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Ayame lives with a ghost.
It sits with her and her mom at the dinner table. It sleeps in the same bed as her mom. It’s there to greet her when she comes home from school, it listens to all of her problems, and it always takes her side. And the ghost is shaped like her dad.
She likes to think of it like that — focusing on what’s there instead of what isn’t. Because if she focuses on what isn’t, on what she doesn’t have in her life, then she’ll never stop thinking about it.
Her life, she thinks, can be divided into two segments: before she knew the truth, and after she found out. She’d thought, when she found out the truth, that her feelings about her dad changed — but it’s only that that helped her realize that they have always been the same.
Ayame sees enough of other people’s families to know what fathers are supposed to be like. They’re supposed to spend time with their families, to spend time with their kids. To help them with their homework, to tell them about their day. It isn’t as though Ayame has ever needed help with her homework, now or ever — but still, it’s the thought that counts.
Maybe it would have been better, she thinks, if her mom had acted like it was something normal, if both her parents hadn’t been such liars. But instead, she has the parents she does. Even though they all know her dad won’t come home, her mom still puts out a plate for him, still stays up all night waiting for him.
Ayame does, too, but that’s different.
From her room, she hears the way he stumbles in at the crack of dawn, the swish of his coat as he drapes it over the closest surface and the hushed voices as her mother greets him. And every time is the same.
“Do you want to go in and say hello to Ayame?” her mom asks. “She’s sleeping, but I’m sure she won’t mind. You haven’t seen her in a while.”
There’s always a moment before her dad says anything — and it’s that moment that Ayame hates the most. Because that moment gives her hope. It makes her brain wonder if maybe, just maybe, this time will be different.
But it never is.
“…No,” he says. “That’s all right.”
More than his words, it’s his tone of voice that kills her. He’s been out all night at work, solving cases involving the worst kind of scum there is — but it’s saying hello to his daughter that he can’t handle. He would rather choose the problems of the entire world over even one of hers.
Ayame learns this lesson quickly. And there’s another one that follows, that she’ll carry with her her whole life. If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.
She’d tried asking her mom countless times before, about why her dad spent so long working, about why he never seemed to spend any time with Ayame, why he seemed to actively go out of his way to avoid her.
Why does Dad hate me? she means but doesn’t say.
A better mother — a real mother — would have understood her question. Hers doesn’t.
“Ayame,” she says instead, “don’t be selfish. You know how important the police are. We should be glad he’s out there helping people. The rest of the world is grateful for it, why aren’t you?”
But he’s a dad, too. Why doesn’t he care about that?
People from police families, Ayame’s learned, are always expected to grin and bear it. Because how can you speak out against the police, against the law? Is your own life worth more than other peoples’? Would you be happy to spend more time with your father if it meant that people would die?
Ayame knows the answer to that question — and she also knows that it’s different than the answer her mom expects to hear.
That’s another lesson that she learns early on in her life: that if she tells people what they want to hear, acts like the kind of person they expect her to be, then they’ll never once want the truth. People see what they want to, after all — and if that’s what you show them, then you’ve won.
She understands, then, that if she wants to know why her dad doesn’t love her, she’ll have to go out and find the answer herself. She wants to know what’s so special about his work, what about it makes him love it more than he loves her.
As the child of a police officer, Ayame knows a lot about laws. Even when she didn’t really want to, it was like they always found her. She knows that breaking and entering is a crime. So she won’t.
Instead, she smiles and waves at the officers at the station and tells them that she’s bringing her dad some lunch. They smile back at her and tell her he just stepped out.
“That’s okay!” she chirps, brandishing the bento in her hand. “I’ll just leave it in his office.”
“Oh, wow,” says one of the officers. Ayame doesn’t know his name; she doesn’t care. “Chief must be a great dad for you to come bring him lunch like this!”
The second she’s turned away from them, Ayame lets the smile slip off of her face. They really shouldn’t talk about things they don’t know anything about.
In her dad’s office, she shuts the door behind her and begins to search. The files in his office are all meticulously arranged — even more proof of how selfish he is. If he has the capacity to clean, then why does it always fall to her and her mom to do so at home?
Ayame flips through them, purposefully taking longer than she should. She wants her dad to come back and find her like this, wants him to have to answer to her. But he doesn’t come, and so she keeps amusing herself by skimming the files. She doesn’t know what she’ll find, but it certainly wasn’t this.
One of the files is about the Nejima murders. She’s heard about them before, bits and pieces, but no details. The final murder, the file says, involved a baby, found on the scene. It was rumored to be Nejima’s daughter, born earlier that day. And it happened to take place on her exact birthday.
Ayame had known about her mom’s stillbirth already; she’d found the birth certificate under her parents’ mattress when she was younger. It’s only now, though, that she has enough information to put two and two together.
