Deep Red

by Hisashi Nozawa

  I returned to the entryway and stepped back outside. I stuck the hammer in my belt, opened the trunk of my car, and took out the chainsaw. I spotted a housewife on her way back from shopping far down the street, so I quickly closed the trunk and carried the chainsaw into the house.

  “Unh, ungh,” the wife was moaning, still in pain. I glanced around the first floor of the house from the living room to the dining area. I tapped the walls, searching by sound for where the pillars might be. Just as the employee at the DIY store had instructed me, I yanked on the wire on the chainsaw, and it came to life. The sound was tremendous, and the air around me vibrated. The exhaust, too, was immense, and soon the entire room reeked of fumes.

  Fathoming a pillar’s location, I touched a wall section with the blade, but it bounced back. I tried again and again, but all I did was leave ragged scratch marks on the wall. I started getting irritated.

  Perhaps the sound of the chainsaw had awakened her; out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mrs. Akiba slowly moving to sit up. I raised my chainsaw, threatening her. Its roar drowned out her shrill scream.

  Turning off the machine for a moment, I pulled the hammer from my belt and stood before her. She stared up at me, her face a mess of streaming blood and tears.

  “If you want money, it’s over there.”

  That’s what she said to me. She thought I was a robber. “Well, would you have fifty million?” I asked her. She didn’t even seem wise to the figure’s significance.

  I felt like I needed to explain why I had forced myself in and hurt her, why I was trying to destroy their house. My voice was muffled with the mask on so I removed it.

  “Your husband is a horrible person. He used my late wife’s insurance money to pay off an acquaintance’s debt. Yes, I was a fool for getting caught in such a scam, but he told me that if I want my money back I should take it from my company. Don’t you think that’s just awful?”

  Mrs. Akiba didn’t seem to get it. Perhaps her head was starting to hurt again, because she interrupted me, saying, “Please call an ambulance.”

  That was when I saw the photo displayed on a windowsill in the dining room.

  Displayed in a fancy frame was a snapshot of Mr. Akiba’s family of five surrounding a pair of grandparents. It looked like it had been taken in a private room at a fancy Chinese restaurant. The grandfather’s face gleamed in the flash. It was the face of the chairman from the school pamphlet.

  “Who is that elderly man?” I asked.

  “My father,” the wife replied.

  The doubt smoldering in my chest cleared. So that had been it.

  Mr. Akiba had once told me that his wife’s family ran a Chinese restaurant in Kobe. Oh, his missus is the daughter of a ramen store owner, I had concluded all on my own, but apparently her parents were businesspeople who managed high-end Chinese restaurants, boutiques, and what have you in addition to exam-prep schools.

  When their diversification failed, Mr. Akiba must have been approached by his father-in-law for help. Judging that becoming a guarantor was too risky, and searching for someone with savings among his connections who would listen to his pleas, Mr. Akiba had chosen me as his victim.

  “So it’s your fault,” I spat to his wife. Knowing myself, I might have been laughing. “Ma’am, your father is to blame. Your family. You.”

  Repeating those words, I brought down the hammer again and again.

  I felt something slimy on my cheek. It was her blood. Mrs. Akiba was convulsing on the dining room floor, and from around her head spread a pool of blood. Ah, I thought, this is how people die.

  That was when I heard the two boys’ voices from the entryway: “We’re home!”

  I felt like I owed the two sons a proper explanation, too.

  “We’re starving,” they proclaimed and entered the dining room. Upon seeing their fallen mother, they looked up, eyes wide, mouth gaping, at the man with thick goggles, and froze. The two of them were around the same height. I’d heard that they’d been born within a year of each other, but their expressions and movements and everything were so perfectly synched that they looked like twins.

  “I just had a talk with your mother, but your father has done something very mean to me. When people do bad things, they have to be punished. You understand, right?”

  I don’t know if the boys actually understood or not, but they nodded.

