A Profession Unfit for a Girl

Stories

## Opening

In my second year of junior high, I—Onishi Aoi, thirteen years old—killed two people.

One during summer vacation, and another during winter vacation.

The first weapon was malice. The second was a battle-axe.

It taught me, bone-deep, that killer is no profession for a girl.

I truly cannot understand those boys of my generation who were caught for their crimes—and not the sturdy ones, but the frail, bespectacled good-boy type—and why every one of them looked utterly unconcerned, not afraid in the slightest.

Could they all have "video-game brains"*? But I love video games too. (Note: The Japanese medical doctor Mori Akio maintains that excessive exposure to video games reduces neuronal activity in a child's prefrontal cortex and impedes the development of emotion, thought, and creativity.)

I can't do this. I absolutely cannot.

I am so afraid I don't know what to do with myself. My body feels as if it is about to shut its vital functions down on its own.

A girl's soul is not suited to killing.

If only someone had told me sooner.

But that summer, the only person beside me was her.

Miyanoshita Shizuka.

## Chapter 1 What You Need to Prepare Is a Pestle and Rapeseed Oil, Shizuka Said

On the last day of the first term the weather was absurdly fine. We second-years sat at our old desks and chairs, listening to the teacher drone on about what to watch out for over summer vacation, every one of us craning toward the window, lined up as neatly as "sparrows on a power line that all turn at once toward a sudden sound."

The summer sun bleached the world outside to white, and everyone was restless to get out of this stifling, damp classroom as soon as possible.

"Onishi in particular—be especially careful!" At the very end the teacher suddenly brought up my name.

Here we go again, I thought.

Whenever this old man, so easily carried away, wants to make an effect, he uses me as the joke.

Probably because I talk a lot, have plenty of friends, and never talk back to the teachers, I make the perfect target.

And as always, I protested:

"What? Why only me?" A few girls in class mimicked the teacher's tone and teased me:

"Be especially careful, Onishi!" And so the last homeroom of the first term ended in a warm, cheerful mood.

It seemed that before the second term began, I would have to say a temporary goodbye to this classroom that was always full of laughter.

I got along especially well with this class. Every day was wonderfully happy.

And just as I wistfully picked up my bag and was about to leave the classroom, I walked straight into someone.

"Sorry." I looked up. It was a classmate I had never spoken to.

She wore metal-framed glasses, and her hair was a—

## Chapter 2 What's your poison?

The season slipped away slowly, like something sliding down a slope, and did not come back.

As if from that day on, summer had ended all at once.

Dead cicadas dropped onto the asphalt, and their chorus thinned. The sunlight weakened and no longer burned.

The adults around us accepted my stepfather's death without surprise. They all knew he had heart disease and had never received proper treatment, so they were not surprised that an attack might come at any time.

The night after I killed my stepfather, my exhausted mother was busy receiving the neighbors who had come for the wake.

Among them was a woman with a strange hairstyle, looking about fifty.

Her long hair was teased full, styled like a Hina-matsuri doll.

I remembered that she came from a family of witches handed down in the village for generations.

These days there was little call for a witch, so the family had all but closed shop. I had heard that this old woman, with nothing to occupy her, loved to gossip about the people on the island.

I had heard she loved turning up at the wakes of households that had nothing to do with her, and I grew wary.

But Mother received her politely.

Later I heard her ask how serious my stepfather's illness had been, and how much of an estate he had left.

After the night had deepened, Shizuka came to the house.

Mother kept bowing to Shizuka in a humble way, murmuring "Thank you" over and over.

The gossiping old woman seemed startled, and hurried to ask me:

"Are you friends with the young lady of the Miyanoshita family? How did you come to know her?" I pretended to cry and ignored her.

Shizuka was dressed all in black, as always—

## Interlude: Miyanoshita Shizuka's Confession

After I opened the door, I suddenly remembered that this day was a Friday.

No matter how much time passes, I will never forget the day the plan began.

But I did not know that then.

(I don't understand what you're saying.)

Aoi, listen quietly. I'll tell it in order, as best I can.

