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V12 Story II – Part 07

Steeling myself, I entered the library. The scent of ink and paper enveloped my whole body. The book-filled space had a distinctive atmosphere. I paused for a moment and glanced around.

Newspapers were pinned to the corkboard on the wall, and yellow artificial flowers adorned the counter.

I could feel the bright atmosphere that usually filled this place, but the neatly arranged wooden bookshelves were bathed in an ominous light. Following the fox, I weaved between the shelves. The titles on the countless spines seemed to convey something. I read them with my eyes for no particular reason.

There were more books I didn’t know than ones I did. Back in high school, the fox often read books, but I rarely picked up any myself. Talking around the desk we brought into the library was more interesting than reading. Looking back, those were unbelievably fun memories.

Did the fox have fun back then? I couldn’t understand what went through his mind. Perhaps no matter how much time passed, we would never see eye to eye.

Slipping through the spaces between the bookshelves, Asato headed for the double doors at the back. Behind them was the stack room.

Asato put his hand on the door. It wasn’t locked, and there was no sign of the guard coming. Asato must have done something before meeting up with me. He put strength into it, and the door creaked open. My eyes snapped wide.

Instead of wood, the shelves inside the stack room were made of cold steel. And they were empty. All the books inside were lying on the floor, open. Sheets of what looked like copy paper were strewn about, with countless ants crawling on them.

Upon closer inspection, they weren’t ants but tiny letters. Ink moved across the paper as if it were alive.

The letters traversed the scattered papers. When there were gaps between them, they traveled through the pages of the books to get to the next one. Apparently, the open books were there as bridges. The letters circled the desk in the stack room.

Just like in the past, there was a desk inside. I couldn’t tell if it hadn’t been removed or if the fox had brought in a new one. It was buried under books and papers. Black letters crawled over its surface. The mound covered in black dots reminded me of ants swarming around a cube of sugar.

The eerie sight squirmed silently in the faint moonlight spilling from the entrance. The countless swirling letters created a black vortex.

Suddenly, Asato leaped onto the desk like a beast. He turned to me and opened his mouth. The sound of a distant bell echoed in my mind.

Clang.

Like the narrator I met in the spirit world world, the fox began to speak.

“I never had any desires from the day I was born. I was shaped by my mother’s desires, and raised accordingly. And so, I became someone who granted the wishes of others. Though even that was all part of the scarlet woman’s plan. In other words, I’ve spent my life catering to everyone else’s desires. Oh, how utterly foolish, laughable, ridiculous. I’ve committed myself to each act—to each moment—and enjoyed it. But at the end of it all, what am I?”

Clang.

With his arms spread wide, Asato looked at me, his figure almost ethereal in the gray light. His face, expressionless, resembled a fox mask. But his eyes—those eyes clung to me, begging for something.

If he expected an answer from me, I had none to give. Only you know who you really are. But it seemed the fox couldn’t grasp that. He had lived a strange life.

One morning, Mayuzumi Asato was born as Mayuzumi Azaka.

One morning, Mayuzumi Asato woke up as an ordinary person. Another morning, Mayuzumi Asato woke up as an animal. Another time, Mayuzumi Asato woke up as a student.

Morning after morning, he transformed, sometimes by his own choice, sometimes forced by others.

But before all of that—before being a god, a human, an animal, or anything else—Mayuzumi Asato was just a pawn of the scarlet woman.

That was the truth. The scarlet woman bestowed another ability to a baby with qualities similar to Mayuzumi Azaka. She groomed the fox to become the catalyst for Mayuzumi Azaka’s demise. Mayuzumi Asato was nothing but a trap for Mayuzumi Azaka.

And if his life was defined by that ability… Mayuzumi Asato’s life was, in essence…

“In essence, it was worthless and meaningless,” the fox said, as if reading my thoughts.

His life had always been controlled by others. One could indeed argue it was meaningless. But I begged to differ.

“You say all that, but aren’t you just running away from your own failures?”

The fox arched an eyebrow. His eyes narrowed irritably, and I stared into them.