  “Your mom was also responsible. So she had to be punished, too.”

  “Did she die?” one of them asked.

  I replied, “It seems that way.”

  The two of them touched her corpse, then shook it, calling, “Mom, mom!” Their mother just lolled around limply. The two kids’ wailing gradually grew loud enough to be painful.

  I once again turned on the chainsaw. It drowned out the children’s crying. I tried to shred the wall and cut through a supporting pillar, but it wasn’t going as planned. Moreover, the crying children were beginning to win over the roar of the machine, and I had a throbbing headache as though thumbtacks were being driven into my skull.

  I have no memory of the thirty seconds that followed. By the time I returned to myself, the two boys were sleeping alongside their mother.

  A sea of blood spread across the entire dining room floor. I realized that I had brought down my hammer on the boys as well.

  Where had I gone off so wrong as to end up robbing three people of their lives? I tried to trace it back to the start, but the thread of my memory just kept tangling, and all I could do then was stand there dazed.

  Night had fully fallen outside. The next to arrive would most likely be the older sister, who was the same age as my own daughter. I was likely to bring the hammer down on her as well, and the thought ate at me.

  There were numerous gashes on the living room wall as though some monster had clawed at it. The air reeked of fumes like a construction site, and three corpses of differing sizes lay on the floor. The sea of blood mingled with the floorboards, and a rich color close to maroon was spreading. It was a terrible sight.

  I wondered how long I remained on my knees, vacant. The chime of the doorbell dragged me back to reality. It sounded like a crash of thunder in the silent house, and I started.

  Mentally preparing myself to face the eldest daughter, I went to the entrance. But the one who came in, saying, “I’m home,” was Mr. Akiba. “Whose car is that outside?” he asked, but upon seeing me, his voice immediately took on a note of alarm. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  I had taken off my goggles, and only the area around my eyes was free of blood. Sensing right away that something out of the ordinary had happened, Mr. Akiba slipped past me to run inside. I matched his pace and followed.

  He slipped and fell in the sea of blood, beheld the bodies of his wife and two sons, and let loose a scream in astonishment. I stood directly behind him, and without giving him a chance to make his next move, I brought down the hammer with practiced ease. Even as he collapsed, Mr. Akiba clutched at me. I, too, slipped and fell. I was reminded of the mud wrestling I’d seen once at a beer garden as we grappled, both of us soaked red.

  I struck at him with the hammer countless times, and a few of my blows must have found purchase because Mr. Akiba’s resistance was waning. I tossed away the hammer and wrapped my hands around his throat.

  “Take your punishment. You’re the one who messed up. It’s your relative’s debt, so handle it among relatives. Apologize, will you? Apologize, will you?”

  In the end, I never got to hear words of contrition from Mr. Akiba. Perhaps it was because I was choking him that he couldn’t tell me how sorry he was. Strength gradually left his engorged face. When I let go, he plopped down on his side next to his wife.

  They had all passed away.

  I glanced up at the clock and noticed that it was almost seven. I wondered what their daughter was doing out so late. Maybe she had cram school? When I looked at their dining table, I noticed that there were only four sets. Why wasn’t the daughter inc
luded in that number? No further capacity for thought graced my head.

  I stood up, zipped through the living room, and came to the entryway. When I opened the door, the chilly night air hit my blood-drenched face. On the lookout for people, I got out onto the street and opened the trunk of my car. I took out the disassembly hammer and returned to the house.

  I’d gone and demolished the residents first. I’d meant to start with the house.

  Even so, I couldn’t let go of my impulse to destroy. Swinging up the hammer, I brought it down at the wall bitten up by the chainsaw. The board caved in and revealed yellow insulation material. Beyond that was a pillar. Engrossed in the task of laying it bare, I widened the hole in the wallboard.

