculously apocalyptic feel of the magazine was
actually the second reason I had bought it. The first was that it
featured a big story on the “prowler” incidents Mikoko-chan
had been telling me about.
I shoved two fries in my mouth, added a straw as well, and
sucked down some cola. I started flipping through the weekly.
The first page was set with an all too vivid picture of a corpse
as the background, and in big, Gothic letters, it read: “The
Homicidal Monster Who Shook Kyoto!”
Ominous indeed.
“So they let you show photos like this . . .” I muttered as I
flipped through the pages. I had already scanned through the
details of the articles, so I at least knew something about the
incidents now, if not everything.
The media had dubbed the crime spree the “Kyoto Prowler
Serial Killings.” Not the most imaginative name in the world,
but then again, maybe a case like this didn’t need one. Still,
the word prowler hardly seemed to be an accurate description
of the criminal. I always thought of as a prowler as a sort of
stalker, someone who stalks people on the street and causes
them harm. But in this case the culprit was luring the victims
into desolate areas, killing them with a sharp blade, and finally
dismembering the corpses. It seemed like maybe “serial killer”
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 4
was a better description than prowler. And you could definitely
make an analogy with the Jack the Ripper murders.
“Six people now, huh? Not bad,” I muttered as I stuffed
the magazine back into my bag.
Yeah, six people. Just as Mikoko-chan had said, six people
in less than two weeks’ time was quite a death toll. It was
probably unprecedented. By the third murder, the police force
had been dispatched all over the region for surveillance. Even
the riot police had been dispatched, and yet the murders went
on, as if the killer were laughing at them.
The victims had no apparent connections. They were
young and old, male and female: The killer showed no mercy
to anyone. The police (and everyone else, for that matter) had
deemed these incidents merely a series of acts of random
violence.
Therefore the sixth victim probably wouldn’t be the last.
The killings would go on. As long as this monster remained on
the loose—or until he decided to stop of his own volition—
there would be more murders. Perhaps even tonight. Perhaps
even right now.
“It’s all nonsense in the end, huh?” I stared out at Shinkyô-
goku Street from the entrance of McDonald’s.
It was the same scenery as always. Fewer tourists and students
on field trips, but it was still pretty crowded—a lot of
kids with dyed hair were milling around. I suppose you could
say that this was when they came out to mark their territory.
Nobody, absolutely nobody walking along this street right
now was seriously considering the notion that they could be
the next victim.
Of course, everyone was still being a little cautious. Some
were visibly unsettled by the mobile police units scattered
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 5
here and there. “What a mess,” they might think, but that
about covers it. At most, they would go home a little earlier
than usual.
But deep in their hearts, everyone believed they would be
going home.
That’s how it is with these things. There are very few
people who can accept as a hard reality the possibility that
they might be the next to die.
It was true that the probability of becoming the next
victim was negligibly low: “Those victims must’ve had been
really unlucky.” A terrible thought, but what else could
people think?
Anyway . . . perhaps I should go ahead and mingle in with
this unguarded crowd? With that in mind, I got up from my
seat only to feel my phone vibrating in my right pocket. I
wasn’t familiar with the number on the display. But I didn’t
want to just ignore it. I went ahead and pushed send.
“Ciao! Mikoko-chan here!”
Hyper from the get-go. It was easy to imagine her giving
me the thumbs-up on the other end, even though I guess she
probably wasn’t actually doing that. But without even knowing
who she was talking to, she was so bubbly and friendly.
What would she have done if this was the wrong number? A
small fire ignited in my inquiring mind.
“Eh? Hey, it’s Mikoko-chan. What’s wrong?”
I didn’t reply.
"Uhh . . . This is Ikkun, right?”
Again, I was silent.
“Hellooo? This is Ikkun, right?”
I persisted in not replying.
“Did I mess up? Huh? I messed up!”
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 6
I kept up the silent treatment.
“Gahhh! It’s like getting all prepped for the next radio
calisthenics session—you know, that exercise show broadcast
over the radio—only to have them go ‘We’re outta time, so
just do the chicken dance’! I’m sorry, I dialed the wrong
number!”
At that, I finally said something: “No, this is right. What’s
up?”
“Uwa!” she shrieked in surprise when I spoke. “Huh?
Wha?” she sputtered, confused. Eventually, she let out a sigh,
so I figured she had calmed down a bit. I also figured that it
was only a matter of seconds before her relief turned to anger.
