Chapter 28: The Void

“Kagehara Kenta… is not like us?” The question, spoken in her own young, childish voice, echoed strangely in the surreal landscape of the dream.

Hearing her parrot his own cold assessment, Kagehara Munemasa gave a slow, deeply satisfied nod, his withered features cracking into a grotesque semblance of a smile.

“That man,” he rasped, his voice like the rustle of dry, dead leaves, “is a failure. Weak. Incompetent. The most strenuous protest he has ever mounted against his own pathetic existence is to hide himself away and rage impotently at the walls, or to drown his sorrows in cheap liquor. Hmph. To think that I, I, could have sired such a cowardly, useless offspring.”

Kagehara Munemasa’s gaze, as it fell upon the broken figure of his son, was a physical weapon, dripping with an undisguised, corrosive contempt.

“A creature shackled by the flimsy, imaginary chains of so-called morality and justice. A man who cannot even command the course of his own life. Such an impotent fool is unworthy of being my successor. He is unworthy of inheriting the name, the power, the legacy, of the Kagehara family.”

It was impossible to know if Kagehara Kenta, lost in his alcoholic haze, heard his father’s venomous words, but he suddenly covered his face with his hands. His shoulders began to shake with silent, desperate, and profoundly hopeless sobs.

“Incompetent… cowardly…” the child-self in the dream observed, her gaze coldly analytical. “Is the act of crying, then, the definitive signifier of incompetence and cowardice?” She found the display difficult to process. Why weep? For as long as she could remember, she had never cried – not genuinely, at any rate. Feigning tears to manipulate the emotions of others was, of course, a different matter entirely.

“Incompetence and cowardice are the antithesis of strength,” Kagehara Munemasa continued, his voice a low, seductive whisper, a masterclass in insidious indoctrination, a dark catechism she had heard many times before. “Crying is merely one of their many pathetic manifestations.”

“Do you know what it means to be truly strong? It means to be forever composed. Forever calm. It means possessing the ability to think with absolute, cold rationality, even when faced with the most desperate, the most hopeless, of circumstances. And thereby, to seize control, to determine one’s own future.”

“The strong may use others, but they never, ever, rely on them. To rely on another is to surrender one’s own destiny into their clumsy, fallible hands.”

“The strong, even when they err, feel no regret. They harbor no guilt. Once a path is chosen, they walk it to its conclusion, without hesitation, without a single backward glance.”

“The strong can face any hardship, any adversary, without fear. Even when that final adversary is death itself.”

After a moment of cold, clear thought, a simple realization bloomed in her young mind. Is he not, in essence, describing me?

But then, Kagehara Munemasa had said that he, too, was like this. Was that truly possible?

Then she heard her grandfather’s dry, rasping voice continue. “I, too, only attained this state of… enlightenment… in my twenties, after a fortuitous accident. An injury. From that transformative moment on, my life entered a new, higher plane of existence. And so it has remained, to this very day.”

“In the past, I confess, I held out some small hope for Kenta. I intended to cultivate him, to mold him into a worthy successor. But the inherent weakness he displayed, his sentimental, emotional nature… it was… nauseating.”

“I could not, I would not, entrust the Kagehara legacy to such a man. And so, I was forced to seek… alternative solutions.”

“Fortunately, you…” His gaze settled on her then, a strange, almost feverish light in his ancient eyes. “You are even more exceptional, more perfect, than I had ever dared to hope.”

“Compared to the disappointment that is Kenta, you, my child, are my ideal successor. The glory, the secrets, the true, dark heart of the Kagehara family… all of it will be passed down through you.”

Just as she was about to respond, to ask another coldly logical question, she saw her grandfather’s expression twist, his face contorting into a mask of pure, unadulterated fury. His gaze turned venomous, his voice a strangled, almost inhuman, hiss.

“You… you… why? Why have you become a woman? Damn it, you worthless bastard!! What is the meaning of this!!”

In the next instant, Yomikawa’s eyes shot open.

Outside, the sky was a dreary, washed-out, weeping gray. Last night’s torrential downpour had subsided into a fine, persistent drizzle that seemed to sap all the color from the world. The air was damp and cool, imbuing everything with a sense of profound, melancholic gloom.

“Why,” she wondered, her heart still pounding with a phantom terror from the dream, “why would I dream of that time now?”

Parts of the dream, she knew, had been horrifyingly real. Her chilling, philosophical discussions with Kagehara Munemasa about her father’s perceived weakness, the talk of her being the true, worthy heir… those conversations had, indeed, taken place.

Though, in truth, she had never given a damn about Kagehara Munemasa’s grandiose talk of legacies and family secrets. They weren’t some ancient, noble clan with a storied history. What glory, what dark secrets, could there possibly be to inherit? She had never bothered to ask. She had never wanted to know.

