Chapter 30: Three Targets

“The incident with Tanaka Erika… that,” Yomikawa thought, the rain plastering dark strands of hair to her face, “that was the final, crushing weight. The last straw that broke the camel’s back.”

“And if that is the undeniable truth, then that bumbling, incompetent fool of a detective, Kishida Masayoshi… he bears a direct and unforgivable responsibility.”

“If not for his catastrophic professional misconduct, his careless leaks that allowed suspicion to fester into public condemnation… even if the police had privately considered me a person of interest, the situation would never have escalated into a full-blown media circus. And if Kagehara Kenta’s career, his reputation, had not been so utterly, publicly, annihilated… he would never have surrendered to such complete and utter despair. He would not have chosen to end his own life.”

“His incompetence was his first great sin. His inability to apprehend the true killer, his second. Two unforgivable failures, stacked one upon the other.”

“Had he, after his initial blunders, somehow managed to capture the real culprit, it might have been a form of atonement. Yes, my father’s career would still have been damaged, but it would not have been completely, irrevocably, destroyed.”

“What a pathetic excuse for a man,” she mused, a cold, sharp contempt twisting in her gut, a feeling far more precise and satisfying than her earlier, chaotic rage. “A so-called detective whose bumbling leads to the death of an innocent man, whose ineptitude allows a monster to continue to terrorize the city… and this creature has the audacity to operate under the banner of ‘justice.’ The irony is so thick, so bitter, it’s almost… exquisite.”

The image of Kishida Masayoshi, still ambling through his mundane life, occasionally affecting a look of performative remorse, even finding the time to de-stress at a climbing gym… it made the darkness in Yomikawa Tsuko’s eyes deepen, her pupils constricting into pinpricks of cold, hard fury.

“However,” a new, chillingly pragmatic thought cut through the anger, “of the three primary targets on my list, Kishida Masayoshi will be, by a considerable margin, the most straightforward to deal with.”

“I must, if only for a moment, offer a grudging acknowledgment to my former self for cultivating such an advantageous position. I have already secured the trust of this foolish detective, and I have skillfully maintained the dominant, controlling position in all our subsequent interactions.”

“With the bait I have already so carefully laid, exacting my revenge will require… almost no significant effort at all. The only remaining question is, what form, precisely, should that retribution take?”

Yomikawa slowly twirled the black umbrella over her shoulder, sending a fine spray of raindrops scattering into the gray, weeping air. A new, colder, more satisfying thought began to crystallize in her mind. For a man like Kishida Masayoshi, would a simple, clean death be… far too merciful? Far too… easy?

“He was instrumental in the destruction of Kagehara Kenta’s career, his professional faith, his very reason for being. Therefore, the only truly fitting retribution is to return the favor in kind. An eye for an eye. I will not take his life. I will dismantle his career. I will shatter his simplistic, naive faith in the very concept of justice he claims to serve. Only then will the scales be truly, and poetically, balanced.”

A plan, cold, intricate, and deeply cruel, began to blossom in her mind. A faint, icy smile touched her lips as she turned her formidable intellect to the second target on her list.

“The reporter… what was his name? Damn it. In my previous existence, I dismissed him as an irrelevant insect, unworthy of my attention, certainly not worthy of retribution. And now, in a moment of critical need, I find I don’t even know his name, his current circumstances.”

“However, this was a sensational, high-profile case. Unearthing his identity… it should not prove to be an insurmountable obstacle. And more importantly, this particular parasite had direct contact with Kishida Masayoshi. I have no doubt that our foolish officer will have a vivid, and likely resentful, memory of the man who so eagerly broadcast his professional failures to the world.”

“Now, then… what form of punishment would be most… appropriate… for this particular specimen?”

“A man who would wheedle information about a suspect from a gullible police officer, who knew full well that the suspect in question was a minor, and yet, still chose to publish the story, to fan the flames of public outrage for his own petty profit… a man like that possesses no conscience, no honor. Destroying his career? His professional faith? He likely possesses neither. It would be a hollow, meaningless gesture.”

“Ostracism… social isolation… cyberbullying…”

The words, cold and clinical, flashed in her mind. She thought of Kagehara Kenta’s final, agonizing months, the crushing, suffocating weight of public scorn, the slow, agonizing death of his spirit. And then, a new, even more elegantly cruel, idea began to take shape.

“To inflict these things upon the reporter himself… no. That is too direct. It would be far more… fitting… to inflict them upon his family.”

“If this reporter has a child… a son, a daughter, the gender is irrelevant. And if he does not currently have one… well, I can be patient. I will simply wait until he does.”

“To ensure that his child, his precious offspring, suffers the same relentless social persecution, the same soul-crushing bullying, the same slow, agonizing social death as my father… there is a certain… karmic, cyclical beauty… to that, isn’t there?”

