Tell me, have you ever experienced the sensation of foreknowledge?
I speak not of mere déjà vu.
But rather, the prior knowledge of a certain thing.
A phenomenon that assaults all senses, sixth included.
For instance... "I've witnessed this scenery before."
"I've tasted this wine before."
"I've smelled this aroma before."
"I've heard this song before."
"I've bedded this woman before."
And, of course... "These feelings have stirred my soul before."
A delusion—an elusive kind of illusion that springs to life as the brain errs.
Tell me, have you ever experienced such a sensation?
"Such as one about us having lost the war once before?"
Well... You cannot possibly know that until it comes to pass. And when it does, and your brain believes that this is how things happened originally, do you begin to experience foreknowledge.
Yours is but a precognition. Or should I say... A self-destructive aspiration.
Do you believe that you will lose this war?
"I do. Of course I do."
And why do you believe that to be the case, my beastly companion? You, a loyal follower to His Excellency the Führer and the commander of the Gestapo... If there is indeed one soul who knows best the valiant efforts of our troops—accumulating victory after victory—it is none other than you.
"Allow me to pose a question of my own, then. Do you truly believe in the thousand year Empire that His Excellency the Führer and his Reichführer both envisioned? How do you answer, Hermes Trismegistus? My dear, elusive sorcerer, you, the exquisite magus who was whispered to be a mere step away from discovering the divine truth behind the very construct of this universe? Would a man of your caliber condone such a foolish notion? I think not."
If those two were the only players on the field, I would very much concur with your assessment. However, this country has you.
The Golden Beast, the Monarch of Destruction; de jure successor to the lance of fate, said to grant its wielder the prowess to lord over this universe. As long as you exist here, even the thought of defeat is but folly of the highest order.
"Yet they are after my life."
Oh?
"You need not feign surprise. After all, I am certain you know anything and everything pertaining to the capital. With that in mind, did I give you my previous answer."
Are you, perchance, planning to rush to your own death?
"Actual life or death matter little. There is meaning behind the existence of one such as I in their ranks. It cannot be undone."
I see. Indeed, the dead—regardless of the concept—cannot be revived. Not even I can accomplish such a thing.
The fallen, by very definition, are dead, and so, they cannot be restored to life. 'Tis the bitter law of the universe. The fairy tales of the young and fair are utter nonsense, nothing more.
"And so, if one wishes to bend that very law, he needs to eliminate such fairy tales. It was your very own theory that proclaimed this, was it not?"
Pray and you shall be given. Weep and a miracle shall occur. In my mind, such deus ex machina are the very definition of evil. If the laws of the universe were indeed constructed in such a way, our prayers would have no doubt shifted the very cosmos into motion.
There exists no dream-like paradise where everyone is equally blessed with fortune. Nay, the world is without mercy, without compassion, forged only of blood and madness. As such, if one desires to enforce his own will in the world, he shall inevitably be tainted by both.
If one wishes to save a single life, a thousand corpses must be offered up in its stead.
Destruction is far easier than resurrection. 'Tis another eternal truth present in a world where everyone robs their fellow men of something.
But alas, I digress.
You do not appear to have any intention of preventing your own death. Or, at the very least, you wished His Excellency the Führer and the Reichführer to believe so.
"Memento mori, proclaims the well-known saying. We must never once forget our eventual end. Death weighs heavy upon man's soul."
And yet that very fact makes you the perfect soul to transcend life and death.
"'Transcendence' was your Rune, as I recall. All I command is destruction."
Destroying the very laws of the universe allows one to transcend it. I see. Allow me to amend my prior statement, then. Destruction may be far simpler than resurrection, but it holds more significance. Nay—There had never been a need to return to the original state to begin with.
"Pray explain yourself."
I merely meant that repetition was an agonizing process, my beastly companion. For instance... Indeed—you yourself had a childhood to call your own, am I correct?
When you were of that age, did a single day not feel frightfully long; and to go further; a whole year, like an eternity?
"Aye, a child's world is filled with the unknown, offering a sea of things not known, and a vast amount of information yet to be learned. In such a state, time does indeed trickle along gently, like sand in an hourglass."
