12

If I were writing a novel and had a protagonist faced with a knife, then I’m certain that I and any other author would follow up by having the main character disarm the threat and prevent any further violence.

But that’s quite difficult to manage in the real world. A person with a knife is incredibly dangerous. Even if the attacker didn’t actually plan to hurt anyone and was only wielding the knife for the intimidation factor, a very slight mistake could cause irreparable harm.

Additionally, I was faced with a child holding me at knifepoint, and I couldn’t be entirely certain of her mental state. Forget a slight mistake, it was possible that I would be harmed even if I didn’t do anything wrong.

I should correct an earlier exaggeration. The stab wound in my calf was rather shallow, enough that it was more like I had been cut rather than stabbed. My jeans were torn and I was bleeding, so it felt like I was hurt worse, but upon checking later it turned out the wound didn’t go very deep at all.

Still, at the time I thought I had been stabbed, and for all I knew I would be stabbed more in the future.

If I hadn’t tried playing cool and just gave into the pain, falling obnoxiously while yelling and screaming and tumbling, I probably could have gained the advantage. But no, I had to try and play the big boy, like I was so much more mature than the little girl in front of me. I played it off like being stabbed didn’t bother me, like I had always known she was there, and that I had even sat down on purpose knowing she was there, so I was past help at that point.

If I could send one message to myself back then, I would probably tell him to just get stabbed and die. Then again, I probably don’t want my younger self to die… But at least stop trying to act so nonchalant about it.

To my credit, I wasn’t losing my cool. Although I was plenty confused, several logical thoughts still streamed through my head. My first thought was whether or not I could manage to wrest the knife from her like a novel protagonist.

But without even allowing for a full simulation, I gave up that thought.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say trying to take the knife would’ve been impossible for me. Considering she was a child, I would have had a what, maybe 80% chance of coming out on top? But to be honest, even if I had a 90% chance, I wouldn’t have taken that gamble.

I must return to the primary issue that the knife wielder was a child. I had no clue what might cause her to suddenly strike, assuming she even needed a reason at all, and then there was the possibility that she could get cut in an ensuing struggle. If I got a serious injury somewhere like my face, then any injury to her would probably still be protected under self-defense, but I’d still have to live with knowing I did that to her for the rest of my life. Besides, there was the all too real possibility that a struggle would end in more than just a light cut. Someone could easily end up stabbed in the stomach, and even if vital organs were missed, we could just bleed out. Given that she was a child, a loss of blood that seemed insignificant to me could be fatal for her. Feeling guilty would be the least of my worries in that scenario. At best I’d become mentally ill, even more so than I already am.

Now, that last paragraph might make you think I was feeling very empathetic towards even the person that held a knife against me, but there was of course a second and more important reason behind my decision.

That’s because as an aspiring author, any possibility of the knives damaging my hands or fingers, even a chance in the single percentages, was too high of a risk. That’s not to mention the possible damage if I accidentally grabbed a blade. In fact, you may think I’m exaggerating, but at the time I was honestly grateful I had been stabbed in the ankle and not the hand.

Any aspiring author would agree with that sentiment. Even more so a real author. I still believe I made the right choice, and disregarding what followed, I will objectively state that my lack of resistance was the best choice for me to have made.

There’s a saying that goes around, something like, “You don’t need a knife to kill a XX, just…” followed by some kind of ironic circumstance, where the XX is any given profession. But I’ll be straight and say a knife’ll be more than enough to kill an author. Granted, a knife would be more than enough to kill most people, but authors especially so.

So there I was, bereft of options. There was absolutely nothing I could do. Wasn’t even worth trying. Maybe if she only had one knife, I could’ve escaped, but not with two. The moment I tried to hold down one blade, the other would attack.

“…”

All I could do was continue to listen to the girl’s soft mutterings. But, no matter how confused I was, I didn’t lose my head. When I think back, that’s probably because some part of me had just accepted the situation as it was. Sort of like when you lose your keys and realize that’s just how the world works sometimes. I’m the kind of guy that gets relieved in those scenarios.

That said, it’s not like I spend my waking hours waiting for the day when a young girl will face me down with a knife in my own room, so I just take precautions where I can. But I felt like there was a self-fulfilled prophecy in that the girl I had seen a week ago was likely to try something eventually, and I was able to accept it calmly. Maybe I was a little too calm, given the entire situation.

