“Monochrome and color are totally different, and I didn’t have any idea what I was doing.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that.”
“So this darkroom has been abandoned ever since then.”
“…I see”
There was a large table covered in dust in the very center of the room, a box-shaped safelight…as well as a lot of other development equipment and tools I had once used that had been left uncared for. Actually, this room felt like more of an abandoned ruin than the storage room next door.
“Of course, I searched every corner of this room, too,” I said with a sigh. “But my body isn’t here. I couldn’t find it.”
“…Ah.” Mei nodded, then walked around the room for a bit before finally looking up at the skylights with the blackout shades once