Murder Anniversary and the Reverse Memorial Read online

  “I never said the last two things.”

  Ayaka paused at the Freudian slip.

  Looking at Kyousuke, who felt a bit hurt, Kagura snorted. “…Hmph, you said I would lose to this idiot—was that the truth, too? Not only is that total nonsense, it’s also a very reckless claim to make… How utterly amazing—an airhead who can’t even gauge her opponent’s strength.”

  “I don’t want to hear from you. I’m much smarter!”

  “Oh, another rash remark? On what do you base such—?”

  “Well, she’s an idiot—Eiri, I mean.”

  “……Excuse me?” Kagura’s expression changed instantly. “My older sister is…an idiot?”

  “Yeah. Her test grades were second from last! And if Eiri’s like that, her little sister can’t be much different, I think. Tee-hee! Oh, and by the way, I was third from the top.”

  Relaxing her prim expression, Kagura clicked her tongue.

  “…Tch. Don’t lump me in with that failure.”

  “Failure—?”

  “She’s a failure, isn’t she? Because she’s an assassin, but she can’t kill. By that metric alone, you murderers are probably much more successful. It’s shameful.” Kagura’s voice was filled with disgust. She spit her words in an angry whisper. “Really…it would have been better if she never came home again.”

  Kagura pulled the iron fan from her obi. “I’m different from my big sister… I have no trouble killing people. In fact I’ve already done it, many times. I could easily soak this fan—my iron-ribbed fan Kujaku—with your blood. Because that is my job, as an assassin of the Akabane clan.”

  With a wave of her hand, she opened the folded fan.

  “……?!”

  Ayaka winced and stepped back, while Kyousuke tensed up.

  All expression disappeared from Kagura’s face. One foot, clad in a white tabi sock, lifted off the floorboards—

  “…But please, relax. At present, I have not yet received the command to kill you. So enjoy all that our home has to offer. Well, then, good-bye.” Flapping wind at them with her open fan, Kagura calmly stepped past Kyousuke and Ayaka, grinning smugly.

  “”

  As she crossed them, her quarrelsome rust-red eyes wordlessly told them: If I was ordered to, I would kill you in a heartbeat.

  The blades set into the iron fan glistened in the summer sunlight. Kagura’s murderous intent was just barely visible, like the knife of a killer preparing to strike. Kyousuke and Ayaka stood still, momentarily paralyzed by the intensity of it.

  “Waaaaaahhh, get oooooofff! Get off meeeeeeeee!”

  “…Fwah.”

  After parting ways with Kagura, Kyousuke and Ayaka quickly made their way back to the guest rooms. As they approached, they heard Renko screaming. Running to see what was the matter, they discovered her squirming and struggling on the floor. Eiri, yawning disinterestedly, had her locked in a perpendicular arm bar.

  “…Oh, Kyousuke. Looks like you caught your quarry, too.”

  “Yeah. You’re, um… What are you doing?”

  “Nothing really. This one’s trying to get away, so I’m just holding her down—see?!”

  “Hyghaaa!! Owowowow, when you’re so rough it makes my joints hurt, owww! Stop, forgive me! I won’t run away anymore, I won’t ruuunnn!”

  “……Yeah, fine.”

  With a sigh, Eiri released her.

  Ayaka rushed over to Renko and cradled her head in both arms. “Are you all right, Miss Renko?!”

  Holding her shoulder, Renko stretched painfully. “Kksshh… A-Ayaka…I’m…already done for… You alone must…run…cough.”

  “Renkoooooooooooo?! Whaa…? Understood. I alone must explore the inside of the mansion and find Eiri’s room—”

  “Hey. We’re going back, Ayaka.”

  “—Ah, okay.”

  “Ow!”

  Ayaka let go of Renko and stood up, leaving her head to crack on the floorboards.

  “Kksshh…how cruel. I was only going to take a peek inside your room, wasn’t I? Why do you hate the idea so much? It’s awfully suspicious.”

  “…No reason. You say you’ll just look, but you’d absolutely rummage through it, is all.”

  “And you have things in there that you wouldn’t want anyone rummaging up? Kksshh.”