On the day Kagehara Munemasa had finally expired, long after those strange, formative conversations, in his final, gasping moments, perhaps he had tried to tell her then. But his strength had failed him. She remembered, with a flicker of her old, cold amusement, the look of raw, impotent frustration on his face as the life had finally guttered out. A man who, due to a traumatic brain injury, had remade himself into a real-life psychopath, who had fancied himself some kind of Nietzschean superman… yet in his final, fleeting moments of consciousness, he had likely finally glimpsed the truth of his own pathetic, self-aggrandizing delusion.

“Hmph…”

The memory, sharp and sudden, made Yomikawa Tsuko let out a soft, almost inaudible snort of laughter, a sound laced with a familiar, chilling contempt.

But just as quickly, the amusement vanished, extinguished as if it had never been. She fell silent, her expression, shrouded in the dim, gray morning light, turning bleak, almost… sorrowful.

“Kagehara Kenta… my father… what was he thinking, what was he feeling, in his final moments, before he chose to end it all?”

“His suicide note… what did he write? Did he mention me? Did he level any accusations against me? Did he, finally, give voice to his hatred, his loathing, for the creature he had sired?”

For some reason she couldn’t begin to comprehend, the thought of this man, this weak, sad man who had been her father, caused a sudden, sharp, and agonizing ache to bloom in her chest. The feeling grew stronger, more insistent with each passing second, a physical pressure that made it difficult to breathe. She found herself taking deep, gulping breaths, a desperate, reflexive attempt to fight against this strange, suffocating, and entirely unwelcome emotional onslaught.

“What did he truly think of me?”

She suddenly, desperately, needed to know Kagehara Kenta’s opinion of her. If she were to apply her usual cold logic to the problem, the conclusion was inescapable: he must have hated her with every fiber of his being. He must have spent every day of his life enduring her existence, swallowing his pain, his resentment, his despair…

And this logical, inevitable conclusion, instead of providing a sense of intellectual closure, only made the ache in her chest worse, more agonizing. It was as if a void, a black hole, had suddenly opened up inside her, a cold, empty space threatening to pull her entire being into its crushing, lightless emptiness.

“Hah…” A ragged gasp escaped her lips.

In that moment, she felt as if Kagehara Kenta’s very soul, his ghost, had somehow attached itself to hers. That the residual anger, the crushing helplessness, the unbearable pain of his tormented spirit were flooding her own heart, forcing her to understand, to feel, the unbearable weight he had carried, every single day of his miserable, ruined life.

Yomikawa lay on the sofa, her body curling into a tight, defensive, fetal ball, a movement that seemed to come not from her own volition, but from some deeper, more primal instinct.

She knew, with a clarity that was both horrifying and absolute, that Kagehara Kenta had once possessed a nearly perfect, happy life. A skilled, gentle doctor, respected by his colleagues, trusted by his patients. A man with many friends, a man who had never known true loneliness or isolation. A good man, without vices. A man who, had his life followed its original, intended trajectory, would have been happy, would have lived a life filled with light.

But Kagehara Tetsuya, her original self, had systematically, and with a cold, detached curiosity, destroyed all of that.

It could be said that the very existence of Kagehara Tetsuya was the singular, malevolent source of all Kagehara Kenta’s suffering.

It was because of “him” that Kagehara Kenta had begun to seek a bitter solace in the bottom of a bottle.

It was because of “him” that Kagehara Kenta’s gentle personality had begun to warp, his relationships to crumble into dust.

And it was because of “him” that Kagehara Kenta’s career, his calling, had been utterly annihilated, that the patients and colleagues who had once admired him had turned away, that no hospital would offer him a position.

“He must have hated me with every cell in his body. And yet… even so… he never once tried to retaliate. He never once tried to harm me.”

“He just… he bore it all himself. In silence. Until he couldn’t bear it anymore. And then… he chose the only escape he had left.”

Remembering the countless nights she had observed him, a silent, unseen witness, alone in the darkened living room, drinking himself into a stupor, Yomikawa’s body began to tremble. Great, wracking, silent sobs tore from her throat, and hot, stinging tears, an utterly alien and humiliating sensation, began to stream down her face. In that moment of profound, shattering grief, she felt as if she had become Kagehara Kenta, experiencing the full, crushing weight of his unbearable pain. And at the same time, she felt, with a certainty that was a physical agony, that she, Kagehara Tetsuya, was the ultimate, singular cause of his suffering, of his despair, of his death.

And for the first time in her long, cold existence, she began to feel regret. A profound, soul-crushing self-loathing.

She hated herself. She should never have even entertained the thought of killing Tanaka Erika. If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have become entangled in a criminal investigation. She wouldn’t have become the final, unbearable, crushing weight that broke her father’s back.