Indeed, it is as you say. In other words, man's life is a journey of studying the unknown in order to transform it into the known.
And so this is how I see it. The father that repeats night after the night the very same moral lecture. The mother that prepares the very same meals day after day. The good neighbor whose smile beams the same way again and again. The bird that only ever wings the same old tune. The household with an ever-unchanging scent.
And to bring the example to its extreme: a sun that knows but one way to sink below the horizon.
Ah, how dull; the world truly is a piece of such tedium.
Tis what man calls "aging".
A steady march towards one's own grave.
And yet, despite growing ever paler with each passing year, mankind does find happiness in being able to experience the unknown. Indeed, for that is what it means to be alive.
"And so, one such as yourself—unable to experience the unknown—is, in fact, not alive at all?"
Suppose, for argument's sake, if you would, that there existed a being from which the very concept of the unknown was removed from birth.
—The sensation of foreknowledge.
His life consists merely of repeating and repeating things already known, in a world already known.
Can you envision a fate more hellish than that?
Granted no life to begin with, and consequently, denied death.
Nay, he cannot die at all.
What I long for is proof that I was born into this world.
Ah, how I desire the kiss of the unknown... Maddeningly so.
I shall instruct you in the endlessly cruel mysteries of this universe.
Are you brave enough to hear my words; words I have spoken to none other in my life? To have a glimpse at secrets holding the divine truth that command the very construct of this universe?
"Do allow me a question before I answer. Why would you grant me, and only me, access such knowledge?"
Because I revere you, my beastly companion.
For you are powerful and dazzling; a fearsome glimmer in your gaze.
During the eternity of my un-life, never once have I laid eyes upon one such as yourself; a being so close to the inferno of hell...
You were the first.
Amongst all those I have seen and known, you stand closest to being a devil.
"You utter a commonplace, Karl. It is hardly a rare occurrence for one such as I to be called a devil."
The more extreme the descriptor, the closer it comes to the realm of commonplace.
I will not proclaim fire to be as water.
Fire shall be as fire; water shall be as water. And you... As a devil.
You have labeled me a magus; alas, I am no such thing.
Only the strong enjoy the privilege of being described in simple, straightforward ways.
However, I am weak.
My essence, ever-fickle, shifting like the wind; my names, too many to count.
Frail.
And hopelessly...
...fragile.
That is what I am.
A trifling existence hardly worthy of being compared to your supremacy.
But that very state also awards me with understanding.
Do honor me with your answer.
"Very well. You called me supreme a moment before. And yet, just now, I have thought of a being I would label as the same. Karl, my dear friend. I revere you as well. I desire to soar close to your secrets. Is that merely part of this cycle as well? This sensation we called foreknowledge?"
I am afraid so. When it does happen and your brain believes that this is how things happened originally, do you begin to experience foreknowledge.
Ah, how agonizing, how truly vexing. Even upon meeting you, and being exposed to your inferno, still I do not live, still I cannot die.
"I do feel your agony, I truly do. As if it were mine to endure."
If so, I beg of you to comprehend... If you do indeed command destruction...
"How amusing. Shall we annihilate everything?"
Indeed. May everything burn—this country, this world, all that our eyes can behold.
Heaven and Hell, God and Satan; from the first universe that was, to the last that will ever be.
Till we chance upon something we have yet to savage.
Till we transcend this foreknowledge.
And when that day dawns upon us...
"Indeed, this reminds me... We did have this little talk once before, did we not?"
Indeed, that I cannot deny. We have repeated it millions of times before, more often than one could count.
In this very moment, we are still but prisoners.
Which is precisely why "he" is needed...
...the one we call Zarathustra.
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[Suwahara City Serial Decapitation Murder Case Death Toll Rises to Seven]
On December 4, around 6:30 AM, an employee of a diner located on the Suwahara City Bypass discovered local salaryman Masayuki Shibutani (28) and his friend and co-worker Mitsunori Oda (28) collapsed in the diner parking lot. He notified the police.
As both victims were decapitated, the Suwahara City Police Department has ruled this the work of the serial killer currently terrorizing Suwahara City.
