023. The Ultimate Evil Emerging from the Small Island

Not everyone is granted the luxury of a life that others might consider ordinary.

Meanwhile, in Japan, Hiroshima Prefecture, on Kamikamagari Island, near Misumi Island.

Misumi Island is itself a small islet in the Seto Inland Sea, and Kamikamagari, sitting right beside it, is pitifully smaller still. In ordinary times, it functions as a resort-like destination; some residents work in the tourism industry, while others make their living from fishing.

The season is approaching the peak of the tourist rush. The chill has long since faded from the Seto Inland Sea, and the sea breeze, carrying the scent of salt and the delicate sweetness of cherry blossoms, sweeps across the entire island. Low cliffs are blanketed in wild grasses and shrubs, with occasional clusters of mountain cherry blossoms jutting out from the crevices of the rocks.

Perhaps it is this very beauty that draws people from thousands of miles away to vacation here. However, most visitors arrive in the height of summer, and few ever come to appreciate the truly bewitching charm of the late spring.

In this interlude, as the spring greenery begins to wane and summer has yet to arrive, in a cemetery far from the resort, Misumi Uika buried the last of her kin.

The island is small, and most residents have known each other for years, many bound by family ties spanning decades. Uika’s mother, however, was an outsider. About a dozen years ago, she arrived on this island with another child born shortly before, Misumi Uine, and settled down. She remarried a local fisherman and gave birth to Misumi Uika.

Uika was naturally cheerful and had always dreamed of going to Tokyo to become an idol. Though their life as a family of four lacked the neon lights and the hazy luster of wealth found in Tokyo, it possessed a leisurely, quiet rhythm unique to the small island.

Unfortunately... fate played a cruel joke on them all.

On that night of wind and tides, her father was lost to the sea while out fishing. Uika would never forget that day. At the funeral, she wept until her heart felt torn apart, and her mother was overcome with inconsolable grief. In a fit of uncontrolled emotion, Uika had screamed at her older sister, Uine: "Uine isn't Daddy's biological daughter, so you don't even care!"

"He was so good to you, yet you do nothing but complain."

"You only love the version of yourself that pretends to be sad!"

...

Her sister, Misumi Uine, left home and never returned.

The next time Uika saw her was on the family’s slightly dated television. Uine had somehow changed her name to "Misumi Uika," and her stage name was also "Uika." She had formed the duo "Sumimi" with Mana Junta, who had won the national singing competition five times in a row. It seemed... she had become an idol?

"Isn't that... my dream?"

In Uika’s heart, the last shred of guilt toward her sister vanished. Her mother, however, strangely did not fly into a rage, but merely sighed incessantly. How could it be like this?

From that day on, Misumi Uika abandoned her childhood dream of going to Tokyo to become an idol. She was inherently resilient and had previously been an optimist, so she began working as a tour guide on the island during her spare time. While the profession was a far cry from her dream, it provided a stable livelihood, at least enough to keep hunger at bay.

"How could it be like this..." Uika would always think this whenever she heard her sister’s songs.

But her mother would always say, "Your sister went to find your father. She didn't go to find Shoko..."

This was... a lie.

Uika had long known that on the day she had run a fever, it was her sister Uine who had gone to keep the appointment in her stead. Now, her sister had taken her name, taken her dream, and, in a sense... taken over her life.

After her father’s death, her mother remained listless and soul-crushed, eventually falling critically ill, leaving Uika to care for her alone. The island's medical resources were scarce, and the family lacked the money to travel to Tokyo for treatment. Her mother refused to plead for help from the Toyokawa family, for whom she had once served as a villa caretaker, and so her condition continued to deteriorate...

Until yesterday.

Her mother lay in bed and never woke again. Uika sat numbly beside the corpse for the entire night, until this morning, when her consciousness finally flickered back to life, as if reborn.

She is dead... so there must be a funeral, right?

But since her father’s passing, the islanders who had known him for so long had gradually distanced themselves from the Misumi family. Coupled with their already strained finances—Uika’s tour guide earnings barely covered school fees and household expenses, and even the money for her mother’s medicine had been scraped together bit by bit—they were destitute.

Fortunately, there were few residents on the island, and generations of the deceased were mostly interred in the same cemetery. Unlike in large cities, where even a funeral was a significant expense, the beauty of Kamikamagari Island was that the graveyard cost nothing.

Misumi Uika carried her mother’s body on her back, buried her in the plot next to her father, and then sat there, motionless, until now.

Those who are consumed by absolute grief do not weep. She sat quietly, arms wrapped around her knees, letting the sea breeze blow from afar and tousle her hair. She had been sitting there for a long time. Time had become hollow; the sound of the tide in her ears felt like a distant hallucination. The entire world seemed to have abandoned her, leaving her alone in this tiny, forgotten corner.

She did not cry. Tears are reserved for those with the energy to grieve, and she no longer had the strength to even shed them.

With both parents dead and her sister having usurped her life, what reason was left to keep living?

Misumi Uika stood up, walked to the edge of the cliff near the cemetery, and gently closed her eyes.

This should be... the right way to end it...

*Whoosh.*

The fall she imagined did not happen. Her body was jerked back violently, and then, as if spinning through the air, she landed on the ground.

Misumi Uika opened her eyes and looked at the figure who had saved her.

"He"—Uika judged by the shape of the Adam's apple that it must be "he"—possessed a face as delicate as a woman’s, with eyes that, upon closer inspection, held a seductive, bewitching quality.

He looked at Misumi Uika and smiled.

"The Buddha’s mercy does not reach those who rush to their deaths. To cross through hell while alive is the karma of man."

This line was from the classic Japanese puppet play *Ningyo Joruri*, titled *The Love Suicides at Amijima*, written by Chikamatsu Monzaemon. In the play, Jihei Kamiya and the courtesan Koharu desire to commit double suicide, yet the monologue of Jihei’s wife, Osan, is deeply ironic.

Uika did not understand why this man, as delicate as a woman, would intervene to save her. She only answered subconsciously:

"Life in this world is like foam floating on water. Why cling to something so fleeting and destined to vanish..."

This was a monologue from the Noh play *Izutsu*, which tells the story of a woman who becomes a ghost out of longing for her deceased husband.

The man before her suddenly burst into laughter, a sound that seemed to pierce the vast sky, though to Uika, it sounded full of deep, lingering resentment.

"I never imagined that while the King seeks with all his might to forge an 'Ultimate Evil Demon,' there would be a natural vessel already waiting."

"How could human scheming ever compare to the devilish workmanship of fate? I should have realized this sooner."

His eyes fixed upon Misumi Uika.

"Let me introduce myself. You may call me Ruri Kazama."

"My older brother loves to talk about wanting to be an 'ally of justice'..."

"Tell me, do you have any interest in becoming an ultimate evil demon?"