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alpindale

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light-novels

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There was no visible hint of self-reflection in Aikawa’s indomitable smile. She didn’t even seem to have any regrets, no, nor was she even hurt.

“Jun, you really don’t think this calls for any kind of reconsideration?”

“Not at all. The fact that I care about Ichihime’s got nothing to do with what she’s done. Haha, same reason I’m not even mad that you were going to betray us, Iitan.”

She knew.

“You slippery bastard. Trying to beguile Ichihime like that as soon as your life was on the line. Why not come live with me─what the hell? You’d just betrayed her five minutes earlier.”

She knew everything.

“I…didn’t intend to betray her.”

Ultimately, the fact that Aikawa was “soft on her friends” stemmed from an overestimation of the rest of the world on her part. Because she herself was the best of the best, she couldn’t comprehend things like my and Hime-chan’s weakness. And even if she could comprehend it, she couldn’t accept that kind of compromise.

“Whether or not I’m soft, I can’t dismiss her feelings. Anyone would end up like that if they were stuck in a homicidal school like Hang ’Em High. Anyone would want to do what she did. It’s just that Ichihime was the only one with the skills to carry it out, that’s all.”

“Skills…”

“That strange little body of hers is a testament to her poor upbringing. She doesn’t even weigh seventy pounds. You’re friends with Kunagisa, you must get it. Though their circumstances are a little different.”

“…”

“Not that I’m saying you’ve gotta have sympathy for her or anything. But don’t blame her just because you happen to hate people who remind you of yourself.”

“I have no intention of blaming her. This whole thing is none of my business, from start to finish. If you hadn’t gotten me involved, I never would’ve known a thing about any of it.”

“Glad you feel that way.”

Whatever the case, Hime-chan…would probably not have been able to get out of there under her own steam. Zigzag was definitely a useful technique, but fundamentally a defensive one. Except for times when she could set a trap and lie in wait, like she did for Shiogi, it was no different from using an ordinary knife. Without the element of surprise, it was possible to avoid the Zigzag even if you weren’t Aikawa. Which is why─and yes, this was the same as Aikawa’s strategy─she struck at the core first. Though that may have involved a certain amount of resentment as well. Asking for Aikawa’s help after her wholesale slaughter of the faculty…

“But…that doesn’t add up. If she simply wanted to escape, the best thing would’ve been to leave it all to you, Jun. That would’ve been plenty good enough. I guess her primary goal must’ve been to kill the Director after all. If the death of the person she thought of as her master had something to do with the change in directorship, it’s even possible that she enrolled at the school with the intention of killing her all along.”

“They’re not unrelated…but I think you’re really overthinking it.”

If it were just the murder, Hime-chan would’ve been fine on her own. It was the escape after the murder for which she needed Aikawa’s help. She would get Aikawa’s cooperation in fleeing the scene of her crime, and then work it so that Aikawa would never suspect her. It was a completely self-contradictory, zigzagging plan─but was that the whole extent of Hime-chan’s strategy?

“Who knows, maybe she wanted me to figure out that she was the murderer. Maybe she was feeling remorseful, or penitent, something like that? Moronic as that might be.”

Uh huh…that seemed most likely. Achieve all her objectives, and have Aikawa render judgment on her to boot. That was such a compelling narrative that even someone like me had a hard time discarding it. If you’re going to get killed no matter what─at least let it be by a greater force than yourself.

A confused desire born of desperation.

We don’t get to choose our friends, so she at least wanted to choose the enemy that would destroy her.

“She deceived us in order to be found out…but that’s too irresponsible for words, Jun.”

“Responsibility, huh? What a strange notion.”

“Yeah. I…don’t really understand it.”

“Nope, me neither. Maybe all she wanted was to have some fun with me. There at the very end.”

At the very end?

She never intended to survive, never intended to succeed at keeping it hidden… I have a hard time believing that, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Since I never could comprehend Hime-chan’s feelings, even at the end. Same way I still can’t comprehend “her” feelings, even now.

─Even thinking about it is pointless.

The history of the losers will never be told.

Soldiers die in battle, and tacticians die in confusion.

And weavers get caught in their own webs.

Ultimately.

Hime-chan wasn’t a stand-in for “her.” That alone seems clear to me. It would’ve taken more than that─to break Tomo Kunagisa.

“Well, with this many hypotheses, one of ’em has to be right,” Aikawa said. For a time my hospital room fell silent. She finished the apple, core and all, and reached out her hand towards the basket again. “Hm─this the kind of thing you eat?”

