The Weight of Being (3)
Hall of Evil.
Having heard about the birth of good and evil, Shirone and his party left Lilith's room and walked down the corridor.
"How much evil do you think exists?" Kain asked.
"This hall contains everything from the origin of evil to its end. I won't rank them, but it's like a kind of ordering. Most evils leave behind only a single line of record."
Every door along the corridor opened into a study; the rooms were too large to gauge from the doorway.
"The truly powerful ones get private cells… ah, here's Havitz. Pretty high up. Rank seven. That would be enough to rival my mother."
No one answered.
"Usually the rooms are arranged chronologically. If you want evils of the current era, you'll have to walk a ways."
Shirone noticed a portrait hung on another private door.
'Ms. Minerva.'
They claimed not to rank them, but by the room order she was eighty-seventh, Iruki said.
"We don't have time."
"I know. You want to see Giyorgi—he's holding Seina captive."
With the Rami Church devouring the world, Seina was indispensable.
'The one who can certify the whole truth about the Holy See.'
Kain turned.
"You sure about this? I don't know him well, but Giyorgi's been biding his time. He wants to kill you."
Shirone said, "It's a responsibility I have to take. Giyorgi was born from my emotions."
"Responsibility." It was a word that didn't suit evil.
"He does look like you. Somehow Giyorgi never felt like a demon. Fine. I'll watch over you."
To the end of the era.
"All right, from here on are the eras you lived in. Wait, wasn't one of these yours?"
Kain swept a path toward Curtis.
"Since we're at the Core you should accept whatever's coming. Why not go in and erase your crime record?"
When no one answered, Shirone called out.
"Mr. Curtis."
"No, forget it. I don't care anymore. Let's just go. If you want to punish me, go ahead." Curtis snarled as the party stubbornly lingered at the door.
"Fine! Damn it! I killed them! I killed those innocent girls! Hate me if you want!"
Fena said, "You really killed those women…?"
"We loved them!" He clawed at his hair, on his knees.
"Nia and I really loved each other. Yes, it was adultery. A man with a wife fooling around with his daughter's friends wouldn't look human! But my life…!"
"Why did you kill them?" Shirone cut to the chase.
Curtis, realizing all his words were nothing but rationalization, let everything go.
"Edrina, Nia, Belita, Daisy — they were friends since childhood. I was having an affair with Nia. My daughter found out. It was Nia's fault. There'd been a petty quarrel and, in a fit of anger… she blurted it out."
Maybe she'd wanted to use that occasion to get it over with quickly.
"That was the day they were supposed to travel. Actually, I was going to meet Nia at the destination. I told my wife it was a local patrol. It's normal for a detective. But Edrina found out everything…"
"You didn't go on that trip."
"No. I left my friends and went to the square. I saw an address for a villa on the bulletin board and went there. And there… she had hanged herself."
"How do you know? Fellow officers said the situation made suicide impossible…"
"The knot."
Curtis's hand trembled.
"It wasn't a hunting-style noose. It's a knot where you twist once more to make a loop catch. First you stand on a stool and tie an old hemp rope to the ceiling pipe. Then you hang, and use your hands to break the rope. After removing the stool you lock the storeroom door from the inside. That completes the sealed room."
A scene formed in the party's minds.
"Edrina would have lain down as if she'd fallen, tied that knot around her neck, and pulled hard…"
The rope wouldn't come undone.
"That's how she left. My daughter…" Curtis imagined again.
He pictured his daughter lying on the cold storeroom floor, throat constricted, waiting for death.
A single teardrop she might have shed.
"I… taught her that knot."
"When she was little, Edrina liked that I was a detective. She seemed to think I was some righteous avenger who beat villains. In truth I was just a man doing odd jobs trying to live like anyone else."
When he first found Edrina's body, the memory that sprang into Curtis's head was of his daughter at eight years old.
"Come here, kiddo."
"Why, Daddy?"
"Hold out both hands. I'll show you something fun."
Curtis tied the little girl's white wrists with a knot and twisted it once more to make the loop.
"Ta-dah!"
"Huh? Why won't this come undone?"
"Haha! How's that?"
Edrina laughed, tickled when he poked her side.
"Stop it! Let me go! You'll get in trouble!"
"Here, watch this."
Curtis put his daughter on his knee and slid the loop out of the knot with his thumb.
"If you just flick it like this, it comes undone. It's called the handcuff method. Magicians use it."
"Wow! Daddy, teach me too. Huh? Huh?"
"All right. Shall we do it again?" "…I could have untied it."
Curtis felt his soul collapse.
"If I'd changed my mind even then, it would have been easy to untie. So why… aah!"
Iruki, who had watched him beat the floor and wail, asked bluntly,
"Why didn't the detectives find the knot…?"
