**The night was without stars.**
Kaoru stood in the doorway. Behind her was a dark corridor, ahead, a staircase leading down. The lights were not on. Only her silhouette, thin and motionless, darkened against the faint streetlight glow coming from the window upstairs.
She looked down.
For a long time.
As if waiting for something. Permission. Or for the last doubt to burn out and leave only what had already been decided.
There was no doubt. She simply stood.
She took out her phone. The screen flashed in the darkness, a sharp white rectangle. She found the number. Pressed call.
Rings. One. Two.
"Hello?" a sleepy, irritated voice with the hoarseness of someone yanked from sleep. Who else would call at such a late hour?
"Does it bother you that it's me calling?" Kaoru said. Evenly. Almost bored. As if she were calling to check the weather forecast.
Shitori fell silent for a second. Sleep vanished instantly; Kaoru felt it even through the phone. It was always like that when people heard certain voices. The body woke up before the head had time to understand why.
"Kaoru… I…"
"Where did you hide the kidnapped people?"
A short pause. Shitori didn't pretend she didn't understand. That was the right thing to do, pretending with Kaoru was too expensive.
"In the basement. That same one."
Kaoru lowered her head. For a few seconds she looked at her boots. Black. Clean. For now.
"Good," she said quietly. "I thought so."
She hung up. Put the phone back in her pocket.
She stood a little longer in the doorway. Listened to the silence of the house. Somewhere upstairs a faucet was dripping, steadily, indifferently. Outside, a car drove by, the headlights slid across the corridor ceiling and disappeared.
Then she turned and walked toward the storage closet at the end of the corridor.
The door creaked, the only sound in the house. Inside it smelled of rust, old dust, and something wooden and dried out. She found the hammer by touch; the handle was cold, heavy, familiar. Not the first time she had taken it. She lifted it. Weighed it in her hand.
A good one. Heavy. Pointed on one side.
On the top shelf hung a mask.
White, with long ears. Painted crooked black eyes, asymmetrical, as if the artist had been in a hurry or didn't want to make them the same. A permanent smile that expressed nothing and precisely because of that expressed everything.
A rabbit's muzzle.
Kaoru took it off the shelf. Held it in front of her; the mask looked at her, she looked at the mask. Then she put it on.
The elastic tightened at the back of her head. The world through the eye slits became a little narrower. A little darker. A little more correct.
She took the hammer and left the closet.
The staircase down was narrow. The walls were concrete, cold, covered in small cracks from which dampness seeped. Kaoru descended slowly, not because she was afraid of slipping. There was simply no reason to hurry. Everything waiting below wasn't going anywhere. She knew that for certain.
She knew the steps by heart. She knew which ones didn't creak.
Down below, a single light bulb was burning, hanging on a bare wire from the ceiling, swaying slightly from a draft coming from nowhere. Weak yellow light. Shadows moved with it, slowly, in a circle, like clock hands.
Three bound men sat against the wall.
Thick marine rope, several loops around their wrists and ankles. No gags in their mouths, Shitori knew that no one would hear here. Or wouldn't want to hear.
Two in suits. Wrinkled, dirty. Several days in the basement had done their work. The school administrator, a large man of about fifty, with a receding hairline and a heavy face accustomed to looking down on people. Now he was looking up from below. Next to him, the deputy, younger, with glasses on his nose, one lens cracked. His hands trembled with a constant fine tremor.
The third was an old man. Small, dry, like last year's leaf. Accidental. He had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, had seen what he shouldn't have seen, and now he was here. He sat straighter than the others. Head lowered, but back straight. As if even while bound he refused to allow himself to slouch.
Kaoru approached slowly. The hammer hung along her thigh. The mask looked at them with its painted smile.
The director saw her first.
He saw the mask. Then the hammer. Something in his face broke, quickly, like glass. He jerked his whole body backward, the rope didn't let him, he only pressed harder against the wall, shoulders rising to his ears, chin tucked in. A big man who suddenly became very small.
The deputy closed his eyes. He simply shut them and didn't open them again. As if he had decided that if he didn't look, none of it existed.
Kaoru stopped in front of them.
She tilted her head to the side, slowly, like a bird examining something on the ground.
"Here are the bogeymen," she said quietly. Thoughtfully. Her voice calm, the kind of voice used to talk about the weather or that the bread had run out. "Did you have nothing better to do? Closing the school?"
The director opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"Listen…" he began. His voice broke. He swallowed, tried again. "Listen, girl, this can all be resolved differently. There are people who…"
"There are people," Kaoru agreed. "Many people. Everyone wants to resolve it differently. Interesting how no one thought about that before."
The director fell silent.
Kaoru shifted her gaze to the old man.
"And what about you, you old fart?" she said, and something like curiosity appeared in her voice. "What was it to you? You should have walked on by. Lived your life. Nursed your grandchildren."
The old man slowly raised his head. He looked at the mask. His eyes were light, faded, the kind people have who have seen a lot and stopped being surprised.
He didn't answer. Only the muscles in his jaw tightened.
Kaoru stood in front of him for another second. Then she straightened up.
She took out her phone without letting go of the hammer in her other hand.
Found the number. Pressed.
"Hello."
"I'm listening," a clear, businesslike voice answered. Without sleepiness, Oota never slept at the right moment.
"Tell everyone. Tomorrow. Near the old school. Need to discuss one matter."
