POST-INCIDENT POLICE REPORT
Case No. 121719-03 Date: 2006年 10月 14日
Prepared by: 森
Actions Taken:
Arrived at Ōmura Shrine at 3:14 a.m. A male subject at the scene (identified afterward as fifty-two-year-old Headmaster Manabu Sato) was unresponsive. All of the bushes and trees, including the botan tree, were filled with crows.
Called out to the subject. He had his back to me and did not answer. Shined my flashlight and asked for identification. He didn’t answer. Informed him he was trespassing. No response from the subject. Walked closer and saw he was holding a knife. Radioed in my location and pulled out my baton.
Instructed the subject to drop the knife. He refused to comply or turn around. Repeated this instruction numerous times. About the time backup arrived, the subject turned. He had no eyes. His face was mutilated. The wounds appeared to have been self-inflicted.
The subject’s head seemed to follow the flashlight. He said something about a traveler who was lost on a road. The subject then turned and ran. On the wall, the vandalism was clearly visible. It was scraped into the wood with the knife. It read: CROWS FLY.
Pursued the subject to the southern wall overlooking the drop-off. He climbed the wall. Called out to the subject to get down and lie on the ground. A flock of crows from the botan tree flew off. The subject jumped. Or was startled.
By the time I reached him, the subject was barely breathing. Bones were visibly broken, and there were lacerations on the face and neck. Little could have been done to save him.
REPORT UPDATE: THE SUBJECT (MANABU SATO) PASSED AWAY AT KŌCHI PREFECTURAL HOSPITAL ON THE MORNING OF OCTOBER 15, 2006.
TRAUMA COUNSELING/UNKNOWN
昭和6 (1931年) 5月28日
SUBJECT: SEIMEI NAKAGAWA, AGE 14
He sits in the concrete room, alone,
a thin blanket covering his shoulders. He won’t eat or drink.
He stares at the wall. He says he is waiting for “her”
to return and take him away from here. He must be speaking
of his mother. But she is dead. The boy is unresponsive.
Last night a man, who has eluded capture, murdered
the boy’s parents while he watched from a fallen tree.
The police arrived and the killer ran. The police officers found the boy
talking to himself, hiding in the branches. They asked
his name, but the boy was unresponsive.
They brought him here, to a place of punishment
and shame. He had nowhere else to go, they said. He has no family.
All that existed in life ended in that park two nights ago.
They offered him tea and rice, but the boy was unresponsive.
The mother saved his life, the reports say.
She threw herself between him and the sword.
I asked him if he was waiting for her. He wouldn’t look up.
What have we created? A world of suffering. A world of war.
Men kill each other in the streets. Their sons and daughters
left in rooms cold with cement and thinly covered by wool.
This is what we made. A boy mumbling to himself in the
dim light. He is difficult to understand. He speaks low.
Crows fly, the boy whispers,
A traveler on the road is lost.
That’s what we’ve become. The boy is unresponsive.
* * *
Ikeda-sensei wasn’t at school on Monday. None of the students had seen him since the field trip. Toriyama-sensei drove out to ride home with us on the bus but wouldn’t say anything. It was probably better that way. No one suspected a thing.
After school I raced home to grab the murder evidence and the files. I wanted to return everything to Yori and distance myself from him. Things were getting too dangerous. Even for the Desert Punk.
“Koda,” my mother called to me from the front door.
“Just returning something to a friend,” I said without looking back. I fastened my helmet and kicked up my bike stand.
“Haru stopped by the house a little while ago. He’s home from the hospital now. He said he was going to Lawson’s.”
“Um, all right. I’ll swing by there on my way home.”
“He’s on crutches. You can probably catch him before he makes it too far.”
I really did want to see Haru, but I had to return the police files to Yori.
“I’ll hurry, kā-san. Oyasumi,” I said, even though it was four o’clock in the afternoon.
“Good night.” She waved. “I’ll leave some shiitake rice in the steamer.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I called back.
“Wear your helmet. And stay far away from Route 33. Promise me, Koda!”
“I promise!” I said, and stomped down on my bike pedal.
* * *
When I finally got there I dropped my helmet in the basket and called up to Yori’s window. “I brought the police files back.”
Yori’s head shot up over the sill. “Are you insane? Why would you shout that? They’ll hear you!”
