atake fell backward, sitting down hard on the floor. His hand was clutched to his face, but the blood poured through his fingers. Masako cried out in shock. A sense of sudden, permanent loss had squeezed the sound from her.

'You got me,' he whispered, spitting out the blood that was quickly filling his mouth.

'You were going to kill me,' she said. He lowered his hand and stared at his bloody palm. 'I was aiming for your throat but my hand was numb,' she told him; her mind was reeling and her mouth seemed to run on without her. Realising she was still holding the scalpel, she threw it on the floor, where it bounced away with a hollow clatter. She'd pressed the blade into a wine cork and put it in her pocket before she left the house.

Though air was seeping into his mouth from the wound and he had trouble speaking, he managed to say, 'You're special... I should've let you kill me before... would've been so good.'

'Did you want to kill me?'

He shook his head and looked up at the ceiling. 'I don't know...' The sunlight from the high windows was now blinding. Pillars of brilliantly lit dust linked the windows to the concrete floor, like the spotlights in a theatre. Her eyes followed his to the windows. She was shaking again, but not from the cold; it was from knowing that with her own hands she had cut off this life. The sky was pale blue beyond the windows and a quiet winter day was beginning, as though nothing had changed, as though last night's horrors had never happened. Satake stared at the pool of blood collecting on the floor before answering her. 'Not kill you,' he said, 'but watch you die.'

'Why?'

'Thought I'd be able to love you when you were dying.'

'Only then?' He looked at her for a moment.

'I guess so.'

'... Don't die,' she murmured. There was a hint of surprise in his eyes. By now, the blood flowing from his face had stained his body red, and he'd begun to moan with pain.

'I killed Kuniko...,' he said. 'And another woman before that looked just like you.. I think I died once, when I killed her. Then I saw you and thought - I wouldn't mind dying one more time... '

She took off her jacket so that she could hold him closer. Her face was swollen and heavy from the beatings, and she knew she must look hideous. 'I'm alive,' she said. 'And I don't want you to die.'

'Looks like I'm going to,' he said, with what sounded almost like relief. His whole body had begun to quiver. She brought her face close to his and examined the wound. It was deep and gaping, but she pressed the skin together and kept her fingers there. 'It's no use,' he said. 'Must be an artery.' But Masako refused to give up, continuing to hold his face as the life seeped out of him. She looked around the factory again. They had met here in this vast coffin, had come to understand one another here, and now would leave each other here.

'I need a cigarette,' he mumbled. Masako roused herself and went to find the pants he'd taken off. Getting a cigarette out of the pocket, she lit it and put it between his lips. In the space of a few seconds it was soaked in blood, but Satake still managed to blow a thin line of smoke from his mouth. She knelt in front of him and looked into his eyes.

'Let me take you to the hospital.'

'Hospital...' he murmured, with the ghost of a smile. A tendon had probably been cut, and all the smile amounted to was a slackening on the side of his face not bathed in blood. 'Woman I killed said the same thing... Must be fate… my dying the way she did...' The cigarette fell from his lips, sputtering out in the pool of blood that lay around him. He seemed to be giving up, and had closed his eyes.

'Still, we ought to go.'

'... Both end up in jail.' He was right - laws would still apply if they emerged from the factory now. She pulled him closer. As their heads touched, she realised that he was already colder. His blood continued to flow over them.

'I don't care,' she said. 'I want you to survive.'

'Why?...' His voice was barely audible. 'After what I did.'

'It would be like dying myself. I couldn't go on.'

'I did,' he said, closing his eyes again.

She began to get frantic, struggling to hold his wound together, to slow the bleeding, but he seemed to be slipping away. He opened his eyes again, this time barely a crack, and looked at her.

'Why me?'

'Because I understand you now,' she said. 'I see that we're the same, and I want us both to live.' His lips were covered in blood when she bent to kiss him, but his eyes were peaceful.

Haltingly, as though hope were unfamiliar to him, he mumbled, 'I've never... didn't think it could happen... But who knows? with fifty million... we might get out.'

'It's nice in Brazil,' she said.

'Take me with you?'

'Yes,' she said. 'I can't go back.'

'… go back... or go on.' He was right. She stared at her bloodstained hands. In a whisper, he added, 'We'll... be free.'

'Yes, free.' He reached out and brushed his hand against her cheek, but his fingers were quite cold. 'The bleeding's nearly stopped,' she said, but he just nodded, perhaps knowing it was a lie.