"For crying out loud! It’s the phone! You have to say something!
I’ll freak out if you don’t! Ikkun, you jerk! You snake!
You . . . you monster!”
I didn’t think I’d done anything that bad.
"Sorry, sorry, I was just kidding around.”
I hadn’t meant to stay quiet for so long, but I also had
never expected she’d provide such a hilarious response either.
Before I knew it, my timing had been thrown off.
“God . . . It’s fine, I guess. Since it’s you and all.”
She let out a moan. It was hard not to feel a little sorry for
her. “Umm,” she started again, back to her normal self. “This
is a business call! Regarding tomorrow’s business!”
“You know, you don’t have to yell. It’s quiet here.”
“Hm? Where are you now?" she asked.
“Ah, uh, I’m at home. At the boarding lodge.”
“Oh. I’m still at school. I had to talk to Inokawa-sensei
about something, so I just got out of the research room. Isn’t
that place incredible?! Books everywhere!”
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 7
Inokawa-sensei led the general-education class. A slightly
eccentric assistant professor, he was popular enough with his
students if you were willing to set aside the fact that he was
way too strict about punctuality. (If you weren’t in your seat
by the time the bell started ringing—even if you were in the
classroom and were in the act of sitting down while it was
ringing—he marked you absent).
“Umm, right, so about tomorrow. Will you be home tomorrow?”
“Yeah, that’s right. Are we meeting somewhere?” I asked.
“Uh-uh. If we set a meeting place, we might miss each other,
right? That’s no good, so I’ll come meet you at your boarding
lodge. I bought a scooter and I kinda wanna take it for a spin.
So, let’s say four o’clock. Can I go to your place at four?”
“Yeah, it’s fine, but . . . you know where the boarding
lodge is?”
“Huh? Oh, no problem there.” She seemed flustered. “I
mean, because we made that address list when classes first
started, so I know it.”
“Is just the address enough?”
"I know Kyoto well, so we’re a-okay. You’re at Senbon
Nakadachiuri, right?”
“Huh?” I asked. There was something suspicious about the
way she was acting, but if she said she knew it, I figured there
was no problem.
“Fine by me,” I replied.
“Okay. That settles that, then. Hmm, I’d like to talk more
since I went to the trouble of calling, but I’ve got to go to
driving school from here. I made an appointment, and if I
don’t go now I’ll be late.”
“Huh. You’re going to driving school.”
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 8
“Yep. How about you? Got a license?”
“I do. Just for automatic, though.”
If it wasn’t such a big hassle to get a license, I could
actually drive anything, but that was a secret.
“I see,” she said. “I’m going for a manual. I’m reaching that
age where I want my own set of wheels, you know? My dad
said he’ll get me a car once I get my license. Yup. Anyway, see
ya tomorrow. B-b-b-byeee!”
She giggled and hung up. I stared at the phone for a while
before putting it back in my pants pocket.
Right. We did have plans tomorrow, didn’t we? It hadn’t
completely slipped my mind, but it was close enough. At this
rate, I might forget again by tomorrow. Maybe it would have
been best to write “Plans with Mikoko-chan tomorrow” on the
palm of my hand, like an unusually dim-witted elementary
school student.
Oh, but if she was coming to meet me at my house, it
didn’t really matter if I remembered or not, I thought. I was
just going to be there all day anyway. I returned my pen case
to my bag.
This time I really did actually walk out of the McDonald’s.
It was already almost eight o’clock, and the shops outside
were preparing to close. Suddenly something occurred to me.
“Ah, that’s right. It’s a birthday thing.”
In that case, I should probably take the opportunity to buy
a present while I was out and about. It was only common
sense—not that I ever thought of myself as someone with a lot
of common sense.
Then again, I’d been sort of half-forced into going. Maybe I
didn’t have to go out of my way to be a good guy or anything.
As I thought it over, I peeped into a nearby souvenir shop.
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 3 9
Emoto Tomoe. Now, what kind of a character was she? I
didn’t have a single memory of her. Once I actually saw her
face, I might remember her. But no matter how hard I
thought about it, I couldn’t remember a single thing about
her. Which meant she probably wasn’t a particularly eccentric
or remarkable person. Maybe she was a little more subdued
than most. The kind of person who reads a book before the
start of class instead of messing with her cell phone.
Wait . . . but hadn’t Mikoko-chan said she was a striking
girl who always wore shiny things? Huh. I had no idea after
all. Not even a vague image.
