Three-Eyes
“Well, well. I was wondering what I’d do with the professor absent, but thank you for agreeing to the interview in his place. Even if you aren’t the professor, an interview with one of the café’s popular employees will be more than sufficient.”
The reporter, who worked for a news outlet I didn’t recognize even after looking at his business card, spoke with exaggerated cheer.
Meanwhile, my head was throbbing.
“There must have been some confusion about the date. If you’re fine with interviewing an ordinary part-time worker, then I don’t mind.”
I doubted the manager would have mistaken the interview date.
It also bothered me that the reporter had deliberately called me an employee rather than a part-timer, clearly trying to flatter me.
Of course, it could simply prove that this interview wasn’t particularly serious in the first place.
‘......What a nuisance.’
There was only one regular customer in the café right now, so I couldn’t even escape by claiming to be busy.
The regular was watching me with keen interest, so she didn’t seem likely to help either.
As I pressed down on my throbbing temple, the reporter enthusiastically continued.
“I’ve wanted to cover this establishment for some time. I’m glad the opportunity came about, even under these circumstances.”
“It’s just an ordinary tarot café.”
“The fact that it’s a tarot café run by a renowned psychology professor is enough to make it fascinating.”
“He only runs it as a hobby during his sabbatical. It isn’t anything that serious......”
“A man who would naturally be expected to open a psychological counseling center instead chooses to run a tarot café. Wouldn’t both those who genuinely believe in fortune-telling and those who stand firmly against it find such an establishment intriguing? The fact that it attracts not only the professor’s students but also numerous ordinary customers is proof of that. Of course, from my perspective, stories with a stronger occult angle tend to sell better.”
The smiling reporter’s eyes gleamed.
“You were one of the professor’s students before becoming an employee here, so I imagine you also approach fortune-telling from a psychological perspective?”
“......”
I felt as though part of his hidden agenda had just revealed itself.
I hoped I was mistaken.
“I took a leave of absence immediately after enrolling in university. I’ve barely studied psychology properly.”
“Even so, the professor personally hired you as an employee...... Has he ever given you private instruction?”
This wasn’t some archaic apprenticeship. What kind of manager hired a part-timer and then personally taught him his own academic specialty?
......What bothered me was that the reporter wasn’t entirely wrong.
“To begin with, let me ask you one question. What do you think of fortune-telling and what people commonly call prophecy?”
Praying that this wouldn’t become any more troublesome, I answered.
“Anyone can do it.”
“Pardon?”
The reporter looked flustered, as though my answer had caught him completely off guard.
“Do you mean...... in a psychological or academic sense?”
“No.”
“Then in an occult sense?”
“It was simply a common-sense answer.”
“I don’t believe the term ‘common sense’ fits particularly well with fortune-telling and prophecy......”
“Prophecy is the act of predicting the future.”
Therefore, anyone could do it.
“Suppose one of your friends smokes three packs of cigarettes a day and drinks heavily every single night. What would you do? Would you simply leave him alone, or......?”
“What? Well, I’d worry about him or try to stop him.”
“Why?”
“Because his health......”
The reporter trailed off.
He must have understood what I was trying to say.
“Suppose your family has owned an isolated plot of land for generations. Then signs suddenly appear that the area will be designated for redevelopment. What would you think?”
“......That I’d hit the jackpot?”
“Exactly.”
“But that’s......”
“Now suppose the owner of that land knows nothing about the redevelopment plans. Even if you told him that he was about to become rich, he wouldn’t understand. He might think you were insane...... or trying to scam him. How would you avoid being treated that way?”
“I’d have to explain that the land was going to be redeveloped......”
“But what if you obtained that information through a strictly confidential source, and disclosing it could result in serious legal consequences or even your arrest?”
“......Then I couldn’t explain it.”
“From the landowner’s perspective, you would appear to be either a con artist or an idiot pretending to be a fortune-teller.”
“Uh......”
“Conversely, if you could explain it, then it would appear to be an entirely obvious prediction.”
Could the prediction be explained?
Or could it not?