My personality, which is to say my nonexistent range of vapid emotions, comes in handy in day-to-day life. For example, studying for exams is easy because no matter how much stress or pressure I feel, I can push through with the logic that I have to study. Even now, my dead emotions are helpful (strange to feel grateful for something that never existed) in getting me to write 1,000 pages of manuscripts a month (I know it’s wrong to think of work as a sort of penance, but I find that word fits best for me. It includes the concept of allowing stoicism for the sake of a goal. There’s this discourse in the publishing world about how “readers can’t enjoy something if the author didn’t enjoy it”, but I would ask how I could expect a reader to enjoy something that I didn’t put all my body and soul into).

Maybe it would be nice if I could’ve fully experienced the shock of having a knife pointed at me. As it was, my response was so empty that I simply remained calm, but even if I wasn’t an overthinker, I likely would have come to the same conclusion that the best response was none at all when faced with a knife.

Only an overzealous moron could take that moment to become a hero, trying to act like the protagonist of an action flick. That’s how people who are only half as smart as they think they are end up stuck in big problems. Because of their overestimation.

I have no idea how much time passed. I certainly couldn’t afford a glance at the clock.

All I could do was stare at the girl, who continued to mutter something under her breath while watching my reactions. For all I knew, she would snap if I looked away, but it was also difficult to look directly at her. I couldn’t read her in the slightest.

I may not be able to tell people apart by their faces, but I will always be able to recognize that girl in any crowd. It may have been 10 years ago, and we weren’t even looking at each other that long, but… there was something special in her that I saw.

It seemed to me that her emotions had been snuffed out, too. It would cause more than a little stress to hold someone at knifepoint, but she did it calmly, showing neither enjoyment nor displeasure. She was like a soldier at the front lines of war, experiencing things that would give them PTSD. It might seem rather silly to compare an elementary schooler in a peaceful Japan to a soldier at the front lines, and even I find it a strange assessment now, but that was my genuine take on her at the time.

She was a girl who witnessed the sad demise of her friend being ripped apart, carefully set that aside, and made sure to properly save her game and put it away. I assumed she had to be emotionally dead in the way that I was, possibly even more so.

Those were my thoughts, and I couldn’t stop them.

I’m aware that assuming you understand someone is the worst place to build any kind of relationship from. The moment I think I understand someone is usually the moment I understand them least of all. And yet I keep doing it over and over and over, ever since childhood. I still do it now. My assumption that I can understand others causes a lot of trouble for those around me. I know in my head that people can get along without fully understanding each other, but that’s never really become something I accepted in my heart. Those few emotions that just won’t die keep getting in my way. Even when it comes to wanting to die.

“…nd.”

For the first time, I caught a hint of her voice. Then I asked her to repeat herself. I may have heard her, but only the last part, so it didn’t really count as hearing. I didn’t know what tone to take with a child holding me at knifepoint, but I couldn’t miss my opportunity. I wouldn’t be surprised if my request to repeat herself came off the wrong way.

Now that I think about it, I didn’t really have much experience talking to children at all, knifepoint or otherwise, so I probably came off as weird every time I tried. I would have probably found it easier to talk to a random female classmate that I didn’t know than a child.

But the situation did not allow me to be picky. Mustering all my courage, I spoke to the girl for the first time, unsure if breaking the silence would end in a bloody tragedy.

“-nd.” the girl repeated. Then, probably realizing by my reaction that I still hadn’t heard her, she repeated herself again. “Stand.”

Once more, she said, “Stand.”

I had been stuck in that chair like glue, but I instantly rocketed up as if her words had been a command from God. Now, some of you might comment that it’s ridiculous to follow a child’s orders, and you might be right, but if you find such great shame in following the orders of a child, then I’m gonna have to recommend you stop reading right now. From hereon out, in the majority of scenes, I will be at the mercy of that child. If you don’t want to watch me act so pathetically, then you should close my little book of recollections now. Assume the man was stabbed to death by the little girl.

That said, I’m only alive today because I followed the little girl’s instructions. If you’re expecting some kind of bravado or manliness to come into play from that, then I recommend you stop reading, too. I’ll do what a child tells me to do if it means I’ll live longer. Call me pathetic or shame me, that won’t change. I’m sure everyone else is the same. Fine, maybe not everyone, but if you think you would die over your machismo and principles, then bravo, how wonderful, how spectacular. But not me.