So that’s why he doesn’t love her.
When she’s done, she leaves the file open on his desk, right next to the bento that she brought. She wants him to come back, to be confronted by her truth just like she never was with his.
But when he comes home that night — late, as usual — he says nothing.
“Dad,” says Ayame. The word is sour in her mouth, tasting exactly like the lie she knows it to be. “Did you see the bento I left for you in your office?”
He’s nose-deep in a stack of files, and he glances up at her after a moment as though he’s forgotten who she is.
“Oh, yeah,” he says. “The other officers mentioned you came by.”
That’s it. No "thank you". No indication that he’d noticed or even seen the file she’d left out for him. No indication that he even cares.
After that, Ayame stops loving him.
It’s easier to do than she thought it would be. Already, he was a father in nothing but name. To learn he wasn’t even that — well, it makes things easier. She switches his title in her head for his first name. His last name is only a bitter reminder that she shares the same one.
Part of her is angry at her mom, too, but it’s harder to be. It was his idea to bring a baby home, his idea to raise her as their own. In some ways, her mom is a victim of his lies, too.
But Ayame’s mother doesn’t love her either. Often, she’ll reach down and touch her stomach, a look of sorrow on her face — and Ayame knows she’s thinking of her real child. Over twenty years, and she still sleeps with that birth certificate under her pillow. Ayame remembers from when she’d found it: the stillborn was a girl.
So that’s all she is. A fake. A substitution. Someone not deserving of love.
Maybe knowing that should hurt — and it does, in some ways. In others, it actually makes Ayame feel a little bit better. She’d always thought it was something wrong with her, like maybe she could have just tried a little harder and gotten her parents to love her. But that’s not how the world works. This was something decided on the day she was born — maybe even before then.
After that, she stops talking to her parents as much — but it isn’t as though either of them notice. As usual, they’re both lost in their own world.
But maybe there is a god, Ayame thinks, because it starts to feel as though her parents are being punished.
If there was one thing she was always sure about —just like how she was sure they didn’t love her — it was that they loved each other. In their own way, but still.
Her mom steadfastly waits up for Tetsuo and defends him no matter what, and Tetsuo brought home a baby just to cure his wife’s sadness. Sure, he didn’t discuss it with her first, but that’s no surprise. It probably didn’t even occur to him to do so. That’s just the kind of person that he is.
But now, it seems like with each day that passes, everything starts to fall apart.
Ayame doesn’t wait up for Tetsuo to come home anymore. It doesn’t matter, though, because she’s woken every day when he does. Her mom used to softly greet Tetsuo in a whisper; now she hisses at him with anger.
The result of these arguments is that he starts coming home earlier, more often; but it is, as they say, too little too late. So much of her mom’s time was once occupied with waiting for him, and now that he’s right in front of her, she doesn’t seem to know what to do with herself. Tetsuo, too, is awkward, unsure, as though he’s found himself in a stranger’s house and not his own.
Ayame watches them both dance around each other with disgust. Why, she wonders, did he only start coming home when her mom wanted him to? Why was she not enough for him to want to come home?
It takes a while for them to split up, but when they do, the entire household breathes a collective sigh of relief. It’s about time.
Officers from the police force come by to offer their condolences; yet another annoyance.
“You guys seemed like such a happy family,” one of them says, downcast. He looks like a kicked puppy. “I can’t believe this happened to you — no one expected it!”
As though he knows anything. As though he has the right to speculate about another man’s family like that.
A holster peeks out from underneath the officer’s shirt; Ayame’s hands itch to reach out, grab his gun, and shoot him in the face. Instead, she smiles.
She remembers, now, all those times Tetsuo had chosen his colleagues over her. It makes sense, she can’t help but think. These are people that he’s worked with for years, that he’s fought with, that he trusts to watch his back. She’s just a random stranger.
“Thank you for coming to see us,” Ayame says. She hangs her head, looking for all the world like a daughter mourning the loss of her family. “It means a lot.”
He hesitates. “Do you know…where you’re going?”
All she knows is that she can’t spend another day around her parents — either of them.
“I want to give both my parents room to find themselves again,” she says. As if. “So I’ll be moving out next week.”
“Wow!” the officer says. His face brightens. “Going to college?”
She nods.
“Your dad, he must be really proud of you.”
“He will be,” says Ayame.
Three months after moving out, Ayame decides to kill herself.
College is nothing but an ocean that she drifts in aimlessly, directionless. Her classmates, whenever she asks them, are clear: they want nothing more than to make her parents proud.
She doesn’t have that. Then what, she wonders, does she have?
Your parents are the people in this world who are supposed to love and support you no matter what, who are supposed to always be on your side. If even those people didn’t love and support her, then why would anyone else?