“In this twisted, conformist, and often cruel, nation of Japan, with meticulous planning and a precise application of pressure, engineering the social death of an individual, particularly a young and vulnerable one, is a remarkably simple affair.”

“When human beings congregate in a mob, their collective intelligence plummets. And when that mob gathers online, in the anonymous, unaccountable cesspools of the internet, their intelligence, their capacity for empathy, their very humanity, descends to even greater, more monstrous, depths.”

In a matter of moments, Yomikawa had already devised several viable, multi-pronged strategies for the complete and utter social annihilation of a peer. A simple matter, really. The second target, then, was also well within her grasp.

“Which leaves only the third, and final, target… and this one… this one will present a more significant, more… interesting… challenge.”

Her eyes, cold and sharp, narrowed to dangerous slits.

“The Makeup Hunter. The waking, flesh-and-blood nightmare of every high school girl in this city.”

“A twisted, monstrous, and terrifyingly efficient, serial killer, preying exclusively on underage girls. Nine victims in ten years. A relentless, methodical predator, operating with the grim, unwavering consistency of one victim per year.”

“His methods, so brutal, so meticulously ritualistic, they bordered on a dark, unholy ceremony, sparking endless, fevered speculation online. A mystery that had once captured the breathless attention of the entire nation, yet had left the so-called professionals of the police force utterly, completely, clueless.”

“To this very day, they don’t even know if the killer is male or female, old or young. Their only working theory, a pathetically broad guess, is that the perpetrator has some professional connection to either medicine or cosmetology.”

“It is, of course, a minor complicating factor that if this creature had not, in fact, killed Tanaka Erika, then I would have. And so, including them on my list of targets for retribution is not, perhaps, one hundred percent… logical.”

“And yet… to leave them out of the equation… it would feel… incomplete. Unbalanced.”

The police might be powerless against this phantom, but Yomikawa Tsuko was not the police. She was not bound by their clumsy rules, their plodding procedures, their quaint, sentimental need for ‘evidence.’

And she possessed two distinct, and decisive, advantages.

First, she had no need for proof.

And second, she knew a secret. A secret about the Makeup Hunter. A secret that, she was certain, held the key to their true, underlying motive. And that knowledge… that was her confidence. That was her razor’s edge.

“To manufacture terror,” she mused, a cold, predatory smile touching her lips, “one must first intimately understand its nature.”

The three targets were now aligned. The methods of retribution, decided. All that remained was to set the pieces in motion. To begin the game.

With a final, long, unblinking look at the smiling photograph of Kagehara Kenta, she turned and melted back into the gray, weeping curtain of the rain.

……

June 23rd. Saturday. A cold, miserable, and relentlessly drizzly day.

Kishida Masayoshi’s mood was a perfect, dismal match for the weather.

It was already noon, and the fine, persistent rain showed no signs of abating. He sat in his parked car near the church, the engine silent, lighting a cigarette. He took a long, deep drag, letting the familiar, acrid burn of nicotine fill his lungs until the faint, sharp ache began in his chest. Only then did he exhale, a thin stream of pale blue smoke dissipating into the damp, heavy air.

He should have been here this morning, at dawn. But a new lead had come in from headquarters, a flimsy tip that Hasebe Koichi had been seen staying at a small, traditional inn in a neighboring prefecture. And so, he’d had to drive out, conduct another fruitless, soul-crushing, and ultimately pointless investigation.

The result, as had become depressingly routine, was a dead end. Still no trace of the mysterious, phantom-like ‘A’. The mood back at the precinct was grim, a thick, toxic miasma of frustration and defeat.

Not wanting to linger in that poisonous atmosphere, he had decided to come here, to do what he had originally intended to do this morning.

To pay his respects to his late father, Kishida Takatoshi.

Kishida Takatoshi had also been a police officer. A member of the elite, and incredibly dangerous, bomb disposal unit of the Osaka Prefectural Police. Twenty years ago, to this very day, he had died in the line of duty, attempting to defuse a complex and powerful explosive device.

Since becoming a detective himself, Kishida Masayoshi felt he was, in his own small, often inadequate, way, carrying on his father’s legacy. And so, every year, on this day, he would come here, to this quiet, lonely place, to pay his respects, and to silently confess the burdens, the frustrations, and the frequent failures, of his own thankless job.

He finished his cigarette, stubbing it out with a final, weary gesture in the car’s overflowing ashtray. Just as he was about to open the door and head into the cemetery, he saw a dark figure, holding a black umbrella, emerge from the side path of the church. The figure moved with a strange, fluid grace, and climbed into a waiting taxi.

It was only for an instant, a fleeting, almost dreamlike glimpse through the rain-streaked windshield, but he recognized her instantly. It was Yomikawa Tsuko.