#35

"Hey, I need another favour from you"

"Uh oh. I don't like the sound of this"

"It's already approaching late summer. You know my time is running out"

"What's all this about? Can you at least tell me now?"

"No. Not yet. Me telling you now could affect the results."

"You sound like some mad scientist"

"Except it's not for the science, but my life, and maybe yours too"

"Well, I guess I'll just have to wait and see. So what gives?"

"Here is the list"

She then pushed over a list of names printed out on a small card, with photographs of faces next to each name, as if it were a graduation album.

"Holy fuck. This is like. A fucking list. You want me to do all of them?"

"Yes. All of them. In as short a period of time as possible. Definitely before the start of Autumn Festival in any case, by whatever means"

"I'm not sure about this.. this is crazy. It's not only risky but maybe even physically impossible to do all this without getting caught"

"This will be my last wish"

"Hey don't say that like you are dying or something"

"I may as well be dead for you, although I probably come back next year, but… you may not be around"

"What do you mean?"

"You will find out. Actually, I hope I'm wrong. We will see"

"Whatever you say m'aam. It's not like this whole thing ever made any sense"

"And by the way, Tobi.."

"What?"

"This may be the last time I see you"

"What? Why? Where are you going?"

"I'll go hide. Wait it out"

"Where?"

"I can't tell you. If you knew, someone might get the information out of you and come find me"

"Man, I will never turn you in, and it's not like you've ever done anything yourself"

"You may end up doing so against your will. And after all, I have given you orders to kill. That is a crime in itself"

"Gees. Ok. So what then? Let's say I get all these girls. What then?"

"You just hold on to your life. And please don't die. Under any circumstances, please don't die. And maybe, just maybe we have a chance to meet again come next spring"

"And what if I die?"

"Don't be stupid. If you die we can never meet again"

"oh, I guess I'm not special enough to re-incarnate"

"I told you re-incarnation is a wrong concept. And you are not like me in any way. You are a chance-based abnormally"

"Whatever that means. Well anyway, what if I fail to kill all of them before the autumn festival?"

"I don't know. So don't fail"

"Ok"

"Promise?"

"I promise"

#36

"How.. how the fuck do you know all this?"

The man, whose voice I was familiar with by now, laughed maniacally, his laughter echoing in the room which now sounded like it was walled with stones, and a hint of metallic reflection – probably the door.

"It's funny how shits go around in circles, isn't it?"

"What… are you?"

"As I said, I'm the father of the sweet little girl you have killed. She was a kind soul, out to take care of lost animals, and you snuffed out her life, with no reason, with NO FUCKING REASON AT ALL!"

"FUCK OK! I'M SORRY! I'M FUCKING SORRY!"

"That won't cut it. Ooh, I love the pun. Cut it. Get it?", another manic fit of laughter

"What do you want me to do? Please, just tell me what you want me to do!"

"Like I said, there is nothing you can do for me you worthless lump of meat. You got nothing that can be of any use to me, or to my girl"

"But your girl's dead. I'm sorry, but there's nothing that can be done. People die when they are killed!"

"Not everyone though. I figured out that much"

"What? How?"

"The grudge. The desperation. The unopened passage of sweet future that should have come. The life that was cruelly and wrongly snuffed. There is no god or justice in the world. But things can happen with the sheer force of will that a piece of meat like you will never understand"

"You are talking non-sense. And why are you keep calling me 'meat'?"

"Because you have no soul. You have no soul Tobi"

"What the fuck?"

"I bet Rika didn't tell you. You are nothing. You have no meaning. You are just a lump of cells that grew out of sperm, to disgustingly crawl on the earth till you are no longer needed, and rot away into nothingness"

"Fuck you. That's basically what every human being is"

"No. Humans have soul. Sure, they disappear after they die – it's extremely rare they linger on, but while they are alive, humans very much have souls"

"Just what the fuck are you?"

"I'm someone who has been grieving for a hundred years. Someone who has been wronged by you and Rika's fucked up chain of doom. Someone who took years and countless trials and errors over many lives. Someone who figured out the way to bring this to a happy end – and to get his daughter back, who should never have died"

"You are bat shit crazy. You do talk like you know something but it's impossible"

"You will see. Oh you will see"

Then I heard the man walk out of the room and close the door.