What is she doing any of this for? What is her life meant, if even the people who gave it to her didn’t care about her?
Her life might not mean anything, she decides, but her death still can.
Ayame knows a lot of different ways to kill herself. She’s seen as much in all of the files her dad used to bring home. She knows a lot of ways to kill other people, too.
The decision is the hardest part of the process; everything else should be easy. First things first, rope. The closest Viva Home is within walking distance.
She wanders the aisles, running over her plan in her head. She probably won’t write a suicide note — who would read it? Not those people who pretended to be her parents. She doesn’t have any friends, either. Growing up, everyone only wanted to get close to her and her family to brag about the fact that they knew a cop. Just one more thing that her dad — that Tetsuo ruined for her.
A voice drifts in and out of range, demanding her attention. An employee. Even before she’s heard anything he says, a smile has already found its way onto Ayame’s lips. Just grin and bear it, her mind reminds her, and then he’ll be gone.
“Are you interested in this wood?”
“Wood?” she repeats. It’s only then that she realizes the aisle she’s come to a stop in. “What would I need wood for?”
Part of her wonders if this is some kind of come-on; she knows boys like this. His face is red, he’s sweating, and he couldn’t look her in the eyes even if she paid him to.
“I don’t know,” he mumbles. “You kind of look like an art student — I figured you would use it for some kind of art project?”
Ayame’s wariness disappears, only to be replaced by an emotion she hasn’t felt for a long time: interest.
“What kind of art?”
The boy scratches his nose. “Dunno what they call it,” he admits. Big surprise; Ayame resists the urge to roll her eyes. “Some kind of…woodblock thingy?”
“Oh, you mean ukiyo-e,” she says. She’d heard about it in one of her classes, but she didn’t pay that much attention. She likes not paying attention in class — a way for her to waste Tetsuo’s ‘hard-earned’ money.
He frowns, probably trying to recall his employee training. “We have pear and mulberry,” he says. “But I think the most popular one is cherry.”
Ayame stares at the wood. She’s never thought about this before — she’s been an art student for three months, but so far, she’s just been flitting from medium to medium. None of them felt right. None of them felt like her.
Fuck it, she decides. Let’s buy this wood and give it a try. If she doesn’t like it, she can always kill herself tomorrow.
Wood in tow, she returns to her dorm room, and she rereads the chapter on ukiyo-e. What once felt so mind-numbingly boring now seems like the most fascinating thing in the world to her.
The technique seems complicated, at least at first, but when broken down, it’s quite simple — as, Ayame has found, most things are. Three main steps: drawing the design, carving it, and then printing it. Each one is traditionally done by a different person, but the only person there for her is her, so she’ll have to make do.
The tutorial provided is for a classic image: The Great Wave off Kanagawa. Ayame’s never cared much for it. It had always seemed too routine, too pedestrian. But a start is a start.
Ukiyo-e, she finds, is much harder than she thought it would be. Her hand is shaky and unpracticed, and the resulting design would be difficult to recognize even as a puddle.
But she doesn’t care about that, because what she does focus on is how it makes her feel. She likes it. She likes every step of the process, and more than that, it makes her feel something — which is a big deal, considering she’s gone every single day here without feeling anything.
This is what art is supposed to do, isn’t it? Make people feel something — and if that person is the artist herself, well, then, more power to her.
The textbook, in between tutorial steps, goes into detail about Hokusai and his story — because you can’t, it says, mention ukiyo-e without talking about the master of ukiyo-e himself. The thing that fascinates Ayame the most is his work ethic, how much he dedicated himself to just one thing in his life: his art.
Constantly seeking to produce better work, he apparently exclaimed on his deathbed, "If only Heaven will give me just another ten years ... Just another five more years, then I could become a real painter."
Ayame looks down at the print in front of her. If Hokusai wished for five more years, she thinks, then can’t she live for one more day?
She repeats that thought to herself the next day, and the next, and the next — until the thought of I want to die has turned into I want to live.
And that’s how Hokusai saves her life.
So many events in his life, she finds the more she looks, mirror her own. His ideals, his words, they resonate with her on a level that she never thought was possible. In a world filled with liars, he and his art are the only things that feel truly honest.
When he was expelled from school, the event was, in his own words, inspirational. “What really motivated the development of my artistic style,” he said, “was the embarrassment I suffered."
Just like the embarrassment Ayame suffered at the hands of her so-called parents. She likes the way Hokusai managed to reframe everything that happened to him — to rise up from the ashes of his life.
Maybe that’s what she needs to do. Maybe everything that happened to her, everything up until this point, was just to lead her to ukiyo-e.
