Hanzai Japan: Fantastical, Futuristic Stories of Crime From and About Japan (37 page)

The gleaming steel entered the crowd of uniforms. Bits of heads and arms caught in the whirling teeth and sailed through the air, smacking into the walls, leaving bright red brushstroke smears against the surface. Intestines spilled from cut-open stomachs and slithered to the floor. The motor roared. Within this blood-mist sauna, I placed each step carefully so as not to tread on any viscera that might cause me to slip. All who approached got carved up by my chain saw.

The machine is built to fell trees of thick and hard wood. It weighs nearly eighteen pounds. The guide bar for the rotating chain is thirty inches long, which is longer than my arm. Frankly, it’s all more than a girl should handle, but when I swing it, all that weight makes for tremendous power. It rips and tears through anything it meets, whether flesh, bone, or even an entire wall if I were to strike at one. It’s as my American grandfather always said: in the end, victory goes to the one with the most power.

I was cutting my eighth opponent when the ninth slipped in the blood. As he fell toward me, I kicked his head back up, then lopped it off with my chain saw. The linoleum floor was super slick from all the gore, and those school slippers have hardly any grip. That’s why I chose shoes with good traction.

Another boy said, “Chain saws are vulnerable in close quarters! Get in there!”

He was right, at least in immediate range. Chain saws aren’t all blade, but require the bulk of a handle and a drive mechanism to function. In that way, they’re probably weaker than spears or swords, and possibly even handguns. The second any of them grapples me, I’m finished. When I kicked my falling enemy’s head, it was a split-second action to give myself distance; if whoever shouted had the insight to see that move for what it was, he deserved respect.

Four students, boys and girls alike, rushed me.

But I came from a line of chain saw wielders going back a hundred and forty years. No martial art lasts a century without addressing its weaknesses.

I locked the throttle into place and swung the chain saw over my upper arm, twirling the deadly machine tightly around my body like a pair of nunchucks. It’s a dangerous technique, as the rapidly spinning teeth pass perilously close to the arteries in my neck. When I first started practicing the maneuver, it was of course with the chain saw switched off, but mistakes still resulted in shredded skin and blood everywhere.

The chain saw ran freely across my body in every which way. Over my shoulders, then across my back, then around my waist, roaring all the way. No other weapon can do the same. Only a chain saw, hurling aside anything it touches, can perform this, my chain saw dance. Against these pitiful sheep in school uniforms, the steel teeth carved up hands, sliced away shoulders, and scraped off faces. My foes scattered in little bits and pieces.

In a flash, I realized that I’d been prioritizing cutting down the girls before the boys. I wondered if it was out of jealousy. The thought brought me a wry smile, tightening my eyes behind their blood-misted glasses.

I don’t want to carry dark thoughts about how that girl stole Takumi from me. Takumi isn’t an object. He’s his own person, and he chose her over me. If he were some mere object to be stolen, then his declaration of love for me would lose all value.

It’s a painful truth, but the first boy I fell in love with had fallen in love with her, and not me. Our love ended in a fleeting moment. Nothing remains to be told in the story of my life but a tragic ending. Did I pick the wrong branching path somewhere along the way, or was this always my fate?

I will kill Takumi and I will die. I will bring an end to this story gone wrong; my chain saw will tear out the final scenes from the book titled
Fumio Kirisaki.
I have absolutely no intention of idling by, listlessly turning the remaining pages of a life without him.

I imagined him seeing me there with my chain saw, and I pictured him crying and throwing his arms around me, saying,
It isn’t true It’s all a misunderstanding You’re imagining it I’m sure of it now Fumio I love you I love you more than anyone I love you so much I could die I love you more than anything in the world I’m sorry I hurt you I won’t leave you again.

But no … Takumi would never be so false. I know that better than anyone. If I didn’t, I never would have retrieved the dusty chain saw from the storeroom.

I’ve lost count of how many people I’ve killed now.

Takumi, Takumi, Takumi.

Each swing of my chain saw carries his name in refrain.