A short pause.
Oota chuckled quietly and briefly. Agreement.
"Understood."
Kaoru put the phone away. She stood. The light bulb swayed, shadows crawled along the walls, stretched, shrank, stretched again.
She slowly walked in front of the three men. Hammer along her thigh. Steps quiet, even. Her boots didn't click; she had long learned to walk without unnecessary sounds.
She stopped.
Turned her back to them.
Stood like that. For a long time. Long enough for it to become unbearable.
"You know what," she said finally.
Her voice was quiet. Almost soft. The kind of voice people have when they speak about something they have thought about for a long time and no longer need anyone else's consent.
"I kill people. For real. Or indirectly, it doesn't matter. There's no difference. The result is the same."
The deputy, who had been sitting with his eyes closed the whole time, quietly groaned, not from pain. From fear that had become too big to keep inside.
Kaoru didn't turn around.
"Killing just like that? Killing for reasons or without reason?", she said it as a question, but didn't wait for an answer. "It's all too boring. Too human. People always look for a reason. Justification. So they can later tell themselves: I was forced. I was protecting. I was saving."
She turned around.
The mask looked at them with its constant smile.
"Murder… that is morality. For some. But for me there is neither good nor evil. There is only action and its consequence. A hero can dismember you while saving this rattling world. A villain can destroy the whole world for your sake alone. So where is the morality? Where does it live? Show me, and maybe I'll believe."
The director was breathing rapidly and shallowly. Sweat glistened on his forehead in the yellow light of the bulb.
"You're sick," he whispered. Not as an insult. As a statement, the last thing he could allow himself.
Kaoru looked at him.
"No," she said simply. "I'm honest. That's different."
She turned away again, slowly, as if examining the opposite wall. The wall was concrete, gray, with dark damp stains. Nothing interesting.
"To surpass evil, that is strength," she continued quietly. "To become something majestic. To go beyond what people call moral or immoral. It's just a cage made of letters. A beautiful cage. Many live in it their whole lives and call it freedom."
The light bulb swayed.
"I left the cage long ago." Pause. "You didn't know about that. Now you do."
She turned.
"So what do you say?"
The director turned away as much as the rope and the wall behind his back allowed. The deputy pressed in even deeper, his glasses slid to the tip of his nose, the cracked lens caught the light of the bulb and flashed for a second.
The old man raised his head.
His light, faded eyes looked at the mask. At the hammer. At her, where behind the white plastic and the painted smile was a face he could not see.
"If you're going to kill us, then kill us," he said hoarsely. An old but steady voice. "Why drag it out?"
Silence.
The light bulb swayed.
Kaoru stood motionless for exactly two seconds.
Then something inside her clicked, quietly, like a switch. As if the last thin thread she had been holding all this time simply out of politeness had finally snapped.
She took a sharp step forward.
The hammer rose and fell point down.
The first scream tore through the basement like paper. Raw, animal, deafening in this low concrete space. Blood gushed immediately, hot, dark, there was unexpectedly a lot of it. Splashes on the wall, on the concrete floor, on the white mask, on the sleeve of her jacket. Red on white. Red on gray.
Kaoru didn't stop.
Second blow. Third. Without pause, just down and down again, methodically, without anger or rage, as if performing a job that had long needed to be done and there had never been time for it. A crunch. Screams, first loud, then quieter, then only wheezing. Then nothing.
The hammer rose and fell.
Rose and fell.
Until it became quiet.
Kaoru stopped.
She breathed evenly. Her shoulders didn't shake. Her hands were steady, only the knuckles whitened where she gripped the handle.
The light bulb swayed.
Blood slowly spread across the concrete floor, finding cracks, quietly, without haste, as if it had all the time in the world. The basement smelled of iron and something sweet, heavy, that remains afterward. She knew this smell. It didn't surprise her.
Kaoru lowered the hammer. She loosened her fingers; the handle stayed in her hand, but the grip weakened.
She stood over what was left.
Then she slowly removed the mask.
She looked at it. The painted smile looked back, the same, unchanging. Blood splashes had landed on it too, three dark spots near the right ear.
Kaoru tilted her head slightly.
"You don't change," she said quietly to the mask. "That's a good quality."
She tucked the mask under her arm. She left the hammer on the floor, simply released it; it fell with a dull metallic sound that echoed for a long time through the basement.
And she walked toward the stairs.
The same steps. She knew where to step.
Upstairs was the dark corridor. The faucet was dripping. Outside the window, night, the same as when she had gone down. As if nothing had happened.
Kaoru reached the bathroom. Turned on the water. Cold; the hot hadn't had time to reach it. She held her hands under it. Watched as the water washed the dark from her fingers. Slowly, spiraling down the drain.
Then she looked in the mirror.
An ordinary face. Calm. Dark hair slightly disheveled. On her cheek, a small spot she hadn't noticed right away. She wiped it off with a wet finger.
Turned off the water.
She went out into the corridor. Walked to the room. Lay down on the bed without taking off her jacket. Stared at the ceiling.
Outside the window, dawn was beginning, faint, gray, hesitant. The birds had not yet sung. The city had not yet woken up.
Kaoru closed her eyes.
She didn't think about what she had done. There was nothing to think about. Everything had already been decided long ago, back when she stood in the doorway and looked down.
She had simply carried it out.