Chapter 40: April 8th

April 8th. Weather: Clear.

I have always held the conviction that only a fool would commit their innermost thoughts—their true, unfiltered self—to the vulnerable pages of a notebook. And yet, recently, having made the irrevocable decision to undertake… that particular course of action… I find myself assailed by an unexpected, almost overwhelming, impulse. A need to share, to confide, to create a record. But, of course, the nature of these… confessions… precludes their utterance to another living soul. And so, after much deliberation, the diary remains my only viable confidante.

It is only now, under these… unique… circumstances, that I begin to perceive a certain… utility… in this archaic practice.

Therefore, I have decided to chronicle the events of the recent past, and those that are soon to unfold.

I wonder what I will feel, when I look back upon these days in the distant future. If I feel anything at all.

I forget the precise age. Kagehara Kenta—my father—first guided my small hands in performing a minor surgical procedure on a stray kitten. The operation itself was a success. He was, I recall, deeply pleased to see my… aptitude… for the bloody work, my complete lack of revulsion. He seemed to harbor a hope that I would follow in his footsteps, into the noble profession of medicine.

He was so very enthusiastic at the time that I simply agreed to his propositions. In truth, I had little to no interest in healing things.

Later that day, after Kagehara Kenta had departed for work, Kagehara Munemasa—my grandfather—found me. He leaned in, his voice a dry whisper, and asked if I wanted to see what the little cat’s ‘insides’ truly looked like.

The stray was a tiny, malnourished thing, still just a kitten. The thought that such a small, fragile creature could move, could eat, could function, much like a human… I confess, I was intensely curious to see its internal mechanics.

And so, my grandfather and I prepared the operating table once more. We strapped the small cat down. And we began to satisfy my burgeoning curiosity.

What I remember most vividly is that we had, unfortunately, exhausted the supply of anesthetic. And so, throughout the entire procedure, the kitten never stopped mewling. When my movements were more… pronounced… its cries would grow louder, more desperate. I found this auditory feedback… extraordinarily interesting.

The cat’s insides, too, were a source of profound fascination. Each organ was so exquisitely, so delicately formed. “Small as a sparrow, yet possessing all the vital organs,” as the old saying goes. I believe that was the sentiment.

After I had thoroughly examined the cat’s internal systems, I posed a question to my grandfather. At what point, precisely, would the kitten cease to function? At what point would it die?

Kagehara Munemasa suggested, with a thin, approving smile, that I should endeavor to find out for myself. In truth, I had intended to do so anyway. I was merely curious if he had ever performed similar experiments in his own youth.

And so, I began to implement the various novel hypotheses that had been forming in my mind. This curiosity, this cold, clinical exploration of the unknown… it was infinitely more stimulating than any dull, lifeless toy or repetitive video game.

I believe… it was at that precise moment that I became utterly, irrevocably, infatuated with this… particular field of study.

However, my first ‘experiment’ did not proceed as smoothly as I would have liked. My technique, I suppose, was still unrefined. Before I had even completed my initial hypothesis, the kitten stopped moving. A kitten that no longer responded to my actions with its cries was no different from a broken toy car. Utterly without amusement.

My grandfather, perhaps sensing my… disappointment… told me not to feel regret. Life, he said, his voice a dry rustle, is just that fragile. The lives of ordinary people, too.

He likely did not realize that I felt no regret whatsoever. If one cat died, could I not simply acquire another?

Finding suitable specimens myself was proving to be inefficient. But if I simply asked Kagehara Kenta, my father, telling him I wished to learn more advanced surgical techniques, he would surely provide me with everything I needed.

The only point worth considering, from a practical standpoint, was that the feline specimens were too small, too… fragile. A single specimen did not last long enough for proper, in-depth experimentation. If only I could procure a subject that was larger, with greater endurance, a more… vigorous… reaction to stimuli, and a more tenacious hold on life. That would be ideal.

But I digress. It was through these repeated experiments, these practical applications of theory, that I gradually mastered a considerable number of surgical techniques, as well as a great deal of… esoteric… biological knowledge.

During this same period, my mother was also constantly, and rather tediously, instructing me in the art of cosmetology. She and Kagehara Kenta had rather different, and often conflicting views on my future career path. She seemed to believe that while being a doctor was a respectable profession, the work itself was… unpleasant. A makeup artist, she argued, was a more… ordinary… and therefore more suitable, profession for her child.