Hokusai, the book says, was known by at least thirty names during his lifetime; his number of pseudonyms, exceeding that of any other major Japanese artist, were so frequent, and so often related to changes in his artistic production and style, that they are used for breaking his life up into periods.
This, Ayame realizes, is a new period of her own life, isn’t it? Now she’s out of her house. Now she’s living.
Now, she has ukiyo-e.
So why can’t she do the same thing?
She can — and as soon as the morning comes, she does just that. She leaves her old name behind, and she is now Ayame Tono.
Over the next few years, she makes ukiyo-e her specialty.
It’s an uncommon subject, and that’s putting it lightly. Ayame hears what her classmates say about her: about how ukiyo-e is a strange interest to have. Especially for a girl.
She doesn’t listen; she doesn’t care. She’s done letting other peoples’ opinions dictate her life. She’s dedicating herself to her art like Hokusai did — and more than that, she’s dedicating herself to him and his teachings. The reason he was able to make so many pieces of art was because he didn’t care to listen to what people were saying about him, and that’s how Ayame will be, too.
Besides, what people say about you often isn’t even true. Just look at all the people worshipping Chief Tsutsumi.
Along with his art, Hokusai was also famous for his talent for self-promotion. Ayame does the same: it’s difficult to do ukiyo-e, so she sticks to painting in public.
It’s peaceful, in a way. People come up to watch her, but she’s able to tune them out and keep working. For the most part, they just treat her like a part of the surrounding landscape — something to look at for a few seconds before they move on. They throw compliments at her, too; these, she doesn’t tune out. They’re nice to hear, that’s all.
This is how she meets Yutaro Namigaki.
He approaches her as she’s painting one day, not bothering to soften his footsteps. Leaning into her space, he makes a sound low in his throat.
Ayame looks at him, because it’s obvious that’s what he wants.
“Not bad,” he says, adjusting his glasses. She doesn’t know if he’s talking about her or her art.
“Do you paint?” she asks.
He scoffs. “Me? No, I don’t have time for that stuff.” It seems he’d seen her question as an invitation, and he proceeds to tell her all about him: about how he’s a top student, about how both his parents are very prominent local figures — “Maybe you’ve heard of them” — and about how he just got his driver’s license.
He introduces himself, and the emphasis he puts on his first name makes it clear that he expects her to call him that.
Though she may be an art student, Ayame has always been good at math.
All her life, she’s seen people brag about being associated with the police force. She hates them; no one cares about cops. They’re all scum, and knowing one really isn’t useful — not when you know for a fact they wouldn’t do anything to help you out.
Instead of knowing cops, it’s important to know people who could help you in certain situations. Maybe that’s one thing that all those idiots had right.
Yutaro Namigaki, if nothing else, could come in handy. That’s why, when he asks her if she wants to go for a drive, she says yes.
Ayame is used to being able to tell when someone is desperate for another’s approval; she’d seen that look on her own face every time she looked in a mirror for seventeen years. Now, she sees it painted all over Yutaro’s.
She wants to see how far he’ll go to gain her approval — how far he’ll go for her. If she’s being honest, she doesn’t have high hopes.
A father is the first man in your life who is supposed to love and protect you, to do anything for you. Hers didn’t.
Why, then, would anyone else — least of all a stranger? Ayame doesn’t know, but she’s looking forward to seeing how far she can push Yutaro just to find out.
In his car, she listens to him tell her about the engine, the horsepower, the top speed, and a dozen other things that she couldn’t care less about. But you know what they say: grin and bear it. Ayame’s done that for so long that she’s an expert at it now.
“You’re such a good driver!” she says, smiling at him.
Men, Ayame thinks, are trash. Tsutsumi is the worst of them, but the others constantly give him a run for his money. Case in point: Yutaro does not say thank you.
Instead, he smirks at her like he already knew that, like her compliment means nothing to him. As though it would have meant the same coming from anyone else — just like how she could have been anyone’s baby, like she was interchangeable, like who she was didn’t matter at all.
Ayame grits her teeth.
“Hey,” she says, “how fast do you think this car can go?” She makes a show of tapping a finger to her chin in thought. “Probably not very, right?”
Yutaro laughs. “I can go as fast as you want,” he says, and his foot presses down on the accelerator.
Their speed increases, and all Ayame can think about is how his car would be destroyed if they crashed. He would die. She probably would, too, but that would be a small price to pay.
A thud, then.
She’s submerged headfirst in her thoughts that for a moment, she wonders if they came true, if they actually crashed. But Yutaro is still driving.
Ayame looks behind them; there’s a silhouette on the street, vaguely human-shaped. One that probably matches the newly made dent in the front of Yutaro’s car. The windshield is streaked with blood, and his hands are white-knuckled on the wheel.
