Chapter 29: The Cemetery

Initially, Yomikawa Tsuko believed this new, unwelcome emotional state, this ‘grief,’ would behave like her earlier bout of rage – a fleeting, violent storm that would, after a respectable interval of ten or fifteen minutes, simply burn itself out, leaving her once again in serene, logical control.

The reality, however, proved to be profoundly, terrifyingly different. The minutes stretched into an hour, then longer still, yet the hollow, constricting ache in her chest, the feeling of a gaping void where her composure used to be, refused to dissipate. It would ebb, for brief, tantalizing moments, only to surge back with renewed, suffocating force. Breathing felt like a chore, each inhalation a conscious effort against some unseen weight.

Kagehara Kenta had been dead for a year. But this phantom sorrow, arriving so belatedly, was proving to be an agonizingly, relentlessly persistent haunting.

Outside, the pre-dawn sky was slowly bleeding from black to a washed-out, weeping gray, a sign that the city was stirring back to life. But Yomikawa couldn’t even muster the energy to check the time. Food was an alien concept. She simply lay there, a still figure on the sofa, her gaze fixed on the ceiling, seeing nothing.

Her limbs felt heavy, filled with lead. The simple act of moving, of even shifting her position, seemed like a monumental task. Unbidden, and to her immense disgust, the hot, stinging tears began to well up again, tracing silent, humiliating paths down her cheeks. She squeezed her eyes shut, her jaw clenched, but she was utterly powerless against the overwhelming tide of this alien sorrow.

“Is this… is this what they call empathy?” she wondered, her mind a chaotic whirl of new, unwelcome sensations. “Am I actually feeling Kagehara Kenta’s tragedy as if it were my own?”

“No… it’s more than that. It’s more acute, more agonizing, than if I had endured his suffering myself. If it were mere empathy, it would manifest as a distant, detached sympathy. A flicker of pity, nothing more.”

“But… Kagehara Kenta’s tragedy… I was an architect of it. A catalyst. And so… self-reproach, guilt… when these potent emotions are added to the volatile mix… the result is… this. This unbearable, crushing weight.”

At that moment, the house phone began to ring, its shrill, piercing summons a violent intrusion into her private misery.

Yomikawa’s first instinct was to ignore it, to let it ring until it died. But the sound was insistent, relentless. With a sigh that felt like it was dredged up from the very bottom of her soul, she dragged her leaden body to its feet.

“Senpai? It’s me, Kana. It’s still pouring out here. I guess… today’s club activity is off, right?”

“Kana-chan,” Yomikawa began, and was immediately startled by the sound of her own voice. It was a hoarse, ragged rasp, thick with a heavy, nasal congestion she hadn’t possessed moments before. “Yes, the club activity will have to be… postponed.”

“Senpai, what’s wrong with your voice?” Kana’s concern was immediate. “You sound… a little weak. Are you alright?” Does she sound like she’s been crying? The unasked question hung, unspoken but palpable, in the air between them.

“It’s nothing,” Yomikawa lied, a jolt of alarm cutting through her sorrowful haze. She cleared her throat, forcing a semblance of strength, of normalcy, into her voice. “Just feeling a bit under the weather. A little rest should suffice.” She quickly asked Kana to inform the other club members, then ended the call.

“Hah—”

The simple act of that brief, performative conversation had left her feeling utterly drained, her body even weaker, her spirit even more depleted than before.

Logically, she knew she needed sustenance. She should eat something. But she had no appetite whatsoever. And even less energy to prepare food.

“Am I genuinely becoming ill? Or can these… emotions… truly affect the physical body to such a profound, debilitating degree?”

She sank back onto the sofa, tilting her head back against the cushions. The tears threatened to spill over again. She didn’t understand it. Her relationship with Kagehara Kenta had never been… close. Affectionate. Not in any conventional sense. And yet, the mere thought of him now unleashed this unstoppable, agonizing wave of grief.

“Should I… should I go to his grave? To… see him?”

The thought, once it surfaced, took root in her mind with a startling, almost preternatural speed and tenacity. And with it, a strange, miraculous sensation. The mere idea of performing this simple, seemingly pointless act seemed to breathe a new, inexplicable life into her limbs, to restore a flicker of strength to her exhausted body.

There were two public cemeteries in the city. One, adjacent to a Buddhist temple; the other, tucked away behind a small, struggling Christian church. Kagehara Kenta’s ashes were interred at the church cemetery. Yomikawa knew the location, of course. But she had never once visited.

At the time of his death, she, as Kagehara Tetsuya, had been… otherwise occupied, undergoing “re-education” in a juvenile detention center. The funeral, she’d been told, had been arranged and managed entirely by Kagehara Kenta’s old friends.

Of course, even if she had been free at the time, she would never have engaged in such meaningless, sentimental rituals as paying respects or mourning.

“Death,” she had always reasoned, with a cold, clear logic, “is a finality. A complete and utter cessation of being. A descent into darkness. Or perhaps, not even darkness, but a true and absolute nothingness.”

“The comforting fairy tales of reincarnation, of the transmigration of souls… they are merely opiates for those too weak to face their own mortality.”

