Chapter Ninety-Five: The Day of Descent, Part Three

When Ji Ning saw Ueno Tsukuhisa again, the middle-aged man was sitting cross-legged in a filthy rented room. It was still the most precious time of day, the late morning, yet Ueno still had a bottle in hand. From the heap of wreckage around him, it was plain he had not been drinking merely to take the edge off.

“Officer Ueno, we have found an effective way to deal with this.” Ji Ning did not feel repelled by the stinging smell of alcohol. On the contrary, he held deep admiration for the detective before him, a man who had never abandoned the resolve that had first set him on this path and had pursued the case for twenty years. Time had never forced this man to yield.

With drunken, half-lidded eyes, Ueno tossed aside the bottle, rose unsteadily, and went to the sink to splash water on his face. The icy water brought him back to himself through the pounding in his head. He scrubbed his face hard, then fixed Ji Ning, who stood at the doorway, with a hawk-like stare.

“A trial?”

Ji Ning nodded. “As a foreigner, I must say that under Japan’s current laws and regulations, we will never be able to bring those people to justice. So our method may be illegal.”

The furrow in Ueno Tsukuhisa’s brow finally eased. He gave a smile as cold as frost.

“That’s more like it.”

He tilted his head back and drained half a bottle of shochu in one go. “I spent twenty years trying to do one thing. But I’m not the protagonist of some story, someone who can reach his goal by sheer will. Every day of my life, every step I take, brings me closer to the cliff. I can see very clearly that ahead there is nothing at all, only ruin. It is a painful thing. Old ambitions, the thirst for justice, promises I once made—all those scattered little pieces have become worms burrowed into my bones, reminding me at every moment.”

“For all these years, what once kept me going is no longer faith. It is more like a curse that keeps me from ever blending into the life of an ordinary person. Sometimes I even think that if a person cannot learn to live numb and viciously, then perhaps that is a kind of illness. I can’t tell whether I’ve gone mad, but it no longer matters.”

“For a fugitive at the end of the road, everything must eventually come to an end, good or bad.”

In the hotel, Catherine was watching the surveillance feed. Only when the man in the footage ended the call did she turn to Qin Mo and Aphra on either side of her.

“Everything is proceeding according to plan. He has already sent invitations to everyone on the list. Now all we need to do is prepare for tonight’s banquet.”

Qin Mo hesitated, then finally spoke. “Should we submit a report to Deer Academy?”

Aphra shook her head. “How could we leave ourselves with something like that hanging over us? Once this is all over, this matter should never be mentioned again.”

Catherine thought for a moment. “I still think we should write a report. After all, we’re students at Deer Academy. Someone is bound to investigate this. Rather than waiting for the academic office to come after us, it would be better for us to submit the report ourselves.”

Then she paused. “But it would be best if the report were sent only after we’ve reached international waters. By then, even if Deer Academy gives any orders, everything will already have begun.”

Aphra pouted. “I have to be on the ship. I want to witness Officer Ueno’s trial with my own eyes.”

Qin Mo nodded. “Then I’ll be in charge of reporting to Deer Academy.”

Catherine looked at Aphra sternly. “Remember this: unless your own physical safety is threatened, neither you nor Ji Ning may lay a hand on ordinary people. I believe Officer Ueno can handle it.”

Koiwai Keigo held the wineglass in his hand. Although his face was masked with makeup to conceal his features, the pallor beneath still betrayed the fear in his heart.

While he drank in an attempt to numb himself with alcohol and ease his terror, he kept wondering: what on earth do these people want? Not only did they kidnap me, they also used bombs to force me to invite guests according to the list they provided. Since when did Japan have terrorists?

“Which ship should we choose?”

Only after remaining silent for a long time did Ueno Tsukuhisa suddenly speak. His voice was hoarse, yet it carried an indescribable calm.

“The Little Angel.”

Though Koiwai Keigo was unwilling, under threats and inducements he had no choice but to surrender to the instinct to survive.

The private yacht moored in the harbor was the venue for this banquet. As the guests arrived, Ji Ning, who had been watching over Koiwai Keigo the entire time, cast him a discreet glance.

As a competent politician, Koiwai naturally understood what Ji Ning meant. He could only force his expression into place and greet the guests.

“Mr. Nakamura, thank you so much for coming...”

“Councilor Koda...”

Ji Ning silently watched Koiwai Keigo speaking with one guest after another in the distance, and he could not help feeling a measure of admiration. Under these circumstances, the man could still handle his social duties with such ease; perhaps such conversation had already become second nature to him.

Once Ji Ning had checked the guest list against the invitations and confirmed that everyone had arrived, he lowered his voice into the communicator.

“Everyone is here.”

In the captain’s cabin, Aphra stretched lazily, one leg crossed over the other. The girl, radiant with youth and vitality, straightened her captain’s hat and then sat upright, beginning to guide the yacht toward international waters.