The police have issued a statement expressing their continued intent to pursue the investigation.
Additionally, it seems as if the killings so far have been initiated at random, as Investigators have been unable to identify any shared traits amongst the victims.
[A Modern Day Jack the Ripper: The Shadow of Fear Covering Suwahara City]
The ongoing Suwahara City serial murder case that started on December 1 has claimed seven victims so far.
A crime of this scale and level of depravity is unheard of in post-war Japan.
Though the criminal's M.O. resembles that of the prototypical serial killer frequently seen in western country, expert opinions remain divided, as the victims' bodies show no signs of sexual mutilation.
[Chaos in the Streets—Suwahara City Shooting Incident]
On December 2, around 1 PM, a scuffle broke out amongst several boys in Maruyamamachi, the city's largest downtown district. Officer Takao Ohta (31) was shot by one of the youth involved upon arriving at the scene.
Officer Ohta survived the incident, but is currently hospitalized.
Criminal acts by juveniles have been on the rise in Suwahara City over the past few months; it would behoove the police to investigate the weapon employed in this incident and its means of acquisition.
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-Ren Fujii's POV
It didn't take me long to get my fill of news for day.
"..."
The teachers had given up on trying to teach today, abandoning most classes and telling us to study on our own. This provided the perfect opportunity for me to skip out on the roof, but the faculty was probably in the midst of a heated debate right around now.
In other words, they were most likely discussing whether or not to close the school until the serial murder case blew over.
It wasn't hard to imagine that they were getting complaints from parents left and right, and it's not like the students themselves felt much differently.
Today, we were looking at less than a 70% attendance rate—we were past the point where you could just ignore things and carry teaching classes.
And of course, none of the students actually attending were interested in the whole "self-study" idea—the classrooms were little more than an offline stage for the sort of debates people were having about the subject on message boards.
Considering how many people were getting fed up with the whole thing and just heading home entirely, I was a model student by comparison.
You jammed a bunch of teenagers on edge into a box all day like this and something was gotta give eventually. I really would have preferred to hit the road myself before any trouble arose, but I'd never hear the end of it from Kasumi, so I decided to just escape to the roof instead.
Though, to be honest, there was another, more pressing reason I had for wanting to be alone.
I sighed and slunk down against the water tower.
I had been having the same dream every night now—the same developments every time, culminating in my decapitation by a guillotine.
And every time I woke up from it, there had been a report of a new murder in the city.
I still couldn't figure out who that girl was. Even though we'd never had anything resembling a conversation, I couldn't get those plaintive eyes and that song of hers out of my head.
The guillotine, the girl, my decapitated head rolling on the ground, bloody bodies with their heads severed... I couldn't help feeling that this was some sort of vicious cycle, with my dreams invading reality and reality in turn affecting my dreams, growing worse by the day. Why was this happening?
I could think of three hypothesis that seemed plausible.
#1: It was all just a coincidence—random noise that only seemed to be forming a pattern. This was the most realistic answer.
#2: I had psychic powers and my dreams were prophetic; I could predict the deaths of those around me. Such people did exist according to my knowledge.
#3: The sort of cliché plot you see in mystery novels and the like.
In other words...
"I'm..."
The murderer?
"No way in hell."
I banged my head against the water tower in an attempt to stave off that line of thought.
Murder was by definition a destructive act; there was nothing to be gained from going around killing other people.
I tried to force myself to think about it from a rational standpoint. All that had happened was a few strangers dying, right? I wasn't the sort of guy to get worked up over something so trivial.
My thoughts threatened to get away from me and spiral into an endless pit unless I kept repeating that with enough conviction to piss even myself off.
I couldn't afford to be concerned with the morality of my outlook on the situation. Continuing to fret about things would just dig me a deeper hole.
If I wanted to convince myself that I was a normal person, then ignoring all this shit was my best course of action.
Not that a normal person would react like that to the current situation, of course...
Suddenly, the bell rang, interrupting my little reverie. It seemed that fourth period had already ended.
If the faculty ended up deciding to close the school after all, the day's classes would likely end now. There would probably be a school-wide broadcast soon enough.
