Chapter 56: Ugly, Disgusting, Filthy

Sadness? Tragedy?

Is that the correct emotional response? The one I am supposed to be having now?

Is this how other, normal people would react upon learning the truth of the relationship between Tanaka Erika and ‘Kagehara Tetsuya’?

Why? Why?

Yomikawa Tsuko’s eyes widened slightly, a flicker of genuine, un-feigned confusion in their dark depths. She had been caught completely off guard by his sentimental, human interpretation. And now, to try and manufacture a look of appropriate sorrow, to perform an emotion she did not feel and could not possibly comprehend… it was too late. The moment, the opportunity to maintain her seamless performance, had passed.

She had no time to carefully analyze the appropriate emotional response, no time to deconstruct the underlying, and to her, entirely illogical reasons for Kishida’s emotional conclusion. She didn’t know if he was testing her, probing for a weakness, or if this was a genuine, heartfelt expression of his own foolish, sentimental feelings.

If it was the latter, it was merely pathetic. But if it was the former, if this was a deliberate, tactical trap… how should she react now to avoid exposing the profound, alien emptiness that resided within her?

“Damn it,” she thought, a surge of cold, almost desperate fury rising in her chest. “To be put in such a pathetic, humiliating position by this… this bumbling, incompetent fool. To be cornered, to be left with no clear, logical path of retreat.”

“If I weren’t so physically exhausted from the earlier, pointless exertion, I would never have been so… careless. So vulnerable.”

“No. That’s not right. This line of reasoning… this is beyond the intellectual capacity of that idiot cop.”

“Which means… someone else is feeding him these ideas. Guiding him. Who? Who is it that is so determined to work against me, to undermine my plans?”

But the situation was what it was. She was trapped. And when trapped, there was only one remaining option: create a diversion. Change the subject. Attack.

“Hmph!”

Feigning a sudden, intense annoyance, she turned her head, her gaze fixing on two men in a different section of the gym. Her voice was a low, sharp hiss of pure, unadulterated disgust.

Kishida Masayoshi, startled by her abrupt, and seemingly random, shift in focus, followed her gaze. “What is it? Is there… a problem with my conclusion?”

Yomikawa Tsuko tilted her chin towards the two men. They were in their late twenties or early thirties, slightly overweight, with the soft, undefined look of men who did not engage in regular physical activity. The sleek, form-fitting climbing attire they wore seemed almost comically, grotesquely, out of place on their soft, fleshy bodies.

“Those two,” she said, her voice laced with a cold, sharp contempt that was entirely genuine. “They’re disgusting. They’ve been staring at me with those… lewd, filthy… eyes ever since I arrived. That, I believe, constitutes sexual harassment. Does that, or does it not, fall under your professional jurisdiction, Officer?”

The accusation was a carefully calculated mixture of half-truth and pure, unadulterated fabrication. But she knew, with a cold, tactical certainty, that invoking the specter of ‘sexual harassment’ would be an effective and immediate distraction.

And she was right. Kishida Masayoshi’s brow furrowed, a look of genuine, if slightly bewildered concern on his face. He glanced first at Yomikawa Tsuko.

Her current attire was, he had to admit, very much in line with her established ‘style.’ A pair of short, dark blue, form-fitting athletic shorts that perfectly, and rather unforgivingly, outlined the provocative curve of her hips. Her long, pale, and undeniably beautiful legs were completely and rather strikingly exposed. Her top was a simple black t-shirt, but it was not loose, and when she raised her arms, or moved in a certain way, a fleeting, almost taunting glimpse of the smooth, pale skin of her midriff was visible.

The body of a third-year high school girl, a body that was like a fruit on the very verge of perfect ripeness. Physiologically, she possessed the capacity for childbirth. Socially, she still possessed the innocent, protected status of a student. This contradictory, and to many, deeply alluring ‘girlish charm’ that Japanese society so prized… it was, in Yomikawa Tsuko, perfectly embodied.

Forcing his gaze away from her long, pale legs, an act which required a surprising amount of willpower, Kishida Masayoshi glanced over at the two men. They were, he had to admit, a bit… schlumpy. Unprepossessing. But their behavior didn’t seem nearly as egregious as Yomikawa Tsuko was suggesting. They were talking to each other, mostly. And only occasionally, when they thought no one was looking, did their gazes drift, with a certain… heated, if rather pathetic, intensity, in her direction.

“Well, they’re certainly being impolite,” Kishida conceded, unsure of how to proceed. “But to call it sexual harassment… I’m not sure it quite meets the legal threshold for that, Yomikawa-san.” A rape case, that was a criminal matter, clearly within his purview. But sexual harassment… he’d never actually had to deal with a case like that before.

“A pervert man, making excuses for other disgusting men. You’re all birds of a feather, aren’t you?” Yomikawa Tsuko scoffed, her eyes, filled with a cold, withering contempt, fixing on him. She looked at him as if he were a piece of trash she had just found on the bottom of her shoe.

“I’m not making excuses for them! And I’m certainly not like them,” Kishida immediately retorted. He wanted to say that when an attractive person of the opposite sex walked by, it was only natural for people to look, to notice. But he stopped himself. That was not something he, as an adult, and as a police officer, should be saying to her.

