He and she (II)

(III)

He had no experience.

Not yet sixteen, Suguru Geto stood before a shelf filled with knives, carefully studying each one.

Fruit knives, kitchen knives, bone cleavers, sushi knives.

The knives varied in length, material, and sharpness.

He glanced around for a while. Once he was certain no one was nearby, he picked up a fruit knife and swung it through the air.

Wrapped in sealed plastic, the knife could hardly demonstrate its sharpness. His few swings looked professional, but there was no substance behind them.

He was still more used to his fists.

But he knew his fists could not kill that "person." Even controlling cursed spirits, the one thing he excelled at, could not kill that "person."

Perhaps only a cursed tool could. But using the school's cursed tools required an application, and Suguru Geto did not want his teacher or classmates discovering his secret.

He hung the fruit knife back up and was about to try a kitchen knife when a voice sounded behind him.

"Are knives really that fascinating? Kids, teenagers-why do they all keep coming over here?"

The clerk's sudden complaint nearly made Suguru Geto drop the kitchen knife.

Feeling a little guilty, he tucked it against his chest, hurriedly paid, and left the convenience store.

Only once he reached the street did he realize he had not even asked for a plastic bag. He had walked all that way holding a knife.

The boy was easily embarrassed, and the lingering sideways looks from passersby made him uncomfortable.

Since the kitchen knife was securely sealed in plastic anyway, he simply opened his uniform jacket and hid it in an inside pocket.

The inexperienced boy had decided to kill that "person" with a kitchen knife.

Having chosen his weapon, he walked down the street, utterly at a loss.

He did not know what to do next.

Revenge on television always happened in one decisive move, satisfying and resolute.

But in reality, when it came to him, never mind a single move-he could not even work out how many steps it would take.

Killing cursed spirits was different from killing people.

Cursed spirits were not his own kind. When he killed them, he did not have to consider conventional morality or their families. He did not even have to worry about being taken away by the police.

As long as he knew that every life he took was to protect ordinary people, that it was an act of justice, he felt no guilt.

But killing people-or, more precisely, killing a "person"-was different.

The phone in his trouser pocket buzzed. He clearly heard it, but did nothing.

It was probably the assistant supervisor calling, or his teacher, Yaga. Satoru Gojo was the least likely possibility.

After all, ever since that "person" had escaped right under the mischievous boy's nose one night a week earlier, the outrageously temperamental "kid" had stopped answering calls or taking missions and begun searching all over Tokyo for them.

Satoru Gojo had told them, in his exact words,

"That Greeny definitely had some kind of cheat enabled. How else could a gun fire faster than I could activate Limitless?! I'm gonna disable Greeny's cheats, then stomp them under my feet and grind them up, down, left, and right~"

Greeny was Satoru Gojo's nickname for that "person." Apparently, it was because he had seen that their eyes were as green as vegetable leaves.

Suguru Geto had felt uneasy when he heard that.

That "person" had changed appearances again. Who had he become this time?

But whoever he became, whoever he used, Suguru had to kill him.

He could not let another tragedy like that summer's happen.

Suguru Geto could no longer bear to see another "Ming Bai"

die because of him.

After returning to his dorm room, Suguru Geto infused the kitchen knife with cursed energy.

Once the knife was covered in dark purple cursed energy, it was no longer an ordinary kitchen utensil.

Preparing the weapon was the easiest first step.

The hard part was finding the resolve to kill.

Suguru Geto spent three days mentally preparing himself.

He told himself that whoever that "person" was now, whatever his gender or identity, he was not truly human.

He was not killing a person. He was merely taking revenge.

But at night, in his nightmares, he still dreamed of Ming Bai's face.

He dreamed of Ming Bai touching his white shirt with a blood-covered hand.

Waking from the nightmare, he covered his face, his whole body drenched in cold sweat.

Could I really bring myself to do it?

(IV)

Every time he swallowed a Cursed Spirit Orb, it was torture.

It tormented not only his body, but his mood as well.

Suguru Geto felt as though his mental state was a suspension bridge riddled with holes, swaying precariously at the slightest gust of wind.

The nauseating taste of the Cursed Spirit Orbs kept lingering on his tongue, while the weight of killing someone still burdened his heart.

He was in Tokyo, a city he had yet to grow comfortable with, and now he also had to constantly find ways to get along with a classmate whose personality clashed with his.

Even late at night, when everything was quiet and it was time to rest, his nightmares kept him from sleeping soundly.

When Suguru Geto, lost in a daze, failed to hear Satoru Gojo's request for the third time, the mischievous boy got angry.

The young master, accustomed to getting whatever he wanted at home, grabbed Suguru's arm and tried to drag him outside for a fight.

