Disclaimer: Haikyuu is Furudate Haruichi's property

Credit: Immeasurable thanks to my beta readers, Rhye, Dispiritment, & EverKnightAngel

Timeline: This fanfic is set in the time gap between the end of Spring Inter-high Preliminaries and the Miyagi Prefecture Representative Playoffs (from mid-September to the beginning of October)

Warning: despite the fic's happy ending, some parts of the story are DISTURBING in more ways than one

Author's Note: May you enjoy your Halloween present, madamada-chan!

එක

Eka

1

'Shit! Shit! SHIT!'

Although the tendency to swear wasn't Sugawara Kōshi's trait, hell would be damned if "in deep shit" didn't entail the situation he was currently in. Across the table in front of him, sat a grim-looking man about Karasuno's dean in age with the manager tag on his uniform. He recognized the man to be Mr. Kinoshita, and no one in the neighborhood wouldn't know Kinoshita's name—children would rather lose their baseball forever than knock at his door if said ball went astray into his yard.

"So, why did you steal it?" the manager demanded.

Suga glanced at the CD before him. The singer's name didn't ring the bell since that particular genre of music was not the type he'd normally listen to.

"Well?" the grump urged, his fingers drumming impatiently against the table edge.

'How am I supposed to know my motivation when I don't even remember swiping it? Heck, I don't even remember entering this store today!'

That wouldn't sound believable, so the high school student settled with, "It was … a test." Suga swallowed hard. "I wanted to know if I could take things fast enough, unnoticed by the security camera. I realize that apologies alone won't suffice, but would you please overlook this? I promise not to do something stupid like this ever again."

Suga bowed deeply, eyes perturbingly aware of the coffee stains across the table. His pulse thudded deeply in his throat. He did not raise his head until he heard Kinoshita's sigh.

"Your parents have a good reputation in our neighborhood. What would they think when they hear about your theft today?"

Suga bit his lip. Why couldn't he steer clear from making his parents' hearts swell with grief or throb with shame?

The middle-aged man spent the next several minutes preaching about moral and ethics, followed by numerous threats about how bad curriculum vitae could affect university selection, before demanding the boy to fill a form containing his details.

The sun had sunk below the horizon long before the manager finally let Suga leave the music store's staff room. Suga felt as though still half-awake from a bad dream. The experience had seemed—and still seemed—unreal. Yet, it had overshadowed everything else and unsettled him more than everything else that had occurred.

The student sighed; he had marred his school's reputation without having any recollection of how he had performed the crime.

The shoplifting was not the only example he didn't remember of committing. He had been out of it lately—experiencing some sort of blackout, only to regain consciousness with troubles already waiting for him. His younger brother's comic book, his mom's purse, and his dad's liquor suddenly just popped up in his room. Luckily, he had managed to return his parents' belongings before they had noticed the loss. However, in his brother's case, he had to make up an excuse of borrowing the book and promised to treat the kid ice cream as an apology.

It had been dusk like this the first time he had blacked out. It had occurred the previous week, though the memory lapse had lasted no more than mere seconds back then: he had been walking halfway down an alleyway, and then suddenly he had already reached the end of the lane.

දෙක

Deka

2

The crossroad two blocks away from Foothill Store was one of the possible routes that Suga regularly took on his way home from volleyball practice. That evening, the Karasuno vice-captain was thinking about the love letter in his pocket when a rolling object bumped into his shoe. He looked down and saw a can of pickled lotus roots.

Further down the road, a senile woman was picking up her spilled groceries and returning them into her pushcart. Her hands trembled with old age and even with the aid of her glasses, she couldn't spot each item quick enough.

Suga returned the can to the senior pedestrian and got the stuck pushcart's wheels out of the indent in the asphalt before helping her pick up the rest of her groceries. When he handed her the last item, she said, "That's not mine; I never bought that trinket."

"Uh, but it was mixed up with your groceries," he tried to convince her in a tone that he hoped didn't sound too pushy.

"Maybe it was already there, on the road, before I tripped. At any rate, my late husband and I share similar dislike for insects," she replied before bowing. "Once again, thank you for your help, young man."

Suga watched her go, and then stared at the butterfly-shaped object. It was hard and flat, and when he opened it, he saw the reflection of hazel eyes staring back at him. Not wanting to steal, Suga put the mirror back on the road, in case its rightful owner went back to retrieve it.

As he strolled home, Suga remembered the letter in his pocket and his jaw clenched. He would have to reject the sender properly tomorrow.

He had found a plain white envelope in his locker earlier that afternoon, shortly after the school bell rang at the end of the day's lessons, when he intended to change his classroom shoes with his volleyball shoes. There was no sender's name, so he assumed it to be a notification from the school.

The tidy handwriting made Suga arc his brow—none of the teachers' looked like that. Following an apologetic opening line for the suddenness of the letter, came a confession that the sender had been watching him during the past two months.

"You are like a kind and caring older brother. You aren't the top student in our class nor are you particularly outstanding in certain subjects, but you're always there when your friends need you. Even after your volleyball team got eliminated on the third preliminary, you kept providing moral support for your teammates despite being upset yourself. These little things are what I like about you."

Suga blushed while reading that paragraph. The next few lines, however, made the hair on his nape prickle.

"This may sound really odd to you since we're both guys, but I'm serious about my feelings. Please give it some consideration. I'll be waiting for your answer for as long as it takes."

The sender's name was written on the last line of the letter: Akutagawa Hideki. Suga recalled the quiet boy who sat at the back. Like him, Akutagawa did not particularly excel in any subject. He was the type who would carry out his duties diligently and never made a racket. The two of them were not particularly close; in fact, they rarely talked to each other, so it had never struck Suga before that Akutagawa felt that way about him. But then again he harbored no particular sentiment for Akutagawa, and it would be unfair to leave him hanging.

'Well, at least it's a good thing that Akutagawa is only a classmate instead of a teammate. I bet it'd be odd to practice together every day after I turn him down.'

'Especially if it's a teammate that you interact with a lot, like Daichi,' a small voice resounded at the back of his head.

Suga laughed it off. 'Daichi wouldn't need a rejection. He—'

Wait, what?

Just because it was now official that Kageyama and Hinata were an item, that didn't mean that Sawamura and he were obliged to follow their lead… Why did he even start picturing Sawamura having a romantic view towards boys, when he seemed to get along well with Michimiya from the girls' team?

An exotic fragrance wafted through the twilight, interrupting Suga's train of thoughts. He halted. Such a redolent perfume, more potent than roses. He knew he had smelled this distinctive aroma before, but what was it?

After racking his brain, Suga recalled his trip to Bali with his parents, back when he had been in fifth grade. The smell derived from the species of flower with five white petals that gradated to yellow closer to its stem. It was, if he remembered correctly, called a "frangipani." But could that plant live here, in the mountain area of Tohoku, considering that it normally grew in tropical and sub-tropical areas?

Suga looked around him, but found no frangipani tree within sight. The street was lined with shops, but void of any vegetation. 'Maybe it's some kind of imported room freshener from one of these buildings,' he concluded, resuming his walk back home.

තුන

Tuna

3

Later that night, in the middle of his Japanese history homework, Suga suddenly heard the creaking of a door. He jerked up from his textbook and glanced at his bedroom door. It remained bolted, since it was his habit to lock the door whenever he was in. Nevertheless, the high pitch just now had sounded crystal clear, as though its source had been close at hand.

'That's strange.' Suga squinted.

Since the sound made no return and the solid wood showed no sign of opening, he decided to resume his study.

Ten minutes had barely passed when he needed an eraser and opened his top drawer to get it. He felt something fleeting behind him.

He turned around immediately.

He turned around. Although his eyes caught nothing other than his bed and bookshelves, for an unknown reason, he felt unprecedented cold along the base of his spine. Could it have been just his imagination that in that brief moment while his head was down, there was something?

He closed the drawer a bit too hastily, and the tip of his index fingers got stuck between the desk and the drawer. As he yelped, he had an odd sensation of someone laughing right behind his back. A part of him wanted to castigate the one who was ridiculing him in his pain, but fear overwhelmed anger. Whatever that was—whoever that was—the entity was not to be messed with.

Beset with a hundred doubts and suspicions, Suga managed to finish his homework, but failed to concentrate on reviewing for his upcoming English test. He, along with Sawamura and Azumane, had promised their teachers to keep up decent grades as long as they were allowed to continue their extracurricular activity, so he couldn't afford to fail. Again he strived to read, only to learn that he made no progress. His brain accepted nothing but fright—illogical, unreasonable anxiety.

When the clock struck eleven twenty-two, Suga gave up his revision and went to bed. Drowsiness, however, refused to come to him. He was lying awake, painfully aware of the ticking clock, before he found to his disquiet that he had been unconsciously listening for something—something he dreaded without knowing what it was.

It wasn't even the end of September yet; why was it so damnably cold that night? The blanket wasn't helping at all, and he was getting up to retrieve a coat from his wardrobe when he seemed to hear the stairs and corridors creak at intervals as if with footsteps, and it struck him that there was something subtly tentative about the creaking. It didn't sound like a family member who was on the way to the toilet or kitchen for a midnight snack.

Not one bit.

'Could it be a burglar?' Suga kept deathly quiet, waiting the would-be intruder's next move. In the silence of the night, every faint noise felt amplified, and horrendous possibilities flooded over his mind. Cold sweat moistened his palms and he could hear his heart thumping louder with each passing second.

Time seemed to slow down. The boards of the corridor in front of his room began to groan with a tremendous load. Footsteps were coming closer, closer, closer … before stopping right in front of his door. Then darkness' hungry throat swallowed its din.

Frangipani fragrance now enveloped his room with infuriating density. There was no sound of an aerosol bottle spraying; even if his mom had bought frangipani-scented room freshener for the living room or her bedroom downstairs, how could he smell it all the way up here? If it had been aromatherapeutic candle alone, the odor couldn't have been this strong.

'Frangipani again? Weird.'

Then there came that ominous fulfillment of his apprehensions—a sneering sound seeped from under his door. The voice belonged to a female, an unfamiliar teenage girl. It formed the impression that destroyed Suga's last bit of rationality and sent him flinging the door open.

No one was there. Quietude swallowed the din of the Sugawara's residence. The plastic plant next to the stairs stood rigidly in its pot. The door of his brother's room remained shut. The curtains stayed perfectly still by each windows.

Suga let out a sigh, though he himself didn't know whether it was supposed to be a sign of relief or vexation. He resumed rummaging through his wardrobe for the coat and wore it to bed. The clock showed a quarter to midnight.

His eyes were fluttering in pre-sleep lethargy when he sensed movement on the ceiling. Right above him, curly hair cropped short, floated a teenage girl he had never seen before.

From this distance, he noticed the many bruises littering her body, almost looking like that of a post-match boxer. Although she wore a local junior high school's sailor-style student uniform, her dark skin, high cheekbones, full lips, wide nose, exposed platform eyelids, and other facial features announced her foreign ethnicity. The last thing he remembered was that the stranger's looming figure over him, a sneer tugging at her cut lips.

When Suga reopened his eyes, a hasty glance at the clock revealed the hour to be one in the morning. He yawned. Maybe he was too sleepy to see properly. Maybe he did see the time properly and the female apparition had been a nightmare he gained during his short sleep. Whatever the case was, he was glad to be dozy and went back to sleep without a sliver of doubt.

හතර

Hatara

4

A silhouetted crowd of doubtful shapes was pouring into his bleary eyes, flashlight beams bobbing in the darkness and derisive voices taunting in a language Suga could recognize only partially. There were "pathetic," "rat," and "cry" among their vocabulary, but the rest was too indistinct to discern.

Suga pleaded through tears, "Stop it! No more, please! What did I ever do to wrong you?"

Some of the figures shifted uncertainly, but one of them grabbed his hair and yanked it down. He struggled, thrashing about, while trying to hold his breath at the same time, but his endurance vanished soon after the toilet bowl was flushed. The involuntary inhalation of water flooded into his throat. He spluttered, coughed and inhaled more. He felt his chest tearing and a burning as water went down into his airway.

When his head surfaced again, it was owing to his torturer's will rather than the success of his own effort. He coughed and tried to gulp as much air as he could, but his head was immediately submerged underwater again. Another toilet flushing followed, so did the amused laughter of his the spectators.

පහ

Paha

5

Suga woke up with a start and jumped out of bed at once to open his window and get some fresh air. The sensation of breathlessness was so intense and uncomfortable. The half-moon was blazing down from a sky so black in its cloudless cruelty like a deep, gargantuan pit of tar.

Wiping the cold sweat from his temple, Suga sucked in a lungful of air. He needed to inhale deep, to make sure it was air that he absorbed instead of toilet water. Even after he clawed at his head and learned that his hair was completely dry, the discomfort of being so helplessly weak refused to leave him. He wondered if that was what it was like to be bullied. It was barely past four, but the vivid dream had oppressed him with a nauseating fright that he had lost all his will to resume sleep.

He got out of bed to fetch a glass of water from the kitchen. The hair covering his body prickled. The Sugawara's residence was an ordinary household unequipped with security cameras, but he had a strange presumption of being closely watched as he proceeded down the stairs.

By the time he had finished drinking, the odd feeling still clung to him. "Yutaka?" he called his brother's name. But the twelve-year-old boy was not there. Suga's voice met no response other than the eerily prolonged echoes of the quiet house.

He was rubbing his coat sleeves from the unusual cold on the way back to his room when he lost his balance. The wooden floor had become slippery without a warning, and he fell down butt-first.

Wincing from the pain, Suga tried to get up. As he checked his body for any injury, he discovered that the floor was far from being dry. It was blotched with a teeming horde of water puddles and wet shoeprints about three or four sizes smaller than his bedroom slippers, but still bigger than his little brother's.

'Does mom or dad have a stay-in guest?' Suga shrugged; he could satiate his curiosity at breakfast. 'Well, for now, I hope my fall didn't make enough rackets to wake them.'

Before closing his bedroom door, he took another glance at the corridor, thinking, 'I didn't hear anyone opening a door being while I was drinking, so the floor must have been wet before. How come I didn't notice that on my way to the kitchen?'

But the floor before his eyes was as immaculate as it normally was, all water stains vanished. Suga rubbed his eyes, and even squatted down in the corridor again to re-check the floor, but no trace of wetness remained.

'Did I imagine all of it?' He sighed and shut his bedroom door.

හය

Haya

6

Suga's Mom asked over breakfast, "What was with all the noise last night?"

"Oh, do you mean when I slipped on the floor?" Suga replied while filling his glass with orange juice.

"Slipped? How could you have slipped on it?"

"Ah, no, I meant 'fell.' Maybe I was so sleepy that I tripped on my own pajama trousers or something."

His little brother joined the conversation through a full mouth. "Still, nii-san, couldn't you use the bathroom more quietly? You were splashing in the bathtub and flushed the toilet repeatedly. Did you get an upset stomach?"

"Huh? But I didn't even go to the bathroom. I only went to the kitchen for a glass of water."

"Then who was it? Mom and dad usually use the bathroom downstairs and I heard the noises so clearly. My bedroom is next door to the upstairs bathroom, remember?"

"Could it be a burglar?" Suga's mom wondered aloud with a tinge of worry in her voice.

