He continued to stare at the road ahead.
“Why don’t you have a girlfriend?” I blurted the words out before I could stop myself. He smiled a small, sad smile.
“Just never worked out, I guess.”
“You’re a good man.”
“That’s what they all say.”
The atmosphere in the car turned cold and awkward. I looked out the window at the rolling hills beside us.
“Do what you need to do, Megu.”
I turned back.
“Sorry?”
“This person you love. Do what you need to do.”
“It’s not-”
“I’m glad you called me. I’m glad I could help.” He finally turned and looked at me. “We’ll be there shortly. Don’t worry.”
There was nothing I could say. I forced a smile upon my lips.
“Thank you.”
He nodded and turned back to the road. We drove the rest of the way in silence, and as the Hotel Blue Ocean came into view, he pulled over on the side of the road.
“That’s it up there.”
“Thank you, Teru.”
“I’m going to assume you’re not coming to the barbecue then?”
“No, probably not.”
“Okay, I’ll tell the others.”
“Thank you.”
I pulled the door handle and got out.
“Megu?”
“Yes?”
Teru scratched the side of his face. “Just… be careful.”
I smiled and nodded. He started the car, and I waited until the back lights disappeared into the distance before I made my way up the hill. Up towards the Hotel Blue Ocean. Up towards Aya and her brother.
33
There was a single car parked in the parking lot. The front light was broken and there were splashes of blood on the inside. There was a trap waiting for me in there. That much I knew. But what could I do? I couldn’t just leave Aya in there with him. Let her die. Let that shadow come and finally take what it was after all these years. I’d come too far. I’d fallen too hard. Teru’s words weighed on my mind. I had to go through with it. There was no other option.
I was in love with her. There was no way I could let her die.
I took a step forward, not sure which room they were in. A door two rooms down opened. Tatsuya stepped outside.
“Ah, you’ve finally made it. We’ve been waiting. Come, come. Get out of the cold. It’s nice and warm in here, you know.”
I bottled my rage up and walked over. One foot after the other. Don’t show him you’re hurt. Don’t show him anything, because that’s exactly what he wants. He wants to see your anger, your rage, but especially your fear. So don’t show him anything. Don’t give him the satisfaction.
He grinned as I brushed past him and closed the door behind us.
The room was as tacky as I would expect from a love hotel called “Hotel Blue Ocean.” The walls were painted bright blue with large, colourful fish, and the bed was shaped like a seashell. The bedside table looked like a seahorse and the bathroom beyond shone with blue and white tiles. The shower head was shaped like a mermaid.
And then there was Aya, sitting on a chair just beyond the seashell bed. No, not sitting. Tied. She was tied to the chair, and she wasn’t moving. Her clothes were torn and covered in blood.
“Oh, don’t worry, she’s alive,” Tatsuya said. “Come, sit. Join me on the bed, would you? Let’s talk.”
“I’m fine right here, thank you.”
“Okay, suit yourself.” He put his hands up in the air and then walked over to Aya. “Aya! Sweet sister!” He slapped her cheek a few times. “Hey! Your girlfriend’s here! Wakey wakey!” He stood up and looked at me and shrugged. “Guess she doesn’t feel like talking right now.”
“What did you do to her?”
He laughed. “What did I do to her? Me? I did nothing. There’s nothing I can do to her. That’s the problem.”
The confusion on my face made him laugh even harder.
“You’ve seen it, right? The shadow that’s always by her side.”
I nodded.
“Good, good. That saves a lot of time. It would be strange if you hadn’t seen it. You see, as a kid, I knew there was something wrong with dear old daddy. He wasn’t like other men, not really. Or maybe he was, who knows? Maybe there’s a darkness inside of us all, just waiting to get out.”
“What are you going on about?” His ravings were starting to piss me off.
“Patience. Did your parents not teach you any manners? When someone is talking, you listen. So shut up and listen.”