Then there were those other two: Atemiya Muimi-chan
and Usami Akiharu-kun, right? I tried to recall them as well,
but with no success.
“Eh, I guess if they’re Mikoko-chan’s friends, they can’t be
all that weird.”
“Tell me what company thou keepst, and I’ll tell thee what
thou art.” Cervantes said it, but surely you could’ve switched
it around and it would still make sense. Nothing to worry
about too much.
As my mind wandered, I picked up a box of snacks from a
display. They were yatsuhashi cinnamon cookies folded into
triangles and stuffed with red bean paste. A wholly
conventional Japanese snack. Thirty pieces, one thousand two
hundred yen.
"Hm . . .”
Kyoto and yatsuhashi—a confection made from rice flour,
cinnamon, and sugar—were synonymous with each other. If
there were no yatsuhashi, it wasn’t Kyoto, which meant that if
there were yatsuhashi, it was. Compared to yatsuhashi,
Kiyomizu Temple, the Daimonji Fire Festival, and the Big
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 4 0
Three festivals didn’t even matter. Shrines and Buddhist
temples were irrelevant. If you didn’t eat yatsuhashi, you
didn’t know 80% of Kyoto.
Okay, then, I thought.
And so it was settled that Tomo-chan would receive snack
food for her birthday. I didn’t want to burden her with
something nondisposable, and I figured it would be the perfect
thing to eat while drinking. Or wait, did sweet stuff go
with alcohol? I didn’t drink, so I didn’t know. At any rate, it
wasn’t like they would be inedible.
And then my back shivered.
It felt as though liquid nitrogen had been poured into my
spinal cord. As if my entire body had been frozen to absolute
zero and the heat of the outside air was about to scorch me.
Only a basic level of brain functionality remained. And then I
felt an intense pressure crushing me. If I couldn’t maintain my
composure, surely I would be pulverized.
But I didn’t look back. I just tried to collect myself as
coolly as possible, and thrust the box of yatsuhashi at the store
clerk. The clerk had a brown earring, a brown ponytail, and a
smile that wasn’t very professional.
"Welcome, now.” The clerk wrapped up the treats for me,
which I accepted as I fished for the exact change. “Please
come again there, now,” the clerk said cheerfully with a little
head bob. Surely it was this kind of heartfelt service that captured
the hearts of tourists, I thought, a little irrelevantly, as I
left the store and began on my way to Shijô Street.
And then I felt it. A gaze so intense it couldn’t be ignored
once detected, a gaze so ferocious there was no way not to be
aware of it. No, this was more than a gaze.
This was the intent to murder.
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 4 1
It was a 100 percent pure murderous desire. Nothing—not
one of a million emotions; not animosity, aggression, or a
sense of mischief—diluted the purity of this desire. My entire
body ached with a terrible feeling. This feeling was long past
the point of unpleasant or unsettling.
I walked.
The feeling followed me.
I walked some more.
The feeling still followed.
“In other words, I’m being followed,” I muttered to myself.
Since when? From where?
I had no idea.
It was so blatant that I didn’t even need to look back.
It was so blatant that I didn’t even need to sense it.
That meant that whoever it was had surely noticed that I
had noticed. The fact that they continued to tail me anyway
was the most blatant thing of all.
“This ain’t good,” I sighed as I weaved my way through the
crowd. It was strange. I really thought I’d left all danger
behind me . . . back on that island on the other side of the sea.
Being tracked all the way to this country, to this city, no less,
seemed unthinkable, much less being killed. I had already
employed Kunagisa’s skills to confirm that.
In which case . . .
This was a random act.
The first thing that came to mind was the feature story
from the magazine in my bag.
The slasher.
“Aw, hell no,” I said to myself. What cruel fate had
brought me to this pass? If I were to put it like Mikoko-chan, I
might have said something like, “It’s like forming a second
Onyanko Club, but everyone’s a backup dancer.” On second
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 4 2
thought, I have no idea what that means. I guess you
shouldn’t try to be something you’re not, I thought. Clearly I
was panicking.
But even supposing the person one thousand feet behind
me right now was the famous prowler, or even supposing it
was just your run-of-the-mill psycho killer, or even supposing
that it was someone with a grudge against me . . .
Something was off. This just didn’t make sense. It was unfathomable
and absurd.
