After a pause, she murmured, “If you’re like me…then I’m not sure that would be a good thing.”
“And why is that?” I followed with another question, and reaching up to lightly cover the blue iris of her left eye with her hand, she shook her head quietly.
“…It just is.”
Mei Misaki.
I had heard she was a second-year middle schooler living in Yomiyama. Meaning that this summer would mark the start of her third year…
I wondered which school she went to.
The thought started to bother me, and almost simultaneously I shuddered as a chill went down my spine. Even as a ghost.
Was it possible—that her middle school was Yomiyama North Middle? And was it possible that she would be in Class 3?
That she was in the same class as that student, Yukari Sakuragi, whose death had been reported in the newspaper?…
…
…
“…It’s not impossible,” I muttered to myself in a rasping croak of a voice.
Sketch 3
Do you want to grow up? Or would you rather not?
…Whichever.
“Whichever”?
You’re not free as a kid…But I hate grown-ups.
You hate them?
It depends on the person. If I could be a grown-up I like, I’d want to grow up right now.
Ah, I see. But you know, it isn’t that great being grown-up.
It isn’t?
I wish I could go back. To being a kid.
Why?
…
Why do you want to go back to being a kid?
…Because I want to remember it, I suppose.
Remember what?
Oh, well…
1
June passed and July began…The seasons turned toward summer, and all sorts of things changed in all sorts of ways as time rolled on, while I remained unchanged.
In this unnatural, unstable “state of existence” as a ghost, continuing to linger noncommittally in the world of the living in a half-formed way, every once in a while appearing without any set cycle or regularity.
At Lakeshore Manor or somewhere nearby.
In the Hiratsuka house or that neighborhood.
I also appeared in places that didn’t fall into any of those categories. On a seaside path on a rainy day or on the grounds of a dilapidated temple whose name I didn’t know…
And yet no one noticed these frequent apparations. Not a single person.
What could possibly be the reason I had become this way?
I felt as if I already knew the answer to this question. I wouldn’t say I was 100 percent positive, but it seemed plausible.
I don’t think, for example, that I held a grudge against someone or that I held on to some lingering attachment or regret about some task that I had failed to complete. Even as an amnesiac ghost, I would expect to have at least a tiny awareness of it if such strong emotions were at the root of this—and yet.
I felt no malice toward anyone in particular.
And I didn’t have any good guesses about what I might have left unfinished—I don’t think.
All I had was a feeling of sorrow overlying my entire self, profound and yet undefinable…
…That’s why.
Thinking about it, I feel sure the cause is the fact that I remain “unmourned.”
I died, but my death is unacknowledged by anyone, and no funeral or proper burial has taken place. Not only that, but not even I know where my physical body (read: corpse) is or what happened to it after I died. In such an unjust situation, I suppose I will continue on this way.
Which would mean…
2
When I appear somewhere, even if I try to touch someone, they never realize I’m there. I suppose some people might get a feeling, but it isn’t clear-cut.
Ghosts have a lot of problems—is that really what this boils down to?
Suppose I was a vengeful spirit with a violent malice at the root of my existence: I would probably haunt the person I hated and end up trying to kill them. I suppose that sort of ghost has characteristics that make it easy to detect its presence, i.e., easy to spot. These are examples of the pointless things I wound up thinking about.
In my case, I was presumably a different kind of ghost. In basic terms, no one was aware of me or saw me. To say nothing of the fact that I wasn’t trying to haunt or kill anyone specific, not that I even could. No matter where, when, or how I appeared, I was utterly “not there” to people.
All I could do anymore was accept it and think, So that’s how it is…As July started, the feeling of surrender was gaining ground inside me.
For example, I thought about possibly kicking up a fuss reminiscent of a poltergeist to draw attention. But even if I was to try that, I don’t think my message (Teruya Sakaki died and turned into a ghost, and I’m right here!) would come across very clearly. It seemed like it would just get confused for petty tricks. I felt worthless. Of course Sou and Mirei wouldn’t get it, nor would Tsukiho or Shuji, who seemed to be covering up my death…
There was only one avenue left to me now.
Something that might have some meaning if I tried it. That being—
To find my body, presumably.
My body, which had fallen to its death in the grand entry of Lakeshore Manor on the night of May 3. My body, whose death I knew had not been properly mourned and which I knew had not been properly buried.
Where was it now? What state was it in? If I could just find that out…, I thought.
If I could just find that out and see the body for myself, to be able to directly experience my own death in a form so undeniable…
If I could do that, then maybe.
Maybe then I would be freed from my current existence.
3
That being the case—
I started to conduct a search for my body each time I appeared.
I didn’t imagine it would be at the Hiratsuka house or anywhere nearby. The place it seemed most likely to be was Lakeshore Manor or the surrounding area.
