Pain,Pain,Go Away

005

Chapter 5: The Girl and the Dressmaking Scissors

My first meal in twenty hours was at a family restaurant. Until then, I'd forgotten I was even hungry, but my appetite came back at once when I smelled the food.

I ordered a morning pancake set for both of us, then asked her while sipping coffee:

"We've had your father and your sister, so is your next target your mother?"

The girl slowly shook her head. She was yawning frequently, not having slept very well. Like yesterday, she was wearing my nylon jacket to hide the blood on her blouse.

"No. My mother, at least, didn't bring me that much pain. Not that she was very kind, either. I'll let her off for now."

This early in the morning, customers were sparse. Most of them were office workers in suits, but at the table next to us, a college- age boy and girl were sleeping in their seats, probably having been here since late last night. The ashtray between them was loaded with cigarette butts.

What a nostalgic sight. Until a few months ago, I'd wasted precious time with Shindo at restaurants in much the same way.

What did we even talk about in all that time? I couldn't remember anymore.

"Next, I think I'll get payback on a former classmate," the girl stated. "It shouldn't require as much travel as yesterday." "Ex-classmate? Mind if I ask their gender?"

"Female."

"And I guess she left some kind of scar on you too?"

She swiftly stood up and sat down in the seat next to me. Pulling up her uniform skirt, she showed me her left thigh. A moment later, a seven-centimeter long, one-centimeter wide scar appeared there.

Taking off my sunglasses to look, the mere contrast of her white skin and the wound felt painful.

"Enough. Hide that already," I told her, concerned about those around us. I'm sure she didn't mean it, but it absolutely looked like she was just showing me her thighs.

"She inflicted it with a shard of glass after pushing me into the mud," she explained matter-of-factly. "Naturally, it's not the physical wound she dealt that's a problem to me, but the emotional one. She was a clever one. She knew very well that shame was the number one way to make people give in."

"I see," I remarked with admiration. Much of the bullying that happened during compulsory education could be viewed as "how much shame can I induce?" Bullies knew that it was a very effective way of making people break.

When people come to loathe themselves - that's the moment when they're at their most fragile. People who are shamed are told they don't have anything worth protecting, and lose the will to resist.

"...When I first entered middle school, the school's delinquents were afraid of me," the girl said. "At the time, my sister knew a lot of malevolent adults. My classmates thought that if they laid a hand on me, my sister would get back at them. But that

misunderstanding didn't last long. One classmate who lived nearby spread a rumor: "Her sister hates her. I've seen her drag her around and beat her again and again." That turned the tables. The delinquents who once feared me, as if to take out their pent-up anger, made me their punching bag."

She spoke as if all this were a decade or two ago. I felt like I was being told about a past she had long since overcome.

"I put up with it thinking that the situation would change once I advanced to high school. But I was only able to go to a public high school, where many of my middle school classmates went, so nothing changed one bit. No, if anything, it got worse."