“The body had been dumped in a ravine overgrown with clover just as the pink blossoms opened to face the sky. He was naked beneath the black haori in which he had been wrapped. His left leg was buried in the earth, both arms were lacerated, opened like fish before frying, and a hole cut in his head was a window to the intricacy of his circuited interior. Red cable spilled from the wound, coiling like a snake in the clover. His face, turned off, was tilted toward the man watching from the south bank of the ravine.

And he looked away, as if from a mirror.”