What I felt was uneasiness. Yes, like the uneasiness you
feel when you notice that reflection in the mirror is looking
back at you, that kind of absolutely mistaken textbook
explanation. I had now confirmed that that red line that’s
usually in front was, suddenly, behind.
“More nonsense?” Of course this was an illusion.
What mattered right now was that someone was following
me. This much was certain. That and, sometime soon, I would
be killed. This much was also certain. With these two
essentially definite facts in mind right now, I had no leeway to
be distracted by any other sensations. Ultimately, my options
were limited.
Give, or take.
“Ahhh, this is becoming a freaking hassle,” I muttered.
I made my way from Shinkyôgoku Street onto Shijô Street.
On the other side of a cluster of cabs was a long line of cars.
Shijô Street was extremely congested at this time of day, to
the point that it was actually faster to walk than to drive. In a
town like Kyoto, which had so many traffic lights it wasn’t
even funny, a bicycle was by far the number one most
effective way to get around.
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 4 3
Number two, incidentally, was by foot. Maybe number
three was a boogie board.
I had come to school by bus, so number two was my only
option. I debated for only an instant about which way to go
before heading east.
After a pause at a red light, I crossed Kawara-machi Street.
If I kept straight on this road, it would take me to Yasaka
Shrine. From there, if I broke south, I would reach Kiyomizu
Temple. It was a textbook route for the Kyoto temple sightseer.
But I was no sightseer, and I had no intention of going as
far as Yasaka Shrine.
I was on pins and needles. I felt that high-pressure gaze
edging ever closer. And if it ever caught up to me, that pressure
would erupt into plain, simple violence.
“Ah . . . this is gonna be close." May already and here I was
in a cold sweat. Just how long had it been since I had been this
nervous? Surely not since I’d left that odd little island. Yet at
the same time, what I felt now was somehow distinctly
different from what I had felt back then.
I am nervous, therefore I am at peace.
I became aware that, for me in this nervous state, failure
was something wholly improbable.
“Phew . . .”
And so I arrived at Kamo River. Instead of crossing the big
Shijô Bridge, I made my way down the staircase beside it and
emerged on the riverbank. Whenever the sun came out,
countless young couples would start crowding the riverbank.
In my personal opinion, this riverbank, lined with perfectly
spaced out boy-girl pairs, was one of the top three must-see
attractions of Kyoto. When the moon was out, the riverbank
offered itself as an after-bender hangout for drunks. After
drinking the night away, they could come here to sleep it off.
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 4 4
The drunks ranged from college students all the way up to
salarymen.
The drunks and lovers had one thing in common: They
were both complete nuisances who went around shoving their
happiness in other people’s faces. But there was no time to
wax philosophical about. No matter what I thought about the
drunks and young lovers, only one thing mattered right now.
It happened to be that one brief moment of the day when the
riverbank was empty. The lovers had already gone home, and
the drunks were still getting drunk.
In other words, it was a perfect situation.
And being underneath a bridge made it even better, right?
I entered the shadow of the bridge as soon as I had
descended to the riverbank. The sounds of passing cars rushed
overhead. The chatter of people crossing the bridge. It was
one hell of a ruckus. But it wasn’t enough to cover this guy’s
footsteps.
Shuffle.
The sound of scraping grit.
I muttered something and turned around.
He made an incoherent noise as he faced me.
My feelings at that point were probably pure and simple
confusion. Ordinary, everyday confusion and nothing more.
There was a mirror in front of me.
Or so I thought.
His height was a bit under five feet, and he was longlimbed
and slender as a flower stem. He wore tiger-striped
shorts; nonskid rustic boots; a red, long-sleeved, hooded parka;
and a black tactical vest. Both hands were clad with gloves,
but they obviously weren’t for something as cowardly as covering
his fingerprints, as they were fingerless gloves. It was my
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 4 5
guess that they served a much more sinister purpose—to stop
the knife from slipping on sweat.
His long hair was tied up in the back and buzzed on the
sides as if he were a dancer. His right ear had a triple piercing,
and two straps that looked like they belonged on a cell phone
dangled from his left ear. His stylish sunglasses rendered his
expression unreadable, but the sinister-looking, obviously real
tattoo running down the right side of his face communicated
this person’s eccentricity loud and clear.
He was unlike me in almost every conceivable way. Our
similarities ended with age and gender.
And yet I felt like I was looking into a mirror.
So naturally I was confused.
And my new friend appeared to be just as confused.