His dad affirmed over the rim of his mug, "I'll check and make sure every that no window in this house is breached before leaving for the office."

හත

Hata

7

"Sup! Suga, can I borrow your math homework?" Yoshida asked the moment he hung his school bag at the side of his classroom desk.

A smile plastered on his face, Suga answered, "You should do homework by yourself instead of copying from other people. We're already in our third year."

"Please?"

"That's not gonna work—not after five times in a row."

"Pretty please?" Yoshida asked again with palms closed together in front of his bowed head.

Suga heard a chortle and turned around. Instead of looking at his direction, Sawamura's eyes were focused on the pen he was taking out of his pencil case, but the trace of a smile still lingered on his lips.

Suga wished that medicine for fluttery stomach had been invented.

"It's nothing to be laughed about, Daichi!" Suga faked a complaint to dismiss whatever unsettling feeling that wrung his gut. "If we don't study seriously, how can we pass the university's entrance exams?"

"Pft … sorry, sorry, it's just that you do look like a mother hen—or rather, mother crow."

"Well, well, ain't that a coincidence?" Their other classmate, Saito, remarked, a huge grin on his face, "From what I heard, given how firmly you led your team members without a coach last year, they refer to you as their father."

"N—of course not!" Sawamura voiced with such vehemence that nearly made people believe him, had it not for the blush that accompanied his denial.

"Which one is not? The coincidence, the coaching, or the father thing?" Onoda, who had heard their banter, teased.

අට

Ata

8

Practice went well that afternoon. Kageyama and Hinata's sync had reached a new height, Noya's receives were as spry as ever, Azumane's serves unwavered, and Tanaka's spikes grew more solid. Even the other first and second years showed some promises. It made Suga feel rather lonely. Just as he himself had asserted, this was his third year. He had less than six months left to study in Karasuno and even less than that to be active in the volleyball club.

The sentiment, however, didn't last through the night.

නවය

Navaya

9

In his dream, he was very, very reluctant to go to school. Of all places he had ever been, there was nowhere as scary as school. Even when he changed his outdoor shoes for the indoor ones, the eyes of other students looked at him mockingly, derision crooking their mouths. The canvas surfaces of his uwabaki were no longer immaculate; they was scribbled with untidy handwritings saying "Die, bitch!," "Go to hell!," and the like. They even made sure that each and every word was written in the katakana alphabet, as opposed to kanji, so that he could read them all.

He heaved a sigh and put the uwabaki on the elevated platform designated for them. There were still so many hours ahead before school was over. He wanted to leave, wanted to escape from those unpitying stares as soon as possible, but something pricked his left toe. He took the shoe off and, much to his dismay, found a red blob tarnishing his sock. He picked the shoe and held it upside-down. A tack, its edge stained with his blood, fell from the uwabaki.

Holding back tears, he rushed to his classroom. More scorns followed, and although he didn't fully understand the vocabulary, he couldn't have mistaken their mocking tones.

But then he questioned himself, 'Why can't I understand the words spoken by Japanese junior highschoolers?'

He took out his biology textbook in preparation for the first period. Much to his perplexity, he couldn't even read nearly any of the kanji letters of the title. It felt that he had selected the book based on his memory of its cover image and color rather than its text.

He flipped through the pages and found nastier scribbles inside. At least, the ones on his uwabaki were meant to be discreet; those were written in small letters with pen and unreadable to viewers more than two meters away. The ones over here looked more like graffiti of bold letters in felt-tip markers. Judging from the different handwritings across the pages, they must have been the work of multiple culprits, but they all were deliberately written in katakana.

The bell that saved him from the mental torture rang at last. The door slid open and the teacher came in. But although Suga understood the basic greetings, he had no idea what the teacher was explaining. He heard a chalk screeching against the blackboard and spent the next twenty minutes gazing at the diagram the teacher had just drawn without comprehending the kanji other than "horse," "cow," and "pig."

When the teacher erased the diagram and wrote new sentences, Suga squinted. He could read the hiragana and katakana parts, but with the slow speed of a first-year elementary student. As for the kanji, well, he counted himself lucky to recognize five words.

All the efforts exhausted his brain, and he let his mind wander for a moment. That was when, in his mind's eye, he saw a different classroom, a different teacher, different classmates, whose racial features and uniform pronounced foreignness. The teacher was praising him for answering her question correctly.

Then a realization hit Suga: he could not go back to that nostalgic place anymore, not when his dad had been assigned to work in the Japanese branch of the company he was employed. He missed his friends, he missed the food, he missed his old house, but most of all, he missed the grandma he had to leave behind.

Suga's hands clenched over the plaids of his…

…skirt?

What the…?

He looked down, examining himself. A red cravat embellished the underside of his sailor-style uniform collars. Now that he paid attention to it, his chest wasn't exactly flat either. He should have noticed earlier that he hadn't been wearing trousers when he looked at his blood-stained sock, but at that time, he hadn't considered that as unnaturalness.

Come to think of it, the homeroom teacher called him with a name he had never heard before, though, again, he felt that really was his name. He didn't pay enough attention to recall what it was.

'What's going on here?' He rummaged his bag and, somehow, knew that he kept a foldable mirror in it, even though he didn't have a habit of carrying mirror in reality. The mirror was butterfly-shaped and bore a striking resemblance to the one he saw on the street while helping the old woman with her groceries. When he glimpsed at his own reflection in it, it he looked nothing like himself: a dark-skinned teenage girl that he had seen in his nightmare the night before, though absent the bruises and cuts and her curly hair was shoulder-length instead of cropped short.

"Enjoying the view?" the reflection asked.

Suga's eyes widened in horror.

දහය

Dahaya

10

The first thing Suga did as soon as he woke up was to grab the nearest book he could find. He sighed in relief once he was sure he could still recognize the kanji alphabet. Even then, his heart still raced as wildly as if he had just been sprinting.

He then remembered an old saying that a dream was the reflection of one's secret desire. 'But I'm not into cross-dressing, nor do I plan to try it,' he convinced himself, 'Besides, I'm not dissatisfied to have been born Japanese.'

He brushed it off and began to get ready for school.

එකොළහ

Ekoḷaha

11

Suga was relieved to find that he could absorb school lessons just fine. That, however, didn't stop him from dozing off in the second lesson, while his literature teacher was in the middle of reciting extremely boring lines of poetry composed by some dude who had lived centuries ago. He inwardly criticized his teacher's poor taste in fashion—that Windsor-knot tie was the wrong match for the bald man's narrow-collared shirt. Just to keep his eyes open, Suga warned himself that today's lesson could come up in the final exam, when he suddenly found himself listening to the examples of state capitalism.

Suga sat straighter and even rubbed his eyes. The teacher standing by the blackboard had her hair tied in a bun and was garbed in a pristine white blouse combined with a gray pencil-skirt—his economics teacher. Economics was the fifth lesson on today's timetable; had he been sleeping during the last couple of hours, despite the bells and the standing greetings?

දොළහ

Doḷaha

12

"Sugawara-san, have you read my letter?" Akutagawa asked at lunch break, after making sure none of their classmates was eavesdropping.

It startled Suga that he had completely forgotten about the love letter. From the corner of his eyes, he perceived Sawamura approaching, lunch box in hand.

Suga stood up from his seat abruptly and said, "Sorry, Daichi, you have your lunch first." Next, he gestured at Akutagawa to follow him, exhorting, "Let's talk somewhere more private."

Akutagawa was chewing his lips when they arrived at the stairs in front of the music room. The music room itself was usually locked when not in use, so Suga stopped there.

Suga inhaled deeply to calm his nerves. "I'm elated to receive your letter, Akutagawa-san, but I'm sorry I don't feel the same way about you."

Although Akutagawa gripped the handrail tightly, his voice was meek. "Do you hate me?"

"No, I neither like nor dislike you."

"So, it'd make no difference to you if I were to get a Nobel Prize or to get run over by a truck?"

"That's not it!"

"Then you must be repulsed by my confession. I knew it! Yeah, I'm a boy, but I was born this way and there's nothing I can do about it."

"No, same-sex attraction isn't the issue here."

"Then you love another boy? Is that why you can't love me back?"

Suga suppressed the urge to punch some sense into Akutagawa. "Look," he said through his piercingly cold grin, "Would it make you feel better if I told you that I'd rather not deal with this love shit because dating would waste my study time, and if I were to get bad grades, the teachers would forbid me to be active in the club, even though that'd just be a poor excuse to cover the fact that I'd rather not have you in my life?"

Suga left right away, ignoring Akutagawa's pleas. What was wrong with him? Akutagawa might be persistent, but wasn't he just trying to convey his sincerity? On the other hand, what was with Suga's slip of self-control? He usually could hold his water better than that. Why did he have to act so spiteful today, just because someone was trying to delay his lunchtime together with Sawamura?

Suga gasped.

No, it couldn't be.

It mustn't.

How much of a hypocrite would he become to develop such feelings for his captain in spite of all the stuff he had said to Akutagawa?

දහතුන

Dahatuna

13

"Wow, Suga-san, all these years, I never knew you were this good at underhand serves!" Nishinoya whistled appreciatively during their 3-on-3 practice game.

Good point. Suga hadn't known that either. The ball went so smoothly—too smoothly—compared to his usual performances. It felt that his body had just moved on its own, without his brain commanding it.

"Er, thanks. Lucky try, I guess?" He managed to force a grin, but his answer came out a pitch higher.

Until the end of practice, Azumane didn't turn up. No one knew his whereabouts, though some first-year tennis club members saw him scurrying towards the school gate as soon as the bell rang. He also didn't reply to Suga's text message.

'Where could he have gone?'

දාහතර

Dāhatara

14

That night, Suga dreamed of a house, in which he knew he lived there even though he had never seen it before. He was sitting at the breakfast table with a dark-skinned man and woman more than twice his age and whined in a pitch far higher than his normal voice could ever produce, "But momma, I don't want to go to school. I'm scared."

Suga was astounded; since when had he started calling his mother "momma?" And why did he understand the supposedly foreign language effortlessly?

The woman before him gave him a stern look as she began to prattle, again in a language so foreign yet so comprehensible to Suga, "Well, you should be! Don't you know where you'll end up if you don't finish school? I don't want my daughter to become a jobless scum of the society."

"It's not that I hate to go to all schools, but the one in this country… I mean, if our departure hadn't been a last-minute order, we all would have had the chance to learn the language before we came here—"

"Dilshani, that's enough! How many more times must we go through this?" the man across the table unburied his face from behind the newspaper and interrupted him crossly. "If my colleague hadn't been caught embezzling the corporation's fund, he'd have been the one standing here now. How often can a salary man get promoted as the Head of Department like this? Why can't you use that young brain of yours to learn instead of complain?"

"Yes, poppa." Suga sighed in defeat, cleared up his plate, and dragged his feet to school.

Needless to say, he had to endure his schoolmates' cruel treatments and incomprehension toward Japanese all over again. If it made any difference, he was now fully aware that he was an external presence who somehow perceived things from the foreign girl's mind. Nevertheless, this time, he paid attention to memorize the girl's name when the homeroom teacher called the roll: Galappaththige Dilshani Edirisuriya.

පහළොව

Pahaḷova

15

Although Suga felt no urge to check his textbook for a Japanese comprehension test this time, the unease inside him grew stronger. He clutched his pillow, quivering, and trying to grasp at the ragged tails of the nightmare. A dream involving the same girl three nights in a row … no matter how he looked at it, such occurrence was nothing but normal.

Now that he had learned her name, he surfed online to find as much as he could about it. His smartphone screen said that it was of Sri Lankan origin. And when he researched about the nation's ethnicity, her features were classifiable as "Dravidian."

Suga went to school with bags under his eyes, too afraid to sleep again, in case the nightmare returned.

Sawamura asked him concernedly, "You look sleep-deprived; are you OK, Suga?"

The fact that his best friend cared this much for his wellbeing cheered up Suga a bit. "Yeah, thanks. It's just that I kept getting nightmares these days."

"You'd better take care of your health. I don't want you to collapse and be absent from practice like Asahi."

"What? So, Asahi was sick yesterday? What did he suffer from?"

"I don't know the details myself. He passed two of our classmates at the hallway this morning, and according to them, his jaw was plastered. I'm gonna check on him at lunch break; wanna come with me?"

During his talk with Sawamura, Suga had caught a glimpse of Akutagawa's scathing look from his own seat at the far end of the classroom, so he tried to keep his tone sounding obliged rather than enthusiastic. "Sure."

දාසය

Dāsaya

16

However, when they reached Azumane's classroom that afternoon, he seemed to be seriously considering the option of jumping out from the window.

"Asahi, what's wrong?" Sawamura asked.

"N-nothing." But Azumane wouldn't look at Sawamura in the eye.

At that precise time, one of Azumane's classmates called out to Sawamura, "Sup, Daichi! Is it true that your club manager already has a boyfriend?"

Suga shifted closer to Azumane, Daichi's reply of "How would I know that?" ringing in the background. "Asahi, how bad is your injury?"

Azumane flinched.

"Yeah, I want to know, too," Sawamura seconded, making his cue to dismiss the curious loudmouth.

Azumane developed a sudden interest at the classroom floor even as he mumbled, "I'm fine."

"Then you'll come to today's practice?" Suga asked.

To this, Azumane bolted for the door, squeaking, "Forgive me!"

"What happens to him this time?" Sawamura shook his head.

"Beats me, but I'll talk some sense into him. He wasted a month without practice half a year ago, but now our days as third years are getting shorter; we can't wait that long with the Miyagi Prefecture Representative Playoffs coming up next month."

After ten minutes of searching, Suga found Azumane at the rooftop, sitting alone with his knees tucked up to his chest. He made another effort to flee, but as Suga blocked the sole entrance…

"Asahi, tell me what's gotten into you."

Azumane looked around first and would not open his mouth until he was certain there was no one else in the vicinity. When he spoke, his voice, although not freed from dread, contained bitterness in it. "You should know that better than everyone."

"How come?"

"How can you say that after what you did to me yesterday?" This time, the resentment in Azumane's voice sounded more apparent. If Suga hadn't known that gentle giant, Azumane's towering height alone could probably make him wet his pants.

Suga's brow arched in confusion. "What did I do?"

Azumane unsealed his plaster to reveal a nasty bruise.

"Are you saying I was even capable of leaving that mark on you? I've never gotten myself into a slugfest all my life, so there's no way I could do that without you deliberately let me punch you, right?"

"But you did. You tricked me to lend you a history textbook and just hit me when I was handing the book. It's bad enough you kept laughing when I asked you why, but now you're even playing dumb, to boot?"

Dumbfounded beyond measure, Suga tried to reason with Azumane, "Wha—when did all those happen?"

Azumane's reply came in a tired tone, "Suga, count me out of your game."

"Please, I need to know; I couldn't remember what happened to me between the second and fifth period yesterday," Suga urged.

Azumane threw him a flummoxed look. "Well, it was shortly before the fourth period started, but why couldn't you remember this?"

"No idea. All I know is that this isn't the first time I got zero memory of a certain occasion." Suga shook his head. "Look, Asahi, if I really was the one who did that to you, I'm sorry. I truly am. If it makes you feel better, you may hit me back." Suga swallowed, hoping with all his might that Azumane would not use his full strength, which could overcome the defense of three players. But if a broken tooth or two could mend his friendship with Karasuno's Ace, so be it.

