13

Now, when I say polite, I of course mean for a child. She didn’t have the practiced social lubricant of a salaryman. It was the kind of politeness that felt contrived, like she was playing house or something. It didn’t sound like it came naturally. But this was at a time where the social complaints of unruly children were reaching a peak (which is a complaint I haven’t heard much of recently, now that I think about it. Probably because the Internet has shown that children have always been unruly, and the adults they became even more so. I’d say it’s never been harder for an adult to maintain their dignity than the current age. You can pretend to be above it all, but the stupidity of your generation is always plain to see), so from my perspective, the posture of this girl, well, now that she’s introduced herself I should refer to her as U, came as a surprise.

That surprise offered a ray of hope that I could possibly have a reasonable discourse with her. But that was just my imagination.

I was what you might call a naive university student, and I hadn’t yet been exposed to the harsh goods and bads of human society. That should be obvious, given I didn’t understand the significance of the fact that the person holding me at knifepoint had offered a self-introduction.

She let me see her face.

She didn’t hide her identity.

She even told me her name.

Either she didn’t care how much I knew, or she had premeditated the death of the person at knifepoint. The person at knifepoint would have a hard time getting out of the first situation unscathed, let alone second. Whatever the case, the person at knifepoint, A.K.A. me, was gonna have a hard time getting out of the situation unharmed.

That being the case, etiquette was hardly a reliable indicator of any kind of standard. Anyone can just come up with some nice words to say in the moment… Maybe an author shouldn’t be admitting things like that.

“…”

Once again, I couldn’t make out what U had said, so I asked her to repeat herself. After a short pause, she said-

“With me.”

Her speaking was unnatural, like she was adjusting the volume on a stereo, and the pause even more so. It brought to mind a flight of fancy that she had pre-recorded everything ahead of time, and was only pretending to talk (as if she had anything to gain from that. She had already introduced herself, not to mention the soprano recorder with her name on it. She definitely had no intention of hiding her identity), but now, as I write it down contemplatively, I can think of a perfectly reasonable explanation for her odd pauses and inaudible tones.

It’s not anything complicated. That’s just what happens to people who aren’t used to talking to anyone.

My work leaves me holed up in my room or a hotel for months at a time with no socializing or speaking, and by the time I can get a manuscript to an editor my lack of speaking ability becomes so apparent that I’m driven to speechlessness.

I honestly don’t know how to speak any more. Volume is just the beginning. I have difficulty keeping up with the flow of conversation to the point that I’ll clash with someone else starting a sentence, or alternatively just drag on forever. I interrupt people unintentionally, or otherwise get confused and lose track of my points mid-sentence. Once I go on a rabbit trail, there’s no coming back, and just as soon as I stop speaking for no reason an endless string of nonsense will come out with all the grandeur of a cow drooling.

What I’m trying to say is that the ability to make conversation is a greater skill than most give it credit for. It’s kinda like riding a bike or using chopsticks. When you know how, you just know, but it can fade over time… Well, I suppose making conversation would be harder than those two, since it can take as little as a month to completely lose it.

“Come with me. Please.”

U‘s voice was finally adjusted to the right level, though the timing of her sentences was a little off. They were punctuated well enough by a second slash to my back, though.

Another shock of pain coursed through me. Pain can be an unreliable indicator of harm, so I don’t know how much damage she actually did, but the thought that her two slash attacks had left a cross mark on my back terrified me. I’d only seen cross-shaped scars in manga before and wondered what it would take to sustain that kind of wound, but I suddenly realized I was faced with a threat that could make that concept a reality.

What U actually did was arguably even more cruel. She had retraced her previous cut across my back (even writing about it now gives me chills), but I couldn’t have known that at the time. I wasn’t in the position to check a three-way mirror, and I didn’t own one of those anyway.

“Or I will make you hurt.”

Well, that’s the wrong order, I thought. But thinking it through, it was at least not as wrong as her order of saving her game before running to her friend. Threatening after already inflicting pain was a rather effective methodology, proven by the fact that I became self-empowered to do whatever she said afterwards. Wait, I don’t think self-empowerment can be used that way, that sentence is a contradiction.

But, since the possibility of conversation (or something close enough to it) had been opened up, I couldn’t stop myself from asking U why. As in, why should I go with her, and why was she there in the first place? I no longer needed to know about her now obvious means of getting in, but rather the underlying purpose.