Boys liked settling their grudges with a fight, after all.

But Suguru Geto was in no mood for that.

He was irritated. Truly irritated.

The fifteen-year-old had never been so troubled before, nor had he ever been this exhausted.

He shook off Satoru Gojo's hand and left the school under the quietly worried gazes of his two classmates.

He needed to find somewhere he could breathe.

Suguru Geto went to a shabby, nearly deserted shopping mall.

He avoided the shops selling sickly sweet drinks, passed the snack stalls wafting greasy fried-food smells, and headed straight for the music shop on the fifth floor.

Music was one outlet for a person's emotions, a window through which the soul could find release.

"Do you have any really intense rock albums? I don't care what country they're from," he asked, stopping a clerk.

The clerk paused, then took an album by a band Suguru did not recognize from the shelf and handed it to him, along with a pair of headphones for listening.

As though he had been handed a lifesaving antidote, Suguru Geto hurriedly put the album into the player and slipped on the headphones.

Would it be hardcore rock? Or the kind of heavy metal with raw-throated screams and shouts?

Either was fine. It didn't matter. Even if the electric guitar shrieked high enough to pierce my eardrums, I wouldn't care.

I just wanted something wild.

Music sounded in his ears. There was no explosive fifteen-second intro; it opened with a cheerful chorus.

What was this? This wasn't the kind of rock I wanted.

He was about to take off the headphones when the second line stopped him.

"Is this just fantasy"①

(Was all of this merely an illusion?)

Suguru Geto hesitated for a moment, then settled the headphones back over his ears.

If he could, he wanted to ask someone, too: was his life an illusion?

The song continued. The boy closed his eyes and listened intently.

"Caught in a landslide,"

(Trapped as the mountains crumbled and the earth split,)

"No escape from reality,"

(Unable to escape reality's cage,)

For some reason, Suguru Geto thought of his own situation. The lyrics fit so well that his nearly suffocating heart found an opening.

Like someone starved of oxygen, he pressed close to that opening and drew great breaths of fresh air.

"I'm just a poor boy,"

(I was only a pitiful child.)

"I need no sympathy,"

(I needed no sympathy,)

"Because I'm easy come, easy go,"

(Because I always came and went as I pleased,)

"Little high, little low,"

(Sometimes soaring high, sometimes sinking low,)

"Anyway the wind blows, doesn't really matter to me,"

(Whichever way the wind blew no longer mattered to me,)

"To me,"

(It no longer mattered to me.)

By this point, Suguru Geto's nose was already stinging with tears. But the next second, he violently flung off the headphones as though he had been electrocuted.

Without even finishing the song, he grabbed an album at random, paid for it, and fled in a blind panic.

After he left, the puzzled clerk picked up the headphones and listened. There was nothing wrong with the sound quality; the song's climactic passage was playing perfectly clearly.

"Mama, just killed a man,"

(Mama, I had just killed someone,)

"Put a gun against his head,"

(I had pointed a gun at his head,)

"Pulled my trigger now he's dead,"

(I pulled the trigger, and the shot killed him,)

"Mama, life had just begun,"

(Mama, life had only just begun,)

"But now I've gone and thrown it all away,"

(But now I had to flee and leave all of it behind.)

(V)

Suguru Geto could not take it anymore.

He had to kill that "person."

He tried to use himself as bait, but his angry departure from school that day had suddenly made the mischievous boy stop acting up. Worried but unwilling to say so, he began following Suguru everywhere.

Satoru Gojo merely had a child's temper. At heart, he was a kind boy.

His determined pursuit of Greeny was simply because he feared Suguru Geto would die at Greeny's hands.

Suguru Geto understood children. Suguru Geto understood Satoru Gojo.

So he could not blame him for refusing to leave his side now.

What he felt more than anything was worry.

Worry that this classmate, whom he had known for less than a month, would get caught up in his troubles.

Another day passed with Satoru Gojo glued to his side, but this time, family business suddenly called him away.

Suguru Geto breathed a sigh of relief. His instincts told him that the "person" was probably already poised to act.

He deliberately headed toward a secluded alley, then discreetly drew the cursed tool from inside his jacket.

Someone was behind him.

No, someone had been behind him for some time.

He had only noticed because they were now just fifty meters away.

Tightening his grip on the cursed tool, Suguru Geto warned himself.

Whether it was a man or a woman, an old person or a young girl, I would bring the blade down.

The footsteps behind him stopped.

He turned, raising the knife, and whipped around to slash behind him, striking nothing but air with perfect precision.

His hand had not slipped. His aim had not been off.

He simply could not do it.

He could not hack her to death.

He could not hack a little girl to death.