Azumane shook his head. "No, as long as you didn't mean to hurt me, that's fine, Suga."

"No, it's not. This is wrong, Asahi, and you can make it right."

"Hitting you doesn't make things right. Besides, I'm glad to have my friend back—you were seriously spine-chilling yesterday."

"Did I look … different … in any way?" Suga cautiously asked, his heart quickening as he dreaded the answer he himself was asking.

"You didn't grow horns and claws, if that's what you're worried about. But your expression and speaking style … they just—I'd never seen you like that before." Azumane hesitated for a moment before adding, "Maybe you'd better consult a psychiatrist about split personality?"

Then, looking at the deadpanned Suga, Azumane appended, "S-sorry. Forget what I said."

He inserted both hands inside his pockets and climbed down the stairs.

"Wait, Asahi, you'll come to today's practice, won't you?"

Asahi halted. Without turning around, he gave Suga a hesitated nod, and then proceeded downstairs.

As he watched Azumane's back, an idea voiced itself inside Suga's head, 'Push him. If he dies, no one will need to know your dirty little secret.'

Suga gasped. What was he thinking? How could have he come up with a homicidal idea against his close friend?

දාහත

Dāhata

17

During the spinal stretch at practice, Suga noticed how jittery Azumane was. The tall boy even missed nearly half the tosses sent his way in the game, but Suga appreciated his friend's courage not to run away.

"Hey, Daichi, which university are you going to enroll into?" Suga asked as they folded up the net.

It was—or at least, should be—a straightforward question, and indecisiveness was never Sawamura's trait to begin with, so Suga didn't expect the captain to pause first, let alone to find hesitation in those usually determined eyes.

"What about this … I'll tell you if you tell me your choice?"

'Why does Daichi need to be secretive about university choice?' Suga wondered as he answered, "I'm thinking about Tohoku Fukushi—it's reputed for its sports achievements, after all. But if I can't make it there, I'll probably go to Tohoku University of Community Service and Science."

"That means you're going to either Sendai or Sakata then," Sawamura mumbled, more to himself than to Suga.

Whether it was his own brain programming himself to think that there was a sliver of sadness in Sawamura's expression when he announced, "I'm going to Akita University," or if that expression was actually there, Suga didn't know.

"By the way, did I leave the classroom between literature and economics yesterday?"

Sawamura's brow rose in amusement. "It's unlike you to have your head in the clouds, but yeah. Right before history, you said something about leaving your textbook behind and dashed to borrow one from another class."

That answer wrenched Suga's guts.

දහඅට

Dahaaṭa

18

When a descent of darkness heralded the moonless sky, the first thing that appeared in Suga's dream was the sound of high-pitched jeers. Several girls were ganging up on Dilshani, this time their features clearly spelled out instead of displayed in silhouettes. Their school uniforms were the same as hers, though some had ankle-length skirts typically worn by Yankees back in 1970's and 80's.

They were inside a female washroom, as far as Suga could tell—there were no standing urinals despite the rows of cubicles and washbasins. Strings of curly jet-black hair were scattered around Dilshani's feet. She was sobbing quietly, while two other students behind her, each carrying a shaver in hand, laughed.

"Whut a stress reliever she is!" the girl with overly thick lipstick remarked.

"Right!" the girl with dyed pink-hair replied, "Especially after that baldy Murakami kept nagging us to study for the upcoming exams. Just because we're third years, so what? It's not like the law says it's a must for everyone to go to high school! Girls can always marry rich guys."

Three other girls laughed. But one—the lankiest of all—said, "Really? This is nowhere near satisfactory for me."

All eyes turned to Lanky.

"The rat ain't gettin' enough." Lanky took out a pocket knife and flicked it open as she approached the weeping Dilshani. Having rolled up a sleeve of Dilshani's uniform, the lanky girl slashed Dilshani's right arm.

"Just trickles rather than streams?" the girl with a wide forehead scoffed. "Yuka, you sure you did it right?"

"It ain't meant to be deep, ya fool. That way I can cut this wretch up on several spots without her dying from blood loss first." The so-called Yuka sneered.

Dilshani was sniffling harder with each new cut, blood dripping onto the floor like washed- out watercolor paint.

'What did I ever do to deserve this?'

Suga averted his eyes, unable to watch any longer. But then he realized: how could he understand the Japanese words without a hitch, but feel her emotions all the same? Come to think of it, he could see Dilshani's full figure without looking at any of the washroom's mirrors. Rather than seeing things from inside the Sri Lankan student's head, he was watching them from the sideline.

"My turn. Gimme the knife." It was a girl who had been silent all the time who now spoke, her words partially mumbled because she couldn't be bothered to let go of the cigarette between her teeth.

"Ho? When it's Hanako who says it, it's gotta mean sumthin'!" The lipstick-slathered girl exclaimed.

The moment Hanako received the knife from Yuka, she tore Dilshani's collar until it revealed a green bra strap slung over her left shoulder.

"No more, please … stop…" Each of Dilshani's syllables was articulated awkwardly as she begged with her limited Japanese and simultaneously tried to suppress her cough from Hanako's cigarette smoke.

Hanako's lips curved at a steeper angle. With one precise thrust, she punctured Dilshani's shoulder until the entire length of the blade was embedded into her flesh.

"AAAA—mpff!"

Hanako plugged Dilshani's mouth with a rag, snuffing out her holler. "This hussy sure can scream."

"What if the teachers heard that?" the girl with the prominent forehead asked, brow creasing with anxiety.

Yuka answered, "What're ya worryin' about, scaredy-cat? Yuzu's out there. She'll tap the door if anyone's comin' this way, then we can pretend to use those cubicles."

But Suga's attention remained fixed upon Dilshani's bleeding shoulder; Hanako showed no sign of dislodging that knife any time soon.

Dilshani tried to say something, but only unintelligible syllables could get through the gag.

"Ooh, she's cursing you in her gibberish, Hanako" the lipstick-slathered girl derided.

Hanako licked her upper lip and said, "Spooky-spooky," as she twisted the blade first to-and-fro, and then circularly.

Suga winced. More tears streaked down Dilshani's cheeks.

"Ya know, people burned witches in the Middle Ages, didn't they?" Hanako slyly remarked, "It's too much hassle to prepare the whole bonfire, so we'll make do with this."

She took out a lighter from her pocket. One scorch after another, she singed Dilshani's legs and elicited muffled screams from the victim's gagged mouth. It was not until hideous constellations of burn marks had littered Dilshani's skin did Hanako stop to admire her masterpiece.

One of the two girls who had shaved Dilshani's head mumbled, "What if her parents see that wound? They're bound to notice her torn clothes and cropped hair."

As though she had been anticipating the question, Yuka responded calmly, "Then we just need to make sure she ain't goin' home to tell 'em."

Through tear-blurred eyes, Dilshani saw the Japanese girls exchanging a meaningful look at one another. Hanako was the first to nod, but the rest were quick to follow.

Yuka spoke again, "Yoshimizu's gang will sure as fuck be delighted with our li'l present."

"But before that," Hanako added, "Let's make sure the bitch doesn't yap too much." She pulled the knife out of Dilshani's wounded shoulder, only to slice the wretched girl's lips with a long vertical gash.

The sharp, acrid taste of her own blood filled Dilshani's throat.

'I can't take this anymore!' Dilshani's inner whimper resounded in Suga's head. The next instant, she struggled to push her tongue through the gag.

"Hey, the bitch's tryin' to bite her tongue off," the lipstick-slathered girl commented in an amused tone.

"Then we'd better make sure she's got nuthin' to bite with." Yuka opened the toolbox she had set aside. Her hand ignores the rows of bolts, nuts, wrenches, and screwdrivers to select a pair of pliers.

Hanako asked, "Some preparation, eh? Did'cha snatch 'em from yer old man's garage?"

"Nah, some gramps gave it to me straight from his shop after I broke his nose." Yuka beamed with pride, patting the pliers as she approached Dilshani.

Again, Suga's stomach lurched. Dilshani attempted to scurry as far back as possible, but her back met the cold, pitiless tiled bathroom wall instead.

Without Yuka ordering them, four girls grabbed Dilshani by each limb. In spite of the terrified girl's wriggles, the metal pincers gripped one of her front teeth in a relentless squeeze. Yuka's hands twisted and pulled. Thick crimson blood flowed steadily down the pincers before dripping onto Dilshani's white blouse.

More blood flooded Dilshani's throat; new agony pummeled her head with each of Yuka's movements. As Suga witnessed Dilshani's eyes roll upwards, exposing agonized white sclera, he was sure that the pain alone was enough to make him pass out before the tooth could even come off.

Unfortunately, the torturers noticed the same thing. The girl with a large forehead tore a sheet of toilet paper from the nearest cubicle and scooped some of marching ants off the bathroom wall.

Sneering, she shook the coned paper against the shell of Dilshani's left ear and watched the ants fall into the eardrum one by one. "We can't have her faint now, when the show isn't finished yet."

දහනවය

Dahanavaya

19

Suga vomited in bed. The acrid, coppery taste he had received in his dream still lingered within his throat.

Clearing his mind, Suga stumbled out of the bed. From his window, he caught sight of the new moon rising over the trees, its sickly-pale iridescence casting shadows across the leaves and lending an unworldly glow to the surroundings. He smelled something that seemed like vomit, before he realized that he had made the mess and hurried to clean it.

'But now that I've seen that much, I can make a visit to Dilshani's school and ask around,' he thought as he stripped the soiled sheet off the mattress.

A diversity of terrible objects—the fruitions of over-excited nerves—haunted Suga's mind for the rest of the night through broken sleep, weary vigils, and the dubious state in-between.

විස්ස

Vissa

20

At the end of their club activity that evening, Suga told Sawamura and Tanaka, "You two go home first. I've got somewhere else to be today."

Suga had been able to identify Dilshani's uniform instantly because Takemori Junior High was one of the options he had considered for his school choices. In the old times, it used to be one of the top five in town, but now it had become a shadow of its former reputation. The walls were dingy, the faucets broken, and in general, the whole facilities could use maintenance. A lot of maintenance.

The school dean said that he had started working there since 1995 when Suga asked, so the visitor asked his permission to speak with an older member of staff who had been there decades before.

"In that case, boy, you'd better interview our chemistry teacher, Masuda-sensei—he's been around since 1973. He already left an hour ago, though."

Suga bowed. "I'll come here again tomorrow."

විසි එක

Visi Eka

21

If Suga had thought his nightmares couldn't get any worse, the vision that came to him that night proved just how wrong he could be.

It was Dilshani's scream that greeted him the moment he entered the realm of slumber. Overwhelming, unappeasable pain immersed her entire being, but it mostly came from her ankles downward. Her wrists were tied up to a hook hanging from the ceiling so that her feet hovered a few inches above the floor. Her shoes were scattered among the broken automobile parts strewn about the dingy garage. In their stead, two containers of hot cooking oils soaked her feet ankle-deep until pitiable burn marks blackened her skin. As Dilshani writhed in agony, her laughing tormenters watched from outside the oil's splash range, holding the containers in place with mop and broom sticks.

If only the scene could be put in fast forward with a remote control! The barrier of a TV screen would have at least sheltered him from the rancid smell of the victim's blood, the pitiable sound of her cries, and the ghastly sight of her torment.

"STOP IT!" he shrieked, tears blurring his vision but his voice never reached the ears of Yuka and her gang. The Sri Lankan girl's injuries had grown by leaps and bounds since the last time he'd seen her, not to mention three of her fingers were clotted with dried blood, now that they had been stripped of their nails. "How could you do this?!"

A couple of minutes later, the girls let go of the mops and brooms. They laughed heartily as Dilshani kicked the containers away, tears raining down her chin.

The girl with the large forehead stepped forward carrying a glass jar in which dozens of centipedes were crawling. She removed its lid and pinched a fat one with a pair of cooking chopsticks. Slowly, deliberately, she lifted it before Dilshani's ungagged mouth despite its exoskeletal body and many legs' wriggling in protest.

Dilshani flinched, mouth shut tight. More tears rolled down from her puffy eyes as the centipede's spindly legs thresh about her lips.

"Oh, how forgetful I am! How can you possibly chew when four of your good old teeth are gone?" Large Forehead faked a sigh, and her friends laughed along. "No matter. We'll just have to make sure you get the nutritional benefit from elsewhere. You've got lots of other holes anyway."

Large Forehead dropped the centipede on one of Dilshani's open wound near her shoulder blade.

විසි දෙක

Visi Deka

22

Disapproval was obvious in Sawamura's eyes when Suga told him that he would be absent from the volleyball practice that afternoon, but when the captain spoke, his tone was of full understanding, "This is your first absent notice in three years; I'm sure you have your own reason."

The Takemori Junior High chemistry teacher turned out to be a grizzly, frail man in his late sixties. He greeted Suga with a warm smile a pile of school yearbooks on his desk.

"The dean told me that you were interested in the students of 1970's and 80's."

"Thank you, Masuda-sensei. These are very helpful."

"Don't mention it. To an old man like me, a young visitor such as yourself is a rare amusement. I might as well enjoy your sojourn. By the bye, is there any particular person you're looking for?"

"Yes, a female student of South Asian origin." Suga recalled Dilshani's torturer's words and appended, "Possibly third year."

"We had only one student that matches your description." Masuda pulled the yearbook from the year 1978 and flipped the pages. "She studied at this school for three weeks or so on my fifth year working here."

"Only three weeks? Was she an exchange student?" Suga asked.

"No, I believe her family immigrated to this country because of her father's work, but then she went missing." The old man pointed at the second photo from the left of the fifth row on the page containing the photos of class 3 – 3. "Is this the one you're searching for?"

Suga nearly shook his head because the girl in the photograph looked so different from the Dilshani haunting him in dreams. For one thing, her hair was still intact and her skin was free from bruises or cuts, then her expression was also full of life. It made Suga wonder whether the photography section had taken place on Dilshani's first day at Takemori, before the relentless claw of bullies tore into her life.

"Was she treated nicely during her short stay here, sensei?"

The chemistry teacher sighed. "I'm afraid other students either ignored her or jeered at her. They didn't treat her hostilely right off the bat. In fact, the first time she arrived, they were crowding around her and praised her exotic appearance. She remained silent because of the language barrier, but the other students took this as standoffishness and started to distance themselves from her."

"But did the other students bully her at all?"

"I don't know that far."

"May I see the yearbook for a bit, sensei?"

Suga identified Yuka, Hanako, and Dilshani's four other torturers' picture on the same page. "Could you tell me about these six?"

Masuda's eyes widened in alarm. "What would you like to know about them?"

"Their contact address, if possible. I'd like to speak to them in person."

"Oh, they are no longer in this world, boy. They all died within the same year, but the police failed to identify any correlation between those cases. Their deaths were caused by various reasons, you see: drowning, fire, traffic accident, capsizing boat, accident with slippery floor, and suicide by slicing her wrists."

Suga recalled Yuka mentioning Yoshimizu's gang, but couldn't find the boys' photos on class 3 – 3. He then asked Masuda, "Was there any male student by name 'Yoshimizu' from the same year?"