And U answered me.

“Because…”

Well, she answered, but I still didn’t hear it. It was risky to ask her to repeat herself, but I had to ask since I just couldn’t hear her. I still hadn’t put together that U was simply uncomfortable with conversation. My assumption was that she just had a soft voice.

“Because you saw me.”

U‘s voice was almost too loud once she repeated herself. Not so much that it would’ve made it to the other side of the room, though.

“Because you saw me, I’m taking you.”

By itself, the reasoning wouldn’t have made any sense, but with U saying it, the reasoning was all too clear. It was about what only I had seen a week prior.

She was right. I had seen her.

I got just a single glimpse that cut through into who U really was.

But how did that explain her desire to “take me”? It didn’t immediately connect, so she hadn’t really answered my question. But Q&A was over. U was in control, so she had no obligation to answer my questions at all. In a manner of speaking, she had been incredibly compliant to that point.

“Go.”

U poked me in the back with her knife. That was such a risky move. Anything could have happened. But I just followed her orders, walking towards the door. I thought I was seeing blood splatter on the ground as I walked, but I didn’t have the time to schedule a carpet cleaning. I put my shoes on and walked out into the hallway, locking the door with my brand-new key. The key seemed so impossibly shiny.

U stuck to my back the entire time, almost like a specter. Well, maybe not quite like that. I don’t really believe in ghosts (as you could probably gather from my other published works), but even in the world of fiction, the idea of a ghost doesn’t mix with a person holding you at knifepoint. From what I could tell, U was perfectly balancing her pressure so as not to break my skin.

Not that I was about to break out in a song and dance for her about it, but it was at least better than ending up with random stab wounds.

“Down. The stairs,” she urged.

I doubted her plans ended at the bottom of the stairwell, so it was likely that U was planning on forcing me straight out of the apartment building. The thought of what “forcing me away” could imply gave me the creeps. I’d already been through some rather horrifying things, but being forced to go somewhere introduced a brand new level of horror.

But there was nothing I could do on the stairway. She continued pressing her knife against my back, and her breaths were ragged and heavy, so further attacks were still very much possible. If I tried running away or avoiding the knife, all it would take was a simple push from her and that would be that. A larger build didn’t help me at all in that scenario.

Regardless, I slowed myself down significantly, taking my sweet time as I walked down each and every step. It was like my own minor form of rebellion. Then again, looking back, that was probably more like an accommodating adult matching his pace with a child’s.

With the hindsight of a 30-year-old, I’m not sure if it’s appropriate to refer to a university student as an adult… but accommodating or not, a university student is close enough to an adult as far as any random kid is concerned. But U was the farthest thing from any random kid, so I have no idea what I looked like in her eyes as I walked in front of her.

And that is how I got driven out of my own apartment. U didn’t waste a moment as we alighted upon the road (the apartment building didn’t have any sidewalk around it).

“Right.”

My road racer was in no condition to be used, but even if it wasn’t broken, the back tire had no guard, so the bike could only carry one person. Our only option was to walk.

“Order. What did you do with it?”

U interjected with something that wasn’t a demand for the first time in a while. But question or not, I had no idea what kind of “order” she was referring to, so I asked her to repeat herself.

“My recorder.”

I only needed those two words to understand what she had meant.

“My recorder. What did you do with it?”

She wanted to know what happened to the recorder that had totalled my road racer. The soprano recorder labeled with her name. As for what happened to it, I didn’t have it on hand because I had left with nothing more than the clothes on my back.

I recalled how I couldn’t bring myself to throw out the recorder, so I’d disassembled it and put it in my bag. I was a bit too self-conscious to walk around campus with a recorder sticking out of my bag, so I’d made sure it would fit by taking it apart.

As for its location, obviously it was left behind in my room… Well, it was my room that I was paying rent for, so it wasn’t left behind, per se. It was where it belonged. Then again, the recorder wasn’t mine… anyway, it’s not worth getting tangled in the details. I was pretty sure I had put my bag where I always did before slinking away to my desk and firing up my word processor.

So I told U exactly that.

She fell silent. Then again, silence had been more of a default state for her, so I can’t say whether she fell silent or returned to being silent… but if it was the former, she may have been weighing the value of going back to grab her recorder from my room.