“Councilor Koiwai Keigo, since everyone has arrived, can you tell us the purpose of this banquet?” asked a gentleman in a dark suit and gold-rimmed glasses, lifting his glass with elegant composure.

Koiwai Keigo opened his mouth to say something, but the microphone had already been snatched away by a man in a mask who appeared behind him. When the man removed the mask, several people in the hall immediately thought he looked familiar.

“My name is Ueno Tsukuhisa. I am a police detective. To be precise, I used to be a police detective...” Ueno had not finished before he was interrupted.

“A detective? This isn’t a place you belong.” The gentleman who had just spoken frowned at Koiwai Keigo. “Don’t tell me you’ve been taken hostage by the police, so you invited us to this banquet?”

He snorted dismissively. “There are always fools who come for vague and empty notions...”

Bang.

He did not get to finish either. Ueno Tsukuhisa interrupted him too, but not with words. He used a bullet.

Only when the gentleman looked down at the wound in his chest, blood gushing ceaselessly as he toppled over, did he still seem unable to believe such a thing had happened to him.

Not only him, but everyone present was stunned by Ueno’s action. The gunshot silenced the politicians who had been speaking only a moment before. Even Ji Ning froze at the sight of Ueno firing.

Ueno blew away the smoke from the muzzle and slowly said, though quietly, every person in the room heard him clearly.

“Do not interrupt me while I am speaking.”

Some had already begun to bend down and make their way toward the lifeboats, but Ueno’s next words extinguished the idea.

“This ship left the shore on schedule and has already been heading toward international waters along a predetermined route. By now we should be about twenty kilometers from land. I doubt any of you are swimmers who can still find their bearings in cold seawater. For the record, the best subject I had in police academy was marksmanship. Do not even think about escaping. That will only anger me. There are forty-seven guests aboard this yacht, and I have two guns and two hundred rounds. I trust none of you is foolish enough to test my aim.”

“How much do you want?” An elderly man who looked to be over sixty, and who had been unconsciously gathered to the center by the others, spoke calmly after Ueno finished.

“Speaker Takakura, I do not want money.” Ueno’s face was calm, but everyone knew his heart was surging with emotion.

“Then what do you want? As long as you let us disembark safely, I promise you that nothing that happens on this ship will be made public. You can have anything you want, and his cause of death will be recorded as a fall into the sea.” The man called Takakura glanced at the corpse still bleeding on the floor.

“As expected of Speaker Takakura. Even in a situation like this, you remain so calm. Unfortunately, what I want is something you may not be able to give me.” Ueno raised his gun, the black muzzle sweeping across the crowd and making everyone tremble.

“Everything can be discussed.” Takakura let out a breath of relief. So long as the man before him was not simply gone mad, so long as there remained something he wanted, then negotiations could continue.

Ueno smiled. “Speaker Takakura, do you know what justice is?”

Before Takakura could answer, Ueno went on by himself. “Justice is a thing that only ever arrives late. So long as you are still alive, it is still on the way. Speaker Takakura, what I want is very simple: a trial that is many years overdue.”

He drew a sheet of paper from his coat. Looking at the names written on it, the last trace of pity in his heart vanished without a trace. When he lifted his head again, his eyes were full of rage.

“You great men, so upright and respectable on the surface, probably do not remember their names. But I do. I will remember them forever. Before this trial begins, I hope you will all remember these names carefully—the names of the people from whom you should have begged forgiveness.”

He began to read them one by one, and with each name Ueno’s gaze swept across the crowd before him, his eyes like a blade of ice. Everyone recoiled from that chilling stare.

When he had finished reading every name, Takakura had already begun to guess why Ueno had come. He looked around at the guests and, finding only men among them, felt all uncertainty leave him.

“We are indeed guilty, but that should be left to the law. You can record the statements of everyone present here and hand them over to the government once we disembark. We will face trial in court.” Takakura spoke slowly in a calm tone, trying not to provoke the mad idealist before him.

For a moment Ueno said nothing, then burst into wild laughter.

“I used to like the law very much. It is not as vague as morality, nor does it shout slogans like religion. It is real, like the last fig leaf of humankind. I once thought I could rely on the law to solve everything and uphold justice, until I met great men like you.”

“I also placed my hopes in religion, hoping those ethereal gods would look upon the human world and punish the wicked. But perhaps we are simply too small, and the gods do not care about ants. Those monstrous sinners continued their crimes. Only later did I finally understand one thing.”

He looked at the crowd with cold contempt.

“You live in a despicable and treacherous way, scorning and trampling on every shred of dignity. Do not imagine that afterward you can atone with hypocritical apologies. The guilty remain guilty forever. No matter how the process unfolds, sin does not disappear. I do not believe there is anyone in this world who suddenly awakens to remorse. That is nothing more than a matter of weighing gains and losses. The children you killed once foolishly believed they could protect themselves with the law, but why would you care? You ignored the laws you yourselves created, yet when you faced punishment outside the law, you tried to use it as a shield?”