"Why, of course, there were at least five of them, if memory serves right."

"Was one of them related to this girl?" Suga pointed at Yuka's picture.

"Yes," Masuda replied with amused wonder, "Hikawa Yoshimizu-kun was her boyfriend, actually, and he died in the same year—hurling himself off a flyover. But tell me, how did you know all this?"

"Before I answer you, please tell me whether this Yoshimizu used to have a gang."

Masuda's eyes were now drenched with suspicion, but he remained cooperative, "Yes, Yoshimizu-kun and his six close friends died in the same year, as well. Their tragic ends, combined with the girls', occurred within a short span, so the newspapers called it 'Fourteen Deaths of 1978.'"

"It's actually fifteen."

"Come again?"

"There are fifteen deaths of this school's students that year, and they're all not unrelated."

Masuda's eyes scrutinized Suga in a squint. "I beg your pardon?"

"Night after night, through dreams, Dilshani-san has been showing me how they mistreated her and made her commit suicide."

"Good heavens!" Masuda exclaimed. He calmed himself with several deep inhalations first before asking Suga, "Are you implying that Dilshani-san has appointed you as her avenger in hunting the families of the dead?"

Suga shook his head. "I don't think she's the type of person who bears grudge against the innocent, but she's clearly trying to tell me something by showing me those dreams. My guess is that she wants me to find out where her body pieces were hidden so that I can give her a proper burial. That's why I'd like to ask those families in case they know."

Masuda, who winced at the phrase "body pieces," asked, "But don't you think this strange? If she wants to be found, why did she kill them in the first place?"

"Again, this is just my speculation," Suga answered, "but their abuse was beyond inhumane; it'd be impossible for her not to give out to anger as soon as she turned into a spirit. By the time she learned that she wouldn't be able to rest in peace without a proper burial, it was already too late."

විසි තුන

Visi Tuna

23

The applause of a quiz show audience greeted Suga when he opened the door of the Sugawara residence. Though the living room TV was on, its watcher— Suga's father—was paying his attention to the golf club he was polishing. The second son of the Sugawara family was crouching nearby, watching the family pet hamster exercising on her wheel. His mother was setting the crockery, the appetizing aroma of beef and potato stew wafting from the adjoining kitchen, and it didn't take long for them to join together at the dining table.

"Kōshi!" Mrs. Sugawara shrieked, "I know you love spicy food, but the whole bottle of Tabasco for your nikujaga bowl … what if it upsets your stomach?"

Suga shrugged. "It's just a small bottle."

A part of him shared his mother's concern; in fact, he had never dared himself to consume so much chili before. Yet, a different part of him convinced himself that the dish was going to be yummy and his stomach would be just fine. Perhaps it was one those teenage rebellions.

"Kōshi, what language is that?" Mr. Sugawara's tone was sharp, like a police officer digging the crime confession out of a suspect. Mrs. Sugawara eyed her elder son with escalating worry, while their younger son stared at him open-mouthed.

Suga blinked. "What do you mean? You know I speak only Japanese."

His father spoke, "Not now. The answer you gave your mom seconds ago."

"I said, 'It was just a small bottle.' What's wrong, dad?"

With a fist banging on the table, his father insisted, "You were clearly saying that in another language. Do you think because you've learned something, you have every right to make fun of your family? We're the parents who has fed you, dressed you, educated you, raised you…"

At this point, Mr. Sugawara's face turned red with rage and his breath burst in loud puffs. Yutaka stared at his chopsticks, but ceased munching. Even the hamster Chacha laid down her lettuce and watched anxiously from her cage at the corner of the dining room.

Mrs. Sugawara gently rubbed her husband's back. "Dear, mind your blood pressure. I think Kōshi gets your point." Then she turned at their elder son and bade him, finality in her tone, "Go to your room."

Suga was sure that further adamancy of his innocence on the matter would only aggravate the situation, so he obeyed without saying a word, while inwardly cursing his luck. Had he known something like this would happen, he'd have dropped by at a convenience store first.

The lamp upstairs refused to emit light as he switched it on, even though its light hadn't so much as flickered yesterday. Still, he'd much rather walk in the dark than go downstairs again and look for a replacement bulb under his parents' scrutiny.

'It's just five more meters to my door.'

An indefinable alarm seized Suga as he stepped through the lightless space. Under the circumstances, he couldn't think of any reason to apprehend danger, but a longing to escape possessed his nerves. Somehow, he felt that he was not alone, that hidden eyes were peering at his every stride from the walls. Terror had established its reign within him.

When his hand was poised to open the door handle, something slithered across his forearm, as though an insubstantial eel had been coiling its way to reach the door before him. Startled, Suga withdrew his hand. An eldritch chill prickled his skin. The clangors of his heartbeat throbbed in the muted air, vibrating in his tremulous body.

There he remained, paralyzed with tremor. His ears caught the sound of footsteps and running water, along with his mother's distant voice, possibly requesting his brother to bring the rest of the dishes to the kitchen sink.

Deciding that whatever had just happened to his arm was merely a figment of his own imagination, Suga pushed the door open. As soon as he closed the door behind him, his nose caught a smell that had not been there a moment before. There was in that place a baleful sentience that chilled him to the very core. The room reeked with the perfume of frangipani—he was overwhelmingly conscious of never breathing an atmosphere so condensed. The air weighed upon him as if burdened with invisible blocks of stones.

Floating in front of him was the disfigured ghost of Dilshani, the ghastly whites of her haunting eyes fixed on his in profound silence. Everything he had planned to speak to her vanished, swallowed by fright.

Instead, she spoke to him in Sinhalese, "Give yourself to me."

The voice ended, leaving a vibration that thrilled Suga's nerves and rendering him immobile. Trepidation stole through his veins like the cessation of a grim, bewitching spell with subtle overtones of macabre. It lulled his astonishment into a sort of dreamy acceptance of the voice and its demand, dominating his entire thoughts.

Dilshani stared at him with her daunting eyes as she reached for his face, her grin pronouncing the spite and the derision of an incarnate fiend.

Although he wanted to flee from that unutterable terror lurking in desolation, he was unable to move even a single muscle. All he could do was gaze back in mute, petrified horror, as cold, insubstantial fingers snaked across the void and the doorknob bit at his paralyzed back. In vain did he try to force himself to shift, every instinct yelling, 'Run!'

He was as motionless as a corpse at the inevitable spread of a cerement. The frangipani fragrance overwhelmed his senses, an oppressing cold washed over Suga's being, and then…

…consciousness slipped away from him.

විසි හතර

Visi Hatara

24

Dilshani reappeared in her pre-disfigured state. Looking very much like her catalogued photograph, she tightened her scarf around her neck, bracing herself for Japan's October climate. Dilshani had been accustomed to life in more or less thirty degree Celsius—even the coldest mountain region in Sri Lanka typically didn't go lower than fifteen degree.

Notwithstanding the cold, she was radiantly beaming, full of enthusiasm to make new friends at her new school. Most students eyed her like a mobile museum display as she strolled through the schoolyard, given that she was the sole foreigner on site, but a scanty number of them greeted her, "Good morning!"

She smiled and greeted them back, since she was familiar with the term "ohayō."

Seeing the local students' giggles, she thought, 'Maybe they think my accent is funny, but no matter. I can't get discouraged by something like this.'

However, when one of the local girls spoke more words, she could only smiled apologetically at them and uttered one of the few stock phrases she had managed to memorized, "Watashi wa Nihongo wo hanasemasen."

Another girl laughed and said something. Suga could relate that it meant, "But aren't you currently speaking in Japanese?" Unfortunately, to Dilshani, they were no more than strings of words with unknown meaning, and she could only stare blankly at her speaking adversaries.

'Why do they still talk in Japanese even though I've already explained that I couldn't speak the language? Are they making fun of me?' Dilshani strode toward her assigned classroom with her head down.

However, the Sri Lankan girl refused to give up even then. She hoped to overcome the language barrier through her favorite sport: volleyball. Alas, when she drew the ball on a piece of paper, because she didn't know how to say "Where's the volleyball club?" in Japanese, the student who answered her question interpreted it as "Where can I find a volleyball?"

The Japanese student pointed at the storage room, where all P.E. equipment was kept. Naturally, it was locked, and Dilshani couldn't comprehend the Japanese student's explanation that the room would only be unlocked during lessons.

The second student she asked interpreted her drawing as "Do you have a volleyball with you?" and merely shook her head.

The third student interpreted her drawing as "Where can I buy a ball like this?", so she wrote the address of the nearest sports store in katakana and gave the piece of paper to Dilshani.

Future didn't look bright until Dilshani questioned the sixth student, who replied, "Oh, you must mean the girls' volleyball club, right? I'll show you the way."

But after the student left, and Dilshani was faced with the full cast of girls' volleyball team members, she was tongue-tied while trying to decide the proper word about joining the team. She remembered seeing "tachimajiru" and "kumiawaseru" among other verbs in the dictionary, but the book didn't go into details on the contextual examples.

She nervously took a step back and her shoulder bumped against another student's. Dilshani apologized immediately, but she said 'sorry' in English instead of in Japanese out of reflect. She considered correcting the word into "sumimasen," but changed her mind. "Sorry" should be universal enough; even Japanese elementary students would know that. Instead she tried being friendly by presenting another smile.

The volleyball club member glared at Dilshani before leaving for a warm-up exercise. The rest of the club members shook their heads. One of them even stepped forward to admonish the foreign girl, "Hey, does your country's etiquette teach you it's OK to do people wrong and ridicule them as long as you say sorry?!"

'So much for Japanese hospitality.'

Whether it was a stroke of bad luck or the students were excessively biased back then, Suga did not know. Depending on the formality of the occasion, the Japanese bowed or waved their hand across their faces while apologizing; Dilshani's smile was interpreted as a mockery instead.

It was not long before more and more local students grew to dislike her.

විසි පහ

Visi Paha

25

Then the sound of footsteps filled Suga's ears. Two or more people were pacing the length of the corridor outside his room.

"Have you cleared stage six yet, Yutaka?"

The question was spoken in the voice of Yamamura Hibiki—a maniac game lover who was Yutaka's classmate and best friend.

"Nah, I'm still having trouble with the blue ogre's fiery breath in stage five," Yutaka answered. By the sound of it, the two boys were en route to Yutaka's room. Suga hadn't even realized Yamamura's arrival; how much time had elapsed?

Suga gasped.

As though all the burdens within him were lifted, the air he had unconsciously been holding in suddenly was let out of his lungs. Dilshani was nowhere to be seen, but he knew for certain that he hadn't been dreaming. He was still standing close to the door, staring at the spot where the girl had been moments before.

His heart thundering in his chest, Suga still tasted consternation in his mouth. He waited, half-dreading, half-anticipating to interact with her again.

Yet, there was nothing, except for a mortifying silence.

'Calm down. Calm down. Calm down,' Suga told himself repeatedly. He then took out his phone and browsed for meditation articles.

After following the step-by-step manual to clear his mind involving sitting cross-legged with some finger gestures he had never tried before, Suga finally managed to get a hold of himself. He did his homework and prepared his books for tomorrow's lessons before going to bed.

විසි හය

Visi Haya

26

In his sleep, Suga found himself inside an abandoned building, where musty smell mingled with the dank exhalations of mildewed and rotten woodwork. Withered leaves swirled in from smashed windows and thick layers of dust already covered the floor's cracked tiles. Littered with "do not cross" lines and demolition signs, the cobweb-festooned premise was hardly recognizable that it used to be an office had it not for busted desks, chairs, and cabinet files here and there.

Dilshani dragged her feet behind Hanako, who held her with a chained harness. The Sri Lankan girl's eyes were red and puffy. Her torn uniform was stained with dry blood; where the fabric did not cover, her skin bore as many cuts and bruises as Suga had seen in his dreams. Her blood-stained gag was set in an odd angle against her partially-toothless mouth. Yuka, who walked in front of them, giggled. "We've brought her here. Now we'll leave ya boys to have yer fun."

"Sure you don't want to stay here and watch?" one of the seven boys asked.

The girls replied with a dismissive laugh before they walked away.

Dilshani was overwhelmed with the same helplessness of an antelope being hunted by a pack of wolves. She shivered at the impending doom, but she had nowhere to run. Four boys seized her; the others stayed in watch, ready to warn their partners-in-crime in case interference came. She struggled in pain, but two hands grasped her arms, while four others tore at her clothes.

"Look, what dark nipples she's got!" One of the boy's comments made her cringe.

The other boys laughed. "Hey, d'ya reckon her cunt is just as dark?"

"There's only one way to find out." Another boy ripped her panties, laying her bare genitals before them all. "Heh, quite a bush she's got down here."

Fresh tears streaked down her trembling chin, but the boys had no plan to stop there. Without preamble, a pimpled boy dipped his finger inside her privates, shaming her further. "It's fuckin' tight. She's a virgin, alright."

The rest of them sneered. They took her right there, begrimed with sweat and besmirched with dirt. It was all about lust and masculinity show-off and subjugation. In a nightmare that refused to go away through her painfully awake state, the ravishers helped themselves with her bare body and took delight in her whimpers.

Until that day, she had never known that a boy's flesh could be as hard as iron. That vile, filthy thing slammed into her introduced new throes of pain different from all the torments she had been forced to undergo. Cringing, she watched blood streaming down below as the despicable brats forcefully parted her resisting thighs. Legs held apart, she couldn't even stomp her feet at the intrusion. A heavy flow of tears pricked her eyes, but it only made her oppressors laugh harder.

Her inexperienced body couldn't withstand their continuous abuse. The first thrust was agonizing, the second was no less torturous and the third brought her the gravest mortification she had ever experienced in her life. On and on the thrusts went in and out of her. All the random groping and shoving happened in a race that felt like a never-ending circle.

Suga wished with all his might to wake up, but no matter what he did, he remained compelled to become a passive witness to the heinous act. He tried to crash his head against the wall, but his body grew insubstantial, going through the bricks rather than bumping into them. He squeezed his eyes shut and plugged his ears, but his mind still discerned what was happening to Dilshani.

"Good, the wench reacts to the pain 'n' tightens up!" one of the rapists remarked.

From a broken window, Dilshani gazed at the sky, which seemed untroubled by humans' problems. Under the same sky, she used to play tag with her childhood friends, groom her cat on the yard, and stroll along the river walk with her dearest grandma. Now, the sweet memories seemed worlds away.

The sky also reminded her of the skin color of Upulvan deviyo—the Sri Lankan protector of the Buddha Sasana. 'Aren't you a god? Why didn't you protect me? Why don't you rescue me?'

With every savage thrust, Dilshani's body was slammed against the dingy tiles like a broken puppet. Hands in fists, tearing at the restraints, and each frenzied sound that came out of her throat were worse than its predecessor. Desperate. A body on the edge of breaking … No power, helpless in this onslaught of agony. Torso, limbs, front and rear … her body was defiled by the brute beasts. Where there were no seed, her capturers' merciless fingers and hungry teeth spared no spot unsullied.

Tainted.

That was what she had become.

That was all she was now.

There was no getting her body out of their inerasable defilement. Pushing the thoughts of her torturers' jeering laughter aside, Dilshani braced herself for one final pain: she took her own life by banging her head backward against the floor.

