Endless Thirst: Above 1

OCTOBER 8, 2022 ~ CTRLDEVIL

Sweat beads were getting into his eyes.
Akihiro Fujishima used his sleeve to dab at his face.
The sun beating down on him and the hot asphalt were relentlessly scorching him. Sweat dripped into his shadow in the street. At the corner of a large shopping center in Saitama City’s Taisei-cho district, an ATM cash machine was set up near the entrance to the store.
It’s Nakagawa’s job as a junior to collect the money.

Fujishima, standing at an imposing 180cm, held a baton in his hand and was standing on watch, silently intimidating anyone who passed by. The full rig of helmets, jackets, and holsters turned the oppressive heat into an even harsher hell. The wind chime hanging at the entrance of the store made a discordantly refreshing sound each time the automatic doors opened.

From a park far away, a higurashi chirped faintly, as if to indicate the arrival of autumn. As dusk signaled that the day of the special sale was soon to come to a close, the concrete plains, which could have accommodated hundreds of cars, were filled with waves of waxing and waning light, and the cars were coming in and out of the parking lot.
Each time a car passed by, it threw a quivering wave of heat at them.
Nakagawa put the cash from the ATM in a case and locked it, and the two of them got into the silver van. He let the air conditioning turn on full blast. The ultraviolet rays through the glass pierced his skin.
Sweat beads streaked his blue uniform with stains and speckles. With a cigarette in his mouth, he fumigated the interior of the car. The smell of sweat was neutralized by the musty smell of nicotine. Neither of them spoke much. Regardless of the fact that they had just finished collecting the cash, they still had a full night shift ahead of them. Nakagawa turned on the radio, as if he couldn’t stand the silence any longer. Fujishima could only be disgusted at what he heard. Coincidentally, the news broadcast on the radio was talking about some sort of bloody incident. It was a convenience store robbery in which three people were slaughtered. Or – a mass murder disguised as a robbery.

A week had already passed, but the police had not yet identified any suspects. The broadcast was sparing in words and moved on to the next topic. The news value must be fading fast – sensationalism was perishable after all. Three people were indiscriminately murdered for a pittance of money. The police had suspected, and the mainstream media had responded by suggesting, that some Asian foreigner had committed the crime. But that was soon to fade into the background. The case was being replaced by questions of prejudice and discrimination against foreigners.
“Detective, I guess you’re back in town today,” Nakagawa interjected.
“I doubt it.” Gazing out of the window with vacant eyes, the gloomy Fujishima simply replied, “I’m not here… not in town at all.”
“Just who could the culprit be?”
“Beats me.”
“I think it was a foreigner. I heard that the sales were only about 80,000 yen. Killing three people for such a tiny amount of money is impossible in our world. What do you think?”

Not a day had passed that he wasn’t reminded of the incident. The animalistic smells and the stupid background music were stuck in his head and he couldn’t scrub it away.
Fujishima had been the first to discover the case. He dreamt about it several times over the course of that week. Grotesque lacerations, leaking entrails, drooping tongues. It took a lot of sleeping pills to counteract all the dreams.

No witnesses. No physical evidence. No commonalities between the three victims. The number of murderers has not yet been announced. The number of murderers has not yet been announced, but it is possible that it is equal to or greater than the number of victims. No, it was a lone murderer. The media wrote whatever they wanted. A man entered the store and stabbed the waiter at the counter. The second chased after the boy, ripped his neck open, and stabbed him in the chest. The middle-aged woman screamed, threw out the basket, and ran away. The third assailant stayed at the entrance, prevented the woman from escaping, and then slashed her head with a blunt object. No, he strangled her with a cord. He did it alone, two men did it, they did it with more than two people – there was no convincing evidence.

Two things were certain: one, the perpetrator was calm. After he butchered the three men, he took the video from the surveillance camera. It was the clerk who set off the alarm.
He was certain that his own name would have been mentioned on the news if the alarm had not sounded a few minutes earlier, and that he would have been the fourth victim. His skin was awash with perspiration. Fujishima had never felt so close to his own death. When the light turned red, Nakagawa put his gearshift in neutral.

“But Fujishima-san, it’s not your best luck to be in charge of so large of an area. How dangerous.”
“It’s not as if I like to take on these jobs, either.”
“Fujishima-san, you’re the boss’s favorite, aren’t you?”
It had only been a year since he had started working for the security company. Even so, Fujishima was put in charge of much of the eastern part of Saitama City. It was more than even a physically strong and experienced security guard could handle. It seemed they weren’t on the same page.

Nakagawa leaned forward. “So what really is the deal?”
“With what?”

“Please, tell me. Haven’t you heard anything from your old colleagues? You see, I bet 20 thousand yen on the foreigner.”
Fujishima pushed the end of his cigarette into the ashtray. Nakagawa kept talking.
“Even you must be curious, Fujishima-san? I heard that you’ve been buying up all the newspapers and magazines about the case. That former-detective blood is rushing through your veins, isn’t it?”
Nakagawa had a mean smile on his face. Regardless of who, everyone seemed to be looking down on Fujishima’s circumstances. But it didn’t matter. The corners of his lips turned upwards meekly. The anti-anxiety medication given to him by the neurologist had taken the edge off his anger.
“Unfortunately, I’m not one of them anymore.”
“But it’s not that easy to forget about the past, is it?”

