The Lying Counselor’s Eloquent Reasoning - Chapter 64

“So you struck this woman with your car, right? Are you certain of that?”

“I-I’m sure. But believe me. I swear, until a few minutes ago, all I remembered was that I hit a cat!”

“Yes, I believe you. Presumably, that’s the nature of your pathology.”

Uroma suddenly grinned.

“I know exactly how you felt that night. You were the most self-loving, self-centered person I’ve ever met, and you were enjoying your life to the fullest, so for you to crash into someone, even by accident, was something you should never have done. That would have been a horrendous stain on your life. It is different from hitting a cat. You have killed a human being, possibly. Right after the accident, you must have been in a state of shock. And you must have been in despair about the possible downfall of your life. The reputation of your admirers around you would change drastically, and the videos of your past TV shows would become a record of your criminal past. Nothing is more sensational and exciting than a crime committed by a socially successful, high-profile person. Your crimes will be highly publicized. You will become the man of the hour. And the thought of your future must have been really unbearable for you. You must have strongly thought to yourself that such a thing must not happen.”

“W-Why, even to that extent, you know my train of thoughts…”

Ryuichi’s face twisted in anguish.

“So there you are, thinking. Let’s pretend it all didn’t happen, let’s forget about it all… And you actually succeeded in forgetting. This is known as dissociative amnesia. It means that when you are under tremendous and intense mental stress, your memory will be forgotten.”

“Amnesia… is it, I…”

“Yes. But you simply had a slight memory lapse of the accident until today. I’m not a doctor, so I can’t do a psychiatric evaluation of you, but I can tell you that you were responsible for your actions on the day of the accident. Yes, you were able to imagine the meaning of what you did and what could happen in the future. Your ability to reason and make decisions was present. That’s why you fell into dissociative amnesia. Therefore, the fact that you had dissociative amnesia until today proves that you were responsible for your actions at the time of the accident.”

Uroma was relentless in his pursuit. In the end, he could not take it anymore, and Ryuichi’s body began to tremble.

“D-Don’t you talk like you know what you are doing! If I have dissociative amnesia, then why do I still remember hitting the cat! Amnesia is when you forget everything! In my case, it’s just a memory swap!”

“Mr. Akiyama, I told you before, didn’t I? That the human brain may sometimes develop a bug in the suddenly created void of large information.”

“Bug?”

“Yes. That way of your memory is probably similar to the hallucinations experienced by people with Charles Bonnet syndrome or phantom limb pain. All of a sudden there was a gigantic blank in your memory. Is it any wonder that your brain was startled and rushed to correct the gaps in your memory based on your past experiences? Luckily, you had an old memory of running over a cat with your bicycle when you were a child.”

“Don’t be absurd! That’s just your imagination!”

“That’s right. I can’t prove anything that happened in your brain. It is only a delusion in your brain.”

With a giggle, Uroma enjoyed a pleasant laugh.

“T-Then! What was the black cat’s shadow in my left eye? You’re only talking about my memory, and you can’t explain the shadow of the black cat at all!”

“Well, of course, it was Pluto who squealed.”

“Pluto?”

“Ah, that reminds me, I haven’t told you the story of Poe’s ‘Black Cat’ until the end. To put it simply, the rest of the story goes like this. The protagonist, who finds a shadow of Pluto, the black cat he once killed, in his new black cat, eventually becomes unable to bear his anxiety and attempts to kill the second black cat. But by mistake, he ended up killing his wife who intervened to stop him. Now, what? The man rushes to conceal his murder by hiding the corpse behind the wall of his basement, a DIY project. Eventually, the police arrive at the house, suspicious of his wife’s disappearance, but they fail to notice anything wrong with the basement walls. Yay, the murder cover-up was a success! The man makes a mental gut punch and taps on the wall, but then suddenly, he hears something. A cat’s creepy meow emanates from inside the basement wall…”

Uroma stretched his mouth out to the side in a ghastly smile, then raised his hands slightly and bent his wrists in a ghost cat-like pose. Perhaps he was attempting to tell a ghost story.

“Soon after, the police dig through the wall where the cat’s meowing can be heard and discover the body of his wife inside. Furthermore, on top of her head, a black cat with one eye glittering was found. Yes, the resentment of this beast that he once killed causes the man to commit murder, and he is further exposed for his crime… Congratulations, congratulations!”

Clap, clap, clap. Whatever it was, it was a man applauding like it was a good story.

“What I like most about this novel is that it is written in the first-person narrative of the alcoholic protagonist. There is no objectivity. How much of it is true and how much of it is just the man’s imagination? Did the black cat truly exist? Withdrawal from excessive alcohol can easily create illusions in a person. You may have even heard auditory hallucinations. What if all the descriptions of the black cat were simply hallucinations… It’s quite a fascinating thought.”

Uroma smirked again.

“And if they were all hallucinations, then they were exactly the same as the shadow in your left eye. Yes, for the man, the vision of the black cat was his own conscience itself. It was his guilt that kept on accusing him. The shadow of the black cat in your left eye is the same, Mr. Akiyama. Your conscience, painted inside the wall of unconsciousness, manifested itself as the shadow of a black cat and persisted in blaming you for your sins. That is the true identity of Pluto, the black cat in your left eye.”

“M-My… conscience…”

Ryuichi momentarily seemed to be struggling to find something to say in rebuttal, but nothing more escaped his lips. He squeezed his eyes shut in pain and nodded helplessly.