Kotaro wasn’t out of it, but losing his vision in one eye had made him cautious about moving around. If he wasn’t careful he immediately tripped over things, or knocked them over when he reached for them.
“Haven’t you got practice Sundays?”
“We’re off ’cause of midterms.”
“Then you better go study.”
“Speak for yourself. You ought to go to class instead of spending all your time at that stupid job!” Kazumi boiled over suddenly and punched the remote, switching off the TV. “It’s time to quit.” She scowled at him. “You’ve been acting weird since New Year’s. All you do is work. It’s like you’re out of control or something.”
Kotaro turned away from her. He put his elbows on the table and rested his chin in his palms.
Something crossed the inky void of his left eye. It looked like a faintly glowing golden thread. He started in surprise and the thread disappeared.
“Listen to me!”
Kazumi’s voice was shrill. Kotaro looked over at her. Swarms of golden threads were boiling out of her mouth and floating slowly toward him. He stared at them, fascinated.
What’s happening?
He reached out and tried to grasp one between thumb and forefinger. It disappeared instantly, almost as if the pulse of air from his fingers had been enough to extinguish it. It was mystifying.
His sister was still talking. Kotaro realized she was crying.
“You were in love with her, weren’t you? With that woman who got killed,” she sobbed. “I know you were. Mom does too.”
Golden threads poured from her trembling lips. Now they were much shorter. They wriggled like something alive, but instead of swimming toward him, they circled her head and flowed into her right ear. Kotaro watched all of this in amazement.
“Why are you looking at me like that? Can’t you see how worried we are? Mom’s so anxious she can barely sleep at night, but she’s out buying you a suit for the funeral. She wants you to dress right when you say goodbye to that woman.”
Kotaro finally focused his right eye on his sister. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Something’s wrong with you,” she said in a warning tone. She got up off the floor and came into the kitchen.
“She’s not coming back, you know, so quit brooding. It was all in your head. She didn’t care about you. She was a grown-up. She had a fiancée. You’re just a college kid, but you’re wallowing and feeling sorry for yourself like you lost a sweetheart.” She pounded the table with her fist. “Come back to reality!”
He waited for the reverberations to die away before answering. “You don’t know the first thing about how I feel.”
She shrank back, looking as though she’d been slapped. “What’s gotten into you, Ko-chan?” she said softly. Her voice trembled and caught in a sob. The threads coming out of her mouth drooped and plunged downward in tiny whirlpools before winking out.
Are those things her feelings?
Feelings. They were like ghosts, or hallucinations. They were real, but not part of the real world. Now Kotaro could see them as ephemeral golden threads.
This is how Galla sees words.
“I’m only trying to help—”
“Yeah? Then butt out,” he cut in brusquely. Kazumi gulped and stood for a moment, frozen, before running out of the kitchen. Kotaro heard her pounding up the stairs.
I’ve never talked to her like that before.
Kotaro and Kazumi had always had an unspoken agreement. He let her put him on the defensive; he would apologize and hear her out. He was always the gentle, caring older sibling. Whether the topic was silly or serious, he’d always been the first to yield when they disagreed. But today, though he’d known she was worried and trying to comfort him in her own way, somehow he couldn’t respond the way he usually did.
Why? Was it because he could see those golden threads?
She’s barfing all those wriggling worms, and she thinks she can lecture me?
He put his elbows on the table and rubbed his face tiredly. Had he given up more than just the vision in his left eye when he made his deal with Galla? He could see people’s words, but what had it cost him?
He went into the living room, grabbed the remote from the sofa where Kazumi had tossed it, and switched on the TV. The panel of guests was excitedly discussing another short-lived celebrity romance. He sat close to the screen and examined it carefully.
What he saw made him blink hard and rub his eyes with his fists. He squeezed his eyes shut and snapped them open again.
He saw threads glimmering faintly. If he’d been farther away, he might not have noticed them.
They almost looked like the scanning lines on an analog TV. They crossed the screen in both directions, vacillating up and down in enmeshed waves. They were different lengths and thicknesses.
Words!
He pounded up the stairs almost as fast as Kazumi had earlier and rushed to boot up his laptop. He tried a textboard called 2channel first.
Sure enough, the monitor was crawling with threads, seemingly thousands of them, far too many to distinguish lengths and sizes. It looked like a nest of worms. The effect was slightly sickening.
Out of these millions of threads, Galla had to find the words of the serial amputator. Would she be able to match something from a swarm like this to the words in the killer’s letter? It was like comparing fingerprints from a crime scene to a database of thousands of sets, waiting for MATCH FOUND to appear.
The hues and density of the threads seemed different from site to site. Kotaro moved busily from keyboard to mouse and back again in a state of near-intoxication, gazing at millions of wriggling threads on textboard after textboard.
He logged on to a news aggregator and searched for articles about the murders. Here the threads weren’t wriggling. Instead they shot quickly across the screen like long, straight needles. They were also much brighter—in fact almost dazzlingly beautiful.
The words of the articles about the serial amputator reflected good sense, logic, and a strong desire to solve the case. That was apparently why they were straight and beautiful.