  “Huh? No, I don’t. There’s no reason I would have anything like that.”

  They continued bickering all the way back to their rooms.

  However, on the way there, Renko said, “We came all this way, so show us around this part! You know, like where the bathroom is and stuff.” And so it was decided that they would make a few stops along the way.

  As they toured the mansion, Kyousuke decided to ask about something that had been bothering him.

  “Eiri. Are you on bad terms with your little sister?”

  “…Why do you ask?”

  “Well, we ran into her in the hallway earlier, and—”

  “What did she say about me?”

  “…Uh.”

  Kyousuke wasn’t sure how to answer. “Failure,” “disgrace,” “it would have been better if she never came home again”—he wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to report Kagura’s abusive words.

  “Shame of the Akabane, a disgrace, a coward, a dunce, a failure, defective, an idiot, worthless, incompetent…what else?” Eiri listed nonchalantly. “Let’s see, ‘it would have been better if she never came home again,’ and so on?”

  “Eh?”

  Eiri smiled bitterly at Kyousuke’s surprise. “…Day after day, at every turn, I’ve been abused by her, you see. I’m keenly aware of the fact that the girl has it in for me. —The Akabane, you see, are a matrilineal family.”

  “Matrilineal? Does that mean that the women carry the family line?”

  “Yeah. The red represents blood, and blood represents birth, and birth represents women… That’s not the reason behind it, but for a long time we have had a tendency to give birth to girls, so for generations the responsibility of being the head of the family has belonged to a woman. The line of succession passes from oldest daughter to second daughter to third daughter…then, after the last daughter, it finally goes to the oldest son. Through the generations, of the heads of the main house, there have been five second daughters and one third daughter… The rest have all been first daughters—like my mother, for example.”

  They walked along the veranda, looking out on the courtyard, where red flowers bloomed. Eiri’s voice was clear and dispassionate.

  “…But unfortunately I, the first daughter of the main house, cannot bring myself to kill. Nevertheless, I am not without talent, so they still expect things of me, even if it’s futile, and the disappointment continues… I think that Kagura, as the second daughter, cannot stand the thought of someone like me. In the past—before she understood that I can’t kill people—she idolized me in her own way.” Eiri looked hurt as she spoke. Kagura hated Eiri, but Eiri did not appear to hate Kagura. Rather, she seemed to feel guilty.

  “…Can’t you make up?”

  “It’s impossible. As long as I can’t kill.”

  “Mmm—”

  Eiri turned away from Kyousuke and looked out over the courtyard. It seemed as if she was telling the truth. If only Eiri could bring herself to take a life, Fuyou would have no problem passing on the line of succession. Then Kagura would have no reason to scorn her, and their sisterly relationship could start to improve. It seemed likely that all of Eiri’s worries, troubles, and difficulties would be resolved.

  “But, Eiri…you yourself, really—”

  “—Ah.” Eiri stopped walking and fixed her eyes on one corner of the courtyard, as if she had noticed something troubling.

  “…Hey, what is it?”

  “Did you find something interesting?”

  Renko and Ayaka, who had been walking behind them, stopped and followed Eiri’s gaze.

  It was a spacious courtyard with a gravel pond, decorated with large boulders and st
one lanterns. In the corner, in front of the carefully arranged greenery, was something bright red, even more brilliant than the flowers—a pair of scarlet kimonos.

  There were two figures squatting down, their backs half-turned. From their size they appeared to be young children.

  The two of them were enthusiastically rustling around for something in the bushes.

  —Shink! There came a strange sound.

  Shink, shink, shink, shink…

  “……?”

  Perhaps they had sensed they were being watched. The two of them stopped their work and turned around.

  “Kyah?!” Ayaka screamed.

  “Whaaa?!” Renko recoiled.

  Even Kyousuke gasped.

  The children’s faces were thickly plastered with something that looked like spurts of blood.

  “……Ah.”

  The next second, their reddish-brown eyes opened wide and round. Their perfectly identical childish faces, stained with bright crimson, burst into broad smiles.

  “Big sister Eiri!”

