Murder Anniversary and the Reverse Memorial

by Mizuki Mizushiro

  “Eiri…” Ayaka’s eyes sparkled as she took the okonomiyaki.

  Renko groaned in displeasure. “Ohhh, why is there nothing for me? Wasn’t there anything that I might have been able to eat with my mask on?!”

  “…No, there was. They have shaved ice and stuff. But even if I had bought it, it would have melted, and I didn’t know what flavor you’d like, so I didn’t get it. You go buy it yourself.”

  “Hmph. Well in that case, I guess it’s okay…”

  Grumbling, Renko returned her scoop, with a hole in the paper, to the stall keeper. Ayaka also returned hers, and Kyousuke and the others left the booth carrying their spoils.

  “Kksshh. Boy, we sure did catch a lot.”

  “That’s for sure. Ayaka plus Renko makes a formidable team!”

  “…You caused a lot of trouble for the guy running the booth, though.”

  The stall keeper’s face had definitely been twitching, even as he smiled professionally when they left.

  While they were buying shaved ice for Renko, Kyousuke and the others discussed which stall to test their skill at next.

  “—Oh?”

  They had found someone familiar.

  A girl wearing a yukata that depicted deep crimson birds fluttering across a white background—Kagura was standing in front of a stall, getting a candy apple. Her seemingly bored copper eyes seized on Kyousuke and the others.

  “…Hmph.” She immediately looked away. Before they could try to call out to her, Kagura promptly turned and walked off.

  “I guess she’s going around by herself.”

  “…It’s understandable, given her other choices for company, right?”

  In the direction that Eiri jerked her chin, Basara stood being fawned over by three unfamiliar girls at the target-practice stall. When he noticed Kyousuke and the others looking, he put on a smug, self-satisfied look and readied his rifle.

  I guess he wants to boast about his success at picking up girls…

  Farther back, Busujima was idling about with a beer in one hand, absently mumbling to himself. It certainly seemed that Kagura would not have much fun going around with those two, either.

  “But even so, isn’t it lonely to be all by yourself? She didn’t even say hi—”

  “I already talked to her.”

  “Oh?”

  “I ran across her when I went to throw away my bottle, so I invited her to join us. I said, ‘Why don’t you come hang out with us?’ She turned me down without even hesitating. She just seems to hate the idea of the two of us being together. So let’s leave her alone.”

  “……I see.”

  If they had been rejected, there was nothing to be done about it. However, if that was the case, why had she come along in the first place? Even if Fuyou had recommended it, it didn’t seem to have been an order…

  “It’s no gooood—I can’t drink it! Does this mean I have to wait until it melts?”

  While Kyousuke was lost in thought, Renko was busy complaining. Although she had stuck her straw tube in a Blue Hawaii–flavored shaved ice and was trying to suck it up, it didn’t seem to be going well.

  Taking her lemon shaved ice from the shopkeeper, Ayaka laughed. “Tee-hee! That’s terrible, Renko. Why don’t you try attempting suicide? Won’t that force your limiter to come off?”

  “Good idea! I’ll go kill myself now.”

  “Wait right there.” Kyousuke grabbed the back of Renko’s neck, holding her in place. If she removed her limiter in a place like this, it would be no joking matter.

  Ayaka held out a treat to Kyousuke, who looked genuinely worried. “Here, big brother! And Eiri, too.”

  “Thank you.”

  “…Thanks.”

  Kyousuke got melon, and Eiri strawberry.

  “Sweet…it’s so tasty. Can I have a bit of your lemon one?”

  “Please do! If you want, you can also taste my big brother’s.”

  “Uh. Th-that’s okay…”

  “Tee-hee. Are you embarrassed about giving him an indirect kiss?”

  “Huh?! N-nnnn-no! It’s not like that! That’s stupid!!” Eiri fumed.

  Renko pulled her hair in frustration as Kyousuke and the others enjoyed their snacks. “Ohhh, c’mon, what the hell is this? All of you are so slick, aren’t you?! I want to eat unmelted shaved ice, too! I want to eat yakisoba; I want to eat takoyaki; I want to eat ikayaki; I want to eat okonomiyaki; I want to eat a hot dog; I want to eat a chocolate banana; I want to eat crepes; I want to eat candy applessssss!”