  Starting up the chainsaw again, I pressed its blade against the pillar rising behind the insulation material. Sawdust spewed out of the back of the machine, and I was amused how easily it cut. As I severed one after another of Mr. Akiba’s house’s supports, I finally felt like forgiving him.

  When I glanced around, I realized that I’d been the center of attention. Mr. Akiba, his wife, and his two children all lay on their sides facing the same direction, and as they rested, their half-mast eyes were glaring at me. Their resentful gazes as I worked on my project felt unbearably annoying. I considered carrying them to the bathroom, but I felt like I was running out of time and decided it would be faster to just erase their expressions.

  When you spend some time with a corpse, it can start to seem like nothing more than an object. Chiyoko had remained Chiyoko even after her death, so I was surprised at the stark difference. There was probably no limit to the damage I could inflict on the Akibas.

  I exchanged the chainsaw for the industrial hammer and used both hands to raise it up. I took aim. Mr. Akiba would be first. I swung down at the center of his face. After hitting it, his expression was clean gone. Next his wife, then his two sons. I smashed their expressions one and all.

  Maintaining my momentum, I redirected the hammer and opened a hole in the wall of the dining room, baring another pillar. The chainsaw spewed sawdust, and it was as though yellow snow were falling on the four bodies.

  I wonder how many pillars I cut through. Yet, when I turned off the chainsaw and strained my ears, I couldn’t hear the house groaning. Where and how did you damage one to bring it down? I was suddenly overcome by a sense of futility.

  I’d been too tense to notice that I was completely out of steam. Sitting down hunched over in the sea of blood, I sighed with my entire body. I no longer had the will to stand up. Thinking back on the exhaustion I felt then, I must have been chipping away at my own life in robbing others of theirs.

  Someone banged on the front door.

  “Mr. Akiba? Mr. Akiba! Are you home? Is everything all right? I’m from the local police box.” It was the voice of a young man.

  Since the door wasn’t locked, eventually the footsteps of several people approached me from behind. I heard gasps. The male voice contacting some place over a com unit sounded so pitifully agitated.

  A neighbor seemed to have called the police due to the noise I’d been making with my hammer and chainsaw.

  Thus, I was arrested on the spot for murder and mutilating corpses.

  In jail, apart from the designated exercise time, I meditate.

  Standing on a grassy plain where a storm had blown through, I keep my ears tuned for hints of the next storm. That’s my mindset.

  After the storm that is “sin” comes another called “judgment.” I judged the Akibas, and now the law will judge me.

  Did Mr. Akiba and his wife commit a sin that had to be paid for with their lives? I ponder this question in light of the psychological abuse that he subjected me to again and again.

  What I can say for certain is that the two boys were innocent.

  As for their daughter, who had been away on a school trip and who continues to live, not having met her end at my hand, no apology could ever serve.

  If sincerely accepting the court’s verdict and dying were to be my atonement, then I believe that I must calm my soul with daily reflection and nurture my resolve to face that outcome.

  What I have recorded here is the result of rummaging through the vessel of my memory and recalling all that I could. I do not expect you to believe everything, but please hear me out on one last point.

  It’s one that I repeatedly made to the investigators after I was arrested and interrogated multiple times.

  I am sane.

  2

  First-Instance Ruling

  Permanent residence: 21 Tomaru, Greater Tomaru, Ichinomiya City, Aichi Prefecture

  Current residence: Portopia Tsukishima Apt. No. 206, 1-28-3 Tsukishima, Chuo Ward, Tokyo

  Sun Educational Equipment Co., Ltd. employee Norio Tsuzuki, born May 6, 1952

  The person described above has been given the following ruling for the crimes of forceful entry into a private residence, murder, and the desecration of corpses.

  Main Clause

  The defendant is sentenced to death.

  1) The issues at hand

  While the prosecutor asserted that the crimes in this case were premeditated and that the defendant is capable of taking full responsibility for his actions regarding the case, the defense asserted that the defendant had felt cornered and was mentally unstable, or had experienced a mental breakdown, at the time of committing the crimes, and further that the victims’ side bore some blame.