That alone determined whether a prediction was regarded as an obvious, logical deduction or dismissed as an absurd prophecy.
The reporter, who appeared to be in his early thirties, scratched his head with the back of his pen.
One would expect a modern reporter to type on a laptop, but he seemed remarkably old-fashioned.
“I see. So that’s what you meant when you said anyone could do it. A prediction based on facts and various pieces of information is effectively no different from prophecy. Conversely,
prophecy is no different from such a prediction. I feel as though I’ve received a profound answer from my very first question.”
“It’s also a rather obvious answer. However, a tarot reader sometimes needs to make an obvious statement sound vaguely profound.”
That was how you satisfied the customer.
Not that I was particularly interested in making myself sound profound.
Regardless of my conversational skills, I had no desire to appear more profound than I was.
“Then do you mean that it ultimately has nothing to do with the occult?”
“If I had to categorize it, I suppose that would explain why so many customers are satisfied with the tarot readings here.”
“How so?”
“As you said, the manager is a renowned psychologist. By observing the attitude, posture, gestures, tone, and speech habits of the customer sitting across from him, he can probably learn a great deal about that person.”
“You mean he can perform what is commonly called cold reading.”
It was the practice of immediately extracting information about someone through various methods without possessing any prior knowledge of them.
“He might not be Sherlock Holmes, but he’s capable of performing a reasonable imitation. I imagine he’s so popular because he uses that ability to counsel his customers.”
“I see. His knowledge as a psychology professor provides the foundation for highly accurate ‘predictions.’”
“He provides accurate ‘counseling.’”
“I understand. ‘Counseling.’”
Our eyes met.
“If someone reeks of cigarettes and alcohol and clearly appears hungover, the chances of that person suffering health problems are high, so the professor warns them to be careful. He can also determine why they became dependent on alcohol and cigarettes, then provide appropriate counseling. That’s probably why he’s so popular.”
The manager had plenty of devoted students at the university as well.
He was a dignified, handsome, middle-aged professor who wore understated glasses. Despite his somewhat delicate features, his eyes were always composed, and anyone who met his gaze could feel a weight that made him impossible to take lightly.
It was only natural that such a man would attract numerous customers when he offered them kind, attentive counseling.
It was equally unsurprising that the majority of those customers were women.
The regular customer who was still watching us with fascinated eyes was also a woman.
Her gaze seemed to be making my headache even worse.
“Besides, anyone can search online these days and find detailed instructions on how to read tarot cards. There are countless explanations and interpretations for both the Major and Minor Arcana.”
“That’s true.”
“Therefore, I imagine many customers are satisfied not because they genuinely expect the tarot cards to reveal the future, but because they value the manager’s counseling itself.”
“I see.”
He didn’t look particularly satisfied.
The reporter wore a strange expression as he scribbled something in his notebook.
“However...... when I conducted my own investigation, I discovered that customers are also quite satisfied with the readings provided by you rather than the professor.”
“......Is that so?”
“Apparently, even though you conduct your tarot readings casually and somewhat carelessly, they have a peculiar tendency to prove accurate......”
Beyond the reporter’s meaningful expression, the regular customer abruptly scrunched up her face and waved her hands, signaling that this wasn’t true.
If she thought my readings were inaccurate, I wished she would simply stop coming.
“If the professor provides ‘counseling’ using his knowledge, wouldn’t your case be entirely different?”
“......I’m not sure.”
It was completely different, yet fundamentally the same.
“As you mentioned earlier, the manager has taught me a few things. They weren’t related to psychology or academics, though.”
“Should I understand that to mean he taught you cold reading?”
“That wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate.”
“I see.”
The reporter closed his notebook.
It wasn’t a signal that the interview had ended.
If anything, he seemed to be declaring that the real interview was about to begin.
Had my prediction that this would become troublesome proven correct?
This was one prediction I would have preferred to get wrong.
“Then allow me to offer an example.”
“An example?”
“Suppose a young elementary school student with no specialized knowledge foresaw an accident involving his family. How would you explain that?”
“......”
The reporter’s eyes curved subtly.