  “Well,” interrupted the oblivious shopkeeper, “…why don’t you take off that mask, miss?”

  “Shut up!”

  Renko was completely livid.

  After finishing their ice-chip snacks, Kyousuke and the others visited the yo-yo fishing stall.

  Multicolored yo-yo water balloons in red, blue, yellow, green, white, and pink bobbed around a vinyl pool. The object was to fish them out with a hooked tool. It was an easy game compared to goldfish scooping, and both Renko and Ayaka were able to quickly get the balloons they were aiming for. Renko got a blue-and-pink balloon, and Ayaka got a purple-and-orange one. As with the goldfish scooping, Eiri refused to participate, but the two of them fished out a red-and-white balloon for her.

  Next they tried their hands at target shooting, which, again, Eiri opted only to spectate, despite Kyousuke’s encouragement to join.

  “…I’m fine,” she refused, absently dangling her yo-yo balloon. “Guns aren’t exactly my forte.” She looked distracted, hardly even watching them shoot, not even eating or drinking anything.

  Kyousuke was worried about Eiri and couldn’t focus on the game. He felt restless wedged between the excited duo of Renko and Ayaka.

  “”

  Eiri silently left the booth.

  “Hey, Eiri!” Kyousuke called to her, setting down his cork gun. “Where are you going?”

  Eiri looked down for just a second. “Bathroom,” she answered nonchalantly.

  “O-oh…I see.”

  Renko and Ayaka called out to Eiri’s back, “See you when you get back!” and immediately returned to their target practice.

  Kyousuke hesitated for a moment, debating whether to return to the game as well. “Ah…sorry, I’ll hit up the bathroom, too,” he said, setting down his cork gun. He was still worried about Eiri’s behavior.

  Renko and Ayaka seemed to be entirely preoccupied with their targets.

  “See you when you get back! Okay, this time for sure… Aww, why can’t I knock it over?!”

  “This is one of those games, huh…? It’s the type where there’s a trick behind the targets. Cheeky… Let’s take it down by concentrating our firepower! …Oh. See you when you get back, big brother.”

  They barely paused in planning their strategy and reloading their cork guns to give him even those hurried answers. Judging by their enthusiasm, there wouldn’t be any problem with leaving them for a short while.

  “If I take a while getting back, you can wander around as you please, okay?”

  Leaving them with those words, Kyousuke turned his back on the target-practice booth. He looked around for Eiri but couldn’t immediately find her. Setting out in the direction that she’d gone, he attentively searched the crowd—

  “Eiri!”

  He finally caught up with her at the edge of the grounds, where she had escaped the throngs of people.

  “……Kyousuke?” His friend turned around, looking puzzled. “Why are you following me? Did you need something?”

  “No, I also wanted to use the bathroom.”

  “Really?” Eiri’s attitude was even colder than usual. Looking away from Kyousuke, she pointed off to the right. “…The bathrooms are that way, so see you later.”

  She promptly walked off, heading left—toward the exit, in the direction of the school gate. Kyousuke followed after her in a panic.

  “Hey, where are you going?!”

  “Nowhere.”

  “Wait up!”<
br />
  But Eiri didn’t stop. Ignoring Kyousuke’s shouts, she hurriedly left the festival grounds, though he deftly followed her.

  “Weren’t you going to the bathroom?”

  “I should ask you the same thing.”

  “…I’m fine, though.”

  “Well, then, I’m also not doing too badly!”

  “Yes you are.”

  “…Why?”

  “Because I’m worried about you.”

  “—Huh?”

  Eiri came to a halt and glared at Kyousuke.

  “Worried…? Huh? There’s no reason for you to be worried. I don’t understand what you mean… This meddling is so annoying. You’d better cut it out.”

  “A-annoying…?”