With that in mind, I decided that every time I appeared, I would search every conceivable hiding spot with purpose.
First up was everywhere inside the house.
Each room on the first and second floors. In the attic and in the basement. The bathrooms and powder rooms, of course, as well as storerooms and closets and inside various wardrobes. The ability to exert physical influence seemed to depend on the time and location, and there were limits on the range and extent of that influence, but I was able to open and close doors and drawers without difficulty.
There were several rooms with locked doors on the second floor, but these posed no problems to me since I lacked a physical flesh-and-blood body. The mere desire to enter brought me inside. I also went to the attic and basement. I even peered into the depths of an old fireplace that had long gone unused. Nevertheless—
In the end, my body was nowhere to be found within the house…
The next place I looked was the garage built on the grounds, adjacent to the house.
Ever since becoming a ghost, I had yet to go back into the garage. On its face, it was a one-story “shed” made of wood with a timeworn appearance, which I had used in life to park my car and store my tools.
The car was still there, as I had left it.
It was a white station wagon that I won’t claim was cared for impeccably. I didn’t own a moped or bicycle. One reason being the old wound to my left leg, so I had only ever used four-wheeled vehicles.
The car wasn’t locked, and the key was hanging on a pegboard in the garage. Just as I had done in life.
The driver’s seat, the passenger seat, the backseat, the storage space…in all it was the same: My body wasn’t there.
I searched every nook and cranny of the garage, including under the car. But still I found nothing…
It wasn’t in the building.
So then outside, I suppose. In which case, the boundaries expanded endl
essly.
The front and backyards on the property. The surrounding woods. The lakeside. It could even be in the ground or in the lake. Even leaving aside the forest, there was always the ocean. Thinking about it sent me into a tailspin.
I had nothing resembling a clue to follow.
In essence, this was an issue tied to “what happened there on the night of May 3 after Teruya Sakaki died?” As it happened, even after becoming a ghost, the very same Teruya Sakaki/I didn’t know. The situation was utterly absurd. The blank, like a thick fog rising over the events before and after my death, I continued to regard with bitterness—
I reviewed my questions.
Why had I died in the first place?
What had happened after I died?
Since these questions remained just that, there were limits on what I could do. At least I could try expanding the range of my search, centering on Lakeshore Manor…
On the other hand, I also had a sense that, well, there isn’t any particular rush about it, either.
Because it wasn’t going to change the fact that I was dead.
Of course, I wouldn’t call my current state a pleasant one, but nor did I have any confidence about what might happen if I were to find my body. I could handle the vague idea of it, but when I considered whether or not it was what I truly wanted, I became somehow uncertain…
…Still.
“When a person dies, I feel like they can connect in some way with everyone.”
Ah…what is this?
Oh yes, this is something I said to someone sometime in the past.
“Who is ‘everyone’?”
When they asked me that, I believe I answered, “I mean everyone who died before them.”
…And yet.
Even though I was dead, I was completely alone here. Stranded in this unnatural, unstable existence.
I don’t want to be like this forever—I know that some part of me felt this way, too.
4
As it neared the middle of July, I happened to be there again when the phone in the grand entry rang.
“Sakaki? Hellooo? You still not there?”
After the machine picked up, a man’s voice I remembered hearing before played on the speaker.
“It’s me, Arai. Have you been gone this whole time or what? I guess you didn’t get my other messages.”
I got them two months ago…but, well.
His tone implied I tried calling a couple other times, you know. Although certainly I seemed to recall that in that call two months ago, it sounded like there was something he wanted to talk about.
“I guess you’re on a long trip? That would be a major problem for me. I can’t remember if you have a cell phone or not. I hope you can try and pick up on this SOS from an old buddy.”
Wish I could, but…sorry, there’s not much I can do about it now. Not to mention that the way I am now, I still can’t really remember what this “old buddy” even looks like.
“I say it’s an SOS, but well, kind of like that other time, I was hoping you could help me out. After all, back in northyomi (?), we went through it all together…Right?”
I thought, Wha—?
We went through it all in northyomi?
I guessed “northyomi” was “North Yomi.” Yomiyama North Middle abbreviated to North Yomi. Where I had gone until partway through my third year, eleven years ago…
So Arai was a classmate from back then?
From North Yomi…in third-year Class 3 that year?
“Anyway, when you get this, could you call me? Please, Sakaki, babe.”
Once he hung up, I went straight to the library on the second floor.
An old friend named Arai…I still couldn’t remember if his name was written with the characters for new well or rough-hewn well, but I thought maybe…
The photo standing on my desk in the library…the commemorative one taken during the summer break of 1987. Maybe one of the people in that photo is him, I thought.
5
They say it started in 1972.
Twenty-six years ago looking back from today and fifteen years ago looking back from when I was a third-year in middle school eleven years ago.