Blood smeared her cropped scalp and the concrete below. Vision darkening as her body contracted, convulsed, fucked and abused, ripped, none. Death. She blackened out and fell limp. Her head was cocked to the left, giving her the grotesque questioning look that her gagged mouth could no longer voice.

Transparent and light as the air itself, her soul floated. Out from her physical body, freed from the mundane torments, but bearing a grudge against her persecutors still.

The boy with split chin declared, "I've always wanted to try it with the dead."

Some of his companions threw him a disgusted look, but did not stop him nevertheless. The boy stepped forward to lay the girl's corpse supinely on the ground. He then spread her lifeless legs and placed his erection in-between them.

"You guys should try this. It's fantastic! She doesn't protest regardless anything you do. It's like she's a slave and you got an ownership over her. You're the king of the world. Woo-hoo!"

The boy with a prominent nose uttered, "Ugh, I'd be deader than dead if I ever enjoyed fucking that cold fish!"

But his companions showed some curiosity and began grabbing Dilshani's legs. "Hey, Tetsu's right. She isn't cold yet. Come on, Taku, let's have a taste at her one last time before we chop her dead body into pieces."

In unabated rage, Dilshani's soul vowed, 'You will pay for this. You all will.'

විසි හත

Visi Hata

27

Suga awoke with a muffled gasp from that horrid dream. His throat was tight with repulsion, while his hands clutched at the sheet and blankets. Thanks to that necrophilic gang-bang, he doubted he wouldn't be traumatized by sex for the rest of his life. Waiting for his galloping heart to slow, he tried to divert his attention to something else—anything else, as long as it wasn't related to fucking.

'When she was thinking in Sinhala Language … did I understand it because I can read her mind?' he wondered.

But when he needed a tinkle an hour later, the sight of his own dick made him sick.

විසි අට

Visi Aṭa

28

"Come in," Suga answered the knocks on his bedroom door in the morning.

As soon as Yutaka entered, he commented, "Nī-san, you look pale."

"It's just the nightmare I had—nothing to worry about. By the way, are you ready yet? I saw your friends waiting outside from the window."

"Yeah, I know. I just want to return this before I go." Yutaka handed down a pair of compasses. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it," Suga replied without taking his eyes off his brother as the latter set the item down on the desk. A sudden thought seized him: what would it be like to puncture Yutaka's eyeball with the compass needle?

'What the… What am I thinking?!'

"Aren't you going to say sorry to mom and dad?" Yutaka asked as he made his way toward the door, ripping the older boy out of his brief reverie.

"Hmm, I guess I'd better do that. I still don't understand why dad was so angry, though. Even if I said something foreign, why did he assume I was scorning mom?"

Yutaka turned around. "Wouldn't anyone? You said that foreign sentence in the same tone as gangsters in the movies would say, 'To hell with you, hag!' and you were snickering to begin with."

"Can't be; I was puzzled at that time."

His little brother shrugged. "I know what I saw."

විසි නවය

Visi Navaya

29

"Hey, Suga, there's a new okonomiyaki-ya near my house. Wanna try it?" Daichi offered after practice.

"Sure," Suga chirped. "Is Asahi coming?"

"No, he has to run some errands for his mom."

"That's too bad."

Suga was sure he was putting up a smiling face, but he must haven't paid enough attention to the drooping end of his sentence, since Sawamura immediately tried to cheer him up, "I'll try to find a day when the three of us can go together."

"Yeah." Suga put up another cheerful front. How could he tell Sawamura that it wasn't disappointment as much as guilt that he felt? Azumane had been avoiding him since the one-sided slugfest.

As expected from a newly-opened business, the small but cozy okonomiyaki parlor was bustling with customers. Sawamura and Suga were designated to a table for two, which was embarrassingly surrounded by couples because the tables for four or more were located further at the back.

"We could eat somewhere else for now and return to this place another day when it's less crowded, if you like. Or we can bring Asahi here," Sawamura offered, his gaze flitting from the couple who were holding hands under their table to the cluster of larger tables occupied by students, workers, or families.

"I have a better idea," Suga announced, a big grin splitting his face, "Let's eat here right now and we can come back later with Asahi if the food tastes good."

Sawamura took less than two minutes of flipping through the menu to decide that he would have mixed seafood okonomiyaki.

"What a coincidence! I'm thinking of ordering the same item," Suga replied after hearing Sawamura's choice.

Sawamura was about to raise his hand to call a waitress when Suga spoke again, "Wait. Daichi, look. It says there's an okonomiyaki-for-two option here. It's cheaper than if we order two individual dishes."

Suga thought Sawamura looked a little stiff when he responded, "Well, as long as you're okay with it."

It wasn't until the waitress repeated their order that Suga realized it.

"One mixed seafood okonomiyaki for couple and a refillable jug of green tea."

Suga blinked. He noticed Sawamura trying his best not to fidget at the sound of the word "couple." There was no mistake that the couple on the next table had heard her words, though: the girl giggled, while her boyfriend's body shook hard as he tried to restrain his laughter.

Apparently the waitress must have noticed this too, since she quickly corrected herself, "I mean one mixed seafood okonomiyaki for two and a refillable jug of green tea. I'm sorry. The menu doesn't specify that the dish is specially made for couples, but the customers who order it are usually couples, so I just got a slip of the tongue… A-anyway, I'll be right back with your orders."

"Come on, stop making that face, Daichi," he assured his best friend as casually as possible when the waitress had rushed to the kitchen, "It's not like this restaurant will serve our order in heart-shaped bowls."

"I guess you're right." Sawamura rubbed the back of his head and forced himself a smile, and then he was back to fidgeting. Two tables away from them, a girl was ogling at her date, after the guy wrote words of love using mayonnaise squirts on the okonomiyaki he had grilled.

Their years of friendship meant that Suga had no difficulty pinpointing the safe conversational topics that could put Sawamura at ease. He started with the easiest: volleyball. "Do you think we'll face Seijō again in the October Playoffs?"

Sawamura's hunched shoulders relaxed at once. "I don't know. I want to see how far they progress, especially now that Dateko's first years are going to make their debut, but it's also quite tempting to have Dateko and Seijō finish each other off."

"Hahaha… if that really happens, poor Kageyama. He never said it out loud, but it's obvious he's itching to beat Oikawa. After our summer training, how big do you think is the chance of Kageyama's victory if they were to compete one-on-one?"

On and on they chatted and, all too soon, the waitress returned with a tray laden with bowls of batter, okonomiyaki sauce, and raw ingredients; a pair of metal spatulas; a wooden lid; and a small hourglass. Switching on the electric hotplate fitted to the table, she explained, "When the sand has sunk to the bottom, that means it's time to flip your okonomiyaki. We already greased the teppan, but if you need extra oil, it's in this container." She pointed at a row of small jars on the table. "Enjoy your meal."

After rolling up his sleeves, Suga mixed the batter of flour, grated yam, bonito stock, and eggs with shredded cabbage, green onion, fishcake, crabstick, octopus, squid, shrimp, scallop, and sweet corn. Afterwards, he spread the mixture circularly on the iron plate. At this point, Sawamura took the other spatula and helped Suga shaping it before pressing the batter with the wooden lid.

"We're a good team, aren't we? Suga commented as he watched the grains of sand trickling into the bottom glass bulb, his fingers absent-mindedly fiddling with the sauce brush. "I kinda wish we wouldn't need to graduate."

"Suga, I also—"

"Oops!" Suga bent under the table to retrieve the brush he had accidentally dropped. He then waved at a waitress and asked for a replacement.

"Sorry, Daichi, you were saying?"

Sawamura glimpsed at the hourglass and answered, "Time to turn this over." Having removed the lid, he smoothly flipped the pancake-like food with two spatulas, and Suga secretly thought, 'Daichi's technique's cool.'

The waitress came back with a clean brush just in time for the dough to be cooked enough. Suga immediately used the brush to spread a thin layer of sauce on the grilled okonomiyaki, its tangy aroma fused in perfect harmony with the savory seafood batter.

"You aren't drawing faces or anything, Daichi?" Suga's eyes followed the mayonnaise drizzle from the squeezed bottle.

"Would you prefer if I drew anything on it?" Sawamura asked as he lifted his glass to his mouth.

As his hand topped off the okonomiyaki with dried bonito flakes, Suga quipped, "For a start, I bet the couples around us would snicker if you drew an arrow between our names."

Sawamura nearly choked on the tea he had just sipped. As always the case with bonito flakes on a hot surface, they wiggled in a dance, but Sawamura's chagrined look indicated that he felt them deriding him. To Suga, nothing could be more entertaining than to watch the normally charismatic captain reduced into an awkward mess like this.

"How much beni shōga would you like?" Suga opened the leftmost condiment jar and spooned some of the red pickled ginger.

"A moderate amount." Sawamura opened the condiment jar next to the ginger to spoon the powdered laver before slicing the finished dish fresh off the grill with a spatula.

Suga could cut up his portion with the other spatula, but he knew that his best friend would be caring enough to prioritize others before himself. However, a bit of the shaved bonito and powdered laver fell off onto the table when Sawamura transferred the first slice to Suga's plate.

'He must pay for this!' A growl rang in Suga's head. The food, tableware, and diners all went swimmy almost like a jumbled dream. Dilshani appeared at the verge of his vision, instructing him…

Just as a clock's hands would start moving automatically the moment its old batteries were replaced, Suga's hands set themselves in motion. One held Sawamura's forearm to keep it in place, the other picked his chopsticks. In his vision, it was clear what he was meant to do: stab those wooden sticks with all his might into Sawamura's flesh. Sawamura would then writhe in agony like a worm whose body was half-eaten by a fish, though perhaps with an addition of his eyes popping out jittering at the ends of their optic strings. If that boy got punctured tendon that would hinder him to play volleyball, all the better.

'Don't!' a small, distant voice cried within Suga. It was the last kernel of sanity at his command—a slight ray among what felt like a bank of gray thunderheads between his ears.

Providentially, Suga managed to stop himself at the last moment. The chopsticks hovered half an inch from his best friend's skin. Sawamura stared at him from the opposite side of the table, lips parted in shock, color drained from his face.

'Think of something! Quick!'

"So, this is how you'd look when you're in a pinch, Daichi? You're always so reliable on the court. I've always wanted to see your abashed state at least once before we graduate." Suga put on a chuckling façade in spite of the guilt washing down his insides.

Sawamura huffed. "That's not funny."

"Sorry, Daichi," Suga chuckled still. "As an apology, how about I feed you my portion?" He pinched a bite-sized okonomiyaki off his plate with his chopsticks and delivered it to Sawamura's mouth."

Sawamura looked even more uncomfortable with the snickering couples around them and cried, "Honestly, what's wrong with you today, Suga?!"

WHACK. Customized to sound like a hand hitting volleyball, the shutter of Suga's phone camera opened and closed.

"A flustered Daichi's photo taken." Suga hummed merrily as he pocketed his cellphone. "I'm gonna make that my wallpaper and show the rest of the team tomorrow. Oh, and I bet it'll be a nostalgic material to show our children and grandchildren."

"Give me that!" Rising from his seat, Sawamura bent over the table to reach for Suga's phone. At any other occasion, his looming figure would have been intimidating, but right now what filled Suga's mind was how close his friend's face from his own. Their lips were aligned and a closing of the eyes would be all it took to initiate a kiss. Sawamura, who realized this a second later, backed off at once.

Suspecting that the people on the neighboring tables laughed at them, Suga kept his head down. His cheeks were aflame with embarrassment and his gaze transfixed on the vinyl floor.

"Just … delete that picture," Sawamura spoke in a low volume from the other side of the table.

Suga nodded.

තිහ

Tiha

30

Suga finished all his homework that night because he planned to research on Dilshani's victims the following morning. With school out of the way on Saturdays, he headed straight to Miyagi Prefectural Archives the moment he finished breakfast.

It was Suga's first time working with microform, but luckily it was just as straightforward as the librarian had explained to him. Sitting in front of one of the microfilm readers, he studied case after case from the 1978 newspaper archive.

Yoshida Hanako's corpse was found drowned in the Kitakami River by three men while trying to fish for salmon. There was no sign of resistance, but since the current was strong and her friends asserted that she was never an accomplished swimmer, the police recorded her death as an accident rather than suicide.

Kobayashi Katsumi's corpse, stagnated in the puddle of blood streaming from her sliced wrists, was found in her room two weeks after her mother remarried. The police immediately declared her death to be a suicide case because she disapproved of her new stepfather.

Wakahisa Tamotsu died in a motorbike accident when the boy was on his way home. He couldn't slowdown in time before his bike crashed through the road maintenance cone bars and fell into a plumbing pit. When the ambulance arrived, they found him with a broken neck, broken arm, and broken leg. With his good hand, he tried to point at the empty space behind the stretcher, and died on the spot.

Hikawa Yoshimizu's death occurred just two days later. Although his relatives and friends substantiated that he was not the sort of weak-minded individual, most people still assumed that he hurled himself off a flyover because of the grief over his best mate Wakahisa's death.

Watanabe Kiyoshi died from a stab wound he received from an unidentifiable robber. The robber was said to have fled from a jewelry shop and bumped into him during the police's chase, casting off the robber's mask. Ignorant of the man's status and the contents of his duffel bag, Watanabe grabbed the robber's collar and shouted expletives at him. The robber slit Watanabe's throat at once. When the police officers reached the crime scene, they found no more than the robber's mask and Watanabe's wide-eyed corpse.

Hashimoto Shizuka was run over by a bus. The passengers verified the driver's statement that he had made sure he had pulled the hand brake lever before he assisted an elderly woman getting down from the bus' steep stairs. Even so, the fact remained that the bus glided down the hill and crushed Hashimoto, who was squatting to pick up her fallen earring.

Yamashita Chiyoko drowned in the sea courtesy of a capsizing water scooter, even though her boyfriend who rode the same vehicle survived. The lifeguards failed to find her when they rescued her boyfriend. It wasn't until two days later that they found her corpse tangled among seaweed.

Ono Takuya was reported to enter the tigers' cage. Since it was a school day and close to exam period, the zoo was short of visitors. The cage was unsupervised outside feeding time. No one knew what he did to agitate the tigers because, according to the zoo director, the tigers had been raised there since they had been cubs and since they had always been fed with the sliced meat of slaughtered cattle, they had never attacked any living creature. Lock-picking tools were found in the pocket of his bloody uniform. Too grisly to behold, his half-digested body, which had turned into bloody chunks of flesh, was then cremated.

Noguchi Yuka's corpse was the least recognizable of all. Charred by the arson that she herself had ignited with the aid of two gasoline containers, she perished in the same fire that destroyed Ishinomaki Saint John the Apostle Orthodox Church. Even after her identity was exposed through the post-mortem DNA investigation from what little remained from her corpse, police still could not affirm the reasons behind her actions. About a third of the church was burnt down, but no clergyman was harmed; hence, the possibility of vengeance against one of the residents was very low. Her family also asserted that she had never associated herself with Christianity, striking down the possibility of religious discrimination.

Gotō Emi strangled herself during a group date. No one knew her reason. The witnesses—three girls and four boys with whom she shared the table—stated that she didn't show any symptom of being upset or even the slightest peculiarity in her behavior, but her hands closed around her throat all of a sudden. The strength of four boys was no match for hers; her hands wouldn't budge no matter how hard her companions strived to pull them off. The restaurant's waiters and other customers attested to the credibility of the accounts.