Like a school of barracuda.
Wait, why barracuda? What made me think that?
His head was spinning. He’d seen too many threads. I’m too new at this. I’d better take a break.
Coverage of the murder had started focusing on why Ayuko hadn’t gone straight to her apartment after Morohashi saw her off at the train station. The taxi driver had come forward with testimony that shed more light on the case.
As the taxi was passing through the Ginza district, Ayuko’s smartphone had buzzed. She’d said “excuse me” to the driver and answered the call.
Why, this is a surprise. What are you up to? Yes, I just got here. I’m in a taxi.
She’d obviously known the caller. After chatting for a few minutes, she’d rung off and asked the driver to take her to the scramble crossing in Shibuya. She’d seemed in a hurry; when the driver asked whether she had a business appointment, Ayuko smiled.
No, I’m meeting a friend.
After dropping her off, he’d watched her disappear into the crowds along the sidewalk.
Whoever called her was probably the last person to see her alive. Her phone was missing, but there would be a record of the call. It had been someone Ayuko looked forward to hearing from, someone she’d be willing to change her busy schedule to meet.
And her friend had murdered her.
That was the only conclusion. Otherwise the caller would’ve come forward in astonishment and fear and grief to testify that he’d seen her the night she died. Or he would’ve contacted Seigo to tell him they’d met the night before, where they’d gone and what time they’d said goodnight. Keeping silent at a time like this was not the way friends behaved.
Could the ser
ial amputator be a close friend of Ayuko?
There was nothing to do but wait for Galla to find the answer.
2
Kotaro faced his nightmare in new mourning clothes.
The temple in Nagoya was every bit as imposing as the renowned temples of Kyoto and Nara. The memorial hall was designed in the traditional style, with a heavy tiled roof. A signboard with black characters on a stark white background stood outside the hall. The sign read: WAKE FOR THE LATE AYUKO YAMASHINA.
The flagstone path from the main gate to the memorial hall was crowded with mourners. Even from his post at the outdoor reception table facing the hall, Kotaro could smell the incense offerings and flowers heaped on the stage.
Makoto and Kaname were there too. They bowed mechanically to the mourners, just as they had been instructed. They gave them a registry card to fill in, received their condolence donations, and thanked them again. Many of the female mourners were in tears as they handed over the formal black and white envelopes with their donations.
After twenty minutes, Kaname surrendered to her grief. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, and fled in tears. Makoto and Kotaro had to soldier on without her help.
Narita was overseeing the reception table. He stood to one side, surveying the mourners and checking his smartphone, coordinating operations at the Nagoya and Tokyo offices. Kumar’s cyber patrolling never stopped. Maeda would take over from Narita tomorrow, when the funeral was held. Kotaro, Kaname and Makoto would return to Tokyo and other Kumar staff would take over for the funeral proper.
The chanting of a sutra sounded faintly from the hall. Mourners kept arriving. Kotaro spent more time staring at the tabletop from a bowing position than he did looking at people’s faces. Kumar’s employees would be last to offer incense for the repose of Ayuko’s soul.
Not that they wanted to. No one wanted to accept what had happened, least of all Kotaro. It was a horrible dream. When he woke up he would go back to Kumar. He would see Ayuko. “How’re you holding up, Mishima?” she’d say, and she’d invite him to dinner, something delicious. They’d talk for hours, laughing and never noticing the time passing. Finally he would see her to a taxi, admiring her legs as she climbed in, and stand there in seventh heaven, wreathed in clouds of exhaust as the taxi drove off.
Seigo sat with Ayuko’s parents next to the altar, which was covered with floral arrangements around a large, framed photograph of the deceased. He looked lifeless, as did most of the mourners. The only one full of life was Ayuko herself, looking down on everyone with the face of an angel.
Someone clapped him lightly on the shoulder. It was Narita.
“Go ahead, you guys. You can offer incense now. When you’re finished, help out at the information desk.”
The flow of mourners had thinned. Those who had made their offerings moved slowly toward the mourner’s lounge along a wooden gangway a few feet off the ground that extended from the hall off toward the right.
“You okay, Kotaro?” Narita said. His face was pale, like everyone else.
Ayuko is dead, and now our world is dying too.
Kotaro stepped out from under the awning that sheltered the reception table. His legs were so unsteady that he almost lost his footing. Makoto grabbed his arm to steady him.
“I wonder how Kaname’s doing? I’ll see if I can find her,” he said and walked off.
The path from the reception table to the memorial hall was paved with stone and lined on either side with neatly clipped bushes and trees pruned to equal heights. Stone lanterns cast a soft glow. The tiled roofline of the hall rose above the black-clad mourners. Through the open doors Kotaro could see the brightly lit altar and the multicolored heaps of flowers, a vivid contrast with the bereft world of the grieving. It truly looked like heaven.
The heaven that was waiting for Ayuko.
He forced himself to look up at the roofline silhouetted against the night sky instead. A few scattered stars shone above it.
There was something on the roofline, blacker than the sky.