I frowned.
“Good. Anyway, I knew daddy was not quite normal, but he sure was good at putting up a front for the public. At home, however, well, let’s just say I learnt some tricks from him on how to keep people in line. I mean, I felt bad for mother, of course. Who wouldn’t? But she had chances to leave, and she didn’t. She thought she could change him. She saw the darkness in him and she chose to remain. She chose to try and help him. In the end, that killed her. Unfortunate, really. I really did like her.”
I clenched my fists by my side. It was taking all the strength I had not to jump across the bed and punch him in the throat.
“Anyway, I digress. There’s a reason I’m telling you all of this, so I need you to listen very carefully. This is important. When Aya was born, I was only four at the time, but there was something about her. Daddy sensed it too.”
Hearing a grown man say the word ‘daddy’ like that made my skin crawl.
“Only, he didn’t like it. It scared even him. Him, the man without a soul. That’s what his colleagues said, anyway. ‘The man has no soul. There’s nothing he won’t do to succeed.’ And what exactly is wrong with that, I ask? Isn’t that our entire purpose for being? To succeed? To shape the world with our own two hands in our own image?”
“Get to the point already.” He was worse than a talk-show host.
“Yes, yes, right. Thank you.” He smiled and walked over to Aya. He slapped her a few more times. I swallowed and did my best to contain myself. “Nothing yet? Hmm. Okay, so anyway. The first time I saw that shadow was when we were kids. I always knew there was something a little ‘off’ about Aya, but that confirmed it. We had a puppy. She loved that puppy. There was a little… ‘accident’ and the puppy died. Aya lost it. She was crying and screaming and she was inconsolable. And then, right as I was about to suggest that we bury the puppy somewhere nice in the backyard, I saw it. Rising in the darkness behind her. This shadow, shaped like a person. It looked at me and, oh, the feeling was indescribable. I’d never seen it before. I didn’t even know it was possible. And for that, I thank Aya. I really do. That day she taught me something that I’ve been striving towards my whole life. But I’m not there yet.” He slapped her again, this time harder. “And she won’t show me how!”
I had no idea what he was talking about. “You’re insane.”
He pulled a knife from his jacket and spun it on his fingertip. “Perhaps. Aren’t all the greatest people insane?” In a second the knife was at Aya’s throat.
“No!”
He pressed it harder against her flesh. “Uh-uh. Stay right there. Now, here’s the thing. Aya doesn’t care about her own life. I could put this through her soft, delicate throat right now and she wouldn’t try to stop me. No, on the contrary, I think she might rather be happy with that.” He stood up straight. “That’s not what I want. I’ve never wanted her dead. She’s my sister! I’m not a monster. No. I want that thing that’s inside her. I want her to show me how she does it. Why I can’t do the same.”
“How to… what?”
He walked around the bed and approached me.
“Surely you’ve noticed it. Whenever Aya’s in danger, whenever she’s scared, or angry, suddenly, there it is. The darkness. Protecting her. Keeping her safe.”
“P-protecting her? She’s been running from it! It’s been trying to kill her!”
Tatsuya
laughed. “I will admit, my sister isn’t the brightest bulb of the bunch. But you, although a little rough around the edges, seem at least somewhat intelligent. Has the shadow ever once tried to harm her? Really?”
I thought back to all the times I had seen it. On the street that time we met, it was just looking at her. In my apartment it approached her, but it never made any attempt to hurt her. At her house when her father was attacking her… it didn’t move towards her, but towards him. It was true. Whenever the shadow appeared, it never once tried to hurt Aya. If it was chasing her, then why…
“Ah, see, there it is. Now you get it. It’s not chasing her. It is her.”
“What… but…” I shook my head. Things were making less and less sense. “You can’t be serious! How could it be her? That’s ridiculous.”
