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V10 Story I – Part 06

“Oh, that’s right,” he murmured.

There was no madness in his voice. He was likely talking to himself, indifferently acknowledging the current situation.

“The reason I couldn’t eat anything was because of this.”

With a human stuffed inside, he couldn’t take out anything.

Abruptly, he closed the refrigerator. As he looked behind him, surprise dawned on his features. We stared at each other in silence. Bewildered, he opened and closed his mouth.

“Basically, it’s about cut flowers and a sense of unease.”

Nonsensical words spilled from Azuma’s lips.

“Listen. It’s very simple,” he continued, as if making excuses. I stood rooted, listening. Wrestling with his thoughts, he desperately pressed on. “Cutting and displaying flowers feels most appropriate to me. I’ve always had this habit—cutting flowers, placing them in fish tanks, or floating them in the bath. But most flowers seem somehow meaningless, or rather, I can’t recognize them as flowers. What I mean to say is, human hands somehow appear like flowers to me.”

Azuma pointed to his own hand. His confusion had subsided. His tone gradually steadied, and he offered a broad smile.

“I live my life subconsciously. In other words, most of these actions are automatic. I try to restore the unnatural to its natural state, and as a result, corpses always end up before me, but by the time I notice, they’re gone. I’m very efficient when on autopilot. Now, a question.”

His smile faded. There was no sign of viciousness in his eyes. He took a deep breath.

“Do you think I’m abnormal?” he asked hesitantly.

“Yes. Undeniably abnormal.”

“Thank you. You’re the first to say that so decisively to me.”

For some reason, he let out a sigh of relief. Then, he regarded me with a troubled expression. He had run out of things to talk about. I thought back to our previous conversations.

“Unnatural things are not good. At least, that’s what I think.”

“Right now, it’s not attached to any human body. So, whether it was attached or not, it doesn’t really make a difference. Do you, for instance, bother thinking about what happened to the branches, leaves, and roots of cut flowers?

“What’s needed goes where it’s needed, and somehow I manage to do things without realizing. Hmm… Yeah, I’m fine. Probably.”

“Suppose you woke up one morning and found someone’s hand by your pillow. I think it’s nonsense to be concerned about its origin.”

“I’ve been told that, aside from vision, my various senses have been dull for a long time. That’s why I’m a bit obsessed with what I can see.”

I could now interpret his nonsensical rambling, and I understood why Mayuzumi labeled this an outlier. There were no innocent victims among her clients. Though strictly speaking, this wasn’t even a case. The woman who informed us of the oddity had been murdered.

It was Azuma who was hiding something. Mayuzumi might have foreseen this when accepting the case. But how could she predict it even before meeting Azuma?

A flashback hit me—something folded thrown at my face in the office. Mayuzumi’s apartment typically had no newspapers.

I pulled out a newspaper from my bag. Azuma displayed no reaction. Checking the date, it coincided with my hospitalization period. Pages chronicled a particular incident.

A dismemberment case. A severed head, wrapped in plastic, was found floating in the sea. A subsequent search led to the recovery of the torso, legs, and shoulders, but not the rest of the body. Forensic experts deduced there to be at least two bodies. The victims’ hands were yet to be found.

One page bore the name of the hospital. Mayuzumi must have stumbled upon this article when Shirayuki dragged her for a visit to the hospital. After we met Azuma, she went to the hospital and took it with her.

Suppressing an inner sigh, I showed the newspaper to Azuma.

“Was this your doing?”

“Probably, yeah,” he replied. “Sorry. My mind is fuzzy.” He seemed genuinely apologetic.

When Mayuzumi twirled the parasol, the phantom hand decayed rapidly. And now the reason became apparent.

It wasn’t the phantom hand that decayed. There was a real hand there before, and her ability showed what had happened to it. The replay was simply superimposed on the phantom hand.

Then, I recalled the client’s words. She had seen a hand submerged in Azuma’s tank.

Shocked, she fled without a word. Thinking she was just seeing things, she visited again, and found the fish tank empty. Azuma displayed no suspicious behavior either.

“When I mustered up the courage to ask, he said the tank was empty.”

“You told Hashida Asako that the tank was empty, didn’t you?”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. That’s what happened. At that time, the tank was definitely empty. I’m not lying. I didn’t even consider lying then.”

Upon leaving, she checked the fish tank once more and found the submerged hand again. Astonished, she told her friend about it. Her friend was shocked as well. They tried to retrieve the hand, but they couldn’t touch it. Again and again their fingers slipped through the pale hand.

“In other words, before the apparition appeared, there was a real hand in the tank,” I said. “That was what the client initially saw. All the apparitions in this house are reproductions based on the real one.”

“Indeed. And hands that don’t decay seemed like artificial flowers to me. I told you guys, didn’t I? About cut flowers and internal décor.”

“Piece of decors, I guess? Yeah, definitely cut flowers. But first, let’s talk about the phantom hand. Unfortunately, this is the only topic I can think of that might catch your interest.”

“I decided to show it to you guys. So, I want you to come, I guess? That’s only an excuse, though. I’m stumped. It would be odd if you didn’t come.”

“Are you worried about me? You’re a kind person. Hmm, but it’s still odd. So, I’ll be waiting.”

Memory of the conversation sent a shiver down my spine.

A horrifying realization hit me. Intrigued by Mayuzumi’s hands, he summoned her. And he felt disappointed when she didn’t come.

“Azuma-san, were you… were you planning to kill the chief?”

“I never intended to kill her. I was just really bothered by the fact that her hands weren’t submerged in the tank. I couldn’t stop myself from making the call. That’s all. After that, I guess my subconscious would do the rest?”

I bit my lip. He approved of his subconscious actions—which made him plenty malicious.

My gaze bore into Azuma. He lowered his head awkwardly.

Before I could curse at him, I forced my mouth shut and chewed my lips. Blame and verbal attacks were futile now. I could shout about the cruelty of taking a life, and he would likely agree. No matter what I said, he would just apologize. And that was all. Condemning him wouldn’t propel the situation any further. I would feel satisfied, but that was it.

Azuma stood in front of the refrigerator housing a corpse. He was a murderer. I was facing a killer. The situation was very weird. Both of us were at a loss.

“What do I do now?” he wondered. “You found out about what I did.”

He glanced back at the refrigerator, slightly opening the door. He pressed on the contents of the plastic bag with his index finger. The bag swayed softly.

“Why did I kill Mako?” he said, baffled. “I never thought her hands needed a special display. Was it the nail polish? Maybe because she claimed to have succeeded in her diet? Either way, I’m disappointed in myself.”

He released his finger and sighed. He had no awareness of committing the murder.

As I stared at him, I sensed something off. Thinking back, I had been getting this jarring feeling numerous times since entering this house. Tropical light and a chilly room temperature. A vibrant scene, fake plants, empty fish tanks.

Everything was mismatched. And at its core…

A murderer stood, looking bewildered, almost childlike.

I sifted through my emotions. Amidst fear and anger was a strange sense of relief.

Azuma always spoke sincerely, like a child expressing thoughts without reservation. He didn’t show any abnormal attachment to things that didn’t interest him.

To me, someone who was outside his realm of interest, he was just a regular human being.