Episode VII - The First Letter ~ Anthony's Confession Part 2

At the library, I saw that Abegail was behind the counter.

"Oh!"

As soon as she saw me, she glared, as if demanding to know what I was doing there.

"Could we use one of the computers?"

"There aren't that many patrons today, so one should be open."

"Thanks."

"Ah-choo! Don't mind us."

We slipped past the counter and headed to the computer corner. We found an open one and crowded together at it.

"Can you do it, Andy? Machines and I don't get along."

Alice sounded afraid.

"Don't get along? It's just a search."

I clicked the mouse to open Qunillia Academy's student roster and searched Anthony Flavier. The hourglass icon appeared, then it showed a message saying there were no matches.

Next, I searched for just the name Anthony.

That had no matches, either.

There were seven hits for Flavier, but four of them were girls and the three boys left didn't have first names even vaguely resembling "Anthony."

Alice and I exchanged a look.

What was going on?

Anthony Flavier was not only not a member of the archery team, but he wasn't even a student at our school.

The next day, Janella appeared during the first-period break, clutching her duck notebook.

"Goooood moooorning! I came for my letter!"

Ignoring a look from Abegail, I led Janella into a corner of the hallway.

"I don't have a letter today."

"Huh? Why not?"

"Because there's no such person as Anthony Flavier at our school."

"Whaaat?" her eyes widened. It didn't look like an act—she seemed truly surprised. Then she started to giggle as if I were telling a joke. "Come on, that's not true. He does too exist!"

"But there's no one on the archery team with that name and no one in the student rolls for the whole school. Who have you been giving your letters to, Janella?"

Her smile never faltered as she answered. "To Anthony!"

She showed not the slightest doubt, and I started to wonder if maybe I was the one who'd been mistaken.

"And he is too on the archery team!"

"B-but—"

"I still have the letter he gave me, too! Look."

She opened the duck notebook and took out the envelope stuck inside it. The envelope was plain white and showed no address, but the sender's name was there—Anthony Flavier. She pulled out the letter.

It was also on plain white paper, three folded sheets.

I remembered that yesterday she had mentioned receiving a letter from him. She'd started to tell me about it, but then her expression had darkened and she trailed off.

She'd also said that something seemed to be bothering him.

Had he written about that in this letter?

Janella looked momentarily troubled, and she glanced up at me with that same wary look she sometimes had. Then she thrust the letter at me decisively.

"He exists. Really. I'm sure of it. Read this letter and you'll see. He's suffering a lot right now… but I'm too dumb to understand what he means… so… so… please help him."

She appealed to me earnestly, her voice shaking. She may have acted cheerful, but she must have been reaching her limit, carrying this burden all alone. Janella may have been hoping for salvation herself. I supposed that was why her gaze looked so helpless.

I knew that reading the letter would only mean more trouble for me.

If I read the letter, it would be a promise to help her.

A peaceful life without surprises was my greatest desire.

It was stupid to get involved in other people's business, especially when I had a choice about it. The best decision would be to tell her, Sorry, I have enough to worry about already, and I don't think I can help anyway, and then withdraw.

But it was too late for that. I was dying to find out whether this Anthony person truly existed and discover how this misunderstanding had happened.

I unfolded the letter. I felt my fingertips tingle and I detected a tangy smell.

"Mine has been a life of shame.

Human beings are inscrutable to me.

They, and their emotions—kindness, fondness, sadness—which every one of them naturally possesses.

I donned the mask of a mime. I struggled to make them laugh, to make them believe I was harmless. But with each lie built atop lies, my spirit only depleted.

I killed someone that day.

When tender flesh was pulverized and red blood spread its tangy aroma across the black asphalt, I watched with a thirsty heart.

I had killed a person.

I doubt that God will ever forgive me."

"That's Never Been Human," Alice declared upon finishing the letter. We were in the club room after school.

"You mean the novel by Benedict Crumbling?"

"Yeah. 'Mine has been a life of shame': that's a quote from the opening line. There's a bunch of other lines that refer back to Never Been Human, too."

She said all that and then sneezed once.

She appeared to have mostly recovered after a night's sleep, but she still seemed a little foggy. Her eyes were still bleary.

"Then the stuff in this letter isn't true—it's just a parody of the book?"

I hoped that was true. When I'd read the letter, the monstrosity and hopelessness of it made me feel as if an evil shadow had fallen over me.

It was a stunning revelation—and a confession—by the young Anthony Flavier.

Ever since infancy, Anthony had been unable to share in the emotions of others.

Why do they like that?

Why do they hate that?

What did it mean to "like" something, anyway? What did it mean to "hate" something?

Someone he was close to passed away, and everyone cried at the funeral.

But he didn't feel sad at all. A friend transferred to a school far away. Everyone was sad he was leaving, but it didn't move his heart in the slightest. Anthony also couldn't understand why everyone fawned over babies and puppies. As these things continued to happen, he began to think of himself as inhuman, an unholy monster.

He couldn't understand things about people that he ought to have understood, and it made him afraid. Disappointed. Heartbroken.

What would people think if they found out he was a monster?

That fear made him take on the role of the clown and struggle to make people laugh and love him.

People were charmed by him and he grew to be popular, but he always cherished an intense shame in his heart with which he continued to struggle.

He was ashamed of lying. Ashamed that he wasn't human. Anthony Flavier stated that again and again in his letters.