But it's terribly complicated. Truly difficult.

(Is it?)

That day was supposed to be like any other day—just some day of some week, everything ordinary.

Mom had gone out to her part-time job. Dad, ever since he was laid off, drank and slept at home all day long. Those were the only two things he did.

(Oh? Then what happened to you is a lot like me. Families like that must be more common than you'd think, Shizuka. I've been thinking—in Japan, a family like that might not count as especially unfortunate at all. It might be the ordinary case.)

Yes, Aoi.

(Wait—doesn't your house not have a father? And after your mother died of illness, your grandfather took you in. Isn't that how it was?) Who told you that? (Who told me? Sachi, probably. Everyone in class says so.)

Mm—that's the story we tell the outside. The truth is nothing like it.

It's hard to explain clearly. Listen first.

(Okay. Achoo! It's so cold!)

That year I was in sixth grade.

No money, and no dreams. Mom did nothing but complain. Dad did nothing but drink. Every day I thought about how to get out of that life.

Every evening after school I used Mom's computer to do something.

(What?)

Go online. Look at dating sites—

## Chapter 3 What You Need to Prepare Is Frozen Tuna Sticks and a Gossipy Old Woman, Shizuka Said

The gray ruins were buried flake by flake under the snow and grew more unreal. The snow piled into mounds on the ground, like islands floating among the waves.

Miyanoshita Shizuka's confession caught me unprepared. I could only listen in silence to that staggering confession.

Miyanoshita Shizuka was not Miyanoshita Shizuka at all. Her real name was Takeda Yuko.

Miyanoshita Koichiro, in order to snatch an old man's inheritance out of a charity's hands, had hastily brought her in as a stand-in.

After that the old man did indeed rewrite his will, changing the heir from the charity to Shizuka.

Before long, the old man was suspected to have died at Koichiro's hands.

—The milk tea in the cup was slowly going cold.

I remembered Shizuka's glasses with no prescription, the way she had deliberately dyed her brown hair black, and the moment in the school corridor when someone called Sota's girlfriend "Takeda" and she turned her head at once.

I also remembered that I had always found Koichiro terrifying.

I asked, my voice hoarse:

"Why were you going to be killed?"

Shizuka let out a long sigh.

"Because I was no longer of any use."

"Why? Didn't Koichiro do everything he could so you would inherit the estate, and become your guardian? If that's the case, how could he not need you?"

"Aoi, you're such a fool." Shizuka's tone was sad.

"Think carefully."

"Think about what?"

"Koichiro's aim was to make Grandfather change the will, because if Grandfather donated the money to a charity, he'd have no way forward. But once the will was changed so that one particular person inherited—"

## Final Chapter What You Need to Prepare Is a Battle-Axe and the Will to Kill, Shizuka Said

That year was about to end.

The little island was ringed by the winter sea, blue-black. By day the sky was covered in a layer of gray cloud; at night it was wrapped in a darkness like black velvet, as if the whole island were swaying among the waves.

Whether it was the cold she could not withstand, or that I had not loved her enough, one morning I found the little goldfish dead in the tank. Her frail red body floated on the surface and looked a little disgusting.

I had cherished her so much since the summer before, tended her so carefully, and still she died.

Life is far too short.

In silence I put the goldfish into a small cookie tin, dug a hole in the yard, and buried the box.

Mother was on the veranda and asked why I was burying strawberry Pocky, a thread of mockery in her voice.

"I'm burying a life," I said.

Mother looked uneasily at my sunken mood.

"Aoi, are you all right?"

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing."

I sat upright on the veranda, looked up at the winter sky, and said:

"My goldfish died."

Hearing me say that, Mother's face turned sad for some reason.

She had long been used to loss.

"How could this happen?"

"Because it was too weak, so it died."

""

"That's what that person said."

I answered with a small sound.

I felt restless, as if my body might explode at any moment.

Slowly I climbed the stairs and returned to my room on the second floor.

What you need to prepare is a battle-axe and the will to kill, Shizuka said.

"Are you going to disappear?"

The snow kept falling—