Everything she knows about laws plays over in her head. Just being a passenger in a hit-and-run isn’t, technically, illegal; still, she doesn’t want to have anything to do with the cops. Not anymore. Not if she can help it.
The best way to do that would be to ensure that she’s innocent — but clearly, it’s too late for that.
The second best thing to do, then, is to make sure that it can’t be traced back to her no matter what.
“We have to go back!” she says.
Yutaro doesn’t listen at first, but he folds under just a bit more cajoling. Typical man.
All of his talk before, about being big and strong and capable, a top student, was apparently nothing but drivel, because he doesn’t even offer to be the one to get out of the car. Instead, he stays in place, terrified.
Ayame rolls her eyes before opening the door. She’ll go, then. After all, if you want something done right…
The body belongs to a girl, probably a high school student. Ayame takes in that fact with apathy. If you don’t want to get hit, don’t fucking walk in the middle of the street. It’s as simple as that.
Just like how Ayame has seen, from Tsutsumi’s files, a lot of different ways someone can kill themselves, she’s also seen a lot of ways someone can kill another person. Sometimes, the results aren’t too different.
This girl, for instance: it looks a bit like she’s jumped off a building.
Ayame’s struck with the sudden thought that she’s glad she didn’t commit suicide back then, because if she had, she would have died like this girl — alone. There’s no honor, no glory in that. Not like the life she wants to lead now.
There’s something in the dead girl’s hand; her fingers are curled tightly around it, as though she was trying to protect it. Before Ayame even realizes what she’s doing, she leans down and pulls it free. She’ll regret it later; she’s leaving fingerprints behind, which means she’ll have to take this thing with her. But for the moment, she doesn’t care about that.
The thing, it’s some kind of talisman. It looks cheap, useless. If this girl had held on to it, then it must have been a gift from someone she cared about. Someone who loved her.
Probably her parents.
Ayame can’t help but think of how she doesn’t have anything like that, anything given to her by her parents. Anything that she would choose to die with in her hand.
What would happen if she called her dad now, for the first time in three years? Isn’t that what people are supposed to do when they’re in trouble: call their parents?
What would he do, she wonders, if she called him right now and told him what happened, what she’d done?
Maybe if she were younger, less attuned to how the world worked — how men worked — she might say he would vow to protect her no matter what. But she’s not that naive anymore. She knows the truth. He would call her stupid, scold her, and then he would be the one to put the handcuffs on her himself.
Ayame stares at the talisman for a few more seconds before shoving it deep into her pocket.
She knew having Yutaro around would come in handy sooner or later, and he proves it to her not more than a few weeks later.
A stone appears before her, and it introduces itself as the Taiko of Tsugaru. When she touches it, memories flood her mind, the curse echo’s last moments. It belonged to a ukiyo-e artist, she learns, who was killed by the daimyo.
This curse beats to death anyone who tries to hide something from the bearer. Fitting, she thinks, for someone like her.
Resurrection, it whispers, to the beat of the taiko. Can you hear it, Curse Bearer?
Ayame can.
The artist’s murderous, vengeful rage fills her heart, to the point where she can’t tell where it ends and she begins. But Ayame is used to tempering down her rage, to holding it in her heart and welcoming it as an old friend. Now is no exception.
The next time she meets up with Yutaro, he brandishes a stone of his own. This is his chance, he tells her, to atone: he wants to resurrect that girl he’d hit.
How selfish, Ayame thinks. It isn’t as though he cares about that girl; he only wants to do this as a way for him to fix his mistake — and to say nothing of all the people he’ll have to kill to resurrect one girl. Won’t he consider those more mistakes? How will he fix those?
She asks him if she can see his curse stone, and fool that he is, he shows it to her. Regardless of everything that had happened between them, he’s still trying desperately to impress her. Men truly are simpleminded.
The curse stone calls out to her, as though it knows she should be its rightful owner. Not yet, she tells it. But soon. She’ll wait until he does the grunt work for her — as a man should do — and then she’ll take the stone at the last moment.
She has her own stone, of course, but killing people with it will be her last resort.
So she tells him she’ll help with his plan, and they come to an agreement: they’ll split up and find curse bearers, then he’ll finish them off with that stone.
Maybe men are good for something after all.
It takes only a few days before Ayame thinks she’s managed to find a few curse bearers. This is what it means to have dedication, after all, and the quicker she works, the quicker she’ll accomplish her goals.
But all of her carefully laid out plans have a wrench thrown into them by none other than Tsutsumi.
She’s out one afternoon when she sees a commotion on the bridge. The police, it seems, are holding a man at gunpoint.
Typical, she thinks. Of course they are — and by the looks of it, the man isn’t even armed. She halfway expects the cops to just shoot him unprompted; they can use their influence to get out of it later if they need to. They can use their influence to get out of anything, after all.
