Chapter 112 Hirata’s World 7
Taka took a deep breath, turned his head to the side, and said to the recorder, "A new persona has erged inside 0098. He calls himself the cri novelist, Mr. F.
"Mr. F suffers from the sa symptom as the main persona, Hirata Shuichi. He believes that he ca from a higher dinsion and is currently possessing Hirata’s body."
Feng Bujue waited from him to finish and tossed the questions that he wanted to ask out. "Doctor, since it is now 2005, Hirata’s case should have closed a long ti ago. May I know the verdict?"
"He was charged with two cases of preditated homicides," Taka replied. "One of them was a police officer, so his verdict was serious. But considering your motive and ntal state, the final verdict was life imprisonnt."
"So, is this a ntal asylum?" Feng Bujue asked.
"This is a prison for ntal patients," Taka said. "We conduct a new assessnt on the inmates every season. That is why we’re speaking now."
"How has Hirata perford in the past fifteen years?" Feng Bujue asked.
"Much more normal than you are now," Taka replied. "When he is in control of his faculties, Hirata told that whenever he thought back to those incidents, he would fall into a black and white world. No matter how many tis it happened, his mories would be filled with monsters and ghosts.
"Sotis, the personas of Watanabe and Tachibana appeared, and when that happened, Hirata would talk to himself. I’ve tried to communicate with these two personas before, and the criminal events that they described were similar to the ones recorded by the police.
"Thus, I believe that these two personas don’t really know what happened back then. They rely took the information that the police told Hirata later as their own mory."
He moved his eyes away from the docunt to Feng Bujue’s face. "What about you, Mr. F? You seem to be very interested in that case, so that ans you also don’t know what truly happened back then, right?"
"Yes, that is the question I have. Fifteen years have passed, and since the verdict result is two preditated homicides, then... Officer Yamada’s body must have been found, yes?" Feng Bujue asked.
"Seven years after the incident, Officer Yamada’s body was found," Taka answered. "It was about that ti that I gained contact with you."
"Then... this ans that even without Officer Yamada’s body, the verdict given was ’two preditated homicides’?" Feng Bujue questioned.
"Well," Taka answered, "based on the situation back then, the case couldn’t have been clearer. Hirata-san’s ntal state was caving in, and he had no other family and no friends to step forward as his character witness. Even the lawyer assigned to him by the court suggested that he fight the case as a convicted felon, so... basically, the sentence was whatever was decided by the prosecutor. All the evidences pointed toward a single truth, that was killing the police officer, grabbing the gun, killing his boss, and then going insane."
"Preposterous," Feng Bujue scoffed. "Before eliminating all the other possibilities, how could you even take that as the absolute truth?
"Perhaps it was Yamada who killed Fukui and then hid the gun at Hirata’s ho before strangling Haruko Sato, who was at ho, before masquerading it at a suicide... Then, that would be able to explain why Hirata went to work like normal on the morning of the 27th."
Taka looked at him for two seconds. "Ha ha... Mr. F, if you’d shown up fifteen years ago and represented Hirata-san as his defense, he might have gotten off with a lighter sentence."
He took up the docunts on the table. "Unfortunately, today, at least two pieces of evidence could undo your hypothesis. First, Yamada had no connection with the trio of Fukui, Hirata, and Haruko. The police did a thorough investigation. Be it a flimsy connection between friends or relatives, there was nothing connecting the police officer to them. Therefore, he didn’t possess the motive to do what you suggested he might have done.
"Second, the location Yamada’s body was found was at the ruins of Hirata’s old ho that was hit by the tornado. The piece of land was sold by the governnt seven years ago, and it was when they dug up the foundation that the body was found. The ti of death was narrowed down to seven years prior, and even though the body had decayed to bones, there was enough coloration on the bones to discern the cause of death. It was undeniably a preditated murder."
"Hmm..." Feng Bujue was silent for a few seconds before shrugging. "Fine, actually, I was rely dissatisfied with the due process and had to co up with a random hypothesis to challenge the verdict."
"Mr. F, the evidence of Hirata-san’s cris is undeniable," Taka said. "Now that I have satisfied your curiosity, how about you cooperate with and answer so of my questions?"
"As I predicted, you aren’t real either." Feng Bujue interrupted Taka, thinking, I believe I know what this whole scenario is about now.
Taka’s face was drawn, and he suddenly stopped speaking.
"You ntioned that after Yamada’s body was found, you started to approach Hirata. After hearing that, it dawned on ," Feng Bujue said, "Seven years after the cri, after knowing Yamada’s body was found, a new person erged within Hirata, and that... was you."
