The blade, buried in firm flesh, carved its way downward. Blood burst free and streamed out as though a dam had broken, yet the man beneath him no longer made a sound. Still, the knife rose high once more, its edge alone catching the faint light.
He had held his breath for this moment for a very, very long time.
Yes.
He had prepared for this for a very long time.
He lowered his head toward the man whose breathing had long since stopped. He could no longer tell whether the sound escaping his lips was laughter or a sob.
Do emotions rust too?
Had there ever been anything left inside him worthy of being called emotion in the first place?
Pushing aside the thoughts tangled in his mind like a spiderweb, he opened his eyes with their faces so close that their noses almost touched.
He could clearly see the last traces of warmth rapidly fading away. Even when he held his breath and listened carefully, there was no sound of a living person.
He checked again.
And again.
Almost unable to believe it.
But nothing changed.
He’s really dead.
Only when that realization finally settled in did something shapeless spill from his lips.
Relief, contempt, guilt.
All of it mixed together into an ugly, seething mess.
He slowly savored the collapse of the world he had once believed unshakable, then rubbed at the corners of his damp eyes with the back of his hand.
He had thought tears would come.
Strangely, though, the back of his hand, crusted with dried blood, remained dry.
With this, the cause of your death is me.
He murmured the words as he stroked the man’s cheek, a cheek he had never once touched before.
Then a light flashed from below.
It came from an old 2G phone, so outdated that most people would have thrown it away without a second thought.
There was not a single number saved in it.
Of course there wasn’t.
He always disposed of his phones as soon as a job was over.
“……”
Come to think of it, the phone suited him perfectly.
Keeping nothing.
Showing nothing but meaningless numbers whenever someone called.
Without even bothering to check the screen, he moved his foot.
Thud.
The phone vanished beneath the bed.
He would never use it again anyway.
For a moment, unsure of what expression he was wearing, he hesitated.
Then he spat on the slumped corpse and turned away.
It was the greatest contempt he knew how to show.
Creaak.
He left the place he had grown sick to death of, abandoning the blood splattered across the room and the murder weapon covered in his fingerprints.
The air before dawn was still cold.
The filthy streets were alive with the noises of people high on drugs.
Unlike in the daytime, the city lay quiet as a dead mouse.
For all he knew, perhaps someone had murdered it too.
For a while, his sticky shoes left red footprints behind him.
The people wandering the streets at this hour wore the same expressionless faces they always did.
Was it because they were all the same sort of people?
Was that why no one so much as pretended to notice a man drenched in blood walking openly down the street?
He no longer wanted to think about it.
Exhaustion settled over him, and whatever strength remained seemed to drain from his fingertips.
Like some fairy tale in which a path home was marked with breadcrumbs, he had the strange feeling that if he looked back, he would see a trail stretching endlessly behind him.
After walking for a long time through narrow, foul-smelling alleys, he reached an intersection.
The streetlamp with the burned-out bulb was still broken.
A full year had passed, and no one had bothered to fix it.
Though he had not come this way in a very long time, his steps never faltered.
When buildings that were obviously cared for by human hands came into view, he instinctively slipped into the shadows.
A little farther on, he reached a familiar place and vaulted silently over a high wall.
He landed without a sound.
Then he approached the front door and reached beneath his shirt.
Clink.
He tugged on the chain around his neck, drawing out the key hidden beneath his T-shirt.
For a moment, he stared at its smooth, silver-white surface.
Then he slowly unlocked the door, the simple motion feeling strangely awkward.
Whether he realized it or not, he pulled the door open and slipped inside without a word.
The interior was completely dark.
There was hardly any furniture, not even the ordinary things one would expect in a home, making the place feel even more desolate than the darkness outside.
But he did not turn on the lights.
He crossed the living room and stopped in front of the innermost door.
Then he slowly opened it.
The faint smell of oil paint brushed against his nose.
That can’t be right.
Dismissing the thought as absurd, he stepped inside and ran a finger lightly over the paints carelessly abandoned on the table.
Dust had settled over them, leaving the surface rough beneath his fingertip.
Even so, he felt something inside him slowly grow quiet.
Only then did exhaustion rush over him like a receding tide suddenly changing direction.
His entire body seemed to sag, heavy as though soaked through with water.
Barely enduring the sensation, he looked around the studio, its outlines dim and wavering in the darkness.
A fine wooden easel.
A palette covered in dried paint.
An empty canvas.
A wooden panel that had not yet been primed with gesso.
And beyond them—
he finally found what he was looking for.
Clatter.
The oil-painting knife showed signs of long use, but its edge was still surprisingly sharp.
The blade was thin and flexible.
Even so, it would be enough.
He lowered himself into a nearby armchair.
As he slowly raised his hand, there was no trace of hesitation left in his fingers.
He let out a breath.
Closed his eyes.
Opened them once more.
Shunk.
Then, without hesitation, he drove the blade in.
“Ah…”
The man who had stabbed himself in the neck stared through fading eyes at the distant view beyond the window.
Ting-a-ling.
Somewhere, a familiar sound rang out.
Blood poured swiftly from the torn flesh of his throat as he tried to count the sins he had committed.
There were too many.
Far too many things he had once sworn never to remember too clearly.
Only then did it occur to him that living had been exhausting.