Ayame can’t hear anything they’re saying from here. This is a waste of time, she decides. It isn’t as though this will get her any closer to her goal.
Then the cop with his back toward her turns around. And their eyes meet.
She recognizes him; of course she does. Would you forget the face of your worst enemy, of the man who threw you headfirst into the godforsaken life that you’d found yourself in?
Part of her wonders if he will recognize her in turn. If he’s moved on in the last three years, if he’s pushed all memory of the daughter he used to have out of his head. Honestly, she kind of hopes he has. That would give her just another reason to hate him.
But then his eyes widen too, and she knows he recognizes her.
What happens next is fast, too fast for even the trained officers to respond to — so there is no way Ayame can.
One second, the man held at gunpoint is across the bridge from her; the next, he’s behind her, twisting her wrists and forcing her hands behind her back.
“Well, well,” he mutters in her ear. “Ayame Tono. I’ve been looking for you for a very long time.”
If there’s anything Ayame has learned in her life thus far, it’s that a man saying he’s been looking for you for a long time cannot be a good thing.
The cops are yelling, but she can barely hear anything over the sound of her own screams. At that moment, she cannot think of anything else to do. She’d seen it in Yutaro back then, when they were in the car together. In times of fear, when faced with danger, with death, humans tend to revert back to simple-minded beings, with only one thought in their head. They forget the past, forget everything that had happened.
All they want is the person who’s meant to protect them from everything — from the world — no matter what.
In that moment of pain and fear, Ayame calls out for that one person, and she calls him by a long-forgotten title. Dad.
She screws her eyes shut, the word slipping out of her without her permission. She’ll regret it later, she knows. But in the moment, she can’t help but hope.
She shouldn’t be surprised, though. He’s disappointed her her whole life. What’s one more time?
The man, using her as a human shield, drags her away from the bridge, from the cops, from the rest of the world. She keeps her eyes firmly closed until her back hits something hard. A tree; he’s brought her to the park.
Ayame is trapped. It’s up to her, then, to take her fate into her own hands; obviously, her former father isn’t one to rely on. If she’s going to get out of this, it won’t be by force alone — he’s stronger than her, if the rapidly forming bruises on her arms are any indication.
The man smirks at her. One of his hands is in his pocket. He’s a curse bearer. She can feel it.
“Girlie, you got some bad luck being born to that son of a bitch Tsutsumi, huh?”
“You can say that again,” Ayame mutters.
He lets out a sharp bark of laughter. “You’re telling me his own daughter doesn’t like him either?” Leaning closer, he grins at her with stained teeth. “What’d he do to you, huh?”
She tries very hard to keep her face neutral, to act like her proximity to this man doesn’t bother her. “Oh, you know, the usual — spent his whole life lying to me and didn’t care about me at all.”
The man cackles, and Ayame figures that if she gets him talking even more, that leaves less chance for him to use his curse stone on her. She doesn’t know if she’s already activated the conditions for his curse or not — the smirk on his face is surprisingly inscrutable.
“You seem to know my name already,” she says, “but I don’t know yours.”
“A final request, huh?” His free hand comes to scratch the back of his head. “Sure. I’m Makoto Ashimiya, but they used to call me Fumichika Nejima.”
Ayame knows this name. The look on her face changes — she settles it back into something more neutral, but not quick enough. He’s seen it.
His smirk widens. “So you’ve heard of me, huh? The infamous perpetrator of the Nejima murders?”
She has heard of him, but that’s not why. She remembers the case file she’d seen in her father’s office back all those years ago. The one where a baby had been discovered nearby — the baby with her exact same birthdate.
So this is her real father.
To be honest, she doesn’t really know what she was expecting. Someone better than the man who’d pretended to be her father for so long, certainly. She doesn’t care that he’s a murderer — she is one too, after all, isn’t she? By proxy, sure, but if she has her way, that’ll change soon.
But she thought he would be better in some way. The man in front of her is nothing good. He’s too cocky, too confident.
Too male.
She knows that look on his face — she’s seen it a thousand times before. It’s the look of someone who already knows he’s won. Because, of course, how could a small defenseless little girl like her even manage to put up a fight?
In her pocket, her curse stone burns. The deep booming of a taiko drum.
Now it’s Ayame’s turn to smile — her sweetest smile. “Of course I’ve heard of you! It’s nice to finally meet you….Dad.”
Nejima laughs, but this time it sounds bitter, dark. He looks ugly. Ayame has looked at herself in the mirror plenty of times — she can see none of herself in this man.
“Did that Tsutsumi drop you on your head when you were a baby?”
“No,” says Ayame, and her smile turns a bit more sharp at the edges. “But he did find me at the sight of the Nejima murders.”
