Pain,Pain,Go Away

008

Chapter 8: Her Revenge

To get straight to the point, we proceeded to take the lives of seventeen people all told, including the first three.

The fourth victim was the girl's former homeroom teacher. After killing the man who, now in his sixties, had been battling with stomach cancer, she stated "Let's take this as far as we can go." And so she added on thirteen more people she had deep grudges against who weren't part of the original plan.

As far as relationships, the breakdown went like this: seven were middle-school acquaintances, four were high-school acquaintances, two were teachers, and there were four "other"s.

The gender statistics: eleven women, six men. How they were

killed: eight died immediately, four ran, two tried to talk it out, three resisted. Those were the final results.

Not everything went exactly to plan. In fact, we failed many, many times. In getting to the seventeenth murder, our targets ran five times, the police arrested us four times, and we suffered major wounds twice.

However, the girl "nullified" it all from happening. No, we didn't play fair at all. We abandoned all responsibility and had everything our way.

It may seem like I'm just laying out numbers here. But if you talked to me right after I'd finished helping with the seventeenth murder, that's just how I'd describe it. By about the fourth or fifth, each of

the victims were just numbers to me.

That's not to say none of the victims left any impression on me. Still, it wasn't who was being killed that was important to me, but the girl's every action in carrying it out.

The more deeply-rooted her anger, the more blood that spilled, the greater her reluctance, the most radiant her revenge was. That beauty alone didn't grow stale no matter how many times I saw it.

Once the eleventh victim was made deceased, the supposed time limit on the accident's postponement, the ten days, had already passed.

And on the fifteenth day, when all seventeen were dead, the effect seemed to somehow hang on.

Even the girl found it odd. I considered that while continuing her revenge, a strong desire to not die just yet arose that prolonged the postponement.

After completing the seventeenth murder amid a thicket red with maple trees, the girl took my hands and we spun around in the falling leaves, like dolls in a mechanical clock.

When I saw her innocent smile, I felt like I finally understood the greatness of having accomplishing something.

And when the postponement came to an end, that smile would be lost forever.

I thought it such a horrible loss, as horrible as the world losing one of its colors.

I'd done something there was no taking back.

By this time, I could feel such a pain in my chest at last.

Once the girl was done expressing her endless joy, she came back to her senses and let go of my hands awkwardly.

"You're just the only one I have to share my happiness with, you see...", she insisted.

"I feel lucky for that," I replied. "That makes seventeen, right?" "Yes. All that's left is you."

Dry leaves piled on the seventeenth corpse. The tall, large-nosed woman who had minutes ago been breathing was one of those who had joined the girl's sister in abusing her.