“School will…”

Her voice was as soft as ever, but perhaps the tempo of her voice just made it harder to hear, as most of her sentence slipped past me again. Her school would what? Did she mean she needed the recorder for school? It was possible that she needed the recorder for her music class… so she probably was deciding whether to go retrieve it or not. In fact, from what I recall, she had even been poking my back less frequently around that time.

If she really did need it for class, then whether or not she wanted to get it, she would have to, but six flights of stairs was a lot to ask from a young child.

I couldn’t stand the idea of forcing that on her, so I told U that the recorder had broken when it went into my bicycle wheel, the implication being that it wasn’t worth going back to get it. Kind of a weird choice from someone held at knifepoint. Being pointlessly kind is just a thing I do, but that particular kindness basically told her to hurry up and get us to where we were going, so it was both pointless and stupid.

“…Oh. I see,” U said. “Thank you very much.”

Thanks for breaking her recorder? I was genuinely confused at the time, but she was probably thanking me for relaying the information. Besides, my bike may have broken the recorder, but she had chucked it in there in the first place, so it wouldn’t make sense for her to push the responsibility of breaking it onto me.

“Off we go, then.”

There wasn’t the slightest hint of sincerity in her thanks, which made me think of her playing back a pre-recorded message again. Given how she changed her mind so easily, she likely hadn’t intended on going back for the recorder anyway.

Or that’s just wishful thinking on my part.

I can only hope her priorities were better aligned than to actually go back and get her recorder if it hadn’t been broken. Seeing that happen would have been beyond shocking.

Because prioritizing a recorder for class over taking me away, also known as her kidnapping attempt, was like prioritizing saving her game over grieving her dead friend.

I didn’t want to see U do that, and my desire not to be party to that choice might have manifested as telling her the recorder was broken before she decided to go and get it. I didn’t approach the idea like that at the time, but from that angle, my strange decision makes a sort of sense. Even if it amounted to asking her to kidnap me quicker.

Describing a decade-old world from my vantage point in the future has allowed for several new discoveries. It’s starting to make me feel strange. It’s oddly invigorating to have these realizations about my vivid trauma that I don’t want to remember. I get this third-person narrator’s point of view, what would officially be referred to as the “omniscient” viewpoint (not that I have any intention of claiming a God-like, omniscient knowledge, it’s just a term. Under the same umbrella that I don’t believe in ghosts, I don’t believe in a God. I do, however, find myths to be an interesting, well-written entertainment experience). Looking at my past self from this perspective makes me feel something akin to regret, such as, “I wish I had done this”, but it’s also amusing in its own way. I suppose it’s inappropriate to find amusement in trauma, even if it is my own.

But take for example this scene of a grown man being directed through the streets at knifepoint by a young elementary school girl. From the omniscient perspective, it’s an absurdly rare and ridiculous circumstance. It’s not funny because it was me, but if I was watching it happen to someone else, it very well might get a chuckle out of me. I mean, we’re not talking about a closed, singular room, or a narrow staircase. It was right out in the open road.

He may have had a knife or two pointed at his back, but he could have just run away, distancing himself from U. Granted, I don’t know how quick the girl’s arms were, but it’s doubtful she could have had the reactionary speed to stab me if I bolted away out of nowhere. Even if she managed to get the tip of the knife on me, it wouldn’t have been guaranteed to stab through. Now, the aspiring author wasn’t afraid of the knives directly, but rather the possibility of an engagement. But since his options had shifted from avoidance to running away, it would have been easy enough to enact a plan. Take the next turn, for instance.

“Left,” U commanded.

I could take off the moment we turned the corner. I would only need five seconds of sprinting as fast as I could, even if it hurt my legs. I could just get on the main road, call for help, and it would be over… But my omniscient perspective informs me that my past self would not be doing so.

He just turned the corner as usual and walked along at a leisurely pace. He might’ve convinced himself he was resisting through his slow movement, but he was actually just accommodating an elementary schooler’s slow pace.