Sure enough, a voice emerged from the intercom about five minutes later.
The contents of the broadcast, however, were not what I had expected.
I couldn't believe my ears at first, but I supposed it was an understandable position. Adults really had it rough.
Another five minutes passed. I lay down on the ground and stretched out.
"Phew, so you really were here."
Much like the school broadcast, I had expected this to occur, but not to play out exactly in the way it did.
"Y'know, I've been thinking this for a while, but you hate school, don't you?"
Kasumi stared down at me with an exaggerated look on her face.
"Fujii dislikes annoying things. Like getting scolded. Things like that."
But what got me was that Himuro was there with her, her tongue as pointed as ever.
I looked up at the two of them, scratching my head.
Well then...
"Blue and white."
"Huh?"
"...?"
"I'm at the perfect angle, you see."
"Ah."
"Ugh...!"
I zoomed in with my phone's camera, driven by a sense of duty.
"Lech."
"The hell are you doing, you perv!?"
Himuro had the ladylike decency to conceal herself, but Kasumi gave me even more of an eyeful as she launched a kick directly at my face, which I dodged neatly.
"It's your fault for standing with your legs spread wide open in front of someone lying on the ground, y'know."
"Th-Th-That doesn't make it okay to..."
She kept mumbling unintelligibly. I could only make out a few words here and there, like "you didn't need to report on the colors."
"C'mon, take this and cheer up, Miss Blue."
"A-Ah, uh... Mmph..."
"Wow, Blue, you sure are cheap, if one piece of caramel is all it takes."
"Rude! I'm not a cheap woman!"
"Come on, don't tease her, Fujii. You calm down too, Miss Blue."
"Ah, um, Rea, are you trying to make fun of me here?"
"Hmm? What's she talking about, Fujii?"
"Who knows? I will say, I'd like her to be as open and forgiving as the sky above, though."
"It is blue, after all."
"Indeed."
"Aha..."
Miss Blue managed to plaster a smile on her face even as her temples twitched. How talented.
"Anyway, enough with the meaningless digressions."
"M-Meaningless!?"
"Well, maybe they wouldn't be so meaningless if they were see-through, featured some lamé, or had an easy-access window built in..."
"You gotta think big to win big."
Himuro laid her hand on Kasumi's shoulder. A "fascinating" method of resolving the situation, to be sure, but effective in the sense that it made the other party feel like washing their hands of the whole thing.
"Forget it. I have a bit of a headache now."
"Like I said, you wouldn't become a star with that sort of attitude."
"And who said I was interested in becoming a star via my choice of underwear? And while we're at it, delete that photo, you peep shot shooter!"
"Oh, I'm trembling."
"Oh, I'm shaking."
"Oh geez, what's up with you guys?!"
I could see that this would only end up going in circles, so I decided to let Kasumi off the hook for now.
After that, Kasumi confiscated my phone and deleted all the data on it in a record 2-3 minutes.
"That broadcast said they weren't closing school, but..."
I couldn't imagine the students were all too pleased with the broadcast earlier. That was probably the reason why Kasumi and Himuro came up here looking for me, too.
"Surely you didn't come here to recruit me to go protest with you, right?"
"No. It's what the teachers decided, so I won't go against it."
She could at least try looking like she meant it.
"I just came to keep an eye on you to make sure you didn't skip afternoon classes."
"What about you, Himuro?"
"I just came to have lunch."
Himuro began to dig through her infinite supply of sandwiches. Where exactly did that pocket lead, anyway?
"Will you have one?"
"If you give me one."
"Ayase?"
"Sure, why not?"
Kasumi and I each took sandwiches from Himuro. Our smiles were just a bit strained.
"The Three Amigos."
Now that was a fanciful interpretation.
"But why do you think they kept the school open, given the circumstances? It's weird."
"Maybe 'cause they figure we're not kids anymore? Or maybe they don't want this to end up leading more people to becoming shut-ins?"
We sat in a row on the bench and discussed current events while eating.
Himuro and Kasumi were sitting on either side of me, boxing me in.
How'd we end up in this arrangement, exactly?