He walked back over to his sister. “I’ve spent years trying to learn how she does it. Not even father was capable of channelling his own darkness like that, and he resented her for it. I’ve tried, over and over, to do it myself, but there’s something I’m missing. Something she won’t tell me. I’ve been trying to figure it out, you see. It appears when she’s upset. In some state of panic or fear or anger. But it’s not enough. Why can she manifest her darkness and I can’t?”
I took a step back, and then another. No. It couldn’t be. Aya didn’t kill those people.
“You’re lying. Aya said it killed your mother. Why would Aya kill her own mother?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Wow, she told you about that? She must really like you. It’s true. Aya killed our mother. Not on purpose, of course. She was young. She didn’t know what she was doing. When the darkness within her manifested, she was too immature to know what it was or how to control it. She wasn’t trying to kill our mother. She was trying to kill our father. Our mother, unfortunately, happened to get in the way. Aya doesn’t really have much control over it. Yet, anyway. It kills for her. To protect her. But she refuses to believe it’s coming from inside herself, and so it gets a little confused sometimes, you know? Killing whatever’s nearby.”
The man on the sixth floor. The man near the convenience store. They were just mistakes? They just happened to be nearby when the shadow was agitated?
I shook my head. “No. You’re lying.”
“What do I have to lie about? You’re nothing to me.” He took a step closer. “Nothing.” Another step. “But you are going to help me.” He pushed me back against the door. “Now that you understand what’s going on, you’re going to help. Aya needs to feel a certain type of emotion before she can bring her darkness out. She likes you, for whatever reason. So, you’re going to help us out.”
He smiled. The last thing I saw was his fist flying towards my face.
34
Sounds faded in and out. Someone was talking. No, not someone. Several people. It sounded like a party raging around me. I blinked and my eyes slowly came back into focus. I was lying on the seashell bed, my hands tied to the headboard. Aya was tied to the chair next to me, but she was awake. She was awake and looking at me.
“Yes, I’d like you to send someone around to check… No, no, that’s perfectly fine, you won’t find us in any compromising positions, I just need someone to fix the shower head… Yes, yes, thank you. Excellent. Goodbye.”
Tatsuya hung up the phone and turned around. “Ah, good, you’re awake! Just in time!”
“Leave her out of this Tatsu-” Tatsuya slapped Aya before she could finish her sentence. Tears welled in her eyes.
“We wouldn’t have to be doing this if you could just get your shit together. How many years have I been trying to help you, huh? How many? And what have I gotten in return? Nothing. Well, I’ve waited long enough. You’re going to show me how you do it. You’re going to learn what makes it happen, and then you’re going to show me. Then I don’t give a flying fuck what you do. You can run off and live happily ever after with your little girlfriend if you want. I don’t care. But not until you show me!”
There was a knock at the door. Tatsuya straightened himself up. “And just in time.” He opened the door and a maintenance man walked in. Tatsuya closed and locked the door behind him.
“You called about a shower head?” It took him a moment to take in the scene before him. “What the-”
Tatsuya pulled a gun. The man dropped his toolbox and threw his arms in the air.
“Tatsuya!”
“Shut up!” He walked over to Aya, the gun pointed at the man, and cut her free. “Stand up.”
Aya stood on shaky feet. Her brother pushed her towards the man.
“Sir, whatever’s going on here, I don’t want any-”
“Nobody asked you to speak. Shut up.” He gave Aya another shove and she stopped just short of the man. “You’re going to service him. Right here. Right now. In front of both of us.”
Aya shook her head.
“I’m not done speaking. You’re going to service this man, who was polite enough to come all the way out here to help us, or I’m going to shoot your little girlfriend in the head.” He turned and pointed the gun at me instead.
“Do it!” I said. “You think I care! You’d be doing me a favour! Just do it!”
Tatsuya grinned and turned to Aya. “She wants me to do it.”
“Leave her alone, Tatsuya! She has nothing to do with this.”
