I was positive I was there.
By myself to one side of the dining room table. From there, I took in the sight of the room.
I watched the three people’s faces and movements.
I listened to their voices and conversation. And yet—
Not a single one of them noticed my presence there. To them, the living, the figures of the dead (a ghost) were fundamentally invisible.
A clock hung on the wall.
It was seven thirty P.M. The night was already dark outside.
The clock also showed the date.
Wednesday, May 27.
May 27…Ah yes. I’m sure that was the date.
I slowly dredged a memory back up.
Today, I was sure, was Tsukiho’s…
“Mommy, Mommy!” Mirei said to Tsukiho. “Where’s Daddy? Where’s Daddy?”
“Daddy’s at work, honey,” Tsukiho answered gently.
“At work? Why is Daddy always at work?”
“His work is very important. That’s why.”
Simply put, Shuji Hiratsuka, whom Tsukiho had married seven years earlier, was a businessman from an old family of the area. He was a hotshot who had broadened the business from its origins in real estate and construction.
He was a full twelve years older than Tsukiho, but for some reason he had chosen her for his spouse, despite the fact that she’d already been married and had a child. The details of that were none of my business.
“But today is your birthday, Mommy,” Mirei said.
She would be six this year. She was a young child not yet in elementary school, but she already had a surprising command of the words she spoke.
“He’s not going to celebrate it with us?”
That’s right—May 27 is Tsukiho’s birthday, and also…
“But we always celebrate together,” Mirei persisted. “We do it for Daddy’s birthday, and my birthday, and Sou’s birthday. We put candles in a cake and sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to you…”
“That’s true. But today is a little different. Daddy can’t come home.”
“Whaaat?” Mirei sounded unhappy. “What about the cake? Are we having cake?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t buy any cake today.”
“Whaaaaat?” Mirei looked even more unhappy.
To one side, Sou stayed silent through it all. I couldn’t see his face from where I was, and so I looked at his expression in the reflection of the glass door.
I suppose his face could be called expressionless.
It could also be taken as dispirited, and he looked as if he were intently hidden away in a shell…
“What about Uncle Sakaki?” Mirei asked Tsukiho. “Last year Uncle Sakaki came and celebrated with us, right?”
“Oh…”
At that, Tsukiho showed some faint dismay.
“You’re right, he did. But Teruya said he can’t come today, either. I think he went on a trip somewhere recently.”
Went on a trip? She can’t mean that—
I died that night!
I died, and now I’m here. I became a ghost and appeared here.
I wanted to argue, but I abandoned the idea almost right away. Even if I were to “give voice” to these thoughts and say them aloud, no one would be able to hear me.
A TV standing on a media cabinet was turned on. It looked like a fantasy anime for girls was playing, and finally Mirei turned her attention to that and stopped sulking.
Sou stayed expressionless and silent the whole time. He wasn’t even particularly touching his food.
“Are you all right, Sou?” Tsukiho asked him worriedly. “You don’t want to eat any more?”
“…No,” Sou replied in a quiet voice I wasn’t quite sure I actually heard. “…May I be excused?”
“Do you feel up to going to school tomorrow?”
At this new question, Sou shook his head slightly from side to side, not speaking.
3
When Tsukiho finished clearing the table, she spread a newspaper over it and began reading.
Mirei was quietly watching TV.
Sou was sprawled on the sofa in the living room but was still as silent as ever, with nothing resembling an expression on his face…
None of the three showed the slightest sign of noticing my presence in the room.
No matter how I chose to act right now, none of them would see me, and no matter what I said, none of them would hear. It sounds obvious, but now that I had become like this, I was simply not there to them.
Even so—
Why had Tsukiho said that I “went on a trip”?
I had lost my life in the grand entry of Lakeshore Manor the night of May 3. I had fallen from the second-floor corridor and died. And yet—
Did Tsukiho not know that?
No. She had to know.
Tsukiho must have known.
She must have known that I’d died there that night…(What are you doing…? Teruya?)
When I had looked over the hall railing that showed signs of having been broken and down at the first floor, a memory had seemed to swell back up in my mind. Several voices I had heard that night (…Stop it) (You can’t…Don’t do it!).
I thought that yes, that had been Tsukiho’s voice.
And the other voice answering her (…Don’t worry about it) had probably been my own.
Meaning—
On the night of May 3, Tsukiho must have been there and witnessed my death. So then why…?
It wasn’t just Tsukiho.
I went to stand beside Sou, who was sprawled out on the sofa, and looked down at his face.
Sou—you were there, too, that night…
“…Whatever,” Sou murmured. He said it with such perfect timing that it seemed as if my thoughts had reached him and he had responded to it.
“I don’t know about it. I don’t know anything. About anything…”
“What’s wrong, Sou?”
Tsukiho looked over at him in surprise.
“What’s wrong? Why are you…saying those things?”