“Therefore, so-called funerals and cemeteries are entirely meaningless constructs. And the acts of paying respects, of mourning… they are a laughable, sentimental absurdity. If one truly wishes to do something for another, it must be done while they are still alive.”

That had been her unwavering, core belief. And so, not just for Kagehara Kenta, but for every other person in her life who had passed away – her mother, her grandfather – she had never once visited their grave. Because, logically, it was pointless.

“Meaningless, or not… there is only one way to be certain.” With that thought, she felt a genuine surge of strength returning to her body, her mind clearing, sharpening, focusing with a new, strange purpose.

She went to the bathroom. The face of the girl in the mirror was still deathly pale, but the slight, tell-tale redness around her eyes was the only visible evidence of her recent emotional turmoil.

After washing her face, she deliberately, methodically, chose an all-black ensemble. Grabbing an umbrella, she stepped out of the silent villa.

The sky was a perfect, weeping mirror of her own mood, a vast, oppressive, and unending gray. Yomikawa took a deep breath of the damp, cool air, pulling her long, black trench coat tighter around herself. Her short boots clicked on the wet, shimmering pavement as she hailed a taxi at the street corner, a silent instruction given, a grim journey begun.

The Christian population in the city was small. And so, compared to the bustling, prosperous wards of Nagano and Mitsuba, the church, located in the dreary expanse of Fura Ward, had a rather dilapidated, almost forgotten air about it. Few congregants meant few donations. On this gray, rainy day, its pale, weathered walls and stark, simple cross radiated an aura of profound, lonely desolation, as if this entire corner of the city were permanently shrouded in shadow.

Stepping out of the taxi, Yomikawa opened her umbrella. Her all-black attire seemed to dissolve into the gloomy surroundings. As she had anticipated, the streets were almost entirely deserted.

She followed a slick, stone-paved path alongside the church, heading towards the cemetery that lay behind it. On a day like this, a day designed for melancholy, unless it was a specific, significant anniversary, it was unlikely anyone else would willingly visit a place so steeped in sorrow.

Kagehara Kenta’s gravestone was located in the inner part of the cemetery, towards the north. It took Yomikawa about ten minutes of walking through the silent, dripping rows of stone to find it. As she’d expected, there were no signs of any recent visitors, no offerings of flowers, no tokens of remembrance. Weeds grew thick and untamed around the base of the tombstone. She had no doubt that, if not for last night’s torrential rain, which had washed the world clean, the place would have looked even more desolate, more gray, more… abandoned.

“To die, and then to have a cold stone erected in your name. A stone that no one will ever visit. A stone beneath which lies a story that no one will ever wonder about…”

“Is there truly any meaning in this ritual?”

She stood silently before the grave, a solitary, dark figure in the rain, her gaze fixed on the small, smiling photograph of Kagehara Kenta embedded in the cold, hard granite.

“I see now.”

A new understanding, a new perspective, bloomed in her heart, not as an emotion, but as a cold, clear, intellectual insight.

“Cemeteries, funerals, mourning, paying respects… all of these things are, indeed, utterly meaningless to the dead. No matter how much the living may grieve, the dead can no longer perceive it. They are beyond its reach.”

“But… all these rituals, all these objects associated with the deceased… they were never truly for the dead. They exist to serve… the living.”

“The living, burdened by their sorrow, their pain, their guilt… they use these rituals, these objects, as a conduit, a vessel, to vent, to entrust their overwhelming emotions. To seek some semblance of peace, some small measure of tranquility, in their own chaotic spiritual world.”

“However… my previous way of thinking was not entirely incorrect, either.”

“Back then, I always considered these matters from the perspective of the deceased. If I were to die, then all these rituals and objects would, of course, be meaningless to me. I would neither need, nor care for, them.”

“And if it were someone else who died, it would have been even more inconsequential to me. Kagehara Munemasa, my mother, even Kagehara Kenta… when these people passed away, I felt no sadness at all.”

“I just never expected… that after gaining this… this capacity for emotion… the death that would touch me the most deeply… would be his. Perhaps it is the same for others. Anyone who knew the true story of Kagehara Kenta’s life… they would undoubtedly feel sympathy for him.”

The fine, persistent drizzle continued to fall, a curtain of gray rain blurring Yomikawa Tsuko’s dark figure against the dreary landscape.

To her immense surprise, she had thought that by coming here, to this place of finality, her emotions might finally stabilize.

However, the so-called calm was only a fleeting illusion. Looking at the sad, gentle smile on Kagehara Kenta’s photograph, a new set of feelings began to brew in her chest, quickly, violently, growing into a tidal wave.

But this time, the tears did not fall. Because a strong, clear, and undeniable impulse, cold and sharp as a shard of ice, surged from her heart, sweeping through her entire body, brutally suppressing all other emotions, all other distracting, sentimental thoughts.

She gave a slow, thoughtful nod, her dark pupils now like two dancing black flames, burning with a new, terrifying light. The powerful, overwhelming impulse quickly solidified in her mind, transforming from a raw, primal urge into a detailed, meticulous, and chillingly precise plan.

“Speaking of which,” she thought, a new, cold clarity in her voice, a voice that was once again her own, “I was not the only person who ultimately drove Kagehara Kenta to take his own life, was I?”