Yomikawa Tsuko slowly, deliberately, uncrossed and re-crossed her legs, a small and yet deeply provocative movement. Her voice was a silken, cutting whisper. “Is there a difference? Your own lewd gaze, earlier… don’t think for a single, solitary second that I didn’t notice.”

A hot, mortifying flush surged up Kishida Masayoshi’s neck, rendering him completely, utterly, speechless.

In his several previous interactions with Yomikawa, he had always been meticulously careful to maintain a professional distance, to be polite, to be respectful. She was, after all, a minor. A young woman. He was constantly, obsessively, reminding himself of this.

But in their past meetings, she had always been dressed in her school uniform, or in a long, modest skirt. Never before had he seen her in an outfit that revealed so much… skin.

And he had to admit, if only to the silent, judgmental jury in his own mind, that she was… incredibly, breathtakingly, beautiful. Her striking, elegant features, her long, slender, athletic build… to not, on some primal, subconscious level, look, to not notice… it would have been a flagrant violation of basic human nature.

“I… I am terribly, terribly sorry,” Kishida finally managed, the words almost choking him. “That was… highly unprofessional, and deeply impolite of me.”

What he didn’t see, what he couldn’t see, was that behind her back, hidden from his view, Yomikawa Tsuko’s hands were clenched into tight, white-knuckled fists.

“The shame of it,” she thought, a wave of cold, black, and utterly corrosive fury washing over her. “To be forced, by this bumbling, incompetent fool, to resort to using my gender, my body, as a weapon, as a shield, simply to evade a difficult line of questioning, to change the subject.”

“This… this power… this unwelcome advantage… it belongs entirely to Senpai. It is a product of her body, her appearance. Which means, in a different situation, with a different, less aesthetically pleasing set of tools, I would have been even more… pathetic. More helpless.”

“Damn it, damn it! I successfully diverted his attention. I escaped his sentimental, idiotic line of questioning. So why? Why can’t I calm this… this rage? This feeling of profound, almost suffocating, self-disgust?”

For some reason, she had the distinct and deeply unsettling feeling that Kishida Masayoshi was… letting her win. That he was, in his own clumsy, foolish way, indulging her. If he had pressed her, if he had ignored her accusations and continued to demand an answer to his question about Tanaka Erika, she knew, with a chilling certainty, that she would not have been able to hold her ground. Her carefully constructed facade would have shattered.

But instead, she had used this… this crude, almost thuggish tactic to evade the question, and in doing so, had instantly, and with a breathtaking ease, reversed the power dynamic, had seized control of the conversation.

And yet… it didn’t feel like a victory.

A true victory, a satisfying victory, would have been to intellectually dismantle his arguments, to systematically, and with a cold, merciless precision, refute his sentimental, foolish theories, until he was left with no choice but to retreat in a state of confused, humiliated defeat.

But this… this felt like a concession. He wasn’t retreating because he was outmaneuvered. He was retreating because he was a man, and she was a young woman, and he was, for whatever pathetic, sentimental reason, choosing to… let her have her way.

And this “victory,” so easily, so condescendingly handed to her… it felt even more disgusting, more humiliating, to Yomikawa Tsuko than outright defeat.

She felt disgusted with herself.

Incompetent.

Weak.

Ugly.

She had, just recently, been formulating a plan, a rather elegant one, she had thought at the time, to use her newfound female identity to orchestrate the complete and utter social death of Katayama Mao, to complete her long-overdue revenge.

But now, recalling that plan, a wave of profound nausea washed over her. The thought that she, she, could have conceived of such a disgusting, ugly, and ultimately, weak, plan… and that she had only now, in this moment of profound, existential self-loathing, realized its true, pathetic nature…

If Kagehara Munemasa could see me now, if he could see the pathetic, contemptible creature I have become, what would he think? What would he say?

Would he laugh that dry, rasping, dead-leaf laugh of his and say, “Excellent. A worthy successor to my bloodline. Just as filthy, just as base, just as contemptible, as I am”?

“It’s getting late,” Yomikawa Tsuko said, her voice suddenly flat, brittle, her composure stretched to its absolute breaking point. “I need to go home and do my homework.” She couldn’t stay here a moment longer. She was afraid that if she did, she might truly, completely, and irrevocably, lose control.

“Ah? Oh, right. Okay. See you later,” Kishida Masayoshi said, startled by her abrupt departure.

After changing back into her uniform, a process she completed with a grim, mechanical efficiency, Yomikawa said a brief, perfunctory goodbye to Yazaki Hitomi, then took the train back to Nagano Ward. She walked from the station to the villa, her school bag feeling unnaturally heavy on her shoulder.

But her mind was anything but calm.

This feeling… this churning, chaotic feeling… it was different from sadness.

Sadness could be vented, could be purged, through the simple, if humiliating physiological act of crying.

But this… this roiling, suffocating feeling in her chest… this toxic cocktail of shame, and rage, and self-disgust…

What could possibly quell it?

She turned the corner onto her street. And the first thing that entered her field of vision, before the silent, imposing villa itself, was a small, fluffy, and impeccably groomed white dog. It was happily, and with a simple, uncomplicated joy, sniffing at the base of a lamppost.

Yomikawa Tsuko stopped. For a moment, she was just… surprised. And then, a strange, slow, and deeply, terrifyingly cruel smile began to spread across her beautiful face.