KOKURO MIKIYA
The image is that of an dragonfly. Busily flying.
A butterfly came to follow, but I didn't slow down. The butterfly eventually could not keep up and fell as it was about to go out of my vision.
It falls in an arc.
The falling motion like that of a snake; it looked like a broken lily. That image is a really sad one.
Even though we cannot go together, I should have at least stayed by its side a bit longer. But that is impossible. Because, as I do not have my feet on the ground, I do not even have the freedom to stand and stop.
Since I could hear someone talking, I decide to get up.
... My eyelids are pretty heavy. This is proof that I still need two more hours of sleep.
As I think to myself that I am petty for still trying to wake up in that state, my will has won over my sleepiness.
... Really, I'm troubled at how simple I am.
I think I finished up writing the drawing plan after working on it all night, and went to sleep in Toko-san's room.
When I raised myself from the sofa, I was indeed in the office. In the summer sunlight, Shinjiku and Toko-san seem to be talking about something.
Shinjiku is leaning on a wall while standing up, and Toko-san is sitting on a chair.
"Morning, Kokuro"
The look on Toko-san's face, which is more like a glare, is normal. ... Seeing that she has her glasses off, I guess she was talking with Shinjiku about "those" kinds of things.
On the note of being usual, she is dressed like the usual too.
With her hair short and her neck showing, Toko-san looks like a secretary. But since her glare looks so scary, I bet she won't ever get that kind of a position.
The black thin pants and the seemingly new white shirt suit her.
"Sorry, I guess I fell asleep." I try to make up an excuse.
"Don't explain the obvious. I can tell." Cutting me off like that, she takes her cigarette to her mouth. "If you're awake, go make something to drink. It should be a good rehabilitation."
".....................?" She must mean reformation when she says rehabilitation.
I don't know why she would say that to me, but since Toko-san is always like that, I decide not to question her.
"Do you want anything, Shinjiku?"
"I'm fine. I'm going to bed soon." Saying so, Shinjiku does indeed seem to be lacking sleep.
Maybe she took a walk last night after I left.
Next to the room which is Toko-san's room and the office is a room like a kitchen.
The sink has three faucets in a row - maybe it used to be a lab, or something. Two of those have metal wires wrapped around them and are not for use. The reason for that is unknown to me; under closer examination, it makes me feel slightly how boxers feel when they are trying to lose weight, but they don't get many thanks because they start to feel violent.
Well, I turn the coffee maker on to make coffee for the two of us. I do so very efficiently. I'm already a master at brewing coffee. But it's not like I'm working here to make tea or coffee...
It's been half a year since I got employed here.
No, the word "employ" is not right because this place is not even a functional workplace.|
To come here prepared even for that, is probably because I fell in love with that person's work.
After Shinjiku stopped time at the age of seventeen, I graduated high school and entered college without a purpose.
It was a promise made with Shinjiku to enter that college.
Even if Shinjiku had had little hope of recovery, I still wanted to keep that promise.
But nothing was there for me after that. After I became a college student, I just lived through the days.
While I was living aimlessly like that, I went to an exhibit I was invited to, and ended up finding a doll.
It was a doll made so delicately, it seemed to be at the limits of a man's skills. It was like a frozen human, yet at the same time it was clear that it was simply a human-shaped mannequin which would never move.
But it was just too beautiful...
A human about to start moving any second now. But a doll which does not have any life to begin with. A place where only things with life can reach, yet a place where no human can reach...
I fell in love with that ambivalence.
Probably because everything about its existence was exactly like Shinjiku back then.
It was unknown where the doll came from. The pamphlet did not even show of its existence.
When I desperately looked for the source, I found out that it was made by a volunteer and the crafter was one surrounded by much rumor in the industry.
The crafter - whose name is Aoyama Toko - is a hermit, to put it simply. I guess her true job is doll-making, but it seems she designs buildings too.
She will do anything that involves making something, but never accepts any requests. She will always go to someone and show them what she will make; and start making it once she receives the payment up front.
I got more and more curious, and I knew I shouldn't have, but I found out the address of this weirdo (A claim which I can now assert with the utmost confidence...)
It was away from the city and it was an ambiguous address not in the residential district or the industrial district.
It wasn't even a house. It was an abandoned building. And it's not just a normal abandoned building. Its construction was started a few years ago, but came to a halt halfway through when the previously prolific economy began to fail. Its shape as a building is present, but the interior is totally unfurnished, and the walls and the floors are completely bare.
It would have been six stories high upon completion, but there's nothing above the fourth floor. Nowadays, it's more efficient to start building from the top floor, but I guess it was still using the old construction method back then. Since the construction was stopped halfway, the half-done fifth floor became like the rooftop.
Even though the building is surrounded by a tall concrete wall, it's easy to get into. It's a miracle some kids didn't make a secret base out of it.
Anyway, I guess Aoyama Toko bought this abandoned building.
The kitchen-like room I'm in right now is on the fourth floor. The second and the third floors are like Toko-san's workspace, so we usually talk on the fourth floor.
...Let's get back on topic.
After that, I got to know Toko-san and I ended up working here, quitting the college I just got into.
Unbelievably, I get paid here.
As Toko-san puts it, there are two types of people with one of two attributes: The one to make and the one to search, the one to use and the one to destroy.
She told me frankly that I had no hope as the one to make, but she still hired me. She said that I had the ability as the one to search or whatnot.
"You're slow, Kokuro." ...I hear that from the next room.
Looking, I notice that the coffee maker is already filled with the black liquid.
"I guess the one yesterday makes eight. People should start to notice the similarities by now." Putting out her cigarette, Toko-san abruptly says so.
She must be talking about the recent recurrent suicides of female high-school students, throwing themselves off high buildings.
I think so because there's nothing else she would want to talk about, this summer being free as it is of any issues such as water shortages.
"Huh? Wasn't it six?"
"There were more while you were dozing off. It started in June, and it's averaging about three per month. Maybe there'll be one more within the next three days." Toko-san says something sickening. Taking a look at the calendar, August will come to an end in three days. Three more days...?
Something about that caught my attention, but it faded away quickly.
"But I heard they are all unrelated. The girls who committed suicide are all supposedly from different schools with no connection to each other. It might be that the police are hiding the fact though."
"You're not trusting people? That's unlike you." Toko-san grins.
...With her glasses off, she can be infinitely mean.
"Because not one will has been televised. Six, no, eight people. If there're that many, at least one should have left behind a will. But if the police have not said anything about it, you'd think they are hiding them."
"I'm saying that's the relation. Or I should say "the connection point". Out of the eight, more than half are seen jumping off by themselves, by several people, but they are unable to find anything wrong with their private lives. It's not like they were doing drugs or affiliated with a weird religion. It's definitely a case of suicide where they felt uneasy about themselves and selfishly took their own lives. That's probably why the cops aren't taking a big interest in this matter."
"Are you saying that there was no will from the beginning?"
After I say so doubtfully, Toko-san nods but says that she can't be too sure.
But could that be possible?
There's an inconsistency somewhere, I think as I take the coffee mug and taste the bitterness of the liquid inside.
Why would there be no will? If there is no will, people usually wouldn't kill themselves.
A will is an attachment to the real world. When a person who does not like to die is forced to die, the will is what they leave behind as a reason for their death.
A suicide without a will.