Standing up spiked the pain in my ankle where I’d been stabbed… cut. I almost bent over right there, but the girl’s command had been “stand”, not “crouch”, so I wasn’t going anywhere.

Standing up from my chair created some distance between me and the girl. The girl maneuvered her way out from under my desk, avoiding the chair, and incidentally placing her in a great position for me to try kicking her. That would have been called a front kick. I knew some judo, which isn’t a martial art that involves striking your opponent, so I hadn’t trained in kicking, but it wasn’t like I would need some great amount of skill to kick a kid. Given her position, if I had just aimed for her face and gone for it, then the incident likely would have been over right there. I’m serious, I probably could have just ended the book here. It would have made for an unfortunate incident, but certainly not a traumatic one, and I would disappear, replaced by a decent writer with acceptable output. But that didn’t happen.

For one, it’s not a lie to say that I was reluctant to kick a small girl. I probably don’t have to keep up appearances by now, so I don’t know how pertinent this point is, but I’ll list it as a statement of fact. Kicking a nearly defenseless little girl as she crawled out from under a desk seemed just as unreasonable to me as kicking a girl armed with two knives.

The other and slightly more rational reason was that my leg was already injured. Using my injured leg to kick or pivot was out of the question… or at least, that was how I felt. Suffice it to say I wasn’t confident in my injured leg’s capabilities. So which leg would be better? Granted, if I had all that time to think about it, I would have been better off just kicking without wasting my time worrying about it.

That aside, the thought that the girl’s actions were calculated terrified me.

Had she injured my leg preemptively for the moment when she would have to defenselessly crawl out from under the desk? The idea of her working so thoroughly was horrifying.

But the idea that none of it was calculated at all was even more horrifying.

That meant she had stabbed me in the leg for no real reason, just because that was where I happened to be. I can hardly think of an idea more terrifying. If I could, I would have put it in Hyakumonogatari.

So, at the end of the day, all I could do was watch the girl crawl out from under the desk, stand up, and readjust her knives in complete silence while I stood waiting like I was some kind of practiced butler.

Thinking back, that would have been the first time I saw the girl’s whole body from the front. Our first encounter had been from behind, and mostly while she was crouched over holding her friend’s head. Then the second time I had only seen her face. But even then, I could only just barely make out her face.

I’m going to reveal this now, since it will come into play later, but the girl’s face gave off the aura of what I reactively labeled as “well-bred”. You could gather it from her clothes and hairstyle. I recently went to France for an interview, and every child there seemed fairly “well-bred”. You could tell that parents doted on their children. Granted, that was just my impression without any data, so I could be wrong. But the Japanese loanword “baby car” is taken from English, and I understand that it’s referred to as a “stroller” overseas, but at least in France, children are kept in strollers for quite a few years. From a Japanese perspective, that might be seen as spoiling children for too long, but if a long period of pampering lends to an overall positive upbringing, then that’s not too bad. Or maybe I’m just going off on a wild fantasy.

Regardless, my first impression of the girl was that “she seems well-mannered”. But that was only from her appearance, and it was obvious that she had not been well-educated when it came to more introspective matters. A correctly mannered fourth-year elementary student would be taught not to point a knife at people. They wouldn’t even need direct instruction to know that it was bad. So I didn’t bother reinforcing to the girl that pointing knives at people was wrong. I was hardly important enough to be able to teach her that, and I had generally given up on saying anything to the person holding me at knifepoint, anyway.

None of that was to imply that she seemed “poorly-mannered” on the inside, however. Unlike “well-raised”, “badly-raised” is used as a criticism of an inner person. But I must be fair, and share that the girl who held me at knifepoint didn’t look violent, or rough, or desperate, like she lived in a world where pointing knives at other people was normal. Then again, maybe the situation doesn’t really call for fairness.

I’m not sure how to put this, and any way I phrase it is a gamble on whether it’ll make sense to a reader, but my impression was that the girl was simply “pointing a knife at me”. There was no will or intent behind it.

In fact, it made me wonder if my earlier prediction that she was emotionally dead was more spot-on than expected.

