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I tightly seize him by the lapels, but he doesn’t even blink. All he does is gaze back into my raging eyes.
“Kunikida, the ideal world you’re after doesn’t exist. Give it up.”
“Shut up! She was just one woman! She hardly even knew how to use a gun! There was no reason to kill her! If you would have given us some time to plan, we could have found a way where nobody else had to die! Why…?!”
“I wasn’t the one who killed her. That was Rokuzo.”
“Did you think I wouldn’t notice?!” I point to the black pistol lying beside Rokuzo. “That’s your gun! You kicked it over to Rokuzo when I was talking to her because you knew he would kill her!”
From where Dazai is standing, he could kick the gun under the bed to Rokuzo without Miss Sasaki noticing.
“I didn’t kill her.”
“Indirectly, you did!”
“Sorry, but you can’t prove that I had any intention to. The one who held the gun and pulled the trigger with the intent to kill was Rokuzo. All I did was trip on a gun that was lying on the ground.”
A murderer who doesn’t soil their own hands…
Getting someone to kill another human being for you: What Dazai did was no different from what Miss Sasaki did. There is no way to prove their intention to kill under current laws and regulations, and they would go unpunished.
“Kunikida, that was the only way to save her. This was the best we could have hoped for.”
“You’re wrong!” I scream. “There is no way this is ideal or even good! There must have been something we could have done. There must have been a real underlying problem we just weren’t seeing! Because…”
If Miss Sasaki really resented the world…
…if she really wanted to eliminate us…
…then she wouldn’t have stopped me when I tried to walk into the poison gas. If she hadn’t, I would have breathed it in and died. If she wanted revenge, then she could have easily killed me then. She could have made it look like an accident, and nobody would have doubted her.
But she saved me. Why? Was it…on instinct? A reflex?
Struggling to speak, I hit Dazai with the facts. “Because the truth is, she didn’t want to do any of this! She had no interest in a world where criminals were killed for their crimes! She just…”
—“I just didn’t want to see him in pain anymore.”
—“You mustn’t touch the lock!”
“Tell me! Was it right for her to be shot and killed?! Is this the ideal world I seek?!”
Dazai just looks at me as he softly strings his words together.
“Kunikida, people who believe there is a right and a wrong—people who believe in the existence of an ideal world—they’re the ones who end up resenting the world and hurting those around them when things don’t go the way they want…just like the Azure King. When those ideals and beliefs are carried out, the victims are the weak and defenseless.”
He stares off into the distance.
“A cry for righteousness is like a sword. Just as it may harm the weak, it will also nev
er be able to protect or save them. The Azure King’s righteousness is what killed Miss Sasaki.”
Dazai’s criticism drives deep. I was chasing after righteousness and ideals. I was able to rise above all adversity in order to realize them.
“Kunikida. As long as you continue to pursue those ideals and remove those who get in your way, then one day you, too, will come to harbor the Azure King’s rage. There will be nothing left around you then—only ash. I’ve seen it happen all too often.”
It is as if he’s staring at something only he can see—something beyond my comprehension, like the abysmal darkness that resides in every human’s heart.
“I…”