She plucked a 5x5x5 Rubik’s Cube, exactly the same size as an apple, from the basket.

“No, that’s something Kunagisa left when she came to visit me. It was supposed to help pass the time, but I can’t solve those no matter how hard I try, so I just left it in there.”

“She came to see you? I thought she couldn’t manage stairs on her own, except at home?”

“She said an old friend named ‘Hiichan’ or something brought her.”

“Oh, so that’s why you’re in such a bad mood, Iitan…” Aikawa solved the cube while she was saying this, never once looking down at her hands, then returned it to the basket of fruit. “Anyway.”

From her seemingly apathetic attitude, I knew we were finally getting to the real reason for her visit, and I readied myself.

“This time around I plumbed the depths of your peculiar nature, and I’ve got you all figured out.”

“My nature, is it? Well, Shiogi called me a ‘non-actor’ or something.”

“Yeah…that sounds about right. Fact is, I’m regretting it just a little bit. Getting you mixed up in this, I mean. I think it might’ve been a mistake. Don’t you? If you hadn’t been there, at least Shiogi Hagihara and Tamamo Saijo would still be alive. Ichihime wanted to kill as few of the ‘students’ as possible, since they were in the same boat as her. The ‘faculty’ were there because they wanted to be─but the ‘students’ had no choice.”

Shiogi had said something about how there was “no place better suited to me than here,” but─I think I can safely say. That there was. Shiogi and Tamamo just didn’t know it. They just couldn’t find other objectives or motivations. And I just wasn’t able to provide them, that’s all.

“But blaming me for their deaths is over the line. It’s got nothing to do with me, does it?”

“You’re constantly surrounded by calamity, and people are constantly dying around you. You─how can I put this, you make people feel like they can’t settle down. You make them anxious. So the people around you are forced out of their comfort zones─and as a result they let their guard down. That’s exactly why I used you for this assignment─but that aspect of your nature doesn’t discriminate between friend and foe. Ichihime got caught up in it too. She killed Tamamo for the sake of your safety, and she didn’t kill Shiogi because she’d ‘found out the truth,’ she killed her to save you; you’d let yourself be captured so Hime-chan could escape, and Shiogi had you trapped like a rat─doesn’t that sound more plausible? Ichihime only wanted to hide her crime from me, her friend. And, locked room or no locked room, once the corpses were discovered she was going to come under suspicion no matter what.”

“I see. I guess that’s another way of looking at it.”

“Someone who shakes people up just by being there, who makes others lose sight of themselves just by being there… Individuals like you aren’t all that rare. When they’re around you can’t settle down, you get irritated, things don’t go like they usually do… Psychology has a way of explaining such people: in terms of ‘defects.’ The people observing you have similar deficiencies, so they start to feel like theirs are being pointed out to them, and it shakes them up. Some people decide that that feeling is love, and some decide it’s hostility. The former want to commiserate with you, while the latter hate you for being similar to them. And you’re the top of the line in that department. You have no personality, so you’re not similar to anyone─but you lack so much that you’re similar to everyone. Which acts on their non-conscious minds; your conscious non-action undermines them. And on top of that, you exploit it cleverly. You ward things off without putting up any kind of ward, you ingratiate yourself without any ingrained defenses. You let others pass, deflect, avoid, evade. You use nonsense to run away, flee, escape. Even though they can’t settle down when you’re around─no one can touch you. It’s pretty much like being around a ghost or a devil. That’s why the machinery goes crazy around you, and people’s switches end up getting flipped. Same was true back in April, and back in May.”

“I said this to Shiogi as well, but…you’re overestimating me.” I shook my head slowly. “I’m nothing special. I just wander around without ever knowing what’s going on.”

“If there’s any silver lining…” Aikawa continued undaunted, totally ignoring my attempt to vindicate myself, “it’s that you have no goals. To be perfectly honest, you freak me out a little. If you develop any kind of intentionality… If you start heading somewhere, who the hell knows what you’ll be capable of? When that happens, the only ones who’ll be able to avoid your influence are people like Zerozaki, who’re absolutely identical to you. Everyone who’s even the slightest bit different…will go off the rails, every last one of them. It’ll be so much worse than it is now, you’ll drag the people around you into your orbit and the accidents’ll spiral out of control.”

Sure─like before.

When I destroyed Tomo Kunagisa.

“Sounds kind of like a horror novel.”

Aikawa’s expression didn’t change at my joke─

She whipped her finger up…

“So I think it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to kill you right now.”

And snapped it back down as she said that.