Still, he made the first move. He inserted his right hand
into a pocket of the vest, and an instant later he was
brandishing a small, five-centimeter-wide knife. He made not
a single wasted motion. It was as if he had surpassed the limits
of the merely human. Light and sound seemed distorted
around him.
Even supposing I had been observing all this from the point
of view of an uninvolved bystander, even knowing that this
was a murderer, his technique was so perfect that I could’ve
only described it as artful.
There was no escaping it. There was no accepting it.
But I managed to dodge the knife by pulling my upper
body back. Of course, normally this would be impossible. I
wouldn’t say I’m any less athletic than average, but I’m
certainly no Mary Lou Retton either. I had neither the quick
eye nor agile body needed to elude a plausible contender for
the title of the world’s fastest knife fighter.
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 4 6
However, supposing a dump truck was coming straight at
you at a hundred miles an hour, but you became aware of this
when it was a few miles away, I think we can all agree that
dodging it would be a simple task.
Likewise, I’d been anticipating my assailant’s slash attack.
It was so obvious that it was coming that it was if I had been
expecting it for the past five years.
I groped wildly for my bag, then swung it around, hoping
to smash him in the face. But with no more than a simple
motion of the neck, he managed to dodge my attack as if he
had been expecting it for ten years.
Because I had strained to dodge his attack, I tumbled
backward. Of course, I didn’t do anything as foolish as try to
roll back to my feet. Even a single arm wasted on such a
maneuver would surely have created a prime opportunity for
the killer. Just as I feared, he wheeled back from his initial
miss and came straight for my carotid artery. Not good. There
was no way to dodge from this position. I guess I could have
theoretically performed a stupid-looking roll and dodge this
one attack. But the next moment, or the moment after that,
regardless of how pathetically I scrambled around on the
ground, he would plunge that knife into my spine. I could
imagine it so clearly that I felt like a certain clairvoyant I once
knew.
In which case, dodging was beside the point. The key was
simply taking it. I swung my right elbow up at the knife.
My opponent twisted his wrist, altering the direction of his
swing. Consequently, the excess momentum from my elbow
had me swinging at nothing. This left my entire front side,
including all of my organs, not least notable of which were the
heart and lungs, completely exposed to the enemy.
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 4 7
Behind the sunglasses, his eyes seemed to smile ever so
faintly.
With another twist of the knife, he aimed it directly at my
heart.
A moment’s pause.
And then the tactical knife swung down at double speed.
So strong was his will to destroy human life that it made his
body move at speeds that couldn’t be detected by the human
eye.
He left me not even time enough to gasp. That’s right: I
didn’t even have time to gasp.
But I had known this one had been coming before I’d even
been born.
!
!
The knife tore through a single layer of my clothing and
stopped. My left index and middle fingers had stopped it—by
pushing up my assailant’s sunglasses.
A stalemate.
He had my heart and I had his eyes. If you put the two on
a scale, their weights obviously differed, but this was no
matter to be weighed on a scale. For my opponent, tearing
through my flesh and bone to demolish my heart was simpler
than taking candy from a baby. But it would leave just enough
time for me to pulverize his eyeballs.
The opposite was also true.
I could sacrifice my own heart to destroy his eyeballs, and
he could sacrifice his eyes to obliterate my heart. Hence, a
stalemate.
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 4 8
We stayed that way for as long as five hours, or maybe it
was five seconds, and then: "This is a masterpiece,” he said,
tossing his knife aside.
“It’s nonsense is what it is.” I retracted my fingers.
He backed away from me, and I rose to my feet slowly,
shaking the grit off my clothes and slowly straightening out
my posture.
Our fight had been a farce—but it had gone so harmoniously,
it was as if it had all been predestined. I felt overcome
by an incredible faintness.
“I’m Zerozaki,” my opponent said as he straightened his
crooked glasses. “Zerozaki Hitoshiki. So who the hell are you,
Mr. Doppelgänger?”
The question left a sour taste in my mouth. It was like
seeing myself asking someone else for my own name.
And that—that was the first encounter between the passive
onlooker and the homicidal monster.
Strangely enough, it was Friday the thirteenth.
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 5 0
Misfortune and misery are underplayed.
Give me more despair. Give me more darkness.
Give me wholehearted depravity.
The thirteenth of any given month, by the way, is more likely
to fall on a Friday than any other day. Friday the thirteenth
occurs once a year at least, and three or four times a year on
average. But for a guy like me who wasn’t Christian—I don’t
even understand the difference between Catholic and
Protestant—Friday the thirteenth meant little more than that
the next day was Saturday the fourteenth.