"I undid it."
When he first discovered the body, Curtis's hands had automatically released the handcuff knot.
"I didn't do it to cover a crime. Adultery—what does that matter when my daughter is dead? I don't know. I was so shattered—if that one knot could just be undone… I couldn't believe it. Maybe she'd come back to life…"
"But you killed them." Edrina's friends—Nia, Belita, Daisy.
"While my daughter was dying, I was waiting at the place where I was supposed to meet Nia."
A different location, a different incident.
"We had planned to meet, but she showed up with all her friends. I was annoyed, and then I found out my daughter was gone. When I asked what happened, Nia said it was all over."
Curtis turned his head.
"How do you think I felt? The feeling of a father whose daughter found out her father was fooling around with her friend. I exploded. I argued with Nia. She threatened to ruin my family—said she'd tear my home apart."
Adultery always ends that way.
"I decided I had to meet my daughter first. But I couldn't leave Nia as she was. Nor the others. So I locked them in the villa's attic. I warned them I wouldn't let it go if they weren't gone when I returned, and they seemed a bit scared."
"Even so, they could have escaped."
"If they'd truly felt their lives were in danger, maybe. It was the second floor and the window was open. But it was just like any other fight—same as before—only this time the family's future was at stake. Nia probably planned to wait. It was an expensive rented villa after all. They'd gossip about me and pass the time. Belita and Daisy would have found it exciting."
Shirone said, "But in the end you weren't able to meet your daughter."
"I went to Sif Square, the agreed place. A merchant I know said she'd been nervously checking the bulletin board. The villa ad was for a vacant house. It felt odd, but I thought a penniless girl would have nowhere else to stay. Detective kids are bold and strange. So I called my friend Raiber. I won't go into embarrassing details, but I could at least arrange an alibi—say I was on local patrol. But what we found at that villa was…"
His daughter's corpse.
"You don't need me to explain the rest. I won't pretend I'd lost my mind. At first it was impulsive. But then a temptation came. Could I make it as if it never happened? I became a killer who knew how to avoid investigation."
Curtis, leaning against the wall, took out a cigarette.
"Most cold cases are like that. They're full of coincidences beyond plausibility. The clinging to life is enormous. If it's treated as an unsolved case, you can still live, right? I don't even remember much after that. Then… a letter arrived at my workplace."
Click—he lit his cigarette.
—It wasn't Daddy's fault.
"Phew."
Curtis blew smoke at the ceiling.
"I couldn't bear the shame. I just wanted to forget. I thought I could just die, but even if I disappeared, what I'd done would remain. That bothered me so much I came to Melkidu to erase it all."
This was the whole story of the Edrina case.
"Stop going. I'll stay. Don't worry about punishment. There's one thing left for me."
He planned to erase the records and then take his life.
In the same handcuff knot that had killed his daughter.
'That will do it, Edrina?'
Curtis tossed his cigarette butt into the Hall of Evil.
"Life sucks, really."
"So don't die." Fena stepped closer.
"What changes if you die? There are things in this world you can't take responsibility for by dying."
Curtis knew that, too.
"So what do you expect? That I'll rot in prison and blink my remorse away?"
Compared to Curtis's crimes, the capital Parme's prison was almost tolerable.
"…I don't know. That's why it's a sin. You can't be held accountable by dying, so you shouldn't do it."
Fena continued.
"How did you feel when your daughter died? You're doing the same thing now. If you just off yourself, what happens to the rest of us left behind? If you're going to die, do it somewhere no one will find you—alone. For God's sake, have some responsibility."
She looked back at Shirone's party.
"I'll stay. Don't worry—go. I won't let you just die."
After a moment's thought, Shirone turned his body.
"Let's go."
With Kain at the lead, the group vanished. Left alone with Fena, Curtis said,
"That was a good performance."
"What?"
"Erase the records and run. The Core is reality, after all. Take a boat or whatever and find a new life."
He admitted he had considered it honestly.
"No. I won't do that."
"Won't do what?"
Fena sat beside Curtis.
"Many people got hurt because of me. What I felt here is there's no such thing as a new life. If I don't change, whatever I do will end the same."
There is no sanctuary for demons, she thought.
"So… what now?"
"Let's stay still. Don't try to do anything. It's our mess—we ruined it. Whatever judgment the world hands down, we accept it. As atonement. It won't change anything but…" Fena swallowed and held back her tears.
"At least we should take responsibility for the sins we couldn't bear."
Sins they could not shoulder.
"…I see."
In the Hall of Evil, Curtis looked up at the ceiling.
'I am sorry.'
I have ruined everything.
'So, O God—'
If a god truly exists, and that god has a heart like a human's—
'Please—do not forgive me.'