  The children shouted with joy and made a beeline for Eiri. They were each holding a pair of huge scissors painted in contrasting black and white, and as they ran across the courtyard, something that looked like fresh blood dripped from the blades. “It’s big sister Eiri, it’s big sister Eiri!” Shaking their weapons overhead, the young children quickly closed the distance between them.

  “H-hey…they’re coming over here!!”

  “To kill us all?!”

  “No, no! Let’s run, Ayaka! Hurry!”

  “It’s big sister Eiri, it’s big sister Eiri! It’s big sister Eiri, it’s big sister Eiri, it’s big sister Eiri, it’s big sister Eiriiiiii, yaaaaaayyy!”

  The young children drew closer as Kyousuke and the others dashed away. The children kicked off their geta footwear, climbed up on the veranda, and ran in circles around Eiri.

  “Big sister Eiri, welcome home!”

  “Welcome home, big sister Eiri!”

  They made an impressive racket. They looked as if they wanted to jump on her right away but couldn’t do so because of the scissors and the blood. Their hair and clothes were practically covered with sticky fluids.

  Eiri looked unperturbed, as if she was entirely used to it. “I’m home,” she said and smiled. “Have you been well, Ryou?”

  “Yeah!”

  The child she called Ryou waved his black scissors in the air.

  “You haven’t caught a cold or anything, Ran?”

  “Nope!”

  The child she called Ran gripped her white scissors tightly.

  The two of them, with their reddish-brown hair cut to about the tops of their shoulders, had exactly the same face. They were naturally the same height, and even their voices were identical. It would have been impossible to tell them apart except for their scissors.

  The twins chattered noisily, ignoring Kyousuke and the others. “Big sister Eiri, big sister Eiri,” “listen, listen!” “In the bushes just now,” “there were strange things!” Shink, shink, shink, went their scissors as they talked.

  “…Strange things?”

  “Yeah!” Ryou and Ran answered in unison. Even their breathing was perfectly in sync. “They were red and yellow,” “and purple and green,” “spiders and centipedes and things like we’ve never seen,” “snakes and frogs and things like we’ve never seen.” “They were weird, and there were lots,” “loooooots of them!”

  “……Ah.”

  Furrows appeared on Eiri’s brow.

  Exchanging looks, the twins continued. “The snake we found just now was great, wasn’t it?” “Yeah, it had really pretty colors!” “Like freshly scooped-out intestines.” “A pink color like small intestines!”

  “……?!”

  A pink snake. One of the poisonous serpents that Busujima had released on the way back to their rooms. Which meant that the blood the twins were bathed in—

  “But it seemed like it was gonna bite at us, so…” “we killed it!” “We cut its head off—” “Slice!” “But it was still alive,” “wiggling around,” “it was gross, so…” “we cut it up!” “With Ryou’s Kurosagi cutters and” “Ran’s Shirosagi cutters!” “Taking turns, from front and back,” “slice, slice!”

  They smiled innocently, and opened and closed their scissors, shink, shink, shink. The blood and fluids dirtying their scissors and clothes must have belonged to the poisonous creatures Busujima had let loose to investigate the mansion.

  “…Ahh. You took care of them, huh?” Eiri sighed.

  Kyousuke and the others were at a loss for words.

  Finally, the twins noticed them. “Ah!” they shouted. “These people, could they be…?” “Uh-huh, they’ve gotta be!”

  Whisper, whisper, whisper, whisper. Bringing their faces close together, they started conferring in secret.

  Eiri took the opportunity to introduce the twins to the dumbfounded group. “These two are my little brother and sister. As you can see, they’re twins, and they’re nine years old. The boy holding the black scissors is the older brother Ryou, and the girl holding the white scissors is the younger sister, Ran.”

  “Nice to meet you, mister!”

  “Nice to meet you, miss!”

  The twins cut their private conversation short and hastily bowed.

  “N-nice to meet you…”

  “A pleasure.”

  “Pleased to meet you!”

  Kyousuke and the others greeted them uneasily, while the twins looked over with immense curiosity. The strange contrast between their clear eyes and their blood-spattered faces was disturbing.