“It’s easy enough.”
“All you have to do is guess what happened, right? I hear you were good at it… but if that were the case, you wouldn’t be here.”
“Well, yes, of course.”
Nakagawa gripped the steering wheel with a face full of open disappointment. At the same time as the light turned green, he pressed down hard on the accelerator pedal. He shortened the gap between the car in front of him and his car and braked hard.
“Don’t tease me.” Fujishima lit a new cigarette and looked out the window again.
The car proceeded according to the manual, driving in a rough and jerky manner. The van crossed the Northeast Line and circled Omiya Park. He could see people returning from the bicycle race track in the park. Men with beers and cups were sitting on the ground.
He could see an image of himself sitting down and sipping a drink, there. Then he saw himself, his neck ripped open and his guts gorged from his belly. How could he not be affected? Even with his anti-anxiety medications, there was no escape to the nightmares that kept interrupting his life.
He delivered the recovered ATM cash to the bank before returning to his office. The company he works for is a well-known security company, with a large parking lot and a gray building on Route 16. He parked his transport under the eaves.

He went upstairs to the office. As soon as he walked through the door, the salt-and-pepper-headed manager looked up and turned his chin toward the meeting table, as if annoyed. The men who had settled into the black leather sofa there stood up. It was Asai, a small, boar-necked man with a body like a dharma doll, and a tall, broad-shouldered man from the First Investigation Section of the police.
The duo had visited Fujishima many times. Asai stood up and bowed. The man from Section 1 did not stand up. In other words, that was part of his job. Asai had a downcast expression on his face.
“‘Scuse me.” Fujishima plopped down on the sofa. “I thought you’d be coming.”
“Aye.”
“So then?”
“We’re going over the legwork and interviewing people related to the crime once more.”
“You want me to tell you what I did that day from the ground up?” Asai gave a nod in reply.

“I don’t wanna.”
“Assistant inspector-”

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“What assistant inspector?”
“..Sorry.”
“Go back and read over the report. That’s all there is.”

The man from the first section leaned forward from the backrest, his cheeks twisting. “That’s all?”
Fujishima took the time to look at the man. A crooked nose, thick eyelids. A face befitting a man of the highest rank in the investigation, who had no regard for the feelings of his adversaries. “The responding officer said that you came out of the store’s back room. Isn’t that so? What were you doing?”
“Read the report.”
“The clerk might have still been breathing, but you just stood back and watched.”
“….”
“You showed up only a few dozen seconds after the murderer had fled. Give it a rest, you must have seen something.”
Fujishima took a sip of the barley tea that had been placed on the table and stood up.
“Hey, we’re not done here.”
The man barked at him a tone of voice that was practically a form of extortion. The air in the office turned frigid. Asai gave him a reproving stare.

Sergeant Mamoru Asai. He was assigned to Section 1 of the Omiya Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Division. The man who had been partnered with Fujishima until a year and a half ago, fixed him with a superior look.
“If you had never gotten yourself involved, I wouldn’t have gone this far. You’re a former detective who was dismissed from his job a long time ago and holds a grudge against the organization. I’m not saying you stole physical evidence, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you knew a thing or two about the witnesses. That’s what we think.”
“I wasn’t dismissed, I put in a resignation.”
“Either way, you must have been upset. I understand how you feel. Assistant Inspector Fujishima was a well-known name. Some people still trash talk you, but at any rate, you were on the verge of leading a search. You feel like you got the short end of the stick, don’t you?” Asai interjected. “Why don’t we go bar-hopping? If you have time.”
“I’ll pass.”

Fujishima put a cigarette in his mouth. He pulled out a large glass ashtray for the reception area. The man’s wary eyes were fixed on the ashtray.
“I get it. You have a family, too, and it’s tough for you to find a job, huh? You don’t even know when you’ll be able to go home, huh? It wouldn’t be strange if something happened while they were fretting about the investigation.”
Fujishima quietly smiled and listened to the man’s lines. The anti-anxiety drugs were certainly effective, but he was terribly conscious of the special baton in his equipment.

“Cut it out,” Asai said with a hard expression on his face. Was he trying to chide the man? Was he trying to warn him? The man lightly cleared his throat.
“I won’t talk about the past. No games. I just want to know if you remembered anything else afterwards.”
Fujishima shook his head.
“Read the report. That’s it.”
A stare-down ensued for a long moment. Then the man stood up briskly and walked out of the office, stomping on the floor.
“Sorry about that.”
Asai bowed his head.
“’s fine.”
Fujishima looked at the many cigarette butts pushed into the ashtray. It’s not funny. The man in charge of the search. It was as if he was looking at what he had once been. Asai spoke as if to interrupt his thoughts. “How has it been, since then?”
“How’s what been?”
“You know, your home.”
“Ah…” Fujishima slumped down on the sofa. An unexpected sense of weariness came over him without end. “I signed the papers after I retired. All the custody is hers, too.”
“Your daughter’s a high school student now, right?”
“I haven’t seen her in a year.”
“Is that so…” Asai kept talking, trying to avoid silence. “You should come over to our house sometime.”
“Hmm?”
“My wife’s a great cook. I’ll be waiting for ya’.”
Fujishima nodded as he pushed his cigarette into the ashtray. Asai smiled happily. Fujishima was never what you would call a considerate man, a man who was well-liked by others. He and Asai had worked together for a while, but it did not seem as though they had a bond.
“Now then, if you’ll excuse me.”
He bent at the waist and bowed his head. Fujishima turned his head and waved his hand lightly in the air. It was impossible to look directly at him. The pity in his eyes disgusted him from the bottom of his heart.

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