A darkness shaped like a person, but far larger.
It was Galla.
Her scythe was a crescent above her head. She stood with wings folded, one hand on her hip, the other raised toward him.
Kotaro saw the black gauntlet. He could see her long fingernails. She raised a finger to her face. Her translucent white skin glowed faintly in the darkness.
Silence!
Even at this distance, he could see her as clearly as if she’d been standing next to him. He saw every detail with his left eye. It was the link between them.
She turned her palm outward and spread her fingers wide. Her hand moved slowly and gracefully, almost floating, until her outstretched fingers aimed at a point on the ground.
The gauntlet held an array of darts. When Kotaro had first encountered her, she’d pointed those needles at him and at Shigenori. They’d been completely paralyzed.
Her arm tensed as she aimed.
A dart flew along the line of her index finger, straight and silent, piercing the night air, slicing through the incense and the voices chanting sutras, through the sobbing and murmuring.
Kotaro followed its flight with his left eye. The dart was forged from darkness, honed and polished like obsidian, flying toward—
The mourners on the gangway. A single individual. A face in profile, clearly visible with his left eye. A woman. She was crying, holding a handkerchief to her face, arm linked with another mourner for support. Her lips trembled as she spoke to her companion.
The dart plunged into her back and disappeared.
Kotaro gasped. A syrupy blob began spreading out around the woman’s feet, growing rapidly larger, rising and morphing into her exact likeness. It was no shadow; she was much too far from the lights of the hall now.
Her doppelgänger.
A silver arrow cut from left to right across the darkness in Kotaro’s left eye and disappeared.
It is the keeper of her words.
Kotaro could see Galla’s voice. He stood rooted to the spot and blinked slowly.
The mourners moved solemnly, heads bowed, but Galla’s target was different from the others. Only she had a doppelgänger. No matter where the light fell, and even in shadow, her doppelgänger never faded, never changed.
Now Kotaro would know her even if she tried to disappear among the other mourners. A woman with a white face, dressed in black, followed by a black doppelgänger.
That is your quarry.
He saw the voice again, a silver arrow.
“I understand,” he said. Galla turned away and disappeared. At the same time, he felt something soft touch his back.
“What is it, Kotaro?”
It was Kaname. Her eyes were swollen. She held a crumpled handkerchief to her nose. Makoto stood beside her, one arm around her shoulders.
“Nothing,” said Kotaro. He smiled. “Come on, let’s make the offering.”
The killer was a woman.
A woman about the same age as Ayuko had murdered her, and brutally.
If the news had come from God himself, Kotaro still would not have believed it—if not for Galla.
Still, how could he be certain Galla was speaking the truth? He had every reason to doubt it. Hesitation, confusion, denial—all would’ve been sensible reactions.
Yet he was certain this woman was the killer, and his confidence didn’t surprise him.
He followed her to the mourner’s lounge, observing her as he went through the motions of tidying up glassware and beer bottles. She sat with several men and women, all about the same age. There were many tears; the women in the group clung to each other for support. Now and then there was a wan smile.
They must be Ayuko’s friends from school.
He approached them casually. For the first time he saw the doppelgänger up close, the Shadow
that Galla had summoned. He almost cried out in surprise.
It was moving. No—it was wriggling.
The Shadow looked like a black body bag—stuffed not with a corpse, but with writhing, wriggling animals. Disgusting creatures, rotting food, and sour-smelling old clothes combined to form this image of a woman, faithful to the last detail, a thing she dragged behind her wherever she went.
What was writhing inside the black form? It seemed ready to rip itself apart. Kotaro sensed suddenly that he might be able to see through the surface and catch a glimpse of what was inside if he focused his left eye.
He was right. He saw what moved inside the body bag: thousands of wriggling threads.
Her words.
Millions of tiny threads, undulating and colliding and intertwining, in all the colors of the spectrum, from red hot to frozen indigo. The accumulated words of a lifetime.
“Do you want something?”
Everyone at the table was eying him with suspicion. The face of the woman with the doppelgänger was startlingly near. She was twisting in her chair, trying to get away from him.
“Is he a friend of yours, Kei?” a woman at the table asked.
“I’ve never seen him before.” The woman named Kei kept pushing her chair back, trying to get away from Kotaro. She was clearly upset.
He straightened quickly and bowed. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I’ve been rude.”
He looked at the woman again. She was very attractive, but her makeup was over the top. Her face was a mask.
“I believe I’ve made a mistake. You wouldn’t be seminar classmates of our late president … ?”
“No, not at all,” everyone at the table said at once.
“We were in the same club with Ayuko.”
“The bicycle touring club.”
“Ah, I see,” Kotaro said with an exaggerated nod. “Then I have made a mistake. I was looking for Keiko Sato. She was in a seminar with Ayuko.”
“Kei’s last name is Tashiro, not Sato.” The woman sitting next to Kei pointed to her. “Keiko and Ayuko were the stars of the club. Who knows how many men with no interest in cycling were desperate to join because of those two?”
The Gate of Sorrows Page 32