A few days earlier, on the night before Yuanyin was fully laid to rest, I had caught a ride in the hearse from the crematorium in the West District back to our home in the East District. Before the car even reached our building, I saw Toji through the window, sitting in the stairwell, almost one with the darkness.
It was hard to get a clear look at someone from a moving car. So before I got out, I thought he was fine, just catching his breath downstairs, waiting to "happen upon" me. Only after I stepped out did I realize he was not clearing his head. In the desolation of the world around him, he was slowly losing his sense of being alive.
That same night, I had wiped the blood from his face with my own hands after his failed attempt to hang himself.
Once, he had been just like me, seeing that day as the end of his life.
(Part one)
Toji was angry.
He vented his anger by beating the Biker Gang members senseless when they tried to band together and resist, then folded his arms and stared silently at the mess on the ground.
This was not his usual silence born of not wanting to bother with conversation. It felt more like he was brewing some emotion that made me uneasy.
After a long while, he asked me, "Yuanli, tell me. What is this supposed to mean?"
Hearing him use my full name filled me with the instinctive fear of a child facing her father. I swallowed reflexively and offered a stiff explanation. "Tools for unwinding."
"Unwinding?"
"Yes, unwinding." I raised my voice a little, trying to give myself some confidence.
This was my first time experiencing that kind of parental interrogation, so I could hardly help being nervous.
"Tell me, how do you unwind with these tools?" Toji picked up a bundle of Nylon Rope and tossed it in his hand.
I pressed my lips together, let my gaze drift toward the riverbank beside us, and said, "You can go fishing..."
At my answer, the Nylon Rope Toji had been tossing fell to the ground with a plop.
Silence hung over us for a few seconds. He pointed at the Nylon Rope, but before he could speak, I jumped in with a perfectly confident answer. "That's the fishing line."
He paused, then pointed at the Sleeping Pills. I continued, "That's the bait."
Before he even needed to point at the Cleaver, I supplied the answer myself. "That's the knife for killing the fish once you catch them."
I could hear that Toji was on the verge of laughing. More precisely, I had made him so angry he almost laughed. "You think I'll believe that?"
"Yes, you will."
Since I had already started with something ridiculous, I might as well take the absurdity all the way.
I kept spouting nonsense. "Just you wait, Toji. Tomorrow I'll take these tools and catch you a big fish, then kill it."
A faint sob suddenly came from behind me, making me instinctively glance back after I finished speaking.
That glance was all it took to reveal that the Biker Gang members behind me had completely dissolved into tears.
With aggrieved, accusing eyes full of tears, they cried, "I knew it! You're a father-and-daughter team of psycho killers! Boo-hoo-hoo!"
At that, the Mohawks huddled together and sobbed uncontrollably.
Adults crying might not have had the piercing quality of children's cries, but the sight could be devastating.
Toji was already angry, and their racket only irritated him further. He picked up the rope and tied those bawling delinquents together.
The one crying hardest-the boy who had snatched my bag-glared at me and began delivering his last words. When he finished, he shouted, "I know the rules! I'll eat the bait myself. You don't have to feed it to me. We Kanagawa Wind-Chasing Knights will die with dignity!"
After that declaration, this Kanagawa Wind-Chasing Knight began dexterously stretching his right foot toward the Sleeping Pills a short distance away, making repeated attempts to reach them right in front of me.
He nearly made me laugh, but I had to admit their interruptions had broken up the tense atmosphere from moments earlier.
In the end, we settled the incident by calling the police. But I knew it was not over yet.
From that day on, getting my hands on a knife became difficult.
Every knife in the kitchen had been cleared away. The medicine box at home held nothing but a few bottles of vitamins, and even the toolbox had been stripped down to a single pair of Needle-Nose Pliers.
I was now as harmless from head to toe as a soft rag doll. Someone was deliberately keeping every sharp object away from me.
Toji really was a hypocrite. He went to such lengths to protect me, so how had he forgotten that he, too, was only a mortal made of flesh and blood?