At the start of that school year, a student named Misaki in third-year Class 3 of North Yomi died.
Misaki was a popular kid, beloved by everyone. None of the students wanted to accept such a sudden death, and…
“They said, ‘Misaki isn’t dead. Misaki is still alive, sitting in the classroom right over there.’ All of them started to pretend like that was true. The head teachers did it, too, and they kept the act up all the way to graduation apparently.”
I remembered telling Sou about the old legend.
It was after graduation that strange things started to happen. They say that the figure of Misaki, who couldn’t possibly have been there in reality, showed up in the class’s group photo taken in the classroom after the graduation ceremony.
“A photo of a ghost?” I remembered Sou asking, his head cocked.
“Something like that, anyway. Although I never saw the photo myself,” I replied before continuing with the story.
“They say that became the trigger. And the year after that, strange…or I should say, terrifying things started happening in third-year Class 3.”
It didn’t happen every year. There seemed to be “on years” and “off years,” and in an “on year,” the number of people in the class would go up by one without anyone ever noticing. No one could tell who the “extra person” was. There wouldn’t be enough desks and chairs at the start of the semester, so they could tell the number of people had increased. And then—
“In years where an extra person was in the class, calamities would befall the class.”
“Calamities?”
“It means misfortunes, or accidents. In other words…people would die. Every month, someone related to that year’s third-year Class 3…”
Whether it was an accident, or an illness, or suicide…There were many ways to die, but every month at least one person with ties to the class would die. People with ties to the class included the students and head teacher and also included their close relatives. This would continue until the day of the graduation ceremony.
“Was that—?”
Even when I explained, at first Sou cocked his head in confusion again.
“Was it a curse?”
“A curse…Well, some people say it is. But it doesn’t mean that the extra person who infiltrates the class is the vengeful spirit of the student named Misaki. According to the legend, the extra person is supposed to be a casualty…someone who died in a previous year’s disaster. But that person doesn’t do anything bad themselves. So I think it’s a little different from a normal curse.”
“Did that—?” Sou looked more and more troubled. “Did that happen for real?”
“Have I ever lied to you, Sou?”
“But…”
“It really happened.” I replied with a serious face. “I experienced it myself eleven years ago. In third-year Class 3 at North Yomi…”
The number of desks and chairs in the classroom was wrong, and there was a group of people who started panicking about it being an on year…In April, first one student’s grandmother died. But since that was the death of an elderly person caused by illness, there were a significant number of skeptics who treated it as an unfortunate coincidence. But then—
“At the start of May, we had our school trip, and as the bus was heading to the airport, just before we left the city limits of Yomiyama, the bus got in a huge accident.”
At that, I pointed to my left leg, which still bore the scars of the injury I’d sustained in that accident. A short gasp escaped Sou. His expression transformed from confusion to terror.
“Several of my classmates died in that accident. So did the head teacher, who was riding with us. We were all…everyone in the bus was covered in blood…It was a terrible accident.”
I sighed and slowly shook m
y head. Sou was looking at me wide-eyed, as if he might start crying at any moment.
“I was hurt badly enough to be hospitalized, and it took a whole month before I could leave. But when I was finally able to go to school, the disaster next struck my own family. You were only a year old, so you wouldn’t remember what happened in the middle of June that year…”
My mother Hinako’s death.
She had gone shopping by herself and suddenly collapsed, and by the time she was transported to the emergency room, it was already too late. The cause of death was listed as heart failure, but according to my father Shotaro, she had been in perfect health. He couldn’t believe she would die so suddenly and became skeptical. Of course, he grieved and was filled with sorrow, too.
I had been unable to say anything before, but faced with that, I revealed the secret of third-year Class 3 to my father. Breaking the commandment passed on to the class—that indiscriminately telling other people about it would bring worse calamity down on us.
I suppose the bus accident in May and my mother’s sudden death in June were both disasters visited on third-year Class 3. I’m sure of it.
If the legend of the class were true, then the disasters weren’t over yet. Someone with ties to the class would die the next month, and the month after that, and the month after that…all the way until graduation. It could be me or my family—maybe my father or my older sister Tsukiho.
“My father—your grandfather—was a doctor, and doctors are scientists, so he didn’t believe me right away. But I begged him so desperately…and I’m sure with the bus accident and my mother’s sudden death, even my father couldn’t help but feel something abnormal was going on…”
“Is that why you moved away from Yomiyama?” Sou asked, his eyes wide.
“That’s right,” I replied, lowering my gaze.
“We were scared. My father and I both were. So we ran. We fled Yomiyama and moved here.”
When I transferred schools and the family left Yomiyama, then of course we would be able to escape the disasters. That’s what we thought. So…
We cleared out of our house in Yomiyama and moved here to Lakeshore Manor, like an emergency evacuation. That was right after the start of July.
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