  After carefully considering evidence that included the defendant’s written statement and psychiatric examination, this court concluded that the crimes were clearly committed within his capacity to bear responsibility.

  Below are the reasons why the defense attorney’s assertions were not adopted.

  2) On the credibility of the defendant’s personal statement and his motives

  The defendant provided a detailed account of the facts of his life, of his encounter with Yukihiko Akiba and their subsequent relationship, and of the situation on the day of the crime.

  Due to the property issues that resulted in the scattering of his family, the defendant was especially vigilant about not deviating from social norms, and this personality formation made him an “inflexible and fastidious person” in his own and others’ estimation.

  However, his explanation as to how Yukihiko Akiba took advantage of their work partnership—to request that the defendant guarantee an acquaintance’s debt, and further that there was no choice but to acquiesce to maintain their relationship—feels quite unnatural.

  The defendant claims that he did not know that the man for which he co-signed was Yukihiko Akiba’s father-in-law until the day of the crime, when he recognized the man in a photo displayed at the household he invaded. The defense failed to provide evidence to support such a claim.

  It must be said that the defendant’s not having superiors or colleagues at his company in whom he could confide, that is to say, his propensity to carry his burdens alone, has worked against him in multiple ways.

  His claim that he was placed in a quandary would have been more convincing if he had ever complained to a third party about his work partner’s unreasonable request.

  To begin with, notwithstanding an unequal work relationship, it seems incredibly hasty and against all common sense for the defendant to sign on the spot an almost entirely blank loan agreement that specified neither the debt-holder, the sum, nor the interest rate.

  The defendant states that at the time he had recently lost his wife, was living in a daze, and lacked proper judgment, but the matter of the loan was brought before him two days after he had returned to work.

  According to the testimonies of his colleagues at Sun Educational Equipment, during those two days, the defendant appeared to be handling his work in the same manner as before, and it is hard to believe that he was so psychologically troubled that he could not give the IOU proper scrutiny.

  The defendant claims that when he invaded the Akiba residence and struck Masae Akiba with a ha
mmer, he only wanted to keep her out of the way of dismantling the home and had no intention, at that point, of killing her. He explains that it was only during the demolishment process, when he saw the family photo on the windowsill and learned that the former chairman in question was in fact Masae Akiba’s father, that he became consumed by anger and impulsively committed the crimes.

  In other words, he repeatedly asserts that all of his crimes thereafter were not premeditated and that the murders of the two children and Yukihiko Akiba were the result of a psychological escalation owing to his panic over Masae’s murder.

  There is not enough of a foundation to take this as fact.

  Let us move on to the “blank thirty seconds,” the most hotly contested point at the hearings.

  While the defendant’s mental state is described in great detail elsewhere in his account, with regards to the murder of the young brothers Tomoki and Naoki Akiba upon their return home, “I have no memory of the thirty seconds that followed. By the time I returned to myself, the two boys were sleeping alongside their mother.” That is the extent of his explanation, making for a rather unbalanced testimony.

  His attorney claims that the lacuna in his personal statement indicates an episode of mental instability or breakdown and that no intention to kill the young children can be admitted.

  This court believes that it is precisely this factor that places the credibility of the defendant’s statement in question.

  Let us organize the defendant’s motives.

  Succumbing to Yukihiko Akiba’s manipulations, the defendant co-signed a loan agreement and had to pay fifty million yen of his deceased wife’s insurance money to an agency. Akiba advised the defendant to embezzle the funds exchanged by their companies in order to recover the sum, but the “inflexible and fastidious” defendant declined in so many words and felt a growing hatred for the victim. Thereafter, the defendant felt mentally oppressed by Yukihiko Akiba’s words and actions and became obsessed with robbing him of something dearly precious rivaling the defendant’s late wife’s insurance money.