It must have looked to her as if he had started muttering to himself for no reason.
Without answering, Sou got up from the sofa. He walked over to the table and turned his gaze down to the newspaper Tsukiho had spread open on the table.
At this point, a relatively large headline in the local news section caught my eye.
ACCIDENT KILLS YOMIYAMA NORTH MIDDLE GIRL
That’s what the headline said.
“Wha—? What happened?” Tsukiho’s dismayed reaction. “This article? What about it?”
She had just tilted her head to one side when a weary “oh” escaped her.
“Yes, Teruya used to go to Yomiyama North Middle…”
Tsukiho turned back to face Sou.
“Did Teruya tell you about it?” she asked. But—
Sou remained silent and only gave an ambiguous tilt of his head.
4
The article in the morning edition on May 27.
ACCIDENT KILLS YOMIYAMA NORTH MIDDLE GIRL
The “accident” announced in this headline transpired as follows.
It happened the previous day, May 26, in the middle of midterm exams. A third-year student, Yukari Sakuragi, was notified that her mother had been in a car accident and was hurriedly leaving school when she fell down a stairwell of the building, sustaining major injuries that led to her death. The same night, her mother also passed away at the hospital, which she had been transported to.
Reading this article, if Tsukiho or perhaps Sou had sensed something more in this straightforward announcement of an unfortunate accident…
The main reason would have been the name of the school: Yomiyama North Middle. And then the fact that the dead student was a third-year student. It would probably have been these two things.
As Tsukiho said, I had once gone to the same Yomiyama North Middle (abbreviated “North Yomi”). Eleven years ago when my family and I had left Yomiyama, I had be
en a third-year in Class 3, and…
…I remembered.
My memories of it still remained. I could remember it clearly.
The secret passed on to third-year Class 3 at that school. The undeserved calamities that befall those with ties to the class.
Tsukiho, too, had remembered. While reading the article over again, she must have noticed the school name and realized the connection.
But what about Sou?
“Did Teruya tell you about it?” Tsukiho had asked, and I would have expected Sou to answer yes to the question. Yes, I remembered telling him the story at some point.
All the times I had told Sou stories of my youth when he had come over to visit, despite the not-insignificant hesitation I felt, still I had…
“You moved out of Yomiyama because of that?” Sou had asked me that day, his face slightly fearful.
“Yes…I suppose we did,” I think I replied, lowering my eyes. “We were scared. I was, and so was my father. So we ran. We ran from Yomiyama and moved here.”
5
Since that night, I had started to occasionally appear places other than Lakeshore Manor.
Sometimes inside the Hiratsuka house where Tsukiho and the children lived, sometimes places nearby in their neighborhood that I remembered. Even at Lakeshore Manor, my appearances weren’t limited to inside the house. During daylight hours, I might leave the building and go for a walk in the yard, or I might suddenly appear in the woods nearby or on the shore of Lake Minazuki.
And there was a fact that I discovered for myself while all this was going on.
Apparently it was not yet acknowledged in the wider world that I/Teruya Sakaki was dead.
My death on May 3 had not been made public. The situation was being treated as if I were still alive and had wandered off on a trip somewhere, just as Tsukiho had told Mirei.
What did this mean?
I had definitely died that night.
I had died and become this ghost.
And yet, the world at large didn’t know I had died. Why was that?
There was only one answer I could think of. Namely—
A cover-up.
6
“…How is that going? All right?” Shuji Hiratsuka asked.
“…Yes,” Tsukiho answered in a low voice. “For now…I think it is.”
“The story is that he went off on a trip by himself, correct?”
“Yes. That’s what I’ve been saying.”
“And everything is all right at his mansion, too?”
“The utility bills are automatically drafted from his bank, so there shouldn’t be any problems for now…Same with the phone. I told the newspaper some story, and they stopped the deliveries, too…”
“No one in the neighborhood goes by there. And he doesn’t really have any friends who would drop by.”
“…No.”
It was right at the start of June, one night when I appeared in the Hiratsuka house, that I overheard this discussion between husband and wife. I had been walking by myself down a long, dark hallway of their sprawling old home and happened to pass by the sitting room where the two were talking.
Hearing their conversation through a sliding paper door, I came to an abrupt stop and strained to listen. Now I was a ghostly eavesdropper, I supposed.
“…How is Sou looking?”
That was Shuji asking. Even with his much younger wife, he spoke in this polite way.
After a short sigh, Tsukiho replied, “Still the same. He’s practically shut himself up in his room. Sometimes I call for him and he won’t come out…”
“Well, I suppose there will be no helping that for a bit.”
“But when I ask him about what happened that night, he tells me, ‘Whatever.’ Or ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’ or ‘I don’t remember.’”
“—Is that so?”
