FLCL

Naota had been doing was pretty unwholesome, but Naota didn't want to hear that from the likes of Haruko.

Naota's head bandage was tied tighter than it had been the day before, to keep the horn pushed in.

What exactly were you up to last night? Naota felt like swearing at Haruko. He didn't want Mamimi to hear him sound that jealous, though, so he swallowed his words.

Not knowing what Naota was thinking, Haruko said, 'Hey, c'mon, let's go take a swing.'

'Takkun's in the game?' Mamimi asked, surprised. 'But Takkun isn't the kind of person who would actually swing the bat.'

Mamimi's casual remark troubled Naota even more. Not 'the kind of person who would actually swing the bat'?

Did Mamimi think of Naota the same way Haruko did?

'You can ride with me to the field,' Haruko offered.

With his lips still pursed, Naota declined the offer. 'No thanks, I don't play baseball.'

'It's Canti's first game.'

Hearing that, Mamimi's eyes lit up, and she jumped excitedly. 'Lord Canti?'

'It's worth it just to see him field,' Haruko promised.

'I want to go see!' Mamimi pleaded.

'You know, your home runs yesterday weren't anything special.' Naota's words, which were nothing more than those of a sore loser, were already lost on the girls.

'I'm coming, Haru!' Mamimi exclaimed.

'Okay!'

With the elated Mamimi clinging to Haruko's back, the Vespa sped off.

Left alone, Naota shouted, 'I'll never let you be my coach again!' bitterly to no one, and then he went home, clenching the bat in his hand.

Until that point, he never would've been able to imagine he could kill his own father.

The house Naota returned to was eerily quiet. Shigekuni and Haruko were at the game, and Kamon wasn't in the shop.

As Naota thought how the bakery might as well shut down, he heard a noise from the back of the house. It was their pet cat, Miyu Miyu, in the corridor.

Miyu Miyu glared into the living room with a strange shimmer in her eyes. Lore said cats could see mysterious things humans couldn't, and it seemed as though their cat had spied something unusual, given that it looked like it was glaring at a monster in the living room.

Naota shared the cat's suspicion and definitely sensed there was someone in his living room. Instinctively squeezing the bat tighter, he peered into the room and saw Kamon sitting alone. At least, Naota thought it was his father. The person looked a little different than his father usually looked. The man wasn't wearing a shirt and was disheveled, leaning against the wall with his mouth open. There was a sense of indecency about him.

Naota thought back to the night before, when he'd felt sickened that Haruko had been in Kamon's room.

'Oh.' Noticing Naota, Kamon quickly tried to hide his exposed stomach. He then peered into Naota's face and shot a satisfied smile as if he were gloating about something. 'Oh, Haruko, I asked you not to leave any marks. If Naota sees them, there's going to be trouble.'

Naota glanced at Kamon's abdomen. It was obvious that what he was trying to hide were love bites. Naota could feel his face stiffening up and his disquiet quickly turned to rage.

To provoke his son further, Kamon said, 'You see, your father and Haruko have that kind of relationship.'

'That kind of relationship?' Naota felt an unspeakable bitterness toward such a blatant display of self-satisfaction and felt completely betrayed. His mind replayed the words Haruko had said to him about seeing him first. Damn it! Despite the fact that she said that…

Kamon leaned against the wall, trying to stand up straight. 'You must be hungry. We have your favorite— genetically modified bean curd—Naotaaa.'

Having addressed Naota with an odd intonation, Kamon made Naota feel as though he were being made a fool of even more. Then, Kamon inexplicably repeated Naota's name over and over again like a broken record. 'Naotaaa, Naotaaa, Naotaaa…'

Naota screamed at his father to shut up, gripping the metal bat in his hand.

That was when the switch flipped on.

Naota suddenly whacked the television in front of him with the bat, causing the cracking of Braun tube and the shattering of plastic.

Although Naota had only hit the television, his father made a sickening 'ugh' sound, like one a chicken makes when its neck is broken.

When Naota glanced over, he saw that Kamon's neck was bent at an unusual angle and that Kamon had collapsed on the floor in front of him. Actually, the brass clock that'd been on top of the television had flown up with the force of the whack and landed directly atop Kamon's head.

Naota sucked in his breath and took a step back.

An hour after the crime, Naota was in the interrogation room at the Mabase Police Station. As he waited alone in the sparse room, he stared through the barred glass window and could see the midday sun shining brightly outside.

'Shock! Sixth Grade Elementary Schooler Snaps, Beats Father with Bat!' That would be the next day's newspaper headlines.

'No, no—he was such an ordinary, mature, good kid. You never would've thought it of Naota…' That's what Naota's homeroom teacher Miyaji and other people would say on chat shows.

I killed my father, and now I'm in an interrogation room facing homicide charges. It's still light out. Hey, what time did I get up today?

Naota was finding it difficult to breathe, not due to lack of air in the room, but because he was thinking of the wide-eyed, fallen Kamon, and was having flashbacks of his father's fallen corpse.

No, my dad isn't dead. As if my dad could be dead! It was a bad dream—all a bad dream. Homicide? Ludicrous. 'Homicide' is a word I've only heard on TV dramas. Murderer? It's a word I've heard on the news. As if my dad could be dead.

MY DAD IS COLLAPSED ON THE FLOOR AND HIS HEART WASN'T BEATING.

What happened to me? Why did I turn out like this? What would my brother and grandfather think?

Another flashback: the corpse with both eyes wide open…

I killed someone. I'M A MURDERER. Maybe they'll publish the essay I wrote at school in the weeklies.

'Future Dreams: When I grow up, I think I'd like to leave this town, because I smell something rotten about the phrase 'age of local autonomy'…'

Damn, if only I'd written something better than that. All the specialists who analyze my psychological state are going to interpret it as 'Boy A's internalized psychopathic tendencies.'

What time is it? Why doesn't this room have a clock? How did I get here? Why didn't I go to school today? Oh yes, it's a holiday. I would've been better off going to the baseball game rather than this. I should've been standing in the batter's box, even if all I'd done was stand. Why am I not holding the bat anymore? That's my brother's special bat. Help me, Tasuku. I can't breathe. I feel heavy—so heavy. The chair I'm sitting on feels like an elevator descending down.

SOMEBODY… HELP ME!

The sound of footsteps approached in the corridor outside the interrogation room.

'I'm going to be the one dealing with this,' a man's voice declared. It was a voice Naota remembered from somewhere.

When the door opened, the eyebrow man, Commander Amarao, was standing there.

Just as I thought—he's a policeman! Naota said to himself.