  “Hey, mister,” “hey, miss!” “Ryou knows about you,” “Ran knows about you!” “Mister, you’re a murderer, right?” “Miss, you’re all murderers, right?!”

  Reeking of blood, the twins drew closer, looking up at Kyousuke and the others with glistening eyes.

  “What kind of weapons do you kill with?” “How do you kill?” “Why do you kill?” “I’m curious, Ran!” “I’m curious, Ryou!” “Tell us tell us tell us tell us tell us tell us tell us tell us!” “We wanna know we wanna know we wanna know we wanna know we wanna know we wanna know we wanna know we wanna know!”

  Shink, shink. Shink, shink.

  Kyousuke and the others tried to retreat, but the twins pressed in on them, opening and closing their scissors.

  “…You two.” Eiri clapped a hand on each twin. “First go wipe off all that gore and change your clothes.”

  “Wah?!” After rubbing their heads, the twins looked at each other, snickered conspiratorially, and then smiled enthusiastically. “Okaaaaaayyy!” Clasping blood-soaked hands, they pattered off.

  Kyousuke and the others could do nothing but stare in mute amazement at the twins’ backs as they disappeared.

  “……What is with them?”

  “They’re too excited! I can’t keep up with them like that!”

  “What incredible kids… Young people these days are scary.”

  “Kids have always been like that. More importantly, should we tell him about that?”

  Eiri pointed at the puddle of blood spreading out from the corner of the courtyard.

  Several seconds passed.

  “What happened?! I heard from my friends that there was an emergency…” Right on cue, Busujima rushed in. Upon seeing the sad state of his beloved pet, he crumpled to the ground, shedding ugly tears. “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeah, Loverboy?! Loverbooooooyyy! Oh…why, why, why like this…?! Uuu…waaaaaaaaaaaahhh!”

  “You have my deepest apologies.”

  “Apologies!”

  Fuyou prostrated herself on the floor of the guest room. The twins copied her and got to their knees, bowing their heads.

  Busujima sat before them cross-legged, his arms folded, appearing to ignore them. He was righteously angry at the massacre of his beloved pets.

  Upon investigation, the maid had discovered six more corpses littered throughout the mansion. Like the poisonous snake
, they had been hacked to death, chopped up by the twins’ scissors.

  Fuyou raised her head from the tatami and spoke in a sorrowful tone. “I’m always telling them not to kill in vain, but…these children have somewhat sadistic tastes. I’m afraid they take to killing small animals whenever you let your attention drift. They are novices who cannot yet control their deadly urges. I am truly sorry that my lapse in oversight led to such an outcome.”

  “Truly sorry!”

  “…………”

  Kyousuke and the others sat at the low table, drinking tea and attentively watching the proceedings. Eiri nibbled at a manju confection and stared at her kneeling relatives with a blank expression.

  Silence.

  Eventually, Busujima answered in a serious tone. “…That’s enough—please sit up. No matter how much you apologize, it won’t bring them back. But…I am also at fault for letting dangerous, poisonous creatures run free. Yes, that certainly was not my finest idea… Given the circumstances, I should have released my more combative friends. If I had, they may have been able to fight back…” Busujima hung his head but grumbled and complained even as he admitted his own part in the tragedy. The death of his pets was surely a great shock.

  Fuyou bent toward him and reached out to touch his cheek. “As I had feared, you cannot completely forgive us? In that case, there is no other way… Allow me to apologize directly.” She stroked Busujima’s face provocatively as she whispered. “In return for you forgiving my children’s foolish actions, I will allow you any kind of brutality. Ho-ho-ho…please, do as you like tonight.”

  “…What?” Busujima looked shocked, mouth agape. Seeming to have forgotten all about his pets’ deaths, he ran his eyes, with undisguised intentions, over Fuyou’s entire body, so youthful and voluptuous that it didn’t seem possible she could be Eiri’s mother. “R-ready and willing.” Quickly he accepted the offer.

  “Just die already!”

  Eiri nailed Busujima with her manju.

  “Gyah?!”

  “Mother!! What do you think you’re doing?!” Eiri scolded, her face flushed. “Saying that kind of thing to a man like this…? Have you lost your mind?! You might allow it, but I will not!!”