KamikaZEN

We never made it to the train.

I had made my best to make sure nobody followed us. It never crossed my mind they didn’t have to, they only had to wait.

I don’t even recall any more what was it I wanted to say to Ichiro. All I can vividly remember is how, when I turned to face her, I suddenly saw a hole no larger than a button pop at the front of her white winter jacket. My mind was still trying to understand the meaning of this strange apparition when I noticed a cloud of fine pink mist and feathers forming behind her back.

Memory has a very strange way of erasing some details while virtually etching others right into our brains. Whenever I go back to that cold winter evening in Chiba Station everything becomes as fuzzy as a long forgotten dream. All I can see with vivid clarity is Ichiro’s face, the look in her eyes as she silently fell to her knees. It was not a look of fear or even anguish, if at all, it showed a vague puzzlement, as if she never really understood what was happening.

Only at the very few seconds before she finally collapsed forward to reveal the huge crater the explosive bullet had left in place of where her back used to be, did she show the slightest hint of surprised understanding. That look never had the time to fully form though, she was dead long before her body finally hit the snow.

It wasn’t until later, after the police had questioned me, that my hands and legs began shaking uncontrollably. There was no reason, of course, had they wanted me dead there was nothing that could have prevented it. As it was, I wasn’t a threat, not even a minor nuisance. In their books I was not even worth the cost of the single bullet needed to dispose of me.

I’d hardly known her (that much of what I told the police was thrue), so after a couple of days they returned my passport and I was sent to the airport on a small yellow cab.

The flight back to Mexico was a very lonely one indeed.