7 - Virtue

Even now, I still vividly remember the feeling of stabbing Tateha's eye with a mechanical pencil. It clings to my mind, to my fingers, and it doesn't let go of me. The squishing noise made by something crushing as easily as a piece of newspaper. The sight of jelly gushing out because it had nowhere else to go.

And then Tateha's voice, unable to make a sound.

Her breathing in but not breathing out as she writhed and curled up.

I think I laughed, because it seemed like a joke at first. My face froze when I finally saw the fresh blood flowing through the fingers covering her right eye.

The moment I saw that, my only thought was protecting myself. What should I do? The teacher will be mad. They're going to call my parents. I wasn’t concerned about Tateha in the slightest.

I'm human garbage. Somewhere deep down, I recognize I’m an evil person through and through.

How could I do something like that? I didn't mean to stab her with a mechanical pencil. My foot slipped and I forgot I was holding the pencil when I tried to catch myself... Here I am, making excuses for myself again. I shouldn't have bullied her in the first place.

I remember a little about why I started. In the beginning, I thought she was a good girl because she smiled a lot. Once I noticed she smiled at anyone, though, it got to the point where I got grumpy any time I saw it happen.

Tateha was the sort of person who quietly watched someone's mood and tagged along behind them with shuffling steps. I noticed that she took turns starting conversations with all of our classmates, like she was trying to serve everyone equal amounts of hot water from a kettle. It all started when I laughed and told my friends, "Look, now she's talking to that kid."

Ridicule became backbiting, backbiting became verbal abuse, and by the end it had escalated to violence. I never thought of my steadily escalating actions as bullying, either. Throwing erasers at Tateha in class to harass her and taking her to the bathroom to abuse her were just part of life at school. It was only when I went to her parent's house to apologize in person for the mechanical pencil stealing Tateha's eyesight that I understood how serious the things I did were.

I was way too late with all of it.

Father started to abuse me after that. His go-to line was, "This is what you were doing to her."

It hurts, being beaten. After he hit me once, I was scared when he got close, even if he didn't hit me. I learned that violence controls both mind and body, because eye contact alone was enough to get my heart pounding. It got to the point where I dreaded going back to the house, so I did things like kill time at a shrine far away. I believed the shrine's god would intervene, even if Father found me there.

Thanks to Mother noticing, he stopped abusing me about the time when I made it to the upper grades in elementary school. You could call us a fairly normal household now, though there's still a tense atmosphere whenever Father is around.

The story about stabbing Tateha's eye with a mechanical pencil spread like wildfire, and the way peoples' eyes looked at me changed, friends and teachers alike. There wasn't anywhere left for me, and I was scared.

There were times when Tateha and I passed one another in the hallways, but we were in separate classes and never talked.

I thought her right eye had been fixed when I first saw her after surgery, and that it was all just a bad dream. When I learned it was a prosthetic eye, though, my heart sank. Every time I saw her right eye, I remembered what happened that day. That's why I wanted to go somewhere Tateha wasn't. I even went as far as applying to a different middle school where no one knew me.

Starting from scratch was the point where I turned myself around. My school life was spent improving myself, to the point where no one would ever think of me as a sinner who bullied someone to the point of blindness. I always made an effort to help people in bad situations. I never trash-talked my friends. I put everything I had into club activities; the same with my studies. I acted cheerful as best I could and treated everyone kindly.

That's right, I am a conscientious, capable human being.

The hand that stabbed Tateha's right eye only ever tried to pull me towards being a bad person, and it had taken on a moral debt.

I am no longer the kind of person who bullies people. I will be an earnest human. I will become a human who is kind and considerate. Having decided that, I did everything to keep that past tragedy concealed as I passed through middle school, as if I had meticulously sealed my body in wax.

Something gnawed at me, though.

I wonder how Tateha is doing.

At the library, I frantically read up on what it was like after being blinded, how to live with a prosthetic eye, all of the handicaps that came with a missing eye, things like that.

Tateha, are you being bullied because of your prosethetic eye? Being blind in your right eye isn't a barrier for you, is it?

I read that people don't have a sense of depth when they're blind in one eye, so they can't tell whether things like balls or cars are coming at them while they're standing still. That was the point I became hopelessly worried about her. It was the moment my desire to confront the past that I had chosen to look away from sprouted.

…I want to see you again.

I want to see you again and make it up to you.

I want to atone for my sins.

I want to apologize to you, even though I know apologizing doesn't fix the problem. I want to rub my forehead in the dirt and apologize until my voice is hoarse and I can no longer speak.

If by some miracle we ever meet again, I absolutely won't bully you this time.

I was sure Tateha hated me, and doubted she had forgiven me, but I still wanted to do everything I could for her. I turned over a new leaf. The person I was back then didn't exist anymore. Even if there was a motive for bullying her, I wouldn't do it.

The demonic self that dumped water on you, stabbed you with a pencil, burned your open wounds, and rolled on the floor cackling about it all, I killed her.

I became a good person. That is my own way of facing a sin that won't go away.

"Ruri-chan."

...And yet.

"…let go? *cough* Wha—what's up? Aren't you going to keep going?"

I wondered why my hands were around Tateha's neck. She looked on the verge of tears, drool and foam blowing between her lips. I was squeezing her neck.

Why? Why had it come to this? I didn't act like a bully anymore. I didn't do things to injure people anymore. Even though I decided to become a decent human…

"A—kh—hh—"

Why was I putting my weight on Tateha, on the verge of choking the life out of her?

Her eyes were wide open, but her right eye kept staring in one direction, not moving. That's because it's a prosthetic eye. She lost her vision. Tears were coming out even though it was a prosthetic eye. I learned in a book that was because the tear glands were still there.

At our fated meeting, I would apologize to Tateha for everything I'd done up to then. We'd become friends and the problems between us would melt away. I'm sorry, you know. Well, it's all good. Can we be on friendly terms from now on? Of course. I would cry tears of relief in the middle of that conversation, and then Tateha would take my hand with tears in her eyes, too.

Once I found out that it was possible to cry with a prosthetic eye, I kept imagining a convenient scenario like that. I hoped it was how it would turn out. I kept working hard to make it turn out that way. I was doing my best to become a human who is mindful of a person's pain and could comfort their spirit.

So despite that, why was I doing this? It's wrong. No one looked forward to this kind of thing.

I took my hands off Tateha and flopped backwards. I climbed off the bed and snatched up my bag, which had fallen on the floor. I hoped clutching it would overwrite the sensation of strangling Tateha.

"Why did you stop?"

"I… have to go home."

Tateha looked down at me from the bed with a dazed expression, then smiled. "So your parents are worriers too, huh? I get it. I'll walk you out."

She was soaked in sweat. As she smoothed out her clothes, her shirt—thin enough to see through—stuck to her skin. Her breath was still rough as she showed me to the door, and the flush lingered on her face.

"Your mom still hasn't come home?"

"Yeah, I don't think she's coming home tonight."

I made awkward conversation with Tateha in the gloomy entranceway. It seemed like unlikely communication between fellow creatures who just a moment ago were 'strangler' and 'strangled'. The world was lit by pale moonlight when I opened the door.

"Ruri-chan." A voice landed on my back as if it had pounced. "Could you come again tomorrow?"

Refuse her.

This is weird. It's absolutely wrong. I became someone with virtue, so I had to stop doing this.

"Sure. If that's what you want, Tateha."

And yet.

A prosthetic sense of justice is extremely easy to break.

I nervously looked at Tateha's eyes. The moonlight didn't reflect from the resin that composed her artificial eye. A pitch black that absorbed all light was fixed on me, motionless.