  “Annoying.” Averting her eyes, Eiri fiddled with her hair. “…What did I say? I didn’t say anything to you, did I? And yet you butt right in and extend your hand to me without hesitation… What is this? Do you want to die? I’m doing what everyone wants, so why do you—?”

  “You’re trying too hard, dummy,” Kyousuke said, interrupting Eiri’s irritated rambling. With just a touch of anger in his voice, he continued. “You’re too worried about what everyone around you thinks… That can’t be fun at all. I mean, since we got here, you haven’t smiled once! So isn’t it absurd for you to say crap like ‘don’t worry about me’…? And you went so far as to lie to us, just to get some time alone. Even if you don’t say anything, I understand perfectly.”

  “Mm—”

  Eiri bit her lip.

  Standing in the way to block her path, Kyousuke continued. “Back when I was having trouble with Ayaka, you told me this—remember? ‘Fawn over her more,’ you said… Allow me to turn those words right back around at you. Depend on us more, Eiri. I don’t know whether or not we can help, but it definitely can’t hurt to try. If there’s something you’re worried about or troubled by, I want you to ask for help and not take it all upon yourself!”

  “Kyousuke…” Eiri stared at him. A few moments passed in silence. “…Hmph. You’re a hopeless simpleton after all.” She brushed Kyousuke aside, heading for the school gate at a brisk pace.

  “H-hey—”

  “I’m getting out of here!”

  Rebuffing Kyousuke’s call to stop, Eiri let a sigh slip out.

  The sharp crescent of the moon hung slender in the silvery-blue night sky. The hustle of the crowds died out just a short distance from the fairgrounds, where there were far fewer streetlights illuminating the darkness. The cheerful noise of the Bon dance was quickly replaced by a chorus of frogs and insects.

  Eiri walked on in silence, and Kyousuke followed her down the raised paths between rice paddies. The wind strummed the green stalks, playing a gentle melody. But suddenly, she turned to face him. “Hey, Kyousuke…”

  “…Do you want to run away like this?”

  Her expression was grave. There was not a hint of sarcasm in her voice as she stared at him with an inscrutable gaze.

  “Run away…?” Kyousuke asked, perplexed. “Are you…serious?”

  “Of course not,” Eiri quickly amended, turning her back on him once more. Her gaze dropped to her feet. “I understand… I know that we can’t run away,” she mumbled. Her voice seemed as if it would vanish into the summer air.

  In the middle of the deserted path, Eiri took a deep breath.

  “You know, I… Exactly six years ago, I came out on a night just like this.”

  She slowly exhaled. The things that Eiri had secretly accumulated—

  “At the time, I had just turned ten years old—it was right before I was to be taken to the site of my first assignment… I’d been training every day, from morning to night, refining my skills. I was the eldest daughter of the main branch of the Akabane clan, after all, and the whole family expected me to perform well, even on my first attempt. I couldn’t afford to fail.”

  As she spoke, Eiri stared up at the night sky, her ponytail fluttering in the wind. “My father said something to me back then. He said, ‘Let’s take tonight off’… He was probably only thinking about my well-being, but to tell the truth I honestly wasn’t interested. I’d spent most of my life before then at home, and my head was full of thoughts of murder. But when I actually went outside and came to see the Bon dance, all those thoughts were brushed aside.”

  Eiri’s voice had taken on a certain tenderness as she recalled her past emotions. “Everything that met my eyes was so fresh and fun and exhilarating. I was so excited, just like Renko. Tugging on my father’s hand, we went around to all the different stalls. Of course, since we were traveling incognito, I wasn’t allowed to do anything that would leave evidence of our being here. There was just one thing that I begged for at all costs… Do you know what that was?”

  Kyousuke pondered her question, looking at the water balloon dangling from Eiri’s hand.

  “Yo-yo fishing?”

  “Wrong.”

  “…Goldfish scooping?”

  “Wrong.”

  “Um…target shooting?”

  “Not quite.” Eiri smiled mischievously. “It was a stuffed animal.”

  “…Stuffed animal?”

  “Yeah. An extra-large stuffed animal, a prize at the target-shooting booth… I wanted that thing no matter what, and I begged him to get it for me. That stuffed animal was Pooh Bear—the last present I ever received from my father.”