He had been persistently ignoring what Mayuzumi Azaka had told him many times before. That Mayuzumi Asato’s desires were ultimately his own. Someone else might have pushed them on to him initially, but he chose to follow them himself.

A life manipulated by the scarlet woman was tragic, to be sure, but blaming everything on that and turning a blind eye was inexcusable. He put a demon in my belly and killed many people.

His identity crisis arose only because he couldn’t become Mayuzumi Azaka. If he had become her, he wouldn’t be in distress.

“You say you’ve lived your life catering to the desires of others, but after failing to become Mayuzumi Azaka, you haven’t even tried to become anything else. You’re just blaming others because you’re aware of your own failure.”

No one’s life has a predetermined meaning. No one gives it to you either. If you didn’t acknowledge yourself, you would be worthless. That applied to both me and the fox, equally. Whining would get you nowhere.

“Asato, you’re making a fundamental mistake. What do you actually want to be? What did you actually want to do? What do you want?!”

I urged him to express his desires. Endlessly repeating that he had no desires, no mind of his own, was just a cry for someone to listen. What did he truly feel behind all the smoke and mirrors?

He pressed his lips tightly together. The painful silence tore at my ears. Suddenly, I remembered something trivial. Something I thought about while walking down the dark corridor earlier.

There was one time when the fox expressed his desire.

“I’ve said it before, Odagiri. I want to die by the hands of a human,” the fox said.

He had said the same thing at the sealed apartment. I stared at him blankly. Back then, he immediately said that he was just kidding. That he just wanted to torment somebody until his last breath.

“I’ve lived a good part of my life fulfilling the wishes of others. Why can’t I have someone grant me one final wish?”

This time he didn’t deny it. He quietly held my gaze. His expression could even be described as serene. The fox was revealing his true feelings. Yet, I felt a chill in his gaze.

Something was wrong. His eyes weren’t asking me to kill him. Those dark, empty orbs held both a plea and the urge to kill.

Come to think of it, he had mentioned one other wish before.

“But you won’t kill me, will you? Every one of them had told me about their wishes, but you were the sole exception. You alone didn’t want anything from me. You took my hand without motive or purpose. It shouldn’t lead to the next part, but alas,” he muttered introspectively.

Then, his gaze returned to me, his lips curled into a sly, fox-like grin.

“You see, I just can’t seem to find a satisfactory answer. If only chatting with you could’ve given me that. Anyway, I don’t recall ever running away, and I still don’t have the answer.”

Even now, the fox refused to confront his own cowardice. He clung to the notion that his life, shaped solely by the whim of others, was worthless.

“For far too long, my life’s been lacking excitement. Even if I begged you to put me out of my misery, you’d refuse. Yet, you’re willing to sacrifice yourself for my sister.”

The cold tone in which he mentioned his sister triggered a sense of déjà vu. Mayuzumi Azaka had once robbed the fox of his position. And now she was taking away the person he was asking to kill him. This person—me—was likely inconsequential to him, whether breathing or not. Their fate didn’t concern him. But having something snatched away from him? That hit him where it hurt.

It was one of the reasons why he ruined the relationship between me and Shizuka.

“If you’re ready to throw your life away for her while refusing to kill me, how about dying because of me, for no reason at all?”

The floor writhed. Papers went flying, fluttering and intertwining as they spiraled upwards. Letters scurried across their surface as if climbing a staircase. The swirling vortex of paper began to spin. Letters melted together, morphing once more into a dark whirlpool. The amalgamation of black and white looked like white birds flying within a back tornado.

The fox spread his arms wide. “Let’s kill each other, Odagiri Tsutomu. We should’ve done this a long time ago. Instead of maintaining a vague sort of companionship for no rhyme or reason.”

His tone dripped with narcissism. I took a step back, cold sweat trickling down my cheek.

No fucking way.

I had no intention of killing the fox, or being killed by him. Frantically, I searched for a chance to bolt out of the stack room. The fox watched me in silence.

“It’s time we settle everything between us, Odagiri,” he said in an icy voice. “Once and for all.”

This was the long story of Odagiri Tsutomu and the fox.