With that, Nejima understands what she’s saying. His smile drops so quickly that she doesn’t even have the satisfaction of relishing it. “No,” he says. “You’re not…you can’t be…”
“But I am.” She takes a step forward, and he takes one back. Their roles have completely reversed — and then, he does what she’s counting on. He takes his hand out of his pocket.
“You’re not my Shino,” he spits at her, baring his teeth like an animal.
The name sounds familiar, but she can’t really think of why. If anything’s clear, though, it’s that he thinks there’s some kind of connection between her and this Shino. Maybe that was what he called her when she was born? Ayame decides to run with it.
“Really?” she asks. “Are you sure I’m not? I thought you of all people would have known me better than that, Dad.”
And then Nejima does what she’s been waiting for.
“I’m not your fucking dad!” he yells, but she doesn’t listen. All she can hear is the sound of the taiko, growing louder and louder.
It’s time, then.
Lightning-fast, Ayame reaches into her pocket and activates her curse stone. So he thinks he isn’t her father — but her curse is only activated if someone hides a truth deliberately that they themselves know to be true.
That means that no matter how much Nejima tries to delude himself, he knows the truth, just like she does.
And that’s why she stays and watches as he’s beaten to death, even though she knows the cops will be on her tail, that she should be moving on. A shame, part of her thinks; they already had something in common what with Tsutsumi ruining both of their lives.
But he’d brought this on himself by denying the truth. Ayame has never once tried to delude herself the same way. If she had, she would have cheerfully used her curse stone on herself.
Nejima is dead in less than a minute, and she leaves him behind without a second glance. She’s already renounced one father — what’s one more?
The cops, it seems, are doing their job for once in their lives. Ayame’s apartment is completely staked out, and she can’t go anywhere without seeing the flash of a uniform over her shoulder.
She has two curse stones now — hers is empty, but the one that belonged to Nejima carries some soul dregs in it. She felt no guilt taking the stone off of his dead body. Consider it her inheritance, taking what she was owed from a father who never bothered to find her.
Not that she ever wanted him to, but still. It’s the thought that counts.
There aren’t many dregs in the stone, though. What a disappointment of a father he was — he’d bragged so much about being able to kill, but when push came to shove, he was nothing but a coward, unable to even fulfill the conditions of resurrection.
But that’s all right. She’d always known that if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. And that’s what she’s planning to do now.
That’s what finds her sitting here in this housewife’s house, next to her and across from that oddly dressed peacock of a man she’s always with. The housewife is rich, at least; not a bad place to hide from the cops. Better than out on the street, at any rate.
Besides, Ayame is sure one of them is a curse bearer. She hopes it’s the woman — the last thing she wants to deal with right now is yet another man.
The housewife, Harue, introduces herself; the weird guy — Richter, the card he’d given her said — tries to do the same, but Ayame cuts him off. It’s clear by the way he looks to Harue for instructions which one of them holds the curse stone. That’s the only one that Ayame is concerned with.
Everything else is nothing but a waste of time.
She’d told them the truth, that she’s a curse bearer. That using the curse stone to kill is her last resort.
Then again, if Harue ends up hiding something from her — well, that’ll be her own fault, won’t it?
It takes no time at all before Harue begins to throw questions her way. Ayame isn’t an idiot; she knows that they’re both just trying to get information out of her. But they did give her Harue’s address and let her hide out here from the cops. Ayame likes to live a debt-free life — owing someone something puts you in the worst possible position. If they’re letting her stay here, the least she can do is answer their questions.
Ayame tells them about what she did to Nejima, partially because they’re asking, and partially because she wants to see their reaction. The detective’s eyes widen, but Harue’s expression doesn’t change at all.
Ayame likes that. This is a woman who understands that sometimes you have to do what needs to be done.
Richter cuts in, offers up the possibility that Nejima would have killed her. Ayame knows that, of course. Obviously, he didn’t take her hostage just for fun. He’d addressed her by name and said that he’d been looking for her for a long time. What does this man take her for?
She is so sick of men like this thinking she’s an idiot. And after she’d told them she used to be the daughter of a cop, too. Part of her hopes that Richter is the curse bearer just so she could give him a taste of her own stone; that would teach him to look down on her.
But that’s not what girls like her would do. Girls like her are supposed to smile and laugh and agree. So that’s what she does.
“Oh, you’re right!” Ayame chirps. “That means it would be self-defense, wouldn’t it — me killing him?”
Harue, then, tells her the story of what happened to her son. More proof that nothing good can come out of being connected to a cop. The curse stone doesn’t work during the day, but it’s evening now; Ayame wants to give it a try. Only scum would lie and try to hide something about their child — so if it works now, she won’t even feel bad about killing Harue.