“How would you explain a child’s prophecy when that child possesses none of the knowledge required for cold reading and predicts something that couldn’t possibly be foreseen through such a method?”
That must have been his objective from the very beginning.
No one like him had approached me in the past several years, so perhaps I had grown careless.
I thought the story’s value as gossip had already expired. I hadn’t realized that someone was still digging into it.
The reporter faced me with an unpleasant smile that almost seemed predatory, as though he had no intention of leaving without an answer.
***
That had been the first time.
It lasted only a dozen or so seconds.
Even the most generous estimate wouldn’t have placed it at more than a minute.
A small kitten had appeared inside the apartment complex one day.
It was so beautiful that every resident treated it like their idol.
They had even watched one another cautiously, each waiting to see who would take it home and raise it.
The kitten dashed after something.
Straight toward the road.
That was where the kitten’s life ended.
After running as fast as its four tiny legs could carry it, it was crushed beneath the wheel of a car leaving the parking lot, its body reduced to a horrific sight.
The death of the little kitten everyone had loved.
He saw it.
He witnessed the scene.
The ignorant elementary school child, who understood nothing, simply knew.
This was the future awaiting the kitten.
The child didn’t want that to happen, so he moved.
He caught the kitten as it raced away.
Already accustomed to human touch, the kitten didn’t avoid his hands and settled obediently into his arms.
And so, the kitten regained its life.
The ignorant child beamed at the warmth of the kitten in his arms.
He had no idea what he had just done.
He knew nothing about what it meant to see the future.
Nothing about what it meant to prophesy.
Nor did he understand the price of twisting the future he had seen.
With his head throbbing strangely, the child returned home while holding the kitten and witnessed his second prophecy.
He saw the future his choice had altered.
His family was on their way to an amusement park.
His father and mother. Their son and daughter.
Originally, all four members of the family had planned to go.
However, their eldest son threw a tantrum, insisting that he had promised to play games with his friends.
His father laughed heartily and remarked that the boy was at the age when he preferred spending time with his friends, while his mother comforted his younger sister.
The little girl had tearfully begged her older brother to come with them. She only stopped crying when he saw them off at the parking lot and asked her to bring him a present.
Then the car departed.
It left the parking lot entrance and entered the road.
From the road, it continued onto the highway.
And then......
The outing should originally have been canceled because of the kitten’s accident.
The people around them would have glared at the family and blamed them for killing the poor kitten. Every member of the family would have been burdened with guilt......
But they would still have survived that day and continued living.
Instead, the car carrying the three of them encountered an accident on the highway.
Something came tumbling from the cargo bed of a massive freight truck and crashed down upon the car filled with cheerful laughter.
That was the end.
The end brought about by the future that an ignorant child had recklessly twisted.
That was how those three people died.
Only then did the ignorant child realize what he had seen.
And what he had done.
The kitten slipped free from his arms and landed in the living room, while the child collapsed where he stood.
A headache incomparable to the one before pierced through his skull, accompanied by the sensation that his entire body was being twisted apart.
Everything came with a price.
Every prophecy came with a price.
Realizing and understanding that truth far too late, the child collapsed amid screams and wails.
He couldn’t even grasp the phone as it rolled across the floor.
All he could do was sob.
He couldn’t change the future this time.
Unlike a few moments ago.
Beside the kitten, which let out a quiet meow because it didn’t understand what was happening, the once-ignorant child lost consciousness.
Then everything ended.
And so, everything changed.
The family who had departed with smiles left this world, and the aunt who rushed over in alarm became his new family.
The daily life of the child who had realized the truth too late led him to an isolated hospital surrounded by stark white walls.
That was the fate of an immature child who understood what had happened but couldn’t explain it.
***
“So, what do you think?”
“......”
I wanted to twist the reporter’s malicious smile even further.
Physically.
But I could predict exactly what would happen if an ordinary young part-time worker at a tarot café attacked a reporter holding a pen, so I restrained myself.
I belonged to the category of people who couldn’t explain their predictions to those around them.
I stood in the position commonly known as a prophet......
Which made restraint all the more necessary.
Because this world belonged to the one-eyed.
***