Nakajima Tetsuo banged his head against the wall of his classroom the very next day. There was no fuss about this being a suicide, since his close friends knew that he had always pined for Gotō Emi.

Hayashi Miho's death was determined as a domestic accident. The gas explosion occurred in the afternoon while all other family members were away, but she stayed at home because of a fever. Fortunately, the fire hadn't been fast enough to creep out to the neighboring houses before the firefighters arrived.

Suga couldn't find any detail in regard to Okumura Rie and Kutsukake Bunta's deaths. The only article in which their names were mentioned was about a Shinto purification ritual at Takemori Junior High done on the principal's request. It said that a lot of parents began to withdraw their children from that school in fear lest it was cursed. Although some of the deaths seemed to be pure misfortune—such as Okumura's accident with a slippery bathroom floor and Kutsukake's case choking on his food during dinner—others were violent or even suicidal.

Afterwards, Suga spent hours of name matching between the photocopied pages containing the photos of Yuka's and Yoshimizu's gangs and the millions of family names in the genealogical records.

Suga left the building with tired eyes, long after the night had swallowed the sun, after finding out that his grandmother's niece had been married to the uncle of the brother-in-law of Tetsu's cousin. Could it be that Dilshani resented him for being the distant relative of one of her ravishers?

තිස් එක

Tis Eka

31

Suga's regular nightmares didn't come to him from that night on.

They were replaced by reality.

Horrible reality.

On Sunday noon, when he came down the stairs for a coffee break after three hours of studying, he heard a loud crash from the kitchen. He hurried there, only to find his mother clamping her mouth with both hands, her face pale, pieces of broken bowls scattering near her beige slippers. Her whole body was trembling, but she wouldn't tear her gaze of the kitchen table. The wooden surface had been incised with large letters that read: DIE! The knife was embedded into the table next to the writing.

"Mom, are you okay?"

Mrs. Sugawara managed a feeble nod before she opened the cabinet under the sink to retrieve a dustpan and broom.

"I'll clean this up." Suga took the cleaning tools from his mother. "Why don't you make yourself a cup of tea?"

"Thanks, Kōshi. I'm fine now. I can manage with lunch preparations."

"What's with the crash?" Her husband rushed to the kitchen. He didn't wait for an answer. As soon as he saw his elder son squatting to tidy up the mess, while his wife took several intakes of breath to calm herself, he declared, "I'm calling the police."

Before he approached the telephone in the living room, Mrs. Sugawara asked, "Dear, could you drive me to the department store later? We need to buy a tablecloth, preferably a waterproof one."

"I'll get rid of that table. There's no way I'll let you prepare our meals every day on something as nasty as that—covered or not."

තිස් දෙක

Tis Deka

32

Suga spent his time studying again while his parents went to buy a new table that evening. Then he faintly remembered the desire to see his family pet.

The screeches went on for a couple of minutes, during which Suga felt something soothing, uplifting, leaving him with an odd awareness of how beautiful life was, and unexpected sense of peace.

Then the sound stopped abruptly, and Suga became aware of something warm and rather sticky against his palms. He looked down, only to find Chacha's unmoving body, her coat of brown and white spattered with blood. Her stiffened claws contracted from each limb, as the two screws pierced through her little head. Since most of the screws' spiral lengths were embedded in the hamster's head, their butts were hardly visible, but their pointy ends protruded from around her maw, giving her the appearance of a fish's barbels.

But there was more than agony and terror in those black, beady eyes. They looked accusingly at Suga—the last face stamped onto them before the brain that commanded them ceased functioning. Goosebumps sprouted all over Suga; did the hamster blame him for not rescuing her sooner, for not devoting more of his free time to play with her, or…

…for something else?

'Who'd brutally kill a hamster like this? What for?' Suga thought as he pulled the screws out of Chacha's head. The dripping blood from the gaping hole would leave stains on the carpet, but he paid it no mind, blobs of tears trickling down his chin. The hamster had been his brother's eleventh birthday gift—Mr. and Mrs. Sugawara had been worried in case their younger son would grow into an otaku if he had no hobby other than assembling mecha figurines, so they entrusted Yutaka with the responsibility of taking care of a pet.

Yutaka came home when Suga was burying Chacha's cadaver in the yard. His indignant squall, "You got it wrong—there's no way she can be dead! She was so healthy when I left for Hibiki's house less than three hours ago!" soon turned into "No, it can't be! CHACHAAAAA. The tears which had accumulated in his eyes now came in a cloudburst.

තිස් තුන

Tis Tuna

33

"I'm telling you that the number of officers you sent to patrol around this area is nowhere near enough! When I came home, I found my toolbox lying open on the garage floor, even though I always stored it on the top shelf, and my pet is dead with two bolts hammered through her head just a few hours after my wife found a death threat on our kitchen table. Do you honestly think this is coincidence?!" Mr. Sugawara's angry voice thundered over the phone when Suga headed to the dining table, having tried in vain to get his brother join their family dinner.

"Where's Yutaka?" his mother asked.

"He wouldn't step out of his door regardless how many times I pleaded."

Mrs. Sugawara sighed and ascended the stairs. From the determined look on her face, Suga knew that his mother would not come down before she succeeded in dragging his sullen brother to the dining room, his eyes were puffy and red and he made no attempt to start a conversation.

තිස් හතර

Tis Hatara

34

On Monday's lunch break, a loud crash alerted Suga that he had been standing in the schoolyard with a baseball bat in hand. When a teacher craned his neck out of the broken window, Suga quickly hid himself behind a tree with his breath shuddering out of him.

'This can't be! I didn't do it, did I?'

Yet, the broken glass had only been the beginning. Driven by guilt and perplexity, he didn't dare to imagine that the crimes would escalate on the very same day.

Suga had held back just in the nick of time before he threw a broom at Kageyama during their practice. Given the timing and the first-year Setter's position as he performed his jump serve, even if he managed to dodge the broom, he'd likely end up with a sprain because of his emergency landing. Thankfully, the team laughed that off as a joke, except for Azumane, who cast a worried glance at Suga, but said nothing.

Seriously considering his early resignation from the team to prevent further harm, Suga called Tanaka for a private talk—he wanted to know Tanaka's opinion before telling Sawamura. The sun resigned, bleeding out the vestiges of the horizon, when they reached one of the streets in their usual homeward route, and Suga vaguely remembered an inexplicable need to take turn to goad Tanaka to the next block so that they would need to pass a construction site. The moment he came to, a bar of timber was dropping from its crane, meters away from Tanaka's head.

"LOOK OUT!" Suga pulled Tanaka to the side. The heavy beam clanged near their feet and its booming noise felt like it could take ten years off their lives, but both boys were otherwise unscathed.

"Gee, thanks, Suga-san; you've just saved my life."

Suga shook his head. "No, you could have died because of me."

"Come off it." Tanaka laughed. "There's no way you could have known there'd be an accident here when you suggested this route."

Suga bit his lip, his heart triphammering in his chest; he couldn't tell Tanaka that he did scheme that out. And destroyed the school's window. And slaughtered the hamster. And engraved the nasty word on the kitchen table.

All of them were his doing—he had become sure of that by now.

තිස් පහ

Tis Paha

35

The nightly dreamless sleep became Suga's only respite. He saw himself getting up, brushing his teeth, having breakfast, and leaving for school from above a murky well. He wanted to reach out for that detached view, to choose which activities his own body ought to do and not to do, but his current self could only move sluggishly. He no longer possessed the control over the entity known as Sugawara Kōshi.

There were times when he even experienced total memory cut-offs. With the passing of time, his misdeeds grew more in significance, along with longer periods of memory blankness. Terrifying days of guilt and dread came and went. More and more people grew distant from him. Insinuation was the least of his misbehaviors; and larceny was far from being the worst. It went like this:

In the middle of a geography lesson, Suga found himself yelling profanities at the teacher. He didn't know what had caused his action; he was just standing there, stupefied and inane, trying to discover how this could have taken place. The dead silence from his surroundings troubled him as his eyes met the eyes of his classmates, who were gaping at him in shock, having never heard him swear within living memory.

'What's happening to me?!'

Clutching his head, Suga ran through the corridor, his mouth pealing forth a deafening scream louder with each stride. He ignored the call of the geography teacher and the craned neck of the onlookers along the way. He dashed home with the same desperation as someone who was caught on fire would reach for water.

His mother greeted him at the door with undisguised worry. "Kōshi, your homeroom teacher called earlier and said that the whole school witnessed you screaming in the hallways. Son, if you're distressed, you can always talk to me or your dad."

Suga merely replied, "Just leave me alone for now."

"But—"

"Please, mom."

තිස් හය

Tis Haya

36

The creases of Sawamura's eyebrows looked even grimmer than Kageyama's when the captain forced his way into Suga's bedroom the next evening, after the vice-captain had faked illness to skip school.

Cocooned with his blanket, Suga looked up as Sawamura stormed in, having kicked his locked door into submission. The moment their gaze met, Suga knew that Sawamura's safety was only seconds away from being annulled. "Daichi … why are you here?"

"I found it hard to believe that you, of all people, chose an express post to deliver your resignation letter rather than giving it straight to my face. Still, when I rang the doorbell downstairs, I didn't expect your mom to tell me that you've been too afraid to even take a step away from this room. Suga, does the thought of our future exams stress you out to this extent?"

Suga shook his head, and then nervously glanced at the open door. "Daichi, you should go while you still can."

"I am not going anywhere until you tell me what's been bothering you."

Suga stole a glance at the door again, as though anticipating that it would close at any given moment. "Daichi, please. It's not safe for you to be here."

"But it's safe for you?"

Suga bit his lip, eyes now transfixed at the door. "It's … it's not safe for anyone to be with me."

Sawamura gazed concernedly at him the way a psychiatrist looked at a troubled patient. "Suga, if this is about the crane accident the other day, Tanaka doesn't blame you at all."

"That's because he doesn't know that it's my fault. I…" Suga sighed. "You see, I had known about that accident before it happened. I planned to kill Tanaka."

Sawamura's brow arched. "Did he piss you off?"

Again, Suga shook his head. "Unlike the case with Kageyama, I bear no grudge whatsoever for him."

"Kageyama? You mean, the broom from the other day wasn't supposed to be a joke?" This time, a tinge of worry was apparent in Sawamura's tone.

"If Kageyama got injured, I'd have higher chance to play Setter, wouldn't I?" A melancholic smile molded itself onto Suga's pale face.

Sawamura seemed like he couldn't believe his ears; his mouth opened, and then closed again before any word could come out.

Suga pressed on. "And there was also the thing with Asahi." Suga swallowed. "He avoided practice last Thursday because I beat him black and blue."

Sawamura's eyes widened. "That doesn't sound like something you'd do."

"All the same, my hands aren't clean on the matter."

Sawamura repressed a sigh. "Why then?"

"I don't know why I did it. I can't even remember how I did it. Please, Daichi, these days, I no longer know what my body is going to do. Just go before it's too late."

"Too late for what?"

"Daichi, leave this room while I still have the control over my body, will you?" Suga stood up and held the door for him. "Good luck with the October Playoffs. I'm sure that Kageyama will do just fine as Karasuno's official Setter, just as he has proven in many occasions before. The team wouldn't miss an inferior Setter like me."

"But that doesn't mean I won't miss my best friend," Sawamura affirmed before stepping outside.

His back leaning against the closed door, Suga tried to calm the jagged rhythm of his heartthrob at the thought of the shape of Sawamura's mouth and the roll of Sawamura's tongue as the taller boy pronounced "friend."

තිස් හත

Tis Hata

37

Mr. and Mrs. Sugawara were not the sort of parents who would let their child be absent from school without a valid reason. As soon as they discovered about their son's physical health, they would hear no excuse from him. For that reason, Suga found himself walking through the school corridors once more, escorted by the curious and pitying looks from his fellow students. Owing to his hysteria two days before, now nearly everybody whispered as he passed, "I heard it was exam stress that made him do it." or "How soon will it be 'til he cracks, do you think?"

As much as those comments bothered Suga, nothing worried him more than another loss of self-control accident. When his head started spinning in the tenth minute of literature lesson, he grabbed his pen and stabbed his palm. At least, the pain kept him conscious.

"Sugawara-kun!" Takeda squeaked as he rushed to the injured student's seat, his textbook abandoned on the teacher's desk. He seemed to be ready to cry 'AMBULANCE!' if Suga's blood wouldn't stop dripping within the next five seconds.

Sawamura raised his hand. "Sensei, allow me to take him to the infirmary."

"I'm fine," Suga insisted.

Takeda pressed his lips together, seemingly considering whether he should escort the boy himself at the expense of abandoning the whole class.

"I can go to the infirmary alone," Suga reiterated.

In the end, the faculty advisor of the Karasuno High volleyball club decided to let the captain handle the matter. "I entrust him in your care, Sawamura-kun."

For the first two minutes, they walked in silence. Each step put Suga ill at ease. Sawamura was going to ask him any moment now. Would he lie to his best friend? Would he rather have Sawamura think he was crazy?

The question that slipped past Sawamura's lips, however, was not "Why did you do it?" With a movement that was too rough for Sawamura's standard, he pushed Suga against the wall until the cement bumped hard against the vice-captain's back.

"When I agreed to leave you alone, it wasn't to let you hurt yourself." Sawamura's words sounded hoarse, almost like the growls of a ferocious beast. Yet, there was desperation mingled in with the anger—a sound so piteous that Suga felt his chest twinge with guilt.

Suga reached for the slightly taller boy, wanting to rumple Sawamura's hair. Sawamura was such a good buddy, and Suga often marveled just how Sawamura was supposed to survive with a second-rate Setter like him and a bunch of noisy brats for teammates. The fond articulation of Daichi's name sat at the tip of Suga's tongue, but then what came out of his mouth was a gruff, high-pitched, unearthly voice that didn't sound like his own.

Yes, something was there with him, some dreadful thing whose name alone was enough to make him shudder. Chuckles rumbled in his chest—chilling primitive sounds far too deep from his throat. The welled-up sounds deepened with its atrocious echo, the terrors that distracted him, and then, everything went black…

තිස් අට

Tis Aṭa

38

When Suga's vision cleared up, morning had shuffled into evening. The shadows, imprisoned during daytime, now gathered like mustering swarms of ghosts in the twilight. Sawamura was no longer with him. He was ambling down a street with stealthy crackle of dead leaves around his feet, feeling too dog-tired to walk home without knowing why. He checked his body. His injured hand had been bandaged, but there was no new wound, no someone else's blood, not even a scratch.

But there was a new wallet nestled in his pocket.

Exactly how did he get it—pickpocketing, threat, force? Suga didn't like to think about it; he wanted to cry. He stood no chance against Kageyama's accuracy. His school grades weren't anything special. And now his reputation had been ruined. What did he live for?

His endurance carried him only as far as the nearest bus stop. The bus itself was scarce with passengers, so he had plenty of seats to choose from. Sleep claimed him without further warning after he spent the first three minutes gazing absentmindedly at the rows of streetlamps from the window, in loss for the past and fear of the future.