"But if this results in one of the students ending up as a victim, they won't get off so easily."
"For example?"
"People would start looking for somewhere to put the blame. The principal would be kissing his job goodbye for sure."
Himuro made a neck-chopping gesture.
"It seems they closed the school of the collage student who died on Saturday. Smart move, huh?"
"The Japanese have a bad habit of averting their eyes from the situation until someone in their own neighborhood gets killed."
"Oh yeah, come to think of it, you're a third-generation Japanese, aren't you?"
"Yeah, my grandpa's German. I've never met him, though."
Himuro nodded while munching on her sandwich. She wasn't the type to let her emotion show though, but maybe she was feeling a bit of righteous indignation herself.
"Hey."
"What?"
"Don't you have anything to say to that? She's making it sound like the Japanese are idiots!"
"No, I mean, I agree with her."
Adults might have had their own set of problems to deal with, but sometimes you had to call a spade a spade.
"It's not just our school that's failing to treat things with the proper gravity, either. All through the city I see stores who are just open all night, as if nothing was wrong. Like, take a look around you. Get what I mean?"
"Not so sure about that. The police seem to be taking things seriously."
What were they supposed to do, declare martial law? It wasn't like terrorists were prowling around. Would that have even been legal?
Maybe it was just me being ignorant, but stuff like this made you realize how "gray" of a country Japan could be.
"Fujii, are you listening?"
"More or less."
"Then what do you think? I'd like an answer."
"Oh, uh... I agree with you for the most part."
I was seriously uncomfortable with answering that while Kasumi was glaring daggers at me from the opposite side.
"Hey."
"What?"
"If you want to complain, do it yourself. I'm not your messenger boy."
"Hey, that's no fair!"
"Who isn't being fair?"
"What are you two talking about?"
"Oh, nothing."
It was no fun being leaned in on from both sides at once. Nope. All I wanted to do was eat my lunch in peace...
I couldn't handle a closeup of two hysterical women, so I leaned backward, but...
"Like I was saying, Fujii, don't you think that th modern Japanese society has gotten too accustomed to peacetime?"
Himuro just kept moving in.
"You're not gonna take that from her, are you!?"
As did Kasumi. I could only lean back even further.
"Hey, what are you whispering?"
"Oh, nothing. Right, Ren?"
The both of them just kept moving in.
And I just kept leaning further and further back.
And then I heard it—an unpleasant creaking.
"Uh, hey."
""What?""
"Better brace for impact."
""Huh?""
I'd almost rather not explain, but, you see... The bench we were sitting on was not affixed to the ground.
So if one were to lean back on it like I had been...
"Ah."
"Kyaah!"
It was only natural that the entire damn thing would tip over.
"Agh, uggh..."
"That hurt... But it's not all bad."
"So you just see this as an opportunity to latch on to people!?"
"Your arms make a nice pillow."
"H-Hey, Himuro!"
"Oh, for the love of... Shut up already."
Damn, she was loud.
I looked up at the sky, hoping to find some sort of solace.
Ah, such a pretty day...
"Looks like it's about time for 5th period to begin."
The bell signifying the end of lunch break rang shortly afterwards. The faculty had decided to actually hold afternoon classes, so it probably would've been bad if I didn't go.
"Ayase, are you going to stick with your usual routine after school?"
Himuro mimed holding a bamboo sword.
"Good question. If they're not closing the school, I don't see why they should be able to take away my training either."
"I do think you might want to tone it down a bit, though. So, will Fujii be with you?"
"Of course!"
"..."
It seemed my feelings on the matter were irrelevant.
"I'm not going to sit there waiting for you all night."
"Yeah, I'll only be doing practice swings. Oh, would you like to join, Rea?"
"I'll pass. I'd rather get home before it's completely dark out. Besides, we have a guest coming over today. So I have to head back early."
"A guest? At the church?"
"Yes. Later."
Himuro made her leave on that note.
Kasumi and I turned to look at each other.
"Guess we should head back to class."
"Yeah."
So here I was, looking at two more hours of classes for the day.
And on top of that, I had to stick around for this kendo freak's practice afterwards.
Man, what a day this would be.