Taka chuckled. "Do you an that I am an existence similar to Tachibana and Watanabe?"
"No, you preside at a level of consciousness far higher than them. From how I see it... Hirata should possess four layers to his consciousness," Feng Bujue explained slowly. "Around November 1990, after witnessing two murders and the suicide of his wife, Hirata experienced a ntal breakdown. From then on, his consciousness was trapped inside the deepest layer of his mind, a world built of terror and chaos.
"One month later, as the investigation started to clarify things, and after Hirata went through many interrogations and obtained information from the court, he coped by inventing two new personas—Doctor Watanabe and Officer Tachibana. These two personas successfully rescued him from the chaotic black and white mory world, bringing him to the second layer of his consciousness. Here, he was given a mont to rest. With the two personas’ aid, he sifted through his mory that was characterized by monsters, filing away the parts that were made up by his imagination, trying to reconstruct his actual mory."
Feng Bujue licked his chapped lips. "When a psychologist attempted to bring forth a patient’s eclipsed mory, they would have adopted hypnosis, not sothing like a video reel. I should have known the space with Tachibana and Watanabe was a ntal space in Hirata’s head... That place is a deeper consciousness compared to here. It is a space wedged between rational thinking and twisted mory."
Staring into Taka’s eyes, he said, "And you, or rather this cell that we’re in, is the third layer."
"What do I represent?" Taka asked.
"You are also a mory," Feng Bujue answered. "You represent the mory that Hirata had for the past eight years... The normal and believable mory that he could trust."
He leaned back in the chair and looked up. Out of habit, he wanted to reach to his nose but realized that his hands were still cuffed. In any case, he continued. "Ti has washed away certain things. After seven years of psychological treatnt and the two other personas to help him take away so of the pressure, the confird ti of death and place that Yamada was found led Hirata to this third layer.
"At this layer, he can speak openly with you, objectively and calmly analyzing the past to help him accept and recognize the present. If Hirata stays with you here and does not return to the previous two layers, even if he does not recover his mory, at least he will be able to recover to beco a normal person."
Feng Bujue’s eyes moved to the recorder. "Inside the recorder, there are conversations between you and him... or rather, Hirata’s own way of rearranging his mory. Therefore, I said, these mories are normal and believable. He doesn’t want them to be mixed with others. But the existence of the recorder also ans that the ti Hirata can spend here is limited before he moves onto the fourth layer."
Taka showed a helpless expression. "Mr. F, what you said is basically correct, but I am sorry to tell you that there are only three layers here."
He sighed. "This place is the layer closest to reality. The recorder and the docunts on the table are part of Hirata’s mory. This room is a replica of the cell Hirata resides in, but in reality, there’s no table or lamp in his cell."
"Only three layers?" Feng Bujue murmured. "How is that possible..."
He showed suspicion and thought to himself, The part of the mory where he gained the murder motive has been recovered. His mory of killing Fukui has been altered, and his mory of witnessing his wife’s hanging was recovered, albeit altered. These should have surfaced after he was apprehended, but why would he have no mory at all of killing Yamada? In fact, it was only seven years later, when Yamada’s body was found, that Hirata knew about the murder. The only information Taka could provide about the murder is also miserly little. It’s like he knows nothing about the murder...
"Impossible. If there is not a higher layer, it can only an that Officer Yamada’s death has nothing to do with Hirata," Feng Bujue said confidently. "That part of mory is not lodged in his mind, so they could not be found in any of the layers."
Taka shook his head. "But the evidence has shown that..."
"Give a mirror," Feng Bujue interrupted.
"What do you plan to do?" Taka asked.
"I’m going to leave this place," Feng Bujue answered.
"At most you’re going to return to your place of origin, and when that happens, Hirata will return to or fall back to the deeper two layers." Taka seed to be advising him.
"I’m not going up," Feng Bujue explained. "I’m going to what’s adjacent."
"Adjacent? What do you an?" Taka asked.
"You’ll never understand," Feng Bujue said in the tone of a life form that ca from a higher dinsion. "Just get the mirror."
In the blink of an eye, Doctor Taka disappeared, and only Feng Bujue was left in the room. On the table before him stood a rimd mirror. It stood upright, supported by the plastic stand on its back. It looked upward at an angle.
Feng Bujue dragged the chair forward to where he could look into the mirror. He saw that the reflection in the mirror was not his own. It was a pale-faced man around forty with an unkempt beard.
"Hirata Shuichi, we finally et," Feng Bujue told the face in the mirror. He had seen Hirata’s resu in the black and white world, and it ca with a picture. Even though the face before him had aged many years, Feng Bujue still recognized it.
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