  “Ah…”

  Kyousuke remembered Eiri sleeping with Pooh Bear in her arms. The stuffed animal gave her such a sense of security. “If I don’t have this, I can’t sleep well.” It must have been a treasured possession, heavy with memories of her father. And that father, whom Eiri had valued even more than Pooh Bear, was—

  “The next week after the Bon dance, my father went out on a job. He promised that when he got back, he would take me with him on the next one… Leaving it at that, he never came home again. Well…what they did bring back…it wasn’t my father anymore.”

  “……I see.”

  Eiri’s tone had grown utterly placid. Kyousuke thought that she must have repeated this story many times; it must have carried many well-worn emotions. Her voice was dark and sad. “—I thought that I would kill them. That I would make the bastards who did that to my father suffer the same fate. Day after day, I kept swinging my sword, in a trance…but despite all that…”

  Eiri’s slender shoulders trembled slightly as her voice swelled with new feeling. “Despite all that, I couldn’t kill. Forget about my father’s enemies; I couldn’t even kill powerless, ordinary people! Just before my blade would cut into their vitals, I would think of my father—of how I felt when I lost my father—and I would project those feelings onto my target! After all, I know perfectly well how badly it hurts to have something important suddenly taken from you one day. I know how deeply sad it makes you… I understand it completely.”

  “Eiri…”

  Kyousuke recalled their frank conversation in the school infirmary some time ago. He remembered the girl who confessed that she “couldn’t kill” while barely holding back a fit of tears.

  At the root of that was anger at the loss of her beloved father, and a sorrow so great that she couldn’t burn through it with that anger.

  “Heh-heh…I really look like an idiot, don’t I?” Eiri muttered derisively. “Putting the feelings of total strangers before vengeance for my father… I lose my nerve. I’m softhearted, worth even less than you! I can’t do anything like this; I’ve got no purpose. I can’t show my face in public—I’m so ashamed. Not to Mother, or Kagura, or big brother, or Muramasa, or Ryou, or Ran, or the branch families…or even to my father.”

  “…………”

  So Eiri didn’t visit the family altar after all. She felt as though she had brought shame not only on House Akabane but also on her father, so she couldn’t go near the place where his soul was supposed to return, and she had visited only his empty grave.

  “—Look here,” Kyousuke said, simply speaking hi
s mind. “Did your family want you to become an assassin? Did they expect you to get revenge? Did your father—?”

  “Of course,” Eiri answered immediately. When she turned to face him, her eyes were like daggers. “We’re a famous family of assassins! I was trained to kill from the time I was a child, and I was fledged into a world reeking of blood… That was normal. There’s no way that they didn’t want me to!! And Father, too, surely…he must have wished that I would become a full-fledged assassin and kill the bastard who killed him.”

  “What about you?”

  “……Huh?”

  “What do you want, Eiri? Do you still want to become an assassin, even if it means thinking painful thoughts and causing others the same pain? Do you want to become a murderer? Forget about where you were born and how you were raised and what other people think of you, and consider what you want—”

  “I want to kill!”

  Eiri bellowed the words, bearing down on Kyousuke with a furious glare. “I want to kill the man who killed my father! I want to be able to kill anyone at all! I want to become a full-fledged assassin and fulfill everyone’s expectations! I want to puff up my chest with pride as the eldest daughter and true heir! I want to become the head of the main house and protect everyone…protect the ones I love. In order to do that, I have to kill… I have to be able to kill! So I—”

  Abruptly ending her long-winded rant, Eiri suddenly clapped her mouth shut and was still. Her eyes opened wide, and she stared out into the twilight toward the approaching sound of geta sandals against asphalt.

  Someone was walking slowly down the raised path that stretched straight through the rice fields. Under a burned-out streetlight, the person who gradually emerged was—

  “Is that so? In that case, hurry up and do it, big sister.”

  “Kagura…”

  Her rust-red eyes looked almost exactly like Eiri’s as they gazed at them scornfully.