15

It would be nice to claim that this had all happened due to my strange ability to stay calm, but really it was just my cowardice that allowed me to so easily be dragged away from my home. Once I’d been locked up in someone else’s closet, I wasn’t sure I could keep up the cool and collected facade.

But even so, complete darkness has a way of robbing anyone of their reason.

It returns you to a primordial beast.

I began protesting louder than I ever had before, screaming at U as she stood outside the door. I don’t think I can even publicly share some of the words I said to her. I very crudely demanded that she stop jerking me around and let me out. I used language that was quite unthinkable for a gentleman.

But the only response I got was U‘s quiet sobbing from the other side of the door, immediately dousing all my impotent rage. The fact that I had made U cry forced me into silence.

Really, I should have been the one wanting to cry. But a small girl crying leaves an undeniable impact, and I may have been insensitive, but not enough that I could ignore that.

It’s really weird when I actually lay it out. There I was, locked away and imprisoned in a closet, trying to comfort my abductor and captor. Well, by comforting, I mean stammering and mumbling apologies without any real logical thread or plan.

I apologized… but for what?

Was I sorry for blaming her for locking me in a closet so small I couldn’t move? That would be a crazy thing to say. But maybe I was already crazy, because I don’t think a normal mind could fully accept the situation I had found myself in. Being in such ridiculous circumstances would drive anyone crazy. I think I get points for remaining calm and not doing anything violent, like trying to punch the door down.

But it’s safe to say that staying calm in that situation ultimately backfired, because after all my stammering and hemming and hawing apologies, U replied,

“Very well. I forgive you.”

And the situation immediately calmed. The problem was solved… in a manner of speaking. My actual problems had yet to be addressed.

Then, without any further words, U‘s presence suddenly vanished from behind the door. I could hear her footsteps and feel that she was gone. As far as U was concerned, her job had reached its end.

But as I said, it was only the beginning for me. The beginning of a confusing life of confinement.

At the time, as a 20-year-old, I had read more mystery novels than any other kind of book. In fact, it wouldn’t be a terrible exaggeration to say I only read mystery novels. I was also at an age where I wanted to show off, just as much to myself as everyone else, so I read more foreign books than Japanese books. Despite all that reading, I’m sorry to say I’ve retained basically none of what I read… but regardless, in the world of mystery novels, a common method of murdering a kidnapped victim is to lock them in a tight space and suffocate them. In the works, it was explained as a simpler murder that didn’t require physical strength or cause as much guilt since the method was more indirect than blunt force or poisoning. I’m pretty sure that I was cynical about that explanation though, since I doubted that people could be locked up very easily in real life. And then I very easily got locked up in real life. I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I still felt like I had brought the situation upon myself.

But a closet isn’t like a vault room. It’s just a closet. The door was slammed shut and locked from the outside (although I suppose from my perspective it was just slid shut), but the door didn’t have some kind of perfectly gapless seal. To the contrary, there was a decently sized gap, maybe around 1/32 of an inch, enough to let some light in and allow me to see out if I pushed my face up against it. The instant that I was locked in, I felt like I was in complete darkness, but once my eyes adjusted it was clear I had at least some light to work with.

It wasn’t sealed up like a safe, or even like a darkroom. It was just another room in an ordinary house. At the very least, being locked in the closet wasn’t going to cause suffocation.

My obsession with detective novels always had me assuming the worst, but the fact that being locked in didn’t equal my death made me calm down somewhat.

Of course, somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that staying calm in that situation wasn’t actually a good thing, but my emotions were already dead as a stump, so I couldn’t control it if my inner self decided to flatline. If I had wanted to act more carelessly, or perhaps violently, then the situation probably could have changed very easily.

When I think about it, most of history’s legendary and heroic figures aren’t just people who act, they’re violent people. They carve out their own path, hardly acting like gentlemen along the way… but maybe being calm isn’t what it takes to be a hero. From what I’m seeing looking back, maybe it’s easier to escape danger by being a person that very easily loses control.

Losing control sounds like an extremely violent concept, and maybe it is, but I guess if the person you are when you’re in control isn’t that good of a person anyway, then it might be better to just let go.

But that’s only one point of view. Hard to say how that might pan out in practice.

Anyway, it was relieving to know that I wouldn’t die or be actively killed right away.

Given the many spikes of relief and anxiety I’d been switching between over the past few hours, you’d think I’d stop giving myself over to immediate emotions, but I think humans are just apt to try and find relief in any tiny glimmer of hope, regardless of the situation. I’m not unique when it comes to that.

I decided to take stock of my situation.

Given my limited view from the gap in the door, I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to see U any time soon. I sat down in the closet, unsure if she had gone to her room or just the living room.

Psychologically speaking, sitting down means that you claim the place where you are as your territory, even if only for a moment (there’s a more complicated term for it, but I forgot it). I told myself that definitely wasn’t the case for that closet (knowing things can really be annoying sometimes) as I sat down to order my thoughts.

Basically, U. U. was the girl that I had seen a week before. I had watched her run up and hold her destroyed friend’s head, but only after saving her game and carefully putting it away. But then I ran away… I knew I had… but she must have seen me.

She realized that I had seen who she really was.

That was why she was doing all this to silence me… just as she said.

Which meant that she was self-aware.

She was living her life completely aware of her true self, carefully hiding it… and imprisoning the first witness to it.

For the next week after that traffic accident, on her way to school, she must have been in that spot, recorder at the ready… I couldn’t really prove that, but she had to have been lying in wait for me. She was using what little time she had on the way to school to try and ambush me… and I had failed to see it coming, since she was just right there.

I should have been able to consider the possibility that since I had seen her, she could very well have seen me. But even then, who could expect me to assume that an elementary school girl would take such direct and bold action?

U‘s odd eccentricity (if that’s a valid word for it) was chilling, but that was it. I didn’t see her commit murder or anything. She was weird, but I couldn’t take legal action against her having weird priorities, and I had even less ethical or moral ground to do so.

So how could I have ever predicted she would take all that time and effort to try and silence me?

…But no. There was no need for pathetic excuses. I should have known. It should have been obvious how embarrassing and humiliating it would be for her “priorities” to be exposed. As a guy who hides his abnormalities and tries to be seen as a weirdo, it should have been plain as day.

Her being a child was no reason to let my guard down. In fact, her being a child only meant that she would feel more acute and unbearable shame. Just because she didn’t know how to write the Japanese kanji for shame didn’t mean she didn’t understand it. This may be a crude analogy, but most adults would rather expose their sexual preferences than their true selves.

In a way, it was understandable that U would take such drastic action… in fact, from her perspective, she probably didn’t have any other choice. Nothing that she did spoke to any hesitation or second-guessing. That could have been chalked up to her being a child without a completely grounded set of ethics, morals, or conscience. Those kinds of thoughts would only come up in post for her.

I know I’m positing a lot without any evidence, but think back to when you were a young elementary schooler. Think of how mischievous and crafty you could be. You could have committed the most barbaric acts without batting an eye. But children aren’t punished the same way because typically there’s no desire to cause harm. It’s a fine line between not caring about causing trouble and wanting to cause harm, but it is a very real line.

Even with those concessions, kidnapping and imprisonment seemed like a pretty big jump. But I think that’s just because I was a university student back then. Now, as a 30-year-old author, I see it with different eyes. I’ve learned to read the room, bow in submission, and stay under the radar.

But that’s where I was at. Our extensive prologue now ends, and my trauma can truly begin to unfold. There will be no further changes in setting.

If I was limited to 10 words, I’d say the following:

Ten years ago, I was kidnapped by a little girl.