My back ached. My arms and shoulders were heavy. I felt like I’d killed half the school, down to the teachers who’d blundered by on their way to their classes. Reinforcements kept streaming in from the third floor, and even from classrooms on the second and first floors, all of them trying to keep me from Takumi. But why?

I was used to the smell of the blood and the noise of my motor now. The linoleum floor was a crimson sea, with blood leaking from corpses and oozing down the stairs. Limbs and gore were piled along the edges of the hall, and everything glistened in more shades of red than I ever thought could exist. Light caught the mountain of bodies, flickering across their wetness like an old, noisy TV screen. But none of this got to me. My hands were full with my enemies who yet lived.

I kept swinging.

Come tomorrow, the newspapers would report the exact number of victims. They’ll all have articles about the girl from somewhere in Saitama Prefecture, who went to school with a chain saw and slaughtered her classmates before killing herself by removing her own head. Not that I’d be around to read them.

But if I stay calm and think about it rationally, I’ve probably not killed all that many. In all the excitement and stress, I likely overestimated my actions. If I’d truly murdered half of the students, then the riot police would have already rushed in with knockout gas.

I took out my stopwatch.

The LCD screen was cracked. The numbers so precious for Takumi and me were gone. I pressed the buttons again and again, but the watch was dead. It must have happened when that guard dog tackled me.

Now I wasn’t able to know how much time was left. I felt like our special time had been crushed under a bootheel, and it was an awful feeling.

But there’s nothing to be done about it. I’m almost to him now. He can’t be more than twenty yards away. Even if the police cars were to pull up to the school gate this very moment, and the cops came running as fast as they can, I’d still reach Takumi first.

Listen up, all of you, and get out of my way or I’ll cut you down.

Chain saw in hand, I proceeded down the hall.

Ahead of me stood only one girl.

My best friend, Kaoruko Odagiri.

Kaoruko stood in the middle of the hallway, resting her backside (not large or small but ladylike, as is the rest of her) on the edge of a student desk. The elegant fall of her skirt made the plain desk seem an antique brought over from an old European castle. Her long, delicate hair gently billowed in the cool morning breeze blowing in through an open window.

Meanwhile, my uniform was covered in blood. My once navy skirt was soaked to a deep purple. My hair was caked stiff, and my bangs stuck to my forehead as if glued there. Dangling from my reddened arms was a chain saw encrusted with ichor and flesh and fatty bits.

Whatever she may have thought of me now, I still considered her my friend. I didn’t care if the feeling wasn’t mutual. Even though a fight split us apart, she was still the first person who got a shy girl like me to open up. We still shared the bond from our previous lives. Even now, she was important to me.

I couldn’t tell if she knew how I felt. She looked at me as if nothing ever happened between us. Maybe she intended to talk me into stopping this senseless slaughter. No matter how much I were to wash my hands now, the stench of blood would never come clean. But Kaoruko wasn’t like other people. Maybe she believed I could still redeem myself.

I didn’t want to take her life. I didn’t want to include her among the countless bodies piled in my wake.

The world diverged into two parts centered on me in this moment.

Ahead of me waited the end of the road.

Behind me lay a sea of blood.

I hoped Kaoruko would remain in the classroom until I’d reached Takumi. If she’d never strayed from the safety I’d intended for her, she wouldn’t have to die.

I put the brake to the chain saw for the first time since this started, then I returned the control lever to neutral. The machine rumbled in protest as the chain stopped its rotation.

I could hear the noise of the city coming to life outside the open window. Was that a sparrow singing, or maybe a bulbul? A truck slowly passed the school grounds, its loudspeaker advertising recycling services for electronics and appliances. I clenched and unclenched my fingers to work out the stiffness. I could hear my knuckles creak.

Then Kaoruko said, “That all was a little over the top, don’t you think?”

I nodded.

“You’ll have to wash your hair more than once or twice to get all that out,” she said. “Dried blood is nasty stuff, so you should hurry up and get a shower. You have such nice hair—I wish you’d take better care of it.”

“Who gives a damn about my hair?”

“I don’t know why you keep talking like that when you’re so cute. It’s a bad habit.”

“I do it because unlike you, Kaoruko, I’m not cute,” I said.