But in that moment, the difference in our builds was made clear. I’m a little taller than the average man (or at least, I was back then. I’m probably more average now), but the girl’s body was small, befitting a fourth-year elementary student, and in my recollection she only came up to my knees. But I’m aware that’s far too short (such a height wouldn’t have even required her to bend over to get under my desk), so that’s probably a poor recollection, and most likely she was somewhere around waist-high. Either way, there was a significant difference between us.

Enough that I wasn’t sure if two knives the length of my ring finger would be enough to bridge that gap. The fact that I was unsure is probably testimony enough to the idea I could’ve overpowered her.

There was something scary about not being able to see her entirety as she huddled under my desk, but when she was exposed to the light of day (okay, it was already evening by then, so it’s more accurate to say she was exposed to the light of an incandescent bulb), she was clearly just a girl… someone I couldn’t mistake for a monster.

But don’t misunderstand, she was just as terrifying as ever. Sure, if she was twice as tall as me, that would’ve been scary, but I’m talking about a different kind of fear. It wasn’t her height, or the weapons, or anything else that was “there”. It was because of the lingering feeling that something “wasn’t there”. The absence of something that should’ve been there constantly pulled at the string of my anxiety.

“Turn.”

The girl spoke again.

“Turn around.”

There wasn’t any deeper implication in her curt, spaced words. She was just saying what she had to say.

So I turned around, as instructed. I didn’t need to be reminded how dangerous it was to turn your back to someone with a weapon, but I did it without a hint of hesitation. I was quite obedient.

I was more afraid of letting things linger with her. Standing in place staring at her with nothing happening would have been suffocating. Anything different was better, even if it put me in more immediate danger… but looking back on it, I don’t think it was really better. With my perspective ten years in the future, I can’t help but see that decision as a little questionable. Maybe the situation had me scatterbrained. Personally, I think I should have pushed back my emotions and kept facing the girl. The knives were farther away, after all.

But, no point grumbling about something already in the past. Hindsight may be 20/20, but judging a past self from the future can’t be very constructive. Whatever I may think of it now, I just turned my back to the girl, fully aware of the possibility that I could be stabbed in the back.

And then, I was stabbed in the back.

Well, that’s not an objective fact, but I certainly felt like I’d been pierced all the way into my organs. Much like when my calf was stabbed, only my clothes were fully cut through. The momentum just passed into my back like a cutting board.

Back when I was using office paper cutters in elementary school, I was capable of using my thighs as the cutting board. I could slice right through all the paper I wanted without splitting my clothes, let alone my legs. It was kind of a specialty of mine. I don’t mean much by calling it a specialty (I had to quit after I was caught by my homeroom teacher and severely lectured. I didn’t really buy into her lecture, but I probably can’t do it any more), but the girl clearly didn’t possess that specialty.

At the same time, she didn’t actually slash me, and given that I was trying to play everything cool my reaction is comparably over-the-top, but you don’t have to cut far into skin to draw blood and cause pain.

I’d say that the average, run-of-the-mill Japanese citizen will never be attacked by a blade. I don’t have any recollection of that happening outside of that girl. At the very least, such an incident isn’t analogous to traffic accidents… meaning I shouldn’t be judged for my exaggerated reaction.

But then…

“Heh.”

I was shocked by what I understood to be laughter coming from behind me. Was my reflexive response funny to her? Was cutting someone and making them bleed amusing?

If that was true, then the situation had gone off the deep end.

The girl hadn’t given anything away up until then, but it was possible that by taking such a concrete action, something was awakening inside her… that she was learning something new.

Maybe something sadistic had come to life inside her, making her ecstatic at drawing blood. That would be beyond terrible. I could never be happy about that kind of birth, and I would definitely never wish it a happy birthday. Especially since it was directly connected to my safety.

Although it concerned my life, my other issue was that I didn’t want my harm to cause the awakening of a new, monstrous desire. I didn’t want it to be my fault in some way.

With that complete self-preservation in mind, I asked the girl behind me what her intentions were. My voice may have been a bit high-pitched, but I spoke slowly and calmly, which was to try and pacify the girl through a level head… okay, I can put it that way all I want, but the reality was that my voice cracked like crazy.

“Heh…heh…heh…”

My memory is of the girl continuing to chuckle behind me, but to be honest, I think that’s just the product of reading too much manga, like I’m expecting the supervillain to do something like that at that moment. She might’ve just let out a sigh.

Especially given what came next.

“My name is U.”

She offered a very ordinary, mundane, and polite self-introduction.

“U. U.”