"I'm ashamed.

Ashamed.

Ashamed to be alive."

There was only one person who realized that Anthony's clowning was an act.

Anthony referred to that person as "S" and noted that although S understood him, they were also capable of destroying him—and were therefore dangerous.

"Only one person, only S with that insightful gaze, has noticed my clowning.

When will I face destruction at S's hands?

S asked me once whether I truly loved her with all my heart."

The letter ended there.

It was impossible to tell who "her" referred to, or who S was. Or how He responded to S's question.

When I finished the letter, I felt an unspeakable tightness in my chest. It was a feeling I'd experienced somewhere before. After Alice's revelation, I remembered where.

It was the opening from Never Been Human.

It was Benedict Crumbling's most famous work; I'd read it in middle school for a summer assignment. We had to pick one of four books and write an essay on our impressions of it. I had still wanted to push myself back then, so I picked the one that seemed hardest. My very first impression of it had been how dark the title was.

But I suppose I had been too immature to understand the protagonist's suffering. What I had taken away from it was that his morose confession had dragged on and on, and it was all jumbled up. In the end, I wrote my essay on a different book.

It was a long time ago, but parts of what I read still lingered deep in my memory. When I'd read Anthony's letter, I'd gotten the feeling that I had read something like it before.

"Ah-choo!"

Alice sneezed.

"Mmrf… I wouldn't say the whole letter is a parody of Benedict. It makes reference to Never Been Human, but it still strikes me as a letter someone wrote hoping that someone would understand his true feelings."

"So then do you think it's true that he killed someone? And what about the part where he says he wishes he could die?"

"If it is true that he killed someone, that's bad."

In any case, "it seems like something is bothering him" was now a contender for Understatement of the Century. He needed help urgently. Even if he was only under the delusion that he had killed somebody, anyone who would put that fantasy into writing was dangerous. I also doubted that a person could go on living for very long with such despair and self-loathing.

"Benedict Crumbling committed suicide about a month after finishing Never Been Human. This might be serious."

The letter read like a suicide note. What had compelled Anthony to give something like this to Janella?

Perched on her fold-up chair hugging her knees, Alice touched her right index finger to her lips and fell into deep thought.

"Crumbling's story is composed of a foreword, three letters, and an afterword, and was serialized in three issues of a magazine. The foreword, which acts as a prologue to the story, and the first letter detailing the protagonist's childhood ran in the May issue. Less than a month after that, on June 13, he and his mistress, Sophia Figaro, drowned themselves in the Moon River."

Her lips moved mechanically, the rest of her face impassive.

"The second installment was published while the authorities were still dredging the river for their bodies. They finally found them on June 19. The third letter and the afterword, which served as the story's epilogue, were published one month later, in July. The story of Never Been Human seemed to be based on his life.

"The protagonist is born to an old aristocratic family in the countryside and feels fear and shame at his difference from other people, so he pretends to be a fool until finally throwing himself into dangerous social movements. But even that is only an indifferent involvement, and he feels disgusted with himself. He carries on an indulgent lifestyle in order to escape his despair.

"In the midst of all that, he's implicated in a double suicide attempt with a waitress, which only he survives. He sinks into despair and denial. Even so, an angelic girl offers him her naïve trust and he takes her as his wife, managing some small happiness. But in the end he falls back into a life of poverty, introspection, and degradation.

"His wife's purity is sullied, the protagonist becomes addicted to drugs, and his friend commits him to a mental institution. He becomes more or less an invalid.

"The author, Benedict Crumbling, was also born to a landowning family in the country and participated in social movements, but in the end, he tortured himself with the idea that he was nothing more than the coddled son of a fortunate family and attempted double suicide with a waitress.

"Crumbling was saved, but the woman died. After that, he married Paulita Quizon, a bar girl he sent for from his old country home. After discovering her transgressions against him, he was shocked and again attempted double suicide but failed. He became addicted to Pabinal and was admitted to a hospital.

"When he was released, he wrote Human Lost, the precursor to Never Been Human, and shortly thereafter attempted suicide with his wife, Paulita, but that, too, ended in failure.

"Crumbling went on to write many brilliant stories and was a fabulously active, popular author. He spent about ten years like that, then he completed Never Been Human. He committed double suicide immediately afterward, and this time neither him nor his partner could be saved. That's why people think it was a suicide note."

Alice trained her unfocused gaze on me and asked, "Have you read any of Crumbling's stories, Andy?"

"I've read Never Been Human. And I think parts of Run, Melos! and Several Scenes of Mount Apricata in a textbook."

"I've always wondered why they don't make an ethics textbook out of Terry, Let's Run! It's a good story, sure, but there's just something weird about it. Ah-choo! Ah-choo! Ah-choo!"

She sneezed several times in succession, probably a by-product of talking for so long.

"Are you okay?"

"Snf, I'm fine… hnk-nk. So what did you think of Crumbling?"

"I didn't really get it. It was nothing but monologue and a really gloomy story. I was really into Terry, Let's Run! The ending was pretty convenient, and I think I was more surprised than moved by it. I only remember snapshots of Scenes of Mount Apricata, but I seem to remember thinking it was refreshing. That and the style was rhythmical and easy to read. It almost felt like I was talking to the author."

"Exactly! That's one of the seductive things about Crumbling's writing."

She blew her nose with pink tissue, balled it up, and threw it in the trash before beginning another heated litany.