#37

I ran through the list Rika gave me over and over. They were all from our school, some in my year, some seniors. I couldn't find any connections between them at all, not in any visual or contextual way, not even in some kind of cryptic wordplay ways with their names. But Rika wanted them dead, and that was the only chance I would have in seeing her again for real. Otherwise, she may disappear – and I may disappear, the only thing that keeps our time together grounded now are these memories I have propped up in my room. Everything we did together, everywhere we've been to, everything we talked about, it's all here, right in front of me – Rika is real. I am real. Nobody can tell me this is just a wild dream.

This was going to be a complex task. I knew it would be extremely difficult to kill them all spread out over a longer period of time. The more I kill, the higher the chance it will be that the cops will find me. For now, that poor blonde sod is held in captivity as the prime suspect, although it is reported that he is still pleading not guilty and lack of physical evidence are making the persecution difficult. So I have to strike while he's still the suspect, and as long as the killings are not happening things can stay in this limbo. As soon as one more girl is killed the police will sniff that there is someone else that's loose on the street. I stared onto pictures of beautiful Rika, back at the list, and stared at her again, and back at the list again. Rika. I miss you, but I think I just found a way to do this for you. And I hope you are right. We will meet again. And all this will make sense in the end.

Summer has passed uneventfully, and I was seriously in need of refilling my Rika charge. But other than that. It was actually boring as hell. I already knew what I was going to do. It was simple, and risk-free. This may not exactly be what Rika wanted, but at best I would walk away free and just wait for her to come back next spring, and at worst I am at least guaranteed to be alive after the upcoming shenanigans, at least until next Spring.

On the first day of the semester after the summer break, I set myself up in the broadcast room of the school. The student that was on duty for the morning announcement has passed out, slumped over the desk with a big lump on the back of his head. I smacked him hard enough to knock him out, but he will live.

I cleared my throat and started the broadcast, reading out the script this poor dude had prepared before. It's not like anybody's really going to think or care about why the broadcast voice sounds different today.

After all the scripted announcement was made, I added my final words

"The following students are asked to come and report in the science room after this announcement immediately. I repeat. The following students are asked to come and report in the science room after the announcement immediately" – then I read out the names. It was just as simple as that.

It certainly was weird that random students were called to come to the science room on the first morning of the semester, but ultimately I knew nobody would care. Teachers had their own jobs to do, they didn't know what other teachers needed, students just did what they were told to do, and if they were not the ones asked to do something they will just let it pass as it doesn't matter to them.

I quickly rushed myself to the science room and waited inside, sitting at the teacher's desk. Soon enough, the girls that got called to come came in one by one. As each of them walked in, I just told them every time that the teacher asked me to keep watch over the room so that no one messes with any equipment and materials until he comes back. The first one just shrugged and took a seat, and the next one just took the explanation as it is, since the first one was sitting around looking alright.

When all six girls came into the room, I stood up and said,

"Sorry, the teacher should have come by now. I'll just pop out and have a quick look outside"

Then I walked out and locked the door with a new lock that I had swapped in the night before. I pressed the button just outside the door that operated the blind to come down on the room's windows, which were installed as some experiments that are part of regular course required dark room. I heard some unsettling noise coming from the room, so I hurried to the next step before they would start getting suspicious and rush to the door. I opened one of the windows on the corridor just outside the science room and took out a roman candle that I had taped just under the window sill. Hugh. This was it. I better get this shot right. I then opened the small window on the corridor side of the science room. A girl caught a glimpse of me and pointed at me, saying something to the other girls in the room. I then pointed the roman candle towards the ceiling light, lit it up, and off it went, a series of direct hits on the ceiling light. As girls started to scream, I pressed the emergency button for the science room, which let down a shutter to seal the windows and the door on the corridor side. This was installed some years ago apparently after a small accident where there was a poisonous gas leak from an experiment class that went wrong.

What ensued was total chaos and wailing terror of a pig slaughterhouse. They were probably no better than pigs anyway. I had to trust Rika's judgment. On the previous night, I had placed a bunch of containers filled with ethanol inside the light cover, and they were much easier to catch fire than petrol. Just to be extra sure, I had also switched all the content in the large number of containers that were kept in the science room, with ethanol.

Once I was certain that things were catching fire, I pressed the fire alarm and ran downstairs to mix in with the crowd. Unfortunately for the girls inside, the sprinklers would not work in that room.

Just an hour later, the whole school was shell-shocked, and students cried as the bodies covered in white sheets were taken out on stretchers to the ambulance. I counted that all six of them were dead. It was a mission success. Now, all I need to do is to recharge myself with my daily dose of Rika tonight in our little world and rinse and repeat until the promised time came in the spring.

Or that's what I naively hoped.