Every day, every breath, had felt like a struggle.
As though someone with bloodshot eyes were always staring at him.
Watching.
Never blinking.
I’m sorry.
He suddenly realized that he had forgotten his daily apology.
He tried to move his lips.
Only a harsh metallic rasp escaped.
With every breath—
hiss, hiss—
air leaked uselessly through his ruined throat.
Soon, his vision began to tilt.
Slowly.
Quietly.
Until the world itself seemed to turn upside down.
This is the end.
He fumbled inside his pocket.
But his body, already drained of strength, no longer obeyed him properly.
His fingers searched uselessly several times before finally closing around something.
He drew it out and looked down.
His vision had blurred too badly for him to make it out.
Still, it didn’t matter.
Even if he couldn’t see it—
even if he never saw it again—
he remembered everything.
This one thing is my only sin.
A short laugh escaped the man as he gazed at the object, worn and frayed around the edges.
His eyes slowly lost focus, as though he were looking past it and into the memories bound to it.
Yet even at the very end, he made himself one final vow.
He would never repent for this.
And with that, his failing eyes finally closed like a curtain falling over a stage.
A white snake once encircled the vast land, biting down upon its own tail.
One day, it asked a passing couple for a favor.
Because it could not release its tail, it was unable to search for its sibling.
And so it asked the couple to find that sibling and bring it back.
The couple nodded at the request of the white snake, whose eyes gleamed like platinum.
After asking the sibling’s name and appearance, they set out on their journey.
They searched for the black snake for so long that the seasons changed three times.
At last, in a forest far to the north, they found it.
The couple told the black snake that its sibling was searching for it.
The white snake remained where it was, still biting its own tail as it waited for their return.
Then, on a bitter winter day, after the seasons had changed four times, it finally saw two figures approaching from far away.
One walked unsteadily on two legs.
The other crawled along the ground like a snake.
Wondering what had happened, the white snake waited three more days before the pair finally reached it.
The woman stood before the snake with bloodshot eyes and a trembling body.
She told it that they had met the black snake in the northern forest.
Its scales had been dark and glittering, she said.
Its eyes had flashed like light.
And the moment they delivered the message, the black snake had darted forward and bitten the man beside her in the neck.
It had killed him.
“I will not kill you, so go quickly and tell my sibling.”
The woman ground her teeth as she repeated the black snake’s words.
It had ordered its sibling never to search for it again.
Having fulfilled the requests of both snakes, the woman finally screamed, her face twisted like that of a madwoman.
“But my lover is dead!”
“The one I promised my life to, the one with whom I shared every joy, the one who was like my other half.”
Unable to contain her grief, the woman threw herself over her dead lover’s body and wept with a voice like thunder.
She had dragged his limp corpse across an enormous distance with her bare feet.
Every toenail had fallen away.
And whenever she clawed at the earth in grief and longing, her fingernails fell away as well.
The limbless beast could not begin to comprehend the depth of her sorrow.
***
My throat feels like it’s on fire.
Every breath felt as though something were scraping down the inside of his throat.
Ian forced his unwilling eyes open.
I think I had a dream.
His stomach churned as the blurry world swayed before him.
He blinked several times in a daze before his vision finally settled on the high ceiling overhead.
“……”
Why is the ceiling so high?
No building in a city this densely populated, where land prices were absurd, had any business wasting that much vertical space.
It would have made far more sense to squeeze in another floor and rent it out.
The only people foolish enough to build like this were usually the upper class—the so-called one percent—or some nouveau riche who had suddenly stumbled into more money than sense.
As though proving his theory, a magnificent chandelier hung overhead, while the nearby table looked like the sort of antique furniture an artisan might have spent months painstakingly crafting.
And those were only the things he noticed at first glance.
Ian quickly swept his gaze around the room, trying to understand the situation.
But no matter how hard he looked, he could not figure out why he had woken up here.
As his scattered thoughts wandered aimlessly, Ian suddenly became aware of something else.
His entire body hurt.
It felt as though he had been beaten for days.
What is this?
The thought of sitting up did not even cross his mind.
He remained buried in the soft bed and decided to begin by working out the date.
Ah, but when was ‘recently’…?
“You’re finally awake.”
While he was still fumbling through the fog inside his head, a door opened and someone entered the room.
White hair, neatly swept back.
A silver monocle.
A perfectly fitted suit, complete with a scarf arranged with impeccable taste.
The middle-aged man was dressed unmistakably like a butler.
Ian clicked his tongue inwardly.
I don’t know who you are, but you’ve got some seriously high-class hobbies…
“You were unconscious for two weeks. Considering how serious the accident was, that isn’t surprising. How does your neck feel?”
Come to think of it, the pain in his neck was probably what had woken him.
So that much time has passed.
There were far too many things he wanted to ask, but he decided the first question should be where he was.
Fortunately, the atmosphere did not feel like the kind where someone might put a gun to his head at any moment.
However.
“Drat.”
What came out of his mouth was not a voice.
It was an ugly metallic rasp.
Air leaked from his throat with a soft—
shhh, shhh—
and an enormous wave of pain tore through him.
It felt as though a sharp blade were being driven mercilessly into his throat.
Ian clenched his teeth and held his breath.
Through the pain, he saw the man standing over him, staring down with a deep frown.