Kagehara Kenta, on the other hand, held the sentimental belief that while the work of a doctor was indeed difficult, and often unsettling for ordinary people, professions like medicine and teaching were noble callings, capable of elevating the human spirit. He seemed to desperately hope I would become such a person.

And so, under their dual, and often contradictory tutelage, I gradually, and with great proficiency, mastered the intricate techniques of both the scalpel and the makeup brush.

Which, by a stroke of almost cosmic coincidence, are the two primary skill sets possessed by that rather infamous individual, the Makeup Hunter.

It would be a terrible, almost criminal waste not to take advantage of such a perfect and timely coincidence, wouldn’t it?

That annoying, interfering girl. I believe I shall use this method to… make her disappear.

The Tanaka family lives right next door. And so, Tanaka Erika and I, by the arbitrary metrics of society, could be considered childhood friends. Which is likely why, from a very early age, I have despised her with an absolute and profound intensity.

Why must her powers of observation be so infuriatingly, so relentlessly acute?

She always saw through my carefully constructed facade. She always detected the cold, bored disinterest lurking just beneath my performance.

Being dragged along by my mother to interact with a gaggle of insipid, foolish children… the process was already excruciatingly tedious. And on top of that, I had to pretend. To pretend to be happy, to pretend to be having fun. And if my performance faltered, if even the slightest, most imperceptible crack appeared in my mask of normalcy, she would be the one to notice.

“Kagehara-kun, you seem bored.”

“If you’re so bored, why are you pretending to be happy?”

“Kagehara-kun is such a strange person. If you don’t want to play, why do you lie to your mom?”

“You lie so very much, Kagehara-kun. But you should know, your lies don’t work on me.”

“You don’t like toy cars or robot models either? Then what do you like, Kagehara-kun?”

“Do you like puppies, Kagehara-kun? The way you were looking at that little dog that just passed by… it was a little strange. That kind of dog is called a pit bull, you know.”

“Do you hate your dad, Kagehara-kun?”

“Why don’t you like your mom?”

“You hate your grandfather the most of all, don’t you?”

To counter Tanaka Erika’s unnervingly sharp and deeply intrusive observations, I have spent countless, tedious hours honing my skills of deception, perfecting my performance.

The precise muscular contraction required for an expression of joy. The exact volume and pitch of a convincing laugh. The subtle, corresponding posture of the body.

The look in the eyes when feigning interest. The minute, almost invisible twitch of a facial muscle when feigning surprise.

The exact amount of pressure to apply when clenching one’s jaw in feigned anger. The precise degree to which one should tense one’s body to convey believable rage.

The angle and stride of a backward step when performing fear.

And yet, despite all my efforts, despite my meticulous, fanatical rehearsals, I would still, on occasion, show a flaw in her presence.

If that were the extent of her transgressions, perhaps I could have tolerated her continued existence. But she was also intelligent. Frighteningly, unnaturally intelligent. To this day, she remains the most intelligent person I have ever had the misfortune of meeting.

She would, for example, deliberately maintain her own grades at a middling, entirely unremarkable, average level.

“Well, you know me, I’m just not that smart! As long as I don’t have to retake any exams, I’m happy!”

“I’m not very good at thinking. Let’s leave that to Kagehara-kun! I love watching Kagehara-kun when he’s thinking really, really hard!”

She could, with an unnerving accuracy, deduce what I had been doing in my room simply by the amount of time it took me to answer the front door.

“You were slow to open the door today, Kagehara-kun. Were you up to something… strange… again?”

“You answered the door so quickly today! Were you waiting for me?”

She noticed, with an irritating consistency, that every Friday evening, there was one room in the house she was absolutely, under no circumstances, forbidden from entering.

“There you go again. It’s Friday, so Kagehara-kun is in that room, doing strange things. I don’t like it when you do those things, you know.”

“Your grandfather is in there with you, isn’t he? Is it because your mom and dad aren’t home on Fridays?”

Her only oversight, her only single, and ultimately fatal, flaw, was that she never noticed that my desire to make her disappear, to erase her from the board entirely, was growing more resolute, more unshakeable, with each passing day.