He shook his head and tsk-ed. “Ah, that’s where you’re wrong. She has everything to do with this, the moment you were stupid enough to fall in love with her. I get it, I do. Nothing wrong with falling in love with a lady. I mean, she’s not the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen, but I wouldn’t say no either, you know?”
I struggled against the ropes. He laughed. “I like her spirit.”
“Tatsuya, please.”
“Aya. Dear sister. You have 10 seconds to remove that man’s clothes and start doing what you do best, or I’m going to be forced to put a bullet through this one’s brain and make you clean up the mess.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“You know why.”
“It’s not me! I keep telling you, it’s not me!”
The maintenance man watched the scene before him in confusion. He backed up into the door and Tatsuya pointed the gun at him again. “Sir, I’d like to remind you that if you so much as even grab for that handle, I will shoot your brains out. Please don’t make me, because getting brain out of the carpet is such a hassle.” He turned to Aya. “Remove his clothes. Now.”
There! I pulled my hands free of the ropes and threw myself at Tatsuya. He fired. Aya screamed. I hit the ground, my vision blurry and a deafening ring in my ears. I waited for the blood to pool around me, for my life to pour out in front of my eyes. That was it. That was how it ended. Unceremoniously on the dirty carpet of a love hotel in the middle of nowhere.
Darkness took shape in the corner of the room. Aya’s eyes were on her brother, her fists clenched and her chest rising and falling.
“Yes, yes! That’s it! I knew you could do it! Feel it, Aya, feel it! Bring the darkness forth! Unleash it!”
The shadow grew taller and taller. Its head pressed against the love hotel roof and it was forced to crouch. It was even bigger than last time. Stronger. More powerful. It bent down and Aya screamed. It consumed the maintenance man, tearing him apart from the inside. Blood splattered across the carpet, the walls, the door, even the roof. The man’s organs were eviscerated. There was nothing but a sack of flesh lying in a pulpy mess on the floor. It barely even resembled a human.
Aya was red, painted in the stranger’s blood. Tatsuya laughed. “You’ve gotten better! Perfect! Amazing! That’s even more than I thought was possible!”
I felt myself lifted off the ground. Tatsuya was holding onto the back of my shirt. I swayed in the air and he planted me on shaky feet, then pulled me close. He wrapped a bloody arm around my neck and squeezed. The gun was pointed at my temple. I wasn’t dead. The bullet didn’t hit me. I didn’t know where the bullet went, but it soon became
apparent that it wasn’t in me.
But I wasn’t free yet. Not even close.
The darkness stood behind Aya. She stared at Tatsuya with hatred in her eyes, frozen to the spot. The shadow moved, imitating the rise and fall of her chest as she contained her rage inside. Or… outside. The shadow was waiting. It was waiting for Aya to tell it what to do next.
No. Not waiting.
That’s what Tatsuya said, after all. The shadow was her. That darkness wasn’t just inside Aya. It was Aya. They were one and the same. It was a part of her as much as her legs, her arms, her torso or her head. And its sights were set on us.
“Are you ready to die for her?” The question was directed at me. I closed my eyes.
“Are you?”
35
The darkness surrounded me. I was inside it and it was suffocating. But I felt nothing. No pain. A slight tingle on my skin and that was it. Behind me, Tatsuya screamed. The gun went off again, hitting the roof, and then the TV. The screen shattered and pieces fell to the floor.
And then the screaming stopped. I was covered in warmth. The smell was sickening. I gagged and fell to my knees. The floor was liquid. I slid and fell on my side. Pain shot through my ribs and black spots swam in front of my eyes. I forced myself to my feet and almost threw up.
Tatsuya was gone. Just like that. There was nothing left of him. The room was painted red with his blood, but unlike the maintenance man—the sack of flesh lying by the door—there was nothing left. He had been completely destroyed. There were bits of him all over the room, and shards of white that were probably bone remnants, but it was like a bomb went off inside him. It liquefied him.
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