It wasn’t that I was so risk-averse that a 1% chance of failure scared me from trying the plan. I just hadn’t thought of the plan. I buried my head in the sand, told myself that nothing about the situation had changed, and never even entertained the thought of escape. I might’ve been playing it cool, or talking like I was nonchalant, but that was just how I presented myself a decade ago. Actually, even if I were to be assaulted in the same way now, I would probably end up in the same position, unable to make a plan. I would hide behind the thought that I shouldn’t provoke someone holding a knife. I don’t even understand how I had so thoroughly tricked myself back then. It was like the world’s greatest multi-layer scam. But I guess reality has a habit of not working the way logic would assume, because humans are such illogical creatures.

I’ve heard a theory that in order for a kidnapping to be effective, the victim needs to cooperate to an extent. Cooperation includes some kind of talking down or mental trickery, the conclusion being that if you can’t secure that cooperation, your chances of success plummet. Cooperation can be guaranteed through several methods, like offering candy or toys, pretending to be lost and asking for directions… but no matter how you slice it, trying to forcefully snatch someone just seems reckless, even if we’re talking about children or the elderly. Any form of serious resistance can exponentially multiply the difficulty. I suppose that just means the kidnapping would upgrade into an assault or murder… especially when you add in the aftermath, kidnapping just doesn’t seem to have a benefit that outweighs the cost.

Granted, I don’t know if crime can fall into categories of cost-effectiveness or truly being “worth it”, but as far as the theory goes, I was most definitely a cooperative victim.

I didn’t even have to be lured in with candy or toys, I just did exactly as told. In fact, whenever we came up against any passersby, I actually became worried they might notice I had a knife against my back, if you can believe it.

Is that to say I was worried about my assailant?

No, I wouldn’t think so. I think what it came down to was that if said passerby were to scream, for all I knew U would get worked up into a fit of rage and just stab me then and there.

In fact, the past me was just so assured of his intelligence that he tried to mitigate the situation. He positioned his body to try and hide the girl from view. The two of us may have been significantly different in stature, but I doubt it was to the point that I could completely hide her, so I don’t know how effective it all was. Especially since there were people coming from both behind and in front of me.

But when I lay it out plainly, nobody would see an elementary schooler walking directly behind a university student and assume there was a kidnapping being performed by the younger party. That said, I wonder what it did look like to the average person.

It’s kind of unusual to see an elementary schooler walking with a university student, so if anything did look criminal, it was probably the other way around. A terrible misunderstanding, given the reality, but even calling the police due to that misunderstanding would have been welcome.

Regardless, whether it was due to my body-blocking or otherwise, nobody that passed by seemed to notice that I was held at knifepoint, or even seemed to think anything was amiss.

I didn’t have eyes on the back of my head, but it was possible that U was holding the knife in such a way that it was still concealed. In that case, it wasn’t worth worrying about. But as long as I was worrying, I was concerned for my own safety, and second was… second was actually my concern for U‘s safety.

Call me a hypocrite if you have to.

People don’t like being called a hypocrite. They get mad, whether they really were a hypocrite or were genuinely good-natured… but I won’t deny that I was concerned over what might happen to the little fourth-year elementary schooler behind me if someone noticed her, or if she was called out for holding a knife.

We were far past the point of playing it off, or just letting her go with a lecture. She had seriously crossed a line. If it was one crime, it could be let go as a spur-of-the-moment choice, but there was throwing a recorder into a bike, stealing a key and ID card, breaking and entering, premeditated assault with a knife, and kidnapping. That many crimes would justify separating her from her parents.

With all that added to my natural instinct for self-protection, I just didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t run away, and I couldn’t ask a passerby for help. I had no options.

But however it broke down, I was just a kidnapped person with thoughts raging in his head. Zoom out from my head, and you find a pathetic guy getting dragged along and successfully threatened by an elementary school girl, which is shameful from any angle.

“Wonderful weather we’re having,” U commented suddenly.

I looked up at the sky in response. It wasn’t raining, which technically counted as good weather, but the sun had already set and it was getting dark, so it was hardly nice outside.

We had been walking in complete silence since the recorder exchange, so I supposed U just felt like she had to say something. Choosing the weather was a safe, commonplace topic, but it was a very strange choice in that particular instance.

Despite her comment on the sky, it crossed my mind that U likely hadn’t been looking at the sky. She had to have been staring at my back and the point of her knife the entire time.

But all that came out of my mouth was a standard reply that the weather was indeed nice.