Monday, October 29, 2085. 5:30 a.m.

The corridor of the Tokyo Detention Center still carried the dregs of night.

There is one fact that remains on record. On the night of the incident, the infrared surveillance camera mounted on a fence 160 meters from the scene recorded no image of the man. The absence of footage and the absence of the man are not the same thing. The investigation report disposed of this discrepancy in a single line ― non-recorded due to camera blind spot ― and that line was never revisited in any subsequent hearing.

The unquestioned blank is part of the record.

 

This detention center's gray spaces have no windows. The lighting is uniform. It casts no shadows.

 

Only footsteps confirm that this place is real.

At a bend in the narrow corridor, a single chair has been placed. Cheap, but not broken.

That it is not broken matters.

The man is sitting in that chair.

He is not handcuffed.

There is no reason to run, nowhere to go, no way to do it.

Both hands are clasped tightly on his knees. The tips of his fingers tremble slightly.

The man is a death-row prisoner ― or he was.
The verdict is confirmed.
― Or rather, it had been confirmed. Perhaps that is the more accurate way to say it.

 

Today, deep inside this building, six specialists have gathered to deliberate what the 

state that will not kill

should do with him.

 

Depending on the outcome of those deliberations, the man may not be executed.

At the same time ― he may cease to be himself.

 

The man thought of his own name.

The sound of it when his mother called him as a child.

The laughter of classmates who teased him for having a name that sounded like a monk's.

 

The sterile string of characters read aloud by the chief judge.

All of it, an official had explained, might become unnecessary information in a few years' time. The official's voice had been polite. Without feeling.

 

Five years of training.

Education.

Vocation.

Etiquette.

Thought.

 

Pass, and you return to society.

― However.

Fail, and an adjustment will take place.

No one had explained to the man exactly what that word meant.

 

The man's fingertips trembled again, faintly. His clasped hands did not come apart.

If your memories are erased ― does your guilt disappear with them?

Even if your guilt disappears ― does your punishment end?

 

And who, in the first place, committed the crime?

The man did not stand. He waited to be called.

 

Inside the conference room, his future was being dismantled ― in words he did not know, by logic he could not follow ― carefully, politely, piece by piece.

 

The man closed his eyes.

― If they say he may live.

― If they say he must start over.

Then who, exactly, would be starting over?

 

The light in the corridor offered no answer.

 

One day, there had been sound first.

Metal dropping onto a floor. A dry, clean sound.

What it was, he cannot remember.

Then, light.

White.

Unnervingly white, given that it should have been night.

A flashlight, a searchlight ― or something else entirely.

"Don't move."

A voice. Low. Imperative.

 

Not his own voice. Of that much, at least, he is certain.

And then ― another set of footsteps.

Not the sound of his own shoes.

Heavy-soled, weighty shoes.

Those footsteps came from behind him, then moved away in a different direction.

The camera had not recorded that position at that hour.

Whether it could not record, or chose not to ― that, too, he cannot know.

The footsteps appear in no witness statement.

Whether he mentioned them or not ― that, too, he cannot know.

 

His hand had been warm.

There is a sensation of gripping something.

But only the weight remains. The shape has vanished.

There had been a smell of blood ― he cannot recall the color.

Whether it was red, even that has grown ambiguous.

The smell was like iron. Like mud-water. Vividly real.

 

"That's not right!"

He cannot tell whether those words left his mouth or existed only in his head.

A moment later, someone was sobbing.

The sobbing moved away, as though receding through a wall, and disappeared.

Just before it disappeared, the hinges of a door made a sound.

Someone had left the room.

It had not been a woman.

 

However ― none of this, the man had been able to say to anyone.

Had he judged that he would not be believed, even if he spoke?

Even that judgment, in the end, is not certain.

Whether the voice belonged to the victim, to himself, or to someone else altogether ―

The recollection breaks off there.

 

No.8049 slowly opened his eyes.

The long corridor of the Tokyo Detention Center.

The same light.

The same chair.

His fingertips still tremble, faintly.

Nothing beyond that can be seen from the outside.