Which is what must have happened with Asura, more or less. Maybe. I don’t really know. But let’s say it did anyway. I prefer to think it did.
So to continue this line of reasoning: Hideo Ozaki, the Round-and-Round Devil, killed those three Yoshiba boys—Shin’ichi, Koji, and Yuzo—and cut them up to try to make a statue of Asura. Though the truth is nobody really knows whether he killed them because he wanted to make an Asura or whether the idea of making the statue occurred to him only after he’d killed them. Three heads and six arms—Koyama’s Asura had the same extra parts. So were Hideo Ozaki and Yoshitaka Koyama feeling the same kinds of feelings when they set out to make their statues?
In a basic sense, they were—or at least something pretty similar. Ozaki even started calling the statue he wanted to make “Asura Man.” Which is why, in the moment before he died, after he had jumped from the roof of that apartment house, in the instant it took him to fall seven stories, there was absolutely no trace of regret or remorse in his heart—which I know for a fact because we were linked together—and that was because he believed that by trying to make his Asura statue, he had hoped to leave the world a slightly better place. He was convinced his “Asura Man” would have been the real deal—not just a toy superman but the image of God.
At this point, of course, I can’t help thinking about that monster—the one I met in the heart of the forest. He had a lot of faces and arms too. Wasn’t he just another—totally gross—Asura?
But if so, then I guess I was doing just what the Round-and-Round was doing: cutting up those kids to make my own god—and mine was even bigger than his, with more kids and more parts. I do feel pretty bad for those kids, if they’re still there in the forest. But it might make them feel a little better to know that the Round-and-Round was working with totally dead boys. My kids were suffering a lot, but at least they were still alive…Well thanks, Aiko!
I guess you’re right: the difference doesn’t amount to much.
Anyway, you still have to admit that Hideo Ozaki’s basic idea—to make a statue of Asura—was a good one, a good impulse…and the fact that he was trying to do something good means that Ozaki himself had some good in him, even if it was just a little tiny bit. And a person who has some good in him can be said to be a good person, at least in some limited way. So in some limited way, Ozaki was a good person. Even if he was the Round-and-Round Devil.
So I would like to follow the example of my own made-up God and exercise great patience and totally awesome compassion…and forgive the Round-and-Round Devil. I would like to say that I even love him.
And I’d like to do the same for myself—forgive me, love me. Regardless of how stupid and selfish I’ve been, how much I’ve insisted on wasting this precious life, I’ve still got a few good points…though I can’t think of any at the moment. Still, I’m sure I have some—at least one or two. Somewhere. Probably.
But let’s forget about me.
Hideo Ozaki, the Round-and-Round Devil. Pushing thirty, unemployed, living with his parents, spoiled, abusive, hanging out, following V of H—and all the while building up this tremendous stress, this awful pressure. He starts looking around for a way to vent his anger and frustration, and what he sees is the terrible stuff these middle school kids have been doing, these little monstrous kid-killers—Sakakibara and the rest of them. So, half as a joke, he kills a few cats, then a few dogs, and I think you can safely say that it’s just a short step to killing the three boys. Hideo Ozaki, the Round-and-Round Devil…just another bad-boy Asura.
So despite his really, really bad choice of materials, you might say that Ozaki himself became a good Asura when he set out to make one…though you’d be totally lying if you did. But maybe you could at least say that he was taking the very first little baby steps on the road to Asura-hood, or maybe that he had at least discovered there was such a road…or maybe that he’d noticed some vague signs that might have eventually led him to discovering that there was such a road…Anyway, for me anyway, the fact that he wanted to make an Asura is at the very least a sign there was some good somewhere in his heart…
So, though I did hesitate for a while, in the end I told Sayaka Yoshiba why I thought her three boys had been cut to pieces. I told her that Shin’ichi, Koji, and Yuzo had become an Asura.
Now of course I knew this wasn’t going to solve her problem. I knew she wasn’t going to thank me for explaining and tell me it was all right now. No, I knew it was only going to make her even crazier with grief and anger. And I wondered why I’d been brought back to this world if that was the best news I’d learned on the other side. But I also knew that time can heal anything—well, most things anyway—and I had my hopes that the photos of the Koyama Asura that the investigators found in Hideo Ozaki’s apartment might actually help in the long run. He had taken hundreds of them—beautiful, pure pictures