He saw Dilshani again in his dream, but she wasn't doing anything apart from grinning at him. "Why … why did you do this to me?!" Suga asked. "You were a victim of unspeakable bullying, torture, and rape—never theft. Why did you make me steal?"

She laughed shrilly, and then replied in Sinhalese; now that they had become singular in mind, the language barrier didn't apply to them, "You think something as petty as that is going to be the only act I make you do? How naïve! I'll make sure everyone you hold dear loses their faith in you, destroy you inside out, and go through a worse hell than what I endured."

The answer stabbed Suga like an invisible blade; Dilshani was going to feast on his miseries slowly but thoroughly.

It was the sound of a thunderclap that woke Suga up. Squinting through the window, he saw an unfamiliar residential area. He kept looking until the bus passed the signboard of a nursing home. The street name indicated that he was at least five bus stops away from his house. He jabbed the stopping request button immediately and alighted as soon as the bus skidded to a halt some two minutes later.

On the way home, as he continued around the side of a park, a convenience store came into view: a large "Post" signboard towering above red brick walls.

After taking note of the address written on the owner's ID card, Suga wiped his fingerprints off the wallet and its contents. He bought a padded envelope and enough stamps for express delivery to dispatch the wallet and its contents straight back to their rightful owner. There were a number of cards and a handful of banknotes left in the wallet, but he couldn't be so sure as to whether Dilshani had made him use up the rest of the money. He could only hope that the theft victim—a forty-one-year-old salary man he had never seen before—wouldn't recognize him should they ever meet in the future.

'How long will Dilshani continue this torment?' Suga walked away, hands in his pockets.

Dilshani was such a miserable spirit, but … he had his own life to live. Compassion alone wouldn't be enough to end her frenzy. He clenched his fists. 'She must be stopped.'

'Maybe if a spirit will stop haunting if the object that houses it is destroyed.' Instead of heading home, he visited the street where he had found the butterfly mirror.

As the benighted firmament filling the realm with slate-grey shadows and the cloud-shrouded moon was aloofly distant, the sure-way not to get lost in this dark was by taking the pathway along the canal. He took a special caution when he passed under the bridge; the silence in the air gave him an eerie sense that someone or something was waylaying him in his course.

The mirror, alas, was no longer there when he reached that street.

තිස් නවය

Tis Navaya

39

When Suga saw Sawamura the next day, a part of him wanted to ask, "What did I say to you yesterday?" but the rest of him wanted to shun the answer, to cling to the last dredge of comfort in ignorance before the inevitable came to ruin his friendship with Sawamura.

'At least he doesn't seem to be injured,' Suga soliloquized as he repeatedly stole glances at the team captain during classes.

The Karasuno Library was a student facility on the second floor. Surrounded by its walls' brown ambiance and the slightly musty scent of paper through decades, Suga found it comfortable from time to time to study there. Today's visit at lunch break, however, was not meant for leisurely purposes. After scouring for a butterfly encyclopedia amid the life science books in the east section, he skimmed through its pages, slowing down whenever he came across a species with black and yellow wings.

The bell signifying the end of the break had come before Suga finished reading and he stayed behind, even though he should return to his classroom. He'd count himself lucky if the librarian found him in a matter of minutes rather than seconds.

He found a match at last: the Ceylon Birdwing, scientifically known as Troides darsius, was a butterfly from Australasia ecozone endemic to Sri Lanka. To conserve the species, these butterflies with deep velvet black upper wings and satiny yellow lower wings were protected as the country's National Butterfly. They primarily inhabited riparian forests and open scrublands at forest edges, although occasionally visited gardens with nectar and Aristolochia plants.

But then the bookshelves and the floor got woozy, his head reeled with the none-too-unfamiliar sensation, and he groaned, "Not again…"

But even then, his voice slurred off.

හතලිහ

Hataliha

40

Somewhere amid the perforating pins and needles inside his head, the air whistled in and out of Suga's dry throat; his breathing sounded quick and hollow. The world closed down to a jumble of noises—jeers, whooshes, clonks, thuds, bangs, and snaps.

'Serves them right, serves them right …' the phrase played on repeat in his mind, badgering him and wouldn't stop until he executed the next move.

Suga stepped closer toward one of the moving figures. It—he? she?—cried out … or perhaps screamed. It was hard to register it all through the throes of fury, the relentless thwacks of metal against flesh. Somewhere, a familiar voice told them to stop, yet it was faint and obscured by some inner mist.

Closer rackets vexed him again, loud and recurrent, and it sounded like there wouldn't be an end of them. Rattles. Clashes. Then the yelps resumed. Next a sound similar to a breaking pencil lead came. After that final sound, all other dissonances ceased.

Only then was the pricking sensation subsiding from Suga's head. He felt his hands loaded with something long, hard, and thin. He looked down and found a blood-spattered crowbar between his fingers.

'What have I done this time…?'

Although dreading the answer, Suga looked around. Five students from another school were lying on the ground, all heavily injured. He saw their uniforms growing darker, sodden with spreading blood. Where the garment didn't cover, their skin was decorated with bruises. One of them even had his hand nailed to the ground with a knife, its blade piercing through his flesh.

Suga cringed. What if any of those boys was mortally wounded or suffering from permanent injuries? Their dyed hair and pierced face indicated that they were reprobates—scums of the society who wouldn't hesitate to defy rules and trampled the weak—but still…

Suga felt that his own body was aching in many places and tired, his muscles just as sore as when he had participated in a school marathon. Trying to identify his location, he walked with a pronounced limp at first, but his gait began to smooth out after twenty strides or so. It was no use; not only did he fail to recognize the place, but he also had never been to this part of town before.

The place lacked adequate lighting, as though it hadn't been meant for human occupancy. In the far background, a tall building's chimney propelled dark smoke into the sky and the air around him stank of burning matters. He started to suspect that he was at an Incineration Plant, which devoured garbage to turn it into electricity, hot water, and a sandy slag used in asphalt, bricks and concrete.

Suga fished his cellphone out of his pocket. Learning his location from GPS, he strode out of the alley. But in the dark, his foot bumped into a large object. The black Karasuno gakuran, short dark hair, and the medium build body…

"Daichi!"

Suga hunkered down, panic clutching around his heart. Blood pooled around his best friend's head. Sawamura was as motionless as a corpse with his arms drooping and their hands dangling limply from his wrists.

"Daichi! Daichi!" Suga called again. He didn't dare to shake Sawamura's shoulder, in fear of aggravating his concussion.

Sawamura remained unconscious.

"Daichi, please, open your eyes!"

In saner times, when Suga didn't come to with rancid smell and trails of crimson trickling down his hands, the sight of Sawamura closing his eyes would incite the wishful thinking of a kiss. But now, he'd pay everything in his possession just to see Sawamura wake up.

"Daichi…"

Sawamura just lay there, soundless and unmoving, with no sign of ever reviving. What about the October Playoffs, graduation, Akita University, and his bright future ahead?

Suga bit his lower lip, and then dialed 119 to request an ambulance. Next, he called 110. If his imprisonment could prevent the risk of harming Sawamura in the future…

"Officer, I think I attacked six high school students at—"

'It's not the time yet for you to rot in jail. You've still got more roles to play.' Dilshani's words robbed Suga of his power of speech. The declaration echoed in his head as his breath caught in his throat.

"Hello? Hello? Are you still there?" The police officer's question over the line went unanswered.

හතලිස් එක

Hatalis Eka

41

Against his will, Suga's body moved, traveling homewards.

The journey itself was a blur.

He saw the bus shelter, the approaching bus, the rows of seats, the front yard of his house, and the door of Yutaka's room—all without any option to do otherwise. No one was at home: his father at the office, his mother at her regular hairdresser, and his brother at school. The reason Dilshani took Suga to Yutaka's room must be…

'No more stealing!' Suga pleaded, 'Please!'

'Don't worry. Nothing as petty as that today,' Dilshani assured him.

He tried to turn back to his own room, but his legs wouldn't obey him. His arms reached for the shelves where Yutaka displayed his mecha model collection and seized two of the robots.

He pulled out their limbs first and trampled them on the ground next. One of the robots' bodies was fractured, and its Sword of Light—or Sword of Lightning, whatever Yutaka had told him—came apart. The other's paint was chipped. Suga swiped more robots, only to break them savagely, including the limited edition ones of which purchase required hours of queuing.

'No!' his mind cried. Those figurines were Yutaka's pride and joy, bought with his own pocket money as well as modeling tournament prize. Yutaka had devoted enormous time and efforts to assemble each model, paint and airbrush each piece, and smooth each joint with sandpaper. But worst of all, Yutaka, who was still recovering from Chacha's death, would surely be devastated by this desecration of his precious collection.

The devastation came so soon, too soon. The door opened to reveal Yutaka, a look of disbelief upon his features. He picked up the disfigured robot nearest to his foot and feebly asked, eyes glassy, "Nī-san, why…?"

Suga wanted to reply, to explain, to apologize, but all he felt was that his lips were being pulled taut until they curved upwards.

"Don't just sneer at me! Tell me why!" Angry tears tumbled down from Yutaka's eyes. His fists were balled in determined vengeance; one wrong answer from his elder brother, he would strike.

Instead, Suga sneered again. He snatched a pair of scissors from Yutaka's desk and swung them at his younger brother's arm.

A tinge of fright laced Yutakas's voice as he dodged. "What are you doing?!"

Suga chased after him.

"Nī-san, why are you attacking me?!" Yutaka evaded the second lunge, his voice a pitch higher.

Suga pursued again, the scissor blades an inch away from Yutaka's neck.

"Nī-san!" Yutaka was positively screaming this time.

It was funny how small, how vulnerable, how daunted Yutaka looked at times like this. He was shuddering all over, his muscles jerking beneath his uniform. When he made a run for the door, Suga tracked him down.

Trepidation written all over his face, Yutaka tried to scamper downstairs … only the older boy was faster. Suga had blocked the top of the staircase before Yutaka could veer off to its first step.

Suga left his brother with no choice but to bolt out to the bathroom at the end of the second floor—the only room left after the stairs. In his asphyxiating panic, Yutaka's quavering fingers couldn't lock the door in time before Suga's foot wedged it open and slid inside before he turned the knob of the mirror-backed bathroom door and slammed it shut.

Yutaka backed off as Suga stepped closer. "No … stop!"

There he was, in the mirror, coming at Yutaka with raised scissors, his mouth crooked in a serial murderer's grin and his eyes insane. Suga brought the scissors down in a whistling overhand blow and he had just time enough to realize that the mirror reflection was also swinging a pair of scissors, and to realize it wasn't a mad killer at all; the raving manslayer was him.

The younger boy could do nothing at first but sob in that helpless, shaking, warding-off gesture. He was as good as a cornered rat with his back against the tiled wall of the bathroom and the bathtub closing his side route. Tears after tears dripped down his cheeks as he wailed, "Why nī-san? Why do you want you kill me?"

"Kill you? Tut-tut-tut." Suga wagged his index finger. 'Yutaka, you've played too much with robots. Shouldn't you try playing pirate? I'll make sure you have one eye to fit an eye-patch."

Through his feverish fear, Yutaka shakily questioned, "That's not nī-san's voice. Who are you? What happened to nī-san?"

Suga's grin widened. Instead of delivering a verbal reply, he swished the scissors onto Yutaka's left eye.

Yutaka instinctively ducked, squatting, and the scissors clashed against the tiles. Pain shot through Suga's knuckles, which helped to loosen Dilshani's control over Suga ephemerally. "Run!" he ordered his brother. "Get everyone away from me!"

Yutaka looked up at him uncomprehendingly, his lips forming unvoiced questions, but Suga was already at the verge of losing control again. He stabbed the scissors at his own flesh. His forearm sent bolt after bolt of pain, but the pain caved into solace as a thought coursed through his mind: this pain would be a cheap compensation for Yutaka's life.

"Hurry… I can't hold this much longer." Drops of Suga's blood trickled onto Yutaka's forehead.

Yutaka forced himself to his feet and scuttled away. The door flung open like a gaping mouth, vomiting him out of its deadly confinement.

'I'm sorry I couldn't be a better brother to you, Yutaka.' Suga uttered his unvoiced apology as he heard Yutaka's frantic footfalls down the stairs. At the same time, the front door opened and Yutaka's shrill voice exhorted, "Mom, we have to get away from here until the police arrives!"

'Thank you for giving me birth into this family, mom.'

But Dilshani heard what he heard, and she reacted to the word "police." If Yutaka was planning to call them, Suga must be moved out of the way for as long as she still needed him as a pawn.

The next hours went in a flurry. There seemed to be food—a burger with extra Tabasco and a carbonated drink—somewhere along the way, crowd, and train stations, but at least no violence was involved this time; Dilshani probably wanted to keep his profile low for the time being.

Peculiarly, he thought he heard Sawamura's voice over the phone.

හතලිස් දෙක

Hatalis Deka

42

Suga's vision didn't clear up until the ashen moon hid among clouds of gray. Much to his horror, he saw the scenery from the window of a familiar room—Sawamura's bedroom.

Suga turned his head to the left and saw Sawamura bandaging the scissor wound on his forearm. In a sympathetic tone, he asked, "What about your own wounds, Daichi?"

'No! Daichi, it isn't me speaking. Get away from here! Now!' Suga tried to scream, but his closed throat would not allow a word to pass.

"Nothing too serious. I was released from the hospital as soon as the doctor found out that the blood on my head wasn't actually mine. I guess I was lucky to have been knocked out with a blood-splattered crowbar at the first strike," Sawamura replied as he stored the remaining bandage back into the first aid box.

"I'm sorry for hitting you," Suga continued.

'What?! It wasn't one of the five delinquents who did it?'

"It's OK. I should have known better than to step in during a scrap like that. But Suga, this isn't like you at all. You didn't return after lunch break and I saw you from the window, walking out of the school yard in the middle of the fifth period." Sawamura stood up and put the box on top of the shelves next to his bed.

"That's why you tailed me?"

"People kept saying that you were starting to lose your marbles and…" Sawamura sighed, approaching the swivel chair by his study desk where Suga was sitting. "Why did you pick a fight with that gang?"

Suga looked away. In a shaky voice, he murmured, "Don't make me remember what they did to me any more than this."

"What did they do to you?" Sawamura's tone rose and his strides hastened. "Suga, what is it?"

'What did they do to me? Did she make me steal their stuff and they were getting even on me?'

Suga shook his head.

Now only half a foot away, Sawamura demanded, "Suga, tell me what they did to you."

Suga drew his knees up his chest, but refused to tell Sawamura anything.

Sawamura approached Suga and knelt by his side, soughing, "Suga, you know you can always tell me. I'll help you any way I can."

Suga looked up glassy-eyed at Sawamura, broken syllables spouting from his mouth, "Daichi, I'm not … worthy … of your … kindness. I'm … impure."

"What do you mean? Did they drive you into drug addiction?"

Suga shook his head. "I'm tainted, Daichi. I'm no longer…" He bit his lip.

Sawamura's eyes squinted as he asked, "Did they…" his fists clenched "…force themselves on you?"

Suga nodded.

'Wait, what?! When did that happen?!'

