Imamimi Notanobu - Epilogue

Just in time to see Zhang go flying out of a tall office window. He hits the floor with a dull thud, and the splinter of glass. A line of blood trails down his right nostril.

I offer my hand. He takes it. It seems like I’d just offered a formal extension of aid, given that he’s looking at me rather expectantly.

“Zhang. Are you going to kill him?”

He looks at me. “Nobu, you don’t know me. I’ve got nothing left. My only brother is dead, my parents are long dead, and my pet chinchilla passed away two months ago. I don’t care if I go to prison.”

He prepares to leave. I tug at this sleeve. “Hey, don’t let what the Tearer said get to you. You’re not some irredeemable piece of shit for not helping expose him.”

Frustration expresses itself on his face. “I’m sure a lot of people would disagree with you,” he says, while not looking at Yuura, which seems to implicate her to some degree.

The implicated in question says nothing. Just looks at me with a mildly dissatisfied expression. As if she’s weighing my opinion with hers.

That doesn’t help my case.

Does Zhang feel guilty? Is this his way of atonement?

…

Fine.

I won’t appeal to his sense of self-preservation or desire to get off scot free. If he’s just here to deny the Tearer’s ‘endgame’, then I’ll just have to appeal to Zhang’s desire to hurt him.

“You said you found cameras in the other place the Tearer was at, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Think about it! What’d be the point of leading you here? He’s already done with his eight murders--and I saw that he spared another person earlier! His little display of ethics is done! He wants you to murder him so he can get martyred!”

Zhang exhales. Realising something. “Yeah, I thought as much.” He chuckles. “Except… there aren’t any cameras here, you know? So once I’m done, there’ll be nothing left for him to be remembered by.”

As if to demonstrate that very fact, he retrieves two paper talismans, and tosses them at Yanghua. Intercepting his movement, ghostly, flaming arms spawn out and block his path to escape. Mad Dog steps in and slashes him on the wrist. Flicking away a trail of blood.

Zhang runs back to join them.

I’m at a loss. I don’t want him to die. And I don’t want Zhang to kill him. I’m not a moralist by any means, but I want to put an end to this.

So.

If there are no cameras here to remember him by.

I’ll just have to make my own.

I take out my smartphone and I open the streaming app. With a hasty type of a title, I hover my thumb over the ‘start’ button, and press it. I give it a few seconds. After about a dozen seconds, there are around twenty viewers, and after double that, there are around fifty.

I don’t say anything. I just turn the camera’s focus on the ongoing fight. The comments are flooding in. A mix of confusion, excitement, and the usual horniness for whatever reason.

The people present don’t notice it, though. They just continue with their life and death event.

Finally, Yanghua catches on. As a kick comes coursing through the air and hits him across the room, he smiles. Despite the blood on his body. Despite his countless bruises. He stands with a certain triumph.

“Do you concede, Tearer-tan?” asks Mad Dog. “If you accept your defeat, I am willing to end it, yes.”

Zhang seems to relish the moment, observing for himself Yanghua’s wounded state. Perfect. They don’t realise it yet.

“Hahaha.” He laughs. “HAHAHAHA! Asking the Tearer to surrender?! Don’t make me laugh!”

“Why is funny?”

“Because none of you get it! Why nurture a sapling, in spite of its time to grow? Why spread our teachings, if never to receive monetary gain?! It is because we care about the future! It is because we yearn for a world of tomorrow better than the one of yesterday! Through education, humans may grow; that is the sole reason for which I exist, for which my heart still beats and fights! Mei Sihua. Hu Yang. Zhao Yilong! I confess to their murders and five more! You see, I cannot surrender! For surrender requires a position of loss, and I have already won!”

Yanghua looks at my phone. On what’s probably instinct, Zhang does too, seeing my camera at long last. Taking out a bundle of fulu paper, Zhang and Mad Dog step back, assessing the boy for any threat of danger.

That’s when, before they can react—

“What?!”

—he eats them. Stuffing the papers into his mouth, and swallows. The bundle of paper works its way down this throat, and with a movement of his lips, they begin to glow. Burning a bright white and shining through the layer of flesh.

“No!”

Zhang rushes to him. He makes a half-hearted attempt to pry open his mouth, only to get pulled back by Mad Dog.

“You’ll burn, Zhang.”

Yanghua’s whole body begins to pulse with light. From his throat to his body. His tail wags all the while, and, like an oil stove switched on, he suddenly catches fire. White flame, in the form of hundreds of little teeth envelops his body, and the smell of burning flesh enters the air.

I stop the stream right then and there. Watching in strange silence as it all comes to an end.

Zhang watches in disbelief. He mutters some incomprehensibles under his breath. Too muddled and too quiet for me to hear. The blood from his cleaver drips to the ground. Accompanying him in his silence is Mad Dog, who’s watching with an almost disappointed reaction.

Tucking his cleaver back into his jacket, the man exits the office room. He just walks past me. In silence. Without a word, and without an emotion besides resignation.

“Gonna turn yourself in?” Yuura asks.

“Probably.”

“You know Japanese prison’s a pain, right?”

“That’s part of the point.”

She stops. “Do you plan to help cover up any more murders?”

He turns to look at her. “No?”

“Then, what’s the point of sending yourself to jail? The whole point of it is rehabilitation and protecting society from criminals. Are you dangerous, Zhang?”

“No what?—”

She cuts him off. “Are you going to be? And do you think doing two years in a rusty cell will make you a considerably less dangerous person by the end?”

“Listen I—”

She cuts him off again. “No, you listen!” Yuura approaches Zhang. Meeting him at eye level. “You wanna become better? Be my guest. But running away, and chickening out to a dark cell, or anything suicidally-adjacent is just cowardice.”

“Okay, and what’d you have me do?”

“You say you want to be better? Help Nobu-kun!”

“Huh?”

“What’s in your brain, a wilted piece of cabbage?! Protect Nobu-kun, stay by his side! He’s been kidnapped by gangsters once; what if they come around again? What if they show up with a gun or a knife or nunchucks—I don’t know! All I’m saying is that’d be a far better and more immediately effective use of your time instead of just say—TURNING YOURSELF TO THE POLICE AND GOING TO JAIL FOR WHO KNOWS HOW LONG!”

Zhang has no reply.

His face has no reply.

His eyes are so deep in surprise that it looks like he just got the biggest revelation of his life.

“Ask Nobu-kun! Ask what he thinks! Have you never considered his feelings, and how he’d been impacted by your actions?”

Zhang turns his head slowly and meets my eyes. “Well, Nobu-kun, have you been impacted by my actions?”

“I do think so. Being set up and kidnapped was kinda scary. And uh—what was it about the gang coming back to find me? Yeah, there’s that too.”

Zhang looks at the ceiling. His black eyes seeming rather thoughtful. “Well then. What are we, if not defined by what we do for others?”