She puffs out her cheeks in mock irritation. “People stopped calling me cute after grade school. Ever since I sprung up like a bamboo tree, even my family stopped saying that.”

Not knowing what to say to that, I waited for her to continue.

“The taller I grow, the harder everything gets.” Kaoruko grinned, and said, “I wish we could add our heights together and each take half.”

I tightened my fist around the chain saw’s handle, the machine vibrating with a low rumble, and forced out the words “Move, Kaoruko.”

“You know,” she said, “I always thought that when a soul reincarnates, it’s only imprinted with its previous bonds. But now I’m thinking I was wrong. Even in this life, you’re still an expert warrior. I never expected that.”

“Step aside.”

“I wonder if I’d be a good fighter too. I know that when we got put on the same volleyball team, we got trounced. I never imagined you were hiding such talent.”

“Get out of my way. I’m begging you, please!”

A nasty smile came to her well-bred countenance. “Now, now, now. Don’t tell me you’re tired of sharing our bond.”

“N-no, it’s not like that.”

Then Kaoruko said, “You’ve made it all this way, but I’m sorry to tell you that Takumi isn’t here.”

“You lie!”

“He went down the emergency stairs with several of the others. I stayed behind to tell you.”

I stared into her eyes. Unwavering, they stared back at me.

There had always been only one rule between us.

Kaoruko never told me a lie, no matter how inconsequential. In exchange, I always believed what she said, no matter how preposterous. When we formed what was for both of us our first friendship, that was the one and only rule we resolved.

I believed her story about the mysterious creature that appeared in the Ayase River. I believed her story about the strange caped figure who appeared in the girl’s restroom. I even believed her about the underground dwellers who ride white alligators.

But then I broke our rule. Rather than believe Kaoruko when she told me that aliens were controlling Takumi, I chose to face off against the new girl. And here we are now, with Kaoruko telling me such a blatant lie.

I made perfectly sure that those metal escape doors couldn’t open without destroying the hinges first. I could see the door directly behind Kaoruko, and it was closed tight and entirely unharmed.

So this is what heartbreak feels like, to be utterly gutted. As I stood there covered in blood, the cold breeze passed straight through me.

This too must be fate. Must those who chose the path of Asura inevitably war against their friends? But now I understood that I would never reach Takumi’s side without climbing over my best and only friend’s corpse. Her luck ran out when she became friends with a girl like me. The only way to honor our friendship was to follow her to the depths of hell.

I squeezed the throttle. The control switch automatically flipped from neutral to idle. Reading my thoughts, the chain saw eagerly roused, raising a battle cry that rattled the heavy window glass.

“I’ll take care of everything,” Kaoruko said. “It’ll all work out. I can get you and Takumi back together again—”

I released the brake and swung the chain saw.

Her neck was as slender as the rest of her, and the blades, whirling at high speed, removed her head with ease. I didn’t even feel the difference between the teeth passing through her flesh and it grinding through her bones. A deep sadness filled me as I thought of how the chain saw roared as it pushed to grind that committee busybody’s attack dog judoka into two parts, and yet it sliced through my dear, dear friend in an instant.

My best friend’s blood geysered from her neck and showered my body.

“Kaoruko, I’m …” I said, but I held the rest back. I wasn’t sure if I should be directing the apology to her severed head or the rest of her fallen body.

But no. I won’t apologize. I decided I would crush any who stand in my way, whether it’s my best friend or even my parents. To weaken my resolve would disrespect everyone I’ve killed.

When I turned on my chain saw, whatever human there was in me switched off. Now I was a walking corpse. I will kill Takumi, and I will die. It is that sole purpose that moves this zombie.

The chain saw is all of me; it is my whole existence. My chain saw is, therefore I am. If each person is born with a single purpose, then mine is to kill.

But I make myself one promise.

If, as Kaoruko told me, another life awaits me, then I will be her friend once more, and I’ll strive not to choose the wrong path again.

The classroom was nearly empty. The desks and chairs were put away as if for the big cleaning day at the end of the school year. The forty students of the class were gone. Maybe I’d already killed them all.