"Is that why you haven't been yourself lately?" For a moment, Suga could sense murderous aura exuding from Sawamura's entire body. However, when the captain spoke, his tone was of collected calmness, "You should speak to the police. They have left a permanent damage to your life. They have to pay for it in jail—even after they're freed, their criminal records should give them hardship with job-hunting."

Suga stared at his best friend speechlessly.

With a determined look on his face, Sawamura confirmed, "I'll go with you to the police station."

"Daichi, you're…"

Suga's pitch went octaves higher, "…so gullible." He laughed—a shrill, uncanny derision.

"Before you worry about your friend getting raped, shouldn't you worry about yourself?" Suga husked. He tackled Sawamura to the ground, giving him no chance to react to the sudden push.

With a single yank, he pried Sawamura's trousers out of the way, the fabric ripping so easily in his grasp. When Sawamura's arms attempted to swat him off, Suga secured them with grips of iron and pinned them overhead with such strength that Suga knew his normal self didn't possess, his slender build utterly dominating the bulkier boy. His knee parted Sawamura's legs and straddled the boy underneath into submission. Then he leaned forward until their bodies were aligned and their crotches ground against each other's in heated frictions.

Panic seized Sawamura. He tried to kick his assaulter, but his action only resulted in the ripping of his briefs, its cotton surrendering unconditionally under Suga's savage fingers.

This was bad. Seriously bad! When Suga looked at the writhing Sawamura like this, a part of him wanted to smell and taste and touch every part of Sawamura.

But Sawamura's voice snapped Suga back from his debauched fantasy. "The real Suga would never do this. Who are you?"

"You're getting ravished. What's the point of introduction?" The voice coming out from Suga's mouth sounded hoarse, otherworldly. "Or do you actually enjoy this?"

Through clenched teeth, Sawamura half-demanded half-entreated, "Do what you want with me, but don't torture Suga any more than this. Get out of his body!"

Suga had never seen Sawamura's brown eyes looked so vicious. They seemed to be ready to tear the world asunder if it meant keeping Suga from harm.

"Why must I do as you ask when I can make the both of you suffer with this body?" Suga cackled as he released Sawamura's wrists to heave his thighs and slung them over his shoulders.

'Stop it! Don't touch him!' Even the worst nightmare would have still been better than this reality.

'What's that? Even if I were to taint the whole world black, this guy alone you'd keep pure?' Reading Suga's mind, the spirit laughed shrilly inside his head. 'And why would he be so special, I wonder?' Dilshani asked in an unearthly singsong voice.

Sawamura asserted with unwavering voice, "Because you need a new host. You've manipulated Suga to commit crimes more than he could count and it's just a matter of time before and the police are looking for him. If they lock him up behind bars, there's no way you could use his body to perform more misdeeds. The fact that you called me earlier and asked if you could come here meant that you needed a hiding place—his family could no longer hide you."

Suga's body stilled.

"Is there certain factors you found in Suga that I don't have? As you already know, I play volleyball, too." Sawamura continued. "You love volleyball, don't you? Even though you made attempts to harm other players, you never ruin the game itself. In fact, except for the broom Suga nearly threw at Kageyama, he never behaved strangely during practices."

The statement baffled both Suga and Dilshani.

Suga was ashamed of himself. 'All these times, I've never even asked about her likes and dislikes, the relatives and friends she left in her native country, her culture … I have no right to consider myself truly sorry for her.'

Sawamura jerked his head at Suga's bandaged right hand. "Suga tried to resist you, didn't he, when he stabbed his palm with a pen during literature lesson? I give myself to you willingly, so you won't have to worry about my resistance."

"Now that's what I call a tempting offer."

The sight of Sawamura's bedroom reeled and faded away.

හතලිස් තුන

Hatalis Tuna

43

The next minute, Suga found himself in a realm where night swallowed the sun and other celestial bodies in its entirety. The sky itself was obsidian black and the world was immersed in sooty gloom. No covering draped his nakedness. He was weightless, floating in the air itself, and was staring up from a bottomless abyss—a powerful chasm that was not only too deep to get out, but also kept pulling him down whenever he tried to climb. It mocked him and entrapped him within its claws all the same. It hurled him into the shades until there was only…

…darkness.

He might as well spend the rest of his life here. Because of him, now Sawamura was…

'Yo, Suga. I never thought there'd come a day I see you transparent and glow-in-the-dark and uh … naked.'

As soon as Suga covered his privates, he looked up and came to gaze into a spring of luminescence. It was pure, white light—free from the murkiness that stained the dismal realm, and its radiance washed fear away from him. Then slowly, gradually, the light morphed into Sawamura's shape.

'Daichi? Why are you here? And you look just as gauzy as myself.'

'Whoa! You're right.' Sawamura inspected himself and hastily placed his hand in front of his crotch out of modesty. 'I guess that's just the way things work here, huh? Anyway, I'm here to make sure you get back safely.'

'No, I don't want you to die because of me,' Suga insisted. 'You're the one who should get back. It may not be too late to cancel the agreement with her. If your soul leaves your body permanently…'

Sawamura shook his head. 'Even if, by some miracle, she agreed, she'd move back to you or to another host and she'd still endanger other people, including you. I don't want to live in a world without you in it—I can't cope with that … I'm in love with you.'

The statement rendered Suga speechless.

Sawamura continued, 'I always have … since our first year.'

With quivering lips, Suga faltered, 'After what I did to you, I have no right to accept your love. I'm sorry I almost…' he couldn't continue.

Reassuringly, Sawamura replied, 'Suga, I understand that you didn't mean to do any of those.'

'But I'm appalled at myself for that attempt.'

Sawamura gazed at him, all patience and no deceit, 'Tell you what. If we survive this, you can treat me a bowl of shōyu ramen and then we'll be even. How's that?'

How Sawamura's words soothed him with frightening speed and filled him with inexplicable joy, Suga didn't know. As soon as he answered, 'Deal,' it was as though the curtain of darkness were being lifted.

All around them, countless souls of varying ages were rising skyward, their luminance brightening the vault of heaven like the gentle glow of paper lanterns. Even though they were all bare, none seemed to be shamed by their exposure. Instead, their faces looked so blissful that troubles could never snare them.

Sawamura halted the nearest passing soul. 'Excuse me, would you explain why everywhere was black just a second ago, and now we see you and the others?'

The soul—a woman a few years older than Suga's mother—turned to face him and answered, 'Young man, you have just experienced what is called Spiritual Darkness. It's a state caused through pride, lust, greed, envy, wrath, sloth, or gluttony. I don't know what you've gone through, but whatever you did must have involved goodness. That's why you were able to break free from Spiritual Darkness and find your way to Spiritual Light through the path obscured by the former.'

The woman's soul scrutinized Sawamura and Suga. 'Hmm, since both of you are still concerned about covering yourselves, I'd say you haven't achieved the full state of Spiritual Light. Anyone who's been in that state will feel nothing but bliss and ascend to heaven. Settle your unfinished business, or else you'll end up wandering in the spirit realm forever.'

After thanking her, Sawamura was in deep rumination. In the end, he prompted, 'Suga, about my confession earlier…'

'What are you saying in times like this?' If Suga had still been breathing, his heart could undoubtedly have leaped out of his throat.

'Well, she told us to settle our unfinished business.'

'But…' Suga's gaze was fixed to his toes. He briefly bit his lip before replying, 'To tell you the truth, I feel the same.'

He looked up again, only to find Sawamura's face coming closer. He gasped, never imagining that his first kiss would be performed incorporeally.

Sawamura's forehead was already touching Suga's, their noses less than a breath away, when he suddenly remembered his self-control. 'May I… I mean, if it's too soon or…'

'Daichi, I want to.' Suga traced along Sawamura's chin and rested his palm where the jaw met the ear. His other hand pressed Sawamura's nape, pulling him closer. They moved toward each other in unison, the gap between them growing smaller and smaller.

As Suga leaned in to meet Sawamura's lips, he learned for the first time that the ever-so-soft brush of a lover's lips was tantamount to salty water to a thirsty drinker. It made him crave more and more and… Before he knew it, he had already wound his fingers in Sawamura's hair, pulling until the slant of Sawamura's mouth was where he wanted it.

Returning the favor with equal ardency, Sawamura wrapped his strong arms around Suga and pulling the slimmer boy up against his chest. He held him tightly, as though wanting their bodies to blend together and become one.

Even after their kiss had ended, Suga had the wildest notion that even if the sky were to tumble to wipe off mountains and lakes from the face of earth, it would no longer matter as long as his beloved Daichi was here with him. And from the wide smile that graced Sawamura's face, he was sure that his now-official boyfriend's feelings weren't too far remote.

His lips still tingling from Sawamura's touch, Suga watched another event unfolding: the landscape of their hometown gradually revealed itself beneath their floating spirits.

'Daichi, can you see that? There's still hope for us. It's our school down there, and that's the Foothill store … the mirror should be at the crossroad two blocks away!'

'Mirror? What mirror?'

Suga led the way as he narrated the abridged version of his encounter with Dilshani and ended his explanation with, 'If the mirror is destroyed, maybe it symbolizes a funeral rite—her unfinished business will then be settled.'

'And she can rest in peace.' Sawamura caught his drift.

හතලිස් හතර

Hatalis Hatara

44

The mirror was lying on the ground in the exact spot as Suga had left it. The moment his eyes found it, Suga exclaimed, 'I knew it! She hid the mirror so that I couldn't see it.'

Sawamura smashed the mirror, its shards flying around them like jagged diamonds.

The next thing Suga knew, Sawamura, was lying flat on his back on the floor of his room. His lower half was ungarbed from the earlier rape attempt, but at least he was no longer transparent. Next to his figure lay a shattered butterfly-shaped mirror.

Suga checked on himself and was relieved that he had also regained his own body. He exhaled. 'Free at last.'

Sawamura looked around, and then, after making sure that it was safe now, he got up.

"You OK?" he asked as he offered his hand to help Suga up.

"Yeah, thanks to you." But Suga immediately averted his gaze from the full frontal view of Sawamura's uncovered skin, snatched by a new panic.

Mumbling an apology, Sawamura hurried to his wardrobe drawers and grabbed fresh underwear. He didn't speak again until he had finished putting on a pair of trousers, "So, does this mean we're dating from now on?"

"Um … Daichi, I didn't tell you this before because we were sort of half-dead before, but now that we have our bodies again…" Suga took a deep breath. "Is it okay with you … I mean, when she showed me her memories, I saw her being violated over and over and felt what she felt. They're too sickening … I don't know how long I'm gonna have to steer sex clear from my life."

"Sugawara Kōshi," Sawamura called with a sharp tone a captain normally used to berate undisciplined team members, but then his tone softened as he continued, "There's more to it between us than just our dicks."

Suga looked abashed.

"Don't worry. We'll take it slow," Sawamura confirmed even gentler still his reassurance brought up a smile into Suga's face.

"Daichi, I've decided: even if it's just a little, I'll do everything within my capacity to prevent foreign students from undergoing the same culture barrier as Dilshani did. For that reason, I'll study at Akita International University, so…" he took a sharp intake of breath. "…I'm coming with you to Akita."

The smile gracing Sawamura's face at his announcement rivaled the sun's radiance—at least, according to Suga's heavily biased point of view, anyway.

Intending to surprise Suga, Sawamura clasped Suga's hand in his own. But Suga surprised him even more by interlacing his fingers with his and rested his head on Sawamura's shoulder.

OWARI

OMAKE

(a.k.a. fluffy time)

"Kōshi, I'm making coffee. Want some?" Daichi asked from the kitchen.

When no reply came, Daichi poked his neck at the living room. Their love nest was as small as a shared apartment that typical college students could afford, so his flat mate should be able to hear him.

To Daichi's wonder, the figure he was searching for was not there. He hadn't heard the sound of door opening or closing during the last two hours, not to mention that all of Suga's footwear bar one pair of slippers still occupied the shoe rack. Nor was Suga the type of person who'd leave his open books lying around at the living room table.

His gaze darting from corner to corner, Daichi scoured the room. Only when he spotted a small bush of hazel hair the behind the kotetsu did his quest end. As he approached, the full view of his sleeping lover unveiled itself before his eyes.

Daichi opened his mouth, the phrase "you shouldn't sleep here" at the precipice of his tongue, but changed his mind at the sight of how soundly Suga was sleeping. Deep in the realm of slumber, the angel laid unstirred, save for his own regular breathing. The chest portion of the sweater Daichi had handpicked for his Christmas present rose and fell. And those lips—those unresisting lips! It was as though they were inviting him to nibble at them…

Daichi shook his head to free himself from the snares of indecent thoughts. Cradling the sleeper in his arms, he carried his precious cargo back to Suga's room.

"Aww, and here I thought I might get another kiss," a playful voice startled him upon reaching the door.

Daichi looked down. "Kōshi! Don't tell me you were awake all along?"

"No, but I am now," Suga presented his reply with a smile that made Daichi swear that even if it weren't the case, he'd still have no power not to forgive Suga's beguilement.

Mustering all the air of command from his years of captaincy during high school, Daichi admonished, "You shouldn't have forced yourself to study when you're too tired."

"I just … well, I was hoping I could get the coursework out of the way as soon as possible so I could spend the rest of the weekend cuddling with you." Suga's fingers created little circles across Daichi's matching sweater.

Daichi could only hope that the ceiling's unlit lamp saved his blush the grace of not being seen. At any rate, he'd better remove himself at the earliest opportunity rather than risking Suga spotting the heat creeping up the tip of his ears…

…except that Suga had another scheme from him.

"Daichi, remember the kiss on our graduation day?" Suga cooed as he wrapped his arms around Daichi's shoulder the moment the bulkier young man deposited him gingerly on the bed.

Daichi stiffened, positive that the blush painting his face was no longer concealable, but he answered in a steady voice, "How can I forget?"

"I wonder how many people you have to beg to borrow those balls to arrange the phrase 'I love you' in the school gym; all the volleyballs in Karasuno High alone wouldn't have sufficed otherwise." Suga giggled, his embrace tightening.

Daichi didn't know what to say, didn't even want to think how flustered he looked right now, but his cunningly adorable boyfriend saved him from any verbal response by sealing their lips together in a possessive kiss. He dived in, callused fingers gently spooning Suga off the mattress to bring him closer.

The last vestige of Daichi's self-control dissipated when Suga's fingers sifted in his hair. It wasn't enough simply for him to receive Suga's kiss; he had to kiss him back with equal—if not greater—intensity. He pounced at the beautiful young man beneath him, taking Suga as much as he could while giving himself to his lover.

Suga moaned as Daichi's tongue determinedly probed the roof of his mouth, the suggestive rolls of his hips inviting Daichi to join him. "You look at me as though you've never seen me naked before," he cooed. "What a temptation!"

Daichi lost the ability to retort. Seduction could come in many guises, but one way or another Suga's gaze alone sufficed to deliver the coup de grâce of turning his brain into mush.

Snaking his fingers past Daichi's biceps all the way to his broad shoulders, Suga pulled him closer, Daichi's head dipping down next to the nightstand bearing the framed photograph of Suga and himself with a replica of Hogwarts™ Express in the background during their first anniversary trip to the Universal Studio Japan.

Before Suga took possession of Daichi's lips once more, he whispered, "But I'm more than willing to be tempted."

THE END