Now, then. The next day was Saturday, May fourteenth. I
awoke inside my one-room Senbon Nakadachiuri apartment.
I looked at my clock to discover that it was about ten until
four p.m.
“Seriously?”
I was a bit . . . that is, fairly—nay, insanely—surprised. This
was a whole new oversleeping record for me. How many years
had it been since the last time I slept until the afternoon? And
it wasn’t only the afternoon—the p.m. was a third over
already. This would probably remain as a stain on my memory
for the rest of eternity.
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 5 1
“But then again, I want to bed at nine in the morning, so
it’s only natural.”
Finally shaking away the sleepiness, I returned to my sense
and rose from my bed.
The room had four straw mats of floor space and a naked
lightbulb. This little pocket of space was unbelievably classic,
and so full of anachronisms that it made you wonder if it had
been around since the olden days when Kyoto was still our
capital. Naturally, the rent was deathly low. Deathly to the
landlord, that is.
I folded up my futon and stuck it on the closet. There was
no toilet or bath, but there was a washstand of sorts, so I used
it to wash my face, then got dressed. My wardrobe wasn’t
exactly jam-packed with options, so all of this took less than
five minutes.
I opened the window and let in the outside air. Kyoto is an
incredible place, in that once you’ve passed Golden Week,
you’ve already entered summer. It’s as if life is still being run
according to the old Chinese calendar—or as if fall and spring
don’t even exist.
Then there came a knock at my door. This apartment
wasn’t equipped with such modern amenities as telephone
intercoms. It was exactly four o’clock. Mikoko-chan was certainly
a punctual one. I was just a little bit dazzled by this.
People who were as anal about time as Inokawa-sensei were
just annoying, but I figured that if you really wanted to refer
to yourself as a human being, you had to be at least as punctual
as an analog clock. In that sense, Mikoko-chan passed as a
human.
“Yo, I’m coming.”
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 5 2
I unbolted the lock (now that’s what I call radically retro)
and opened the door. But to my surprise, it wasn’t Mikokochan.
“Sorry.”
It was Asano Miiko-san, my neighbor. She was twenty-two
years old, making her my senior, and she was a seasonal
worker. There was something strangely Japanesey about her
style, and even right now she was dressed in classic Japanese
summer casual wear. It was black cloth, with the word
Carnage printed on the back of her top in white letters, and
she had a distinctly samurai-esque ponytail. At first she
seemed unapproachable, but after you talked to her for a bit,
it quickly became clear that she was a pretty decent human
being. Maybe a little on the mysterious side, but that just
added to her charm.
“Miiko-san . . . right? Good morning.”
“Yeah. Were you sleeping?”
“Yeah, I actually overslept a bit, so . . .”
“If you slept this late, I don’t think it still qualifies as ‘a
bit,’ ” she said drably. With her subdued demeanor, it was
often hard to guess what she was thinking. It wasn’t that she
was completely expressionless. Instead, her default expression
was a glare, with changes so subtle that she might as well have
been expressionless.
“Oh, please come in. As usual, there’s not much to see,
though,” I said without a hint of false modesty. I stepped aside
to make way, but she shook her head.
“Nah, I just came to give you this.” She passed me a flat
box. It was wrapped in paper with the word Snacks written in
big letters.
“. . . .”
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 5 3
“They’re yatsuhashi. They’re a Kyoto favorite.”
“I know them, but—“
“They’re yours. They’re good, you know. Well, see ya . . .
I’ve got to get to work.”
She spun around, flashing the word Carnage at me. The
fact that she had offered no explanation as to why she had just
given me a box of yatsuhashi was hardly unexpected. She was
a woman of few words, and when you thought about how
much effort you would have to exert just to fish an answer out
of her, it was easy to justify leaving things unexplained. And
so I send her off with a simple “Thanks very much, I’ll definitely
enjoy them,” and nothing more.
She stopped in her tracks.
“Sounded like you got back just this morning,” she said
without turning around. “So, what’s the story?”
“. . .” Damn these thin-walled apartments. Actually I suppose
they do have their perks.
“Oh, I was just hanging out with a friend all night. Nothing
shady. Nothing exciting either.”
“A friend, huh? Wouldn’t happen to have been that
colorful blue-haired girl who came by around February, would
it?”