Standing before the partly open door, I was watching his terrifying suicide attempt unfold.
This was not the first time I had faced a scene like this, but I sincerely hoped it would be the last.
Toji drew a sharp blade from the ugly worm and lowered his head to stare at it, leaving me unable to make out his expression.
Toji, my father by blood, could you tell me what you were thinking right now?
Were you considering where this blade had come from, or hesitating with death already accepted, deciding where to strike so you could end your life in a single blow?
For some reason, I felt as though I were looking at myself from a third-person perspective.
In every lifetime, when I stood before Yuanyin's grave with my head lowered over a blade, did I look like him, too?
I had no way of knowing. But I knew that if anyone had been unfortunate enough to witness me that day, they surely would have been just like me now, anxiously pushing the door open and doing everything in their power to stop it.
(Part two) Interlude
The washing machine began filling with water.
Fresh from his shower, Toji stood barefoot on the cold tiles, looking at the mirror veiled in a gauze of steam. He could not make out his own reflection.
Once it finished filling, the washing machine beeped and began churning water with nothing in it.
Only then did Toji belatedly realize that he had not put the dirty clothes inside.
Sluggishly, he tipped all the clothes he had worn out over the past few days from the laundry basket into the washing machine, then returned to the sink, his mind still caught on everything that had happened that day.
The red backpack. A blade sharp enough to sever any life. The pills and Nylon Rope, their implications unmistakable.
Toji could not bring himself to say the truth of what Yuanli intended to do.
The Inventory Curse Worm draped over his shoulder seemed to sense his thoughts. It obediently slid down to the floor, tilted its head back, and opened its mouth toward him.
Toji looked down at the Inventory Curse Worm, then drew from its mouth the Cleaver that had come within a millimeter of stabbing into his foot.
He had bought this knife. Some of the nicks along its edge had come from his first attempt to sharpen it with the Whetstone. This Cleaver had witnessed their move into their new home and Yuanli becoming a big sister. Was it now going to witness the warmth of Yuanli's blood?
Staring at the blade, Toji was filled with regret.
He regretted not going to sign the papers immediately after his wife died, leaving Yuanli to face that cold corpse instead. He regretted not accompanying Yuanli to the crematorium, leaving her alone to witness the cruel reality of a once-vibrant life being burned to ashes. He regretted not going with her to choose the burial plot, which had led to Yuanli nearly falling to her death on the mountain. He even regretted that, when his wife had treated Yuanli with indifference, he had not chosen to embrace and protect her, instead leaving her to live alone as the loneliest person in the world.
What hurt him most, what he regretted most, was that he had once deceived himself into believing Yuanli was unbreakable.
Yuanli was unbreakable, so she could calmly handle his wife's funeral arrangements; she could pretend to be an adult and contact the crematorium with perfect composure; she could keep living with ease even after the agony of losing a loved one; she could even forgive him without limit and comfort his heart as he fled from reality.
Was that possible? Even if she were an adult rather than an eight-year-old child, could she possibly be unbreakable?
Just how much of a failure did a person have to be to overlook every clue pointing to the truth and deceive himself into believing his daughter had been born unbreakable?
Beneath those easy, unruffled expressions, had she been hiding pain a thousand times greater than his own?
Toji did not dare think any further. That bright red backpack had torn away every illusion veiling his eyes.
If not for the accident that day, the secret hidden in that bag would surely have taken his daughter away on some sunny, breezy day, without him knowing a thing.
He refused to let that day come. He would not accept Yuanli dying.
At last, Toji's mind, so adept at running away, stopped issuing nothing but commands of I don't want to go, I don't want to face it, and I don't want to look.
He began to understand, began to realize. Every time he thought, I don't want to go, or I don't want to face it, the consequence was Yuanli taking another step toward shattering.
He had to pick up the pieces of his daughter, too.
Yuanli, outside the door, seemed to still be worried about him. She pushed it open and hurried inside.
Toji put the knife away, then walked over to her and gently stroked her head.
Everything passed between them without a word.
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