“─”

Nothing─happened.

Nothing…happened.

“That’s a harsh joke.”

“Joke? Did you say joke?” Aikawa put on a show of exaggerated surprise. “Right, right. Keep telling yourself that.”

“…”

“Haha. If you were gone, who’d set up my punchlines for me?” Then, cynically, “’Kay, pal, I’m outta here.” Standing up, she folded the chair and put it back where she’d found it. And just for good measure, she took another apple from the basket. “Until the threads of fate entwine once more. May your future hold most excellent misfortune, and a pathetic excuse for good fortune.”

She started walking out of the room.

My final question was directed at her back.

“Why did Hime-chan─”

“Huh? Why did Hime-chan what?”

“Why do you think Hime-chan called me that?”

“Come on, it’s not hard. Or do you,” Aikawa turned the question back on me, “not understand why she hid the truth about Zigzag from you? Mental problems aside, it wouldn’t’ve been inconvenient for her if you knew she was a weaver, and yet she played the regular old washout right up till the last second. Do you not understand why she really did that?”

“No, I don’t.” Even though it was my own question, I hung my head and averted my eyes from Aikawa’s. “Wasn’t it just that she wanted me to underestimate her? By playing the stupid high schooler, she could keep me off my guard.”

“Not even close, you moronnn. Hanh, basically, she conflated the two of you. Mister Somebody, who resembles nobody and so can resemble anybody. She projected you,” Aikawa sneered. “Same way you projected her onto Tomo Kunagisa. Talk about ships in the goddamn night.”

Just as I saw Tomo Kunagisa in Hime-chan.

Hime-chan saw something in me?

“Think I’ll ever see her again?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll get you two together again soon, whether you like it or not.”

And with that, the contractor disappeared from my sight. As always, throwing my mind into disarray as she did so. While she may not have done what she usually did, further solving something I’d already solved, she did leave me with a whole new host of concerns.

Dammit…the Princess of Intimation, the Empress of Insinuation, Her Majesty the Queen of Suggestion. Thanks a lot, leaving me with a lapful of ambiguous and possibly spurious foreshadowing. Tamamo was one thing, but I’d wanted to point out that maybe the reason Shiogi got killed was because Aikawa had gone for a costume change.

“So does the whole ‘no personality’ thing mean people get to say whatever they want? Everyone expects too much of me… Gimme a break already.”

Even though I’m nothing more than an introverted nineteen year old with no imagination who’s maybe a little on the voluble side.

While I was pondering this, the nurse came in with a tray of food, almost like she’d tagged in when Aikawa left. Or more likely Aikawa had sensed the approach of the nurse and departed accordingly. She’s like a ninja.

“That cool babe with the fashion sense of a stand user who was just leaving your room? Never seen her before. She come to visit you in the hospital, Ii-Ii?” the nurse asked with keen interest, looking over her shoulder towards the door. “She your big sister, Ii-Ii? Your cousin?”

She seemed convinced we were related.

“Oh…she’s my girlfriend.”

“Whaa?”

She didn’t even try to hide her doubt.

“See, she’s madly in love with me. It’s a real problem, barging in on me even here. I was hoping for some time alone while I was in the hospital, at least.”

“Right, right. G-o-o-o-tcha.”

The nurse clearly didn’t believe a word I said.

“It may not have seemed like it, but when it’s just the two of us she’s really something. She’ll do literally anything I say.”

“Sure, sure, of c-o-o-o-urse. You lucky dog, you. Ii-Ii, what a stuuuud.”

She lined up plastic dishes on the table as she said this.

“Lovey dovey~♪ kissy kissy~♪”

What the hell is this hospital doing, hiring a nurse with so much personality? I was getting kind of annoyed (on top of which I was feeling emptied out), so I decided to change the subject.

“Excuse me, nurse, but do you read detective novels?”

“I’m a nurse practitioner,” she corrected me. Sounds to me like the difference between a tactics expert and a tactical expert, but I guess she was a particular person. “Sure, I read them, por qua?”

“Because it’s Quiz Time.” I picked up the envelope Aikawa had left behind, and as I examined its contents, I continued, “Say there’s a room somewhere. The door has a biometric hand scanner, so from the outside it can only be locked or unlocked by the room’s owner. One day, you and your two friends, the three of you, visit that room. The door is locked and it won’t open, so you force it open, and inside you discover the dismembered corpse of the room’s owner.”

“Ahh, a locked-room murder. This really brings me back.” The nurse smiled. “A handprint, huh… Sounds like Lupin.”