“Actually, Kunagisa’s an extreme shut-in. This was someone
else. A guy.”
She nodded with a look of complete and utter disinterest,
but I wondered if she would’ve perked up a little if I had said
“I was schmoozing with that killer everyone’s been talking
about under the big Shijô Bridge.” Then again, Miiko-san
being the way she was, it was entirely possible that she
wouldn’t have given me more than a “huh,” even if she knew I
wasn’t joking.
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 5 4
She nodded, seemingly satisfied, and proceeded on her way
down the planked hallway. She was headed to her part-time
job. When I first discovered those weren’t just her indoor
clothes, even I couldn’t help but vocalize my surprise.
I shut the door and returned to the middle of the room.
But why did it have to be yatsuhashi? Come to think of it,
these were the exact same yatsuhashi I had picked up the
previous day for Tomo-chan’s birthday. It was a terrifying coincidence,
but there it was.
“Well, whatever.”
I stacked the two boxes and stuck them in the corner of
the room.
Looking at the clock, I discovered is was several minutes
past four.
Thirty minutes later, it was past 4:30.
“Well, duh,” I said aloud and lay down on the floor.
Well now. Wasn’t Mikoko-chan coming to pick me up at
four? Of this I was certain. I may forget things, but I never
misremember them. This meant Mikoko-chan had either
gotten in an accident, gotten lost, or was just a sloppy person.
But no matter which it was, there was nothing I could do right
now.
“Time for some Eight Queens?”
Of course, there was nothing as extravagant as a chessboard
in my room, so I’d just have to play it in my mind. The
rules to Eight Queens were simple, and concise—just place
eight queens on a chessboard so that none of them can capture
any other. It’s one of those “brain exercise” routines. I’d
played the game quite a few times, so I basically knew the
solution. But with my poor memory, I always forgot the exact
arrangement, so I was able to enjoy the game every single time
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 5 5
I played it. Okay, not that it was really all that enjoyable. But
it was a good way to kill some time.
I started strong, but the trouble set in around the fourth
queen. The game was starting to lose its consistency. Queens
just don’t get along with other queens. There should never be
more than one party in power. Moreover, if I allowed my
thoughts to wander like this, I’d lose track of where I had put
all the pieces up until now, and I’d have to start all over.
The thrill of sectioning off your mind like this was indescribable.
You could say it was something like the feeling of
walking on a balance beam, only the more pieces you placed
down—that is, the closer you got to a final solution—the
harder it became. In that sense, it was very much like a game,
and great in that sense. In the case of failure, there was no one
but yourself on whom to vent your anger, and herein lay the
real thrill.
And just as I was trying to find the place for the seventh
queen, there came a knock at my door and a cry of “Ikkun!”
The chessboard went flying. Queens everywhere.
For an instant, my heart, not to mention my thoughts,
stopped.
I approached the door and swung it open. This time, it really
was Mikoko-chan. She wore a pink camisole with a red
miniskirt, exposing a healthy and refreshing amount of skin.
“Morning!” she said with a wave. Then came the full-faced
grin. “Ikkun, guten morgen!”
“. . .”
“. . .”
“. . .”
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 5 6
“Morgen . . . gen . . . gen . . . It’s like the Doppler effect or
something.” She was as spastic and smiley as I’d come to expect
her to be. Her eyes drifted away from me off into space.
“Umm, I was just wondering, and I know this isn’t the kind of
thing you would do, but . . . Are you mad or resentful or hatefilled
or cursing my name or anything? Actually, cursing my
name does seem kinda like something you’d do.”
“. . .”
“Come on, let’s communicate! Hey! Don’t be so quiet!
When you get all quiet I feel like I’m about to have something
terrible done to me!”
“Your palm,” I said.
“Hm?”
“Hold the palm of your hand in front of your face like
this.”
“Okay . . .”
She did as told.
Smack! I smooshed her hand into her own face.
“Gwah!” she shrieked in unfeminine fashion. Satisfied for
the time being, I went back inside to fetch my bag. Now
where had I put those yatsuhashi?
“Uwa! You’re terrible!” she said as she came into my room
for some reason. “You’re being violent with me just for being a
little bit late? That’s abuse, you know. It’s like forming a jurybased
judicial system, only all the jurors are O. J. Simpson!”
Apparently forty minutes late was only “a little bit late” in
Mikoko-chan’s mind. Without waiting for an invitation, she
came into the middle of my room and took a seat on the floor.