Ueno whispered, “How could there possibly be such easy luck in the world?”

Bang.

The muzzle spat bright yellow flame, and the man called Takakura collapsed into a pool of crimson blood.

“Even if we are guilty, what right do you have to take our lives? If you do this, you will become a criminal yourself,” a man said, his voice trembling.

“Of course I have no right. But what right do you have to condemn me?” Ueno said coldly. “I too once wanted to stand on dry ground, but after so many years of gaining nothing, I understood one truth: only by stepping into the mire can I judge people like you, only then can I give the victims an accounting, and give myself one as well.”

He fixed the man with a hard stare.

“Those children—those children who should have been in the happiest years of their lives. Their lives were brought to a dead stop by you. Did you ever ask yourselves what right you had to take their lives?”

Ueno raised his gun again.

“You killing us will change nothing. What happened cannot be undone. You can let us go. We will atone at any cost. Killing us serves no purpose except to vent your rage.” The man was already trembling so violently that his body had begun to fail him, yet the instinct to survive drove him to search for any way he might live.

“Atone?” Ueno said, lowering the gun a little, a cold smile returning to his face. “What use is your guilt? No one can forgive you in their place. If, every time a murderer brings down the blade on decent people, the rest simply say the dead are gone and the living must move on, then who will punish evil? Who can guarantee that a sinner who escapes punishment will not strike again? Do you know what kind of pain those families live with? Do you know what it means for a family to lose its smile? There was a child named Yuna Uchida who loved wind chimes more than anything when she was alive. After she disappeared, her mother killed herself, and her father went insane; the sound of wind chimes would send him into a breakdown. A once happy family was shattered beyond repair. Tell me, what could money possibly make up for?”

“Please, please, don’t kill me, don’t kill me.” The man was already weeping and crying, collapsing to the floor.

Ueno pointed the gun at the man’s temple.

“Do you know how terrified those children were when they died? You do not. You know nothing! Because all you care about is yourselves. You put on clothes and you may look like people, but long ago you threw away everything that made you human. Is it only in the face of death that you will feel fear, only then that you will repent?”

“What right does someone who has destroyed another person’s entire life have to go on living?” The gun fired again. Blood soaked Ueno’s clothes, but he did not care at all. The things he had once cared about had already been frozen by more than twenty years of wind and frost. All that remained were memories in his mind, memories that would wrench him awake from sleep before every dawn.

Ji Ning could no longer stand by. Everything had veered far from what he had expected. Hadn’t they agreed that they would simply record the confessions and hand them over to Interpol? How had it come to this? How had it descended into this?

He stepped forward, trying to say something, but his lips opened and closed without a sound.

Ueno gave him a cold glance. “If you had read the case files, you would not pity these scum. Humanitarianism applies to human beings.”

“There was a girl named Mei Kato. She should be twenty-three now, but because of that man you were just pitying, she will remain thirteen forever. Those people’s gatherings, all glittering splendor and obscene excess—I only feel disgust. I always feel as though what they are drinking is not red wine, but the blood of those girls.”

“Do you know how those cases were dealt with?” Before Ji Ning could answer, Ueno continued on his own. “Before their eyes there was only darkness, and in their ears unfamiliar voices. Perhaps they could feel themselves lying in an ambulance, turning a corner, stopping, then being unable to move as they lay on a cold operating table while their organs were removed one by one. At that very moment, their mothers were finishing dinner, their fathers were wrapping up work. They were still waiting for their children to come home, but those children had already vanished from this world without a sound. Later, when public outrage grew too great, these great men casually threw out a scapegoat. Just like that, the villain was caught, spent decades living obediently in prison, and then after release reformed himself and worked hard, as though everything had returned to the proper track.”

Ueno looked at Ji Ning with indifference.

“If the one who died was your own family, and you could forgive them, then only then would you have the right to ask me to forgive them. Many people speak the word forgiveness so easily, simply because they do not understand hatred.”

The gun in Ueno’s hand kept flashing with fire until the final round was fired. The entire yacht had become a hell of blood.

Ueno looked around. There was no expression on his bloodstained face. It was only when he walked past the dazed Ji Ning that he spoke softly.

“I had no choice. If they returned to Japan, the price they would pay would amount to nothing more than a single apology. Compared with what they did, I have already been merciful enough. The crimes they committed are not something that can be atoned for so easily. When the law has rotted away and martyrs must fight to the death, only death can offer the living any comfort.”

When Ji Ning looked down at the deck running with blood, a sudden darkness swallowed the yacht whole, as though drawing the curtain on this feast of slaughter.