Fuminori Nakamura - Evil and the Mask

He nodded slightly.

“I want to take some time to think things over. Everything that’s happened. There’s been too much going on.”

The warm air gently stroked my cold skin. Without getting up, I took off my coat.

“But do you really have to leave to do that? And will you ever come back?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure. I just want to get away from it all for a while … think things over.”

He nodded again, but I couldn’t tell if he approved or not.

“I see,” he said. “Well, I’ll give you several months’ worth of pills. They’re just a precaution, but it’s best if you keep taking them.”

“Thanks.”

The woman entered with tea. Steam rose from the white cups, hanging in the air for ages. She walked out again silently, her smile still firmly in place.

“I worked on her face too,” he said, lifting the cup to his mouth.

The tea must still have been piping hot, but he drank it calmly without blowing on it first. It was as strong as ever.

“You two are mysterious,” I said.

“You’re pretty mysterious yourself.”

I looked around the room, filled with green like a conservatory.

“What’s your …?”

He didn’t seem surprised by my unfinished question.

“What kind of life she and I lead, how we got here … that’s another long story.”

He grinned and wiped the corners of his mouth.

“I’ll give you three guesses, and I’ll tell you which one is closest.”

His smile seemed more definite than usual. I felt my own lips curving as well.

“Okay, how about this? You’re at the end of a tragic love affair.”

“So you’re really going to play? Fine. You’ve got two left.”

“The two of you killed someone precious to you.”

“And the last?”

“You’ve used up your will to live. You committed some kind of crime and were persecuted by people, by society.”

He slowly drank his tea.

“Perhaps all of them hit on part of the truth. But one thing’s certain. This is the last refuge for both of us.”

I gazed around the room once more. It was getting warmer.

“By the way, your face is looking good,” he continued, turning a mirror towards me.

I saw my face, still glowing with cold from outside. My eyes were large, my chin tucked in, my cheeks slightly hollow.

“It’s still new, but it already belongs to you. It’s bonded to your own muscles and it looks truly yours. You’ve passed through something, am I right? I don’t know if it was good or bad, but it shows in your face. I can tell because I’m a professional. It’s better than it was before.”

“No, that’s not right. There’s nothing admirable about what I’ve done.”

My inner clock told me it was time to go. My body seemed to want to sit there forever, and I tried to make myself get up but couldn’t. Just after midday I was due to meet Ito from JL.

“It’s almost time for you to leave, isn’t it?” The doctor stood. “I can always tell, even without people looking at the clock.”

He gave another proper smile.

“Not because I’m a plastic surgeon, though. It’s because I can often read what other people are thinking, what’s bothering them. When I was a kid, my parents fought all the time. I’d get between them when it looked like they were about to start, and I grew up always conscious of their moods. It’s funny that as an adult it seems to be a useful skill in life, one of my good points.”

The doctor opened the door and I went into the corridor. He came after me.

“One last thing, though,” he said softly. “If you’ve stumbled into a problem that can’t be solved by humans, if you’ve taken someone’s life … Overseas they have this concept of God.”

The hallway was much colder than the room had been.

“People who believe in God, when they’re suffering because they’ve killed someone, as long as they feel properly repentant, they can commend it to him. Thinking they can’t be forgiven, that’s just their own pride, because the only being in the universe with the power to absolve sin is God. Only God, far superior to humans, is able to forgive.”

I said nothing.

“In some places in Africa, when young people who were abducted as children by guerrillas or revolutionaries and forced to fight as soldiers returned to their villages, they hold this ceremony. They tell them that if they go through this ritual, if they cross this line, they will be cleansed of the guilt that torments them, the guilt of murder. In fact, lots of young people have been saved that way.”

He stood next to me as he spoke, studying my expression.

“Murder is beyond human judgment. For that, you have to turn to a concept greater than us.”

I hesitated for a moment, then walked away. He followed me without a word. At the entrance I stopped to put on my shoes.

“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it,” I said. “We could seek redemption like that. Every killing is different.”

I turned to face him again.

“But holding on to it, leaving it unresolved, I think that’s right for me. I think I want to carry that perpetual burden, the knowledge that I’ve harmed others, I want to carry it for my whole life. I’m sure that’s best for me.”

He smiled serenely.

“That’s why I like you, because you say things like that.”

I GOT OUT of the cab, walked along a narrow street lined with rundown apartments and turned a corner past some shuttered-up shops. Opposite a prefab with a rusty traffic accident prevention sign on the wall was an empty factory. I stepped over the useless, twisted fence, and there was Ito. He was wearing the same gray beanie with a lightweight black coat and expensive denim jeans, sitting on a heap of scrap metal. When he noticed I was there he glanced at me briefly. Beside him lay a large backpack. For some reason I got a feeling of déjà vu.

“Are you sure you weren’t followed?”

“I changed cabs, then walked the rest of the way. It’s fine, I think.”

On the ground, the puddles had largely dried up.

“The guy they were hunting is dead. Of the two who were on the run, he was closest to me. Did you know that?”

“It was on the news.”

Ito was playing with the strap on his left wrist with his right hand. His cheeks twitched as though he was grinding his molars. Even when I lit a cigarette, he didn’t look at me.

“The bastard’s dead. All they said was that the body was found on the street, but it sounds like he jumped off a building. Still wearing his backpack with the evidence linking him to me in it. Stupid prick. Guys like that, they can dish it out but they can’t take it when it looks like it’s going to come back on them. They’ll probably catch the other one soon too. JL will be finished.”

He let go of his wristband, as though he’d finally run out of energy. His silver earrings glinted in the sun.

“Have you got the money?”

“Before that … have you really never killed anyone?”

Ito drew his brows together.

“Not yet. But don’t get the idea it’s because I’m chicken.”

His eyes were slightly sunken and he looked thinner than before.

“It’s just that it was too soon. That’s why this has happened. We should have done the killing all at once, after we’d grown much bigger. Pull off one trick after another to cause the maximum confusion, and then do it all in one fell swoop. When they were told that what the prank they pulled with the TV commentator was lame, they just went crazy. Because they got such a big reaction from the media, they got an inflated idea of their own importance. Dickheads. What we were trying to do wasn’t just about our own egos.”

“But still, you should forget about killing.”