Plop. She scanned her surroundings with a look of true curiosity.
“Oooooo,” she sighed in awe. “Wow, there’s nothing
here. Amazing!”
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 5 7
“You know, that kind of compliment isn’t particularly
flattering.”
“You really don’t have a TV! You’re like one of those
struggling students from the good ol’ days. I bet you study by
the light of fireflies! Does anyone else live in this apartment?”
“Uh, well, there’s one swordsman freeloader, one hermit,
a fifteen-year-old and thirteen-year-old brother and sister currently
running away from home, and then there’s me, so that’s
four rooms and five people. Up until recently there was an
aspiring singer here too, but she went to Tokyo to launch her
major-label debut.”
“Wow, so this place is kind of prosperous. Kind of a surprise.
So I guess that means there’s an open room here? Hmm.
It does have a certain ambience, huh? Maybe I should move
in!”
What could she have possibly seen in this apartment, in
this room, that would’ve given her such an idea? “Better not,”
I said, giving her the appropriate advice. “Well, let’s get going,
huh?”
“Ah, not yet. It’s still too early,” she blurted out.
“But won’t it be bad if we don’t leave soon? We’re already
pushing forty minutes here.”
“No, we just have to be there by six. Tomo-chan’s apartment
isn’t far from here, so even if we leave at five thirty we’ll
have plenty of time to get there.”
“Oh really?”
“Really,” she said with an index finger thrust skyward. It
was hard to deny the adorableness of her grandiose gesticulations,
but it didn’t seem like the thing I needed to go out of
my way to mention, so I didn’t. I didn’t want to get her all
excited.
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 5 8
“Then why did you say four o’clock?”
“Huh? Oh, that. Well, you know. Ehh, I’m not so great
with time. It was just in case, just in case.”
“You mean there was a chance you might have been an
hour and a half late?”
Just thinking about it made me feel like blood might shoot
out of my ears.
“Huh?” she said, peeping at my face to catch my expression.
“What’s the matter?” she asked cheerfully.
“Nothing. I’m not thinking about anything. I’m definitely
not thinking about how you should maybe consider the feelings
of the person waiting for you to arrive. Or how you
should stick to the time that you designated. Or how you
should at least call if you’re going to be late. Or how you
should take better care of chessboards.”
“Chessboards?” She scratched her head.
Naturally she wasn’t supposed to understand that.
I found the yatsuhashi lying in the corner of the room and
cut the seal on one of the boxes. I placed it in front of her.
“Can I eat ’em?”
“Sure.”
I stood up and made my way over to the sink. I thought to
boil some water for team, but I didn’t have a kettle. I thought
of using a hot pot, but I had no burner in any case. So I just
poured her a cup of tap water and placed it in front of her.
Looking thoroughly baffled, she glanced at the liquid
thrust before her, but then pretended not to see it and didn’t
bother touching it.
She chowed down enthusiastically on the yatsuhashi.
“Asking this might be one of those things and all, but are you
poor, by any chance?”
ZAREGOTO: THE KUBISHIME ROMANTICIST ■■■ 5 9
“No, I’m not particularly strapped for funds.”
Living in an apartment like this, I had no evidence to support
this statement, but it was the truth. At the very least, I
had enough money saved up to pay for your years of college
without lifting a single finger. Technically it wasn’t money I
had earned personally, but it was in my possession.
“I guess you’re sort of an economist then, huh? Or is it a
philosopher?”
“I’m just bad at spending money. Sort of the opposite of a
shopaholic.”
I helped myself to some yatsuhashi as I spoke. She gave me
a halfhearted nod of comprehension.
As she knelt on the straw-matted floor of my room, I
stared at her from top to bottom. Huh. Not that I was thinking
anything in particular, but there was something very
awkward about having her sitting here in the middle of my
room. I don’t know if you would call it unnatural or risqué,
but something about it felt incredibly iffy.
I stood up.
“Huh? Where ya going? We’ve still got an extra forty minutes.”
“Forty minutes is just a ‘little bit,’ right?”
“Ahh! Ikkun, that’s the kind of thing a big jerko would
say!” she said, recoiling overzealously. “You don’t have to hold
it against me forever!”
“I’m just joking. Let’s go get a light lunch somewhere. It’s
no fun just picking at each other in this empty room.”
I hoisted my bag over my shoulder and headed toward the
door.
“Aww, that’s not true,” she mumbled as she followed me.