Shuji Hiratsuka was a businessman, but on the other hand, he’d had an unorthodox career, having once studied at a medical university and becoming qualified as a physician. In that way, he had maintained a connection with his late father Shotaro, who had been a talented doctor. Apparently that had been the connection that brought him and Tsukiho together.
“He doesn’t appear to be getting weaker physically, is that correct?”
“—No.”
“I’ll look for a good opening and have a talk with him myself. If necessary, there’s a specialist I’m on good terms with, so I can consult with him.”
“It must have been such a shock to Sou…”
“Of course it would be. But…we’re agreed, are we not, Tsukiho? You do understand?”
“—Yes. I understand.”
My eavesdropping had led me from the doubts I’d been harboring toward conviction.
Despite knowing about my/Teruya Sakaki’s death, they—at the least, Shuji and Tsukiho Hiratsuka—were trying to keep others from learning of it. For some reason, they were trying to cover up what had happened on the night of May 3.
7
My/Teruya Sakaki’s death was being covered up.
It was being hidden from the public eye.
Which of course would mean that no funeral had been held, and my corpse had not been cremated or interred.
—So then what?
The question rose up unavoidably at this point.
What had happened to me after my life had ended in the grand entry of Lakeshore Manor on the night of May 3? What had been done to me—or rather, to my corpse? Where had it been taken, and what state was it in now?
When I started thinking about such things—
I began to think that the reason I had turned into this after my death might lie there.
A corpse given no funeral rites and left unburied after death.
A corpse whose current condition and whereabouts were unknown even to (the ghost of) its former occupant.
…That was why.
Because of such a unique situation, I must have gotten stuck in this world after my death in this unnatural and unstable existence.
In which case…
If that were the case, then I…
8
“You know, this lake is half-dead.”
I remembered having this conversation.
It was mid-June. I spoke spontaneously, while standing on the bank of Lake Minazuki and gazing for a long while out at its deep green surface.
“You could say it’s a double-bottomed lake. The water quality is divided into an upper and lower layer—a shallow layer and a deep layer. The upper layer is fresh water, and the lower layer is brackish.”
“What’s ‘brackish’?”
The person I was talking to cocked their head slightly.
I explained that brackish water was low-concentration salt water created by mixing fresh water with seawater.
“Salt water is heavier, so it sinks to the bottom, and over years and years, the oxygen in it dissipates completely. Plants and animals can’t live in deoxygenated water. So the bottom half of the lake is a world devoid of life. That’s why the lake is half-dead.”
“Half…dead.”
The other person repeated those words.
And then she carefully removed the white eye patch that covered her left eye. Yes—the other person was that girl: Mei Misaki. We had been talking, gazing out at the lake surface from this place on the shore.
“Hey,” I said, seeing her movement. “Why are you taking off your eye patch?”
“—Just felt like it,” she answered curtly.
She wore a woven straw hat with her summery white dress. Red sneakers on her feet. A small rucksack was slung over her shoulder, and she held a sketchbook under her arm. Her outfit came vividly back to me.
It was…last summer.
I think it was at the beginning of August. A couple days after we’d met on the beach at the end of the previous month. Sou had come over to visit me, and he spotted her with her sketchbook open where she had installed herself in the shade of the trees beside La
keshore Manor. She said she hadn’t known it was my house, that she had been wandering the neighborhood and found the house by chance and had wanted to try drawing it, or something along those lines.
I had gone out to the lakeshore, so Sou brought her over to me…
“Do you like drawing? Are you in the art club at your school or anything?”
The girl didn’t answer any of these questions, but ran her eyes over the surface of the lake and said, “I had no idea there was a lake this close to the ocean.”
“You didn’t know about it?”
She didn’t answer.
“There are two other lakes near here actually. Together they’re called the Three Lakes of Hinami. They’re pretty famous.”
She had nodded slightly but continued to scan the surface of the lake, and so I’d said to her: “This lake is half-dead, you know.”
9
“I like this better than the ocean.”
I recall Mei Misaki saying that at the time. I had remembered it.
Early in the midsummer afternoon. But the sky was slightly cloudy and the sunlight was gentle. A breeze blowing in off the lake added a chill.
“Why?” I asked.
“People always say, ‘But the ocean’s right over there…’ Very few people bother coming here to relax. If anything, this is an unpopular, neglected spot.”
“The ocean—” As she responded, Mei slowly closed and then opened both eyes, her right and her left. “The ocean is too full of living creatures. So I prefer this.”
“Hmm.”
And—yes—I’m pretty sure it was after that when, a short while later, I said these words to her: “Your eye. That blue eye.”
With her eye patch off, I was looking at the strange blue of her false eye.
“With that eye of yours, you might be seeing the same things I am…looking in the same direction.”
“Why?” She was the one to ask the question this time. “Why would you…?”
“You know, I’m not sure.” I could only offer this ambiguous response. “I wonder why I said that.”
Another Episode S / 0 Page 4