“Who’ll hear me?”
“They!”
“Oh, right. Rain Spider. Gotcha. I’m winking here. You can’t see it, but I’m winking.”
“What? No. The police, Koda. The police will hear you!”
“You know, screaming at me to keep my voice down kind of defeats the purpose.”
“Get inside!”
“Is the door unlocked?”
“No.”
“So will you come down and unlock it?”
“No. My sister will see me. Crawl in through the window, Koda.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen.”
“Then go home.”
“I have to give you back the files.”
“No, you don’t! Go away, Koda. Leave me alone.” Yori slammed his bedroom window shut.
Huh. That went differently than I’d expected. I looked at the overgrown corner of his house. Guess I don’t have much of a choice, I thought. The window it is.
I stepped over the weeds and old soda pop cans and pushed on the glass of the kitchen window. It slid back with a spurt of dust. His sister is going to hear me fall inside their house and then she really will call the police. Not the brightest idea you’ve had, Desert Punk.
My first foot landed in a sink of old dishes. Gross. Gross. I pulled my body through the window, but my backpack caught on the sill.
“C’mon. Let go,” I said.
Yori’s sister grunted from somewhere down the hall. “Yori? Is that you in there?”
I slid past a table stacked with old newspapers and ran upstairs to Yori’s room.
“Don’t give them to me,” Yori said when I walked in.
“But you can just put them back. Put the lid on the box. Retape it if you have to. No one will ever know.”
“They already know, Koda.”
“How could they? No one saw you. You’re the Desert Punk! On the outside you’re a town office employee with a bad suit—”
“I like my suit.”
“I know you do, but it doesn’t matter because no one else notices it. You fade into a crowd. Which is perfect for a secret identity. By day you’re a boring accountant, yes, but by night you’re this fearless desert survivor who breaks down the—”
“Stop it!”
“What?”
“Just stop it!”
“Yori!” his sister bellowed. “What’s going on up there?”
“Nothing’s going on up here, ne-chan. You should just mind your own stupid business!”
“What did you say?” she shouted.
“That you should mind your own business! Also your face is ugly! And I hate your TV! And you smell like rotten meat!”
Yori’s sister didn’t say anything back. I just stood there while Yori breathed loudly.
“I’m not an idiot, Koda. I know there’s no Desert Punk, no secret hero. I’m just Yori Yamamoto and I work at the Kusaka Town Hall and that’s all I do. All that I’ll ever do. I knew you wanted the evidence, and I knew you were using me to get it.”
“Yori—”
“But I didn’t care. Do you know why? Because I have nothing, Koda. I’m alone. I live with my horrible sister, who watches game shows every day, and when I get home at night I drag myself upstairs and dress up for a tiny video camera. That’s all I have: my sister and a small box of glass and electronics. I would have done almost anything if you’d promised to be my friend.”
“We are friends, Yori.”
“No. No, we’re not. Because a real friend wouldn’t do this to someone he cares about just for some game he made up. They’re really watching me. Do you understand that, Koda? I stole something from them. Maybe they missed the files, maybe they saw me walk out with the evidence—somehow they know what I did and they are angry and they are watching everything I do.”
“Who is watching you, Yori?”
“I can feel them. Like eyes in the darkness staring down into my soul. Have you ever walked up a dark flight of stairs and you could swear someone was right behind you? That’s what it’s like for me every minute of every day. I can’t get away from them. I can’t get away from their beady eyes! They’re inside me!”
“Listen to me, Yori,” I said, stepping cautiously toward him. “I think I know what’s happening. There’s someone who can help you. Her name is Moya and she’ll know what to do. We can ask her. She’ll tell us what to do.”
“It’s too late. They’ll follow me until they’ve seen enough and then it will be over in a flash. They’ll fly down and steal my soul. My fat, smelly sister will cry, and she should. Her brother couldn’t even grow up to be a boring accountant. I’ve failed at everything I’ve ever done, Koda. Everything! Even at being me.”
“I can stop this, Yori. I promise. Let me help you.”
“Get out, Koda. I can hear them outside the window. I can hear their awful wings. I can feel them staring and watching. They hate me. I’m a traveler on a road that I’ve never seen before and I am lost.”
“Yori.”
“They are coming,” he whispered. “The crows are coming.”