The curse stone responds, which means it can be used, but it doesn’t react to anything Harue just said. That means it’s the truth, then.
“My condolences,” Ayame says, and means it.
Harue has been honest with her, so Ayame will be honest back. Cards on the table. She tells them that she’s activated her curse and all that’s left is for the conditions to be fulfilled.
She wants to see if Harue will back off, kick her out of the house, or at least stop talking. But instead, she does the opposite — she keeps making conversation, deliberately seeking out different topics. For the first time, Harue’s expression looks really shaken.
“Do you…have a light on you?” she asks.
“No, instead of talking about that, how about we talk about why you’re so shaken…as I thought. You have a curse stone, too. You’re a curse bearer, aren’t you, lady?”
Harue hesitates. “No,” she says, and then her fate is sealed.
Ayame lets her glee seep through into her face, pressing her hands together. “Ah. There we go.”
“Ma’am, ma’am!” Richter cuts in urgently. As though there’s anything he can do. “Did she fulfill the conditions?”
“She sure did!” says Ayame. “Okay, it’s time for a beatdown.”
The living room is big; it’s kind of impressive, she thinks, just how much screams can echo in here. When the job is done, Harue is barely recognizable as anything anymore, let alone a human being.
Sauntering over, Ayame plucks the curse stone off of her. She’s used to the onslaught of memories that hit her by now; the Haunting Clappers, the stone tells her, only need a source of fire.
That was a close one — of all the times to be a smoker, Ayame thinks, and bites down a giggle.
“Now then,” she says, and turns her attention to Richter. “What will you do, Mr. Investigator? You’re not a curse bearer, so I don’t have any reason to kill you. But I won’t show you mercy if you’re going to try and capture me. So what’ll it be?”
Richter crosses his arms and screws up his face. Even before he says anything, she already knows what his answer will be. Everything about his body language is closed off, defensive. He isn’t going to fight her, not when he still doesn’t know the conditions of her curse — the same ones that left his companion dead on the floor. All he needs is a little push.
“Um, your employer’s already dead anyway, so…there’s no reason for you to go out of your way to arrest me, right?”
Richter doesn’t meet her eyes. “I could still do my duty as a citizen and report you, you know?”
“Oh, what a surprise! This is when you decide to suddenly choose the side of righteousness?” Ayame laughs, gesturing to the body. “She was after the same thing, you know? There’s no clean hands when it comes to soul dregs.”
He can’t say anything against that; they both know it’s true.
“Well, it looks like you don’t have anything to say about that.” She steps over the body delicately, heading for the door. “I’ll be taking my leave, then. Bye bye!”
Honestly, part of Ayame wants Richter to stop her, to say something. To fight back for what he pretended for so long to believe in. But instead, he just stays quiet and lets her leave without a word.
A coward until the end. Typical man.
Ayame is so close to her goal — so close she can almost taste it. Even her art has been getting better, as though the inspiration has just been flowing into her lately.
But close isn’t good enough. Not when she isn’t quite there yet.
She’d expected more from Harue, but her curse stone was empty of any soul dregs. People are getting too soft these days, she thinks. Not like her. Someone who’s willing to do whatever it takes in order to accomplish her goal.
All of Ayame’s curse stones, old and new, whisper to her. She needs more soul dregs, they tell her, to resurrect someone who died so long ago. More, more, more.
As soon as night falls, she takes up the One-Sided Reed. This, she thinks, is her real destiny: to rid the world of trash men. It’s easy, all things considered.
She goes through the phonebook, and she systematically kills all the men who are still at their place of work in the middle of the night.
It’s amazing how many men there are like that in the world. Men who are neglecting their families, their wives and children, for nothing but a bit of fleeting recognition. Men who don’t take responsibility for anything. Men who keep secrets, who lie and cheat and deceive.
The only downside of using the One-Sided Reed is that Ayame doesn’t see the men she kills. All she can do is close her eyes and picture their dismemberment, the way they’ll bleed out. She hopes they know why she chose them. She hopes, in their final moments, they regret all the choices they’ve made.
But before that, she kills one person. Someone very specific. The person who most deserved it.
It’s all over the news the next morning, about how the entire police department is thrown into disarray. Ayame’s mother tries to reach out to her, too.
She doesn’t reply. If she has to listen to one person — one man — in her life, she at least wants it to be one of her choice.
The spur of seemingly random killings lasts for three more nights. Soon after the killings stop, a female ukiyo-e artist bursts onto the art scene introducing herself as the Mysterious Mad Paintress, and is quickly hailed as a modern reincarnation of the great Hokusai.
People from all over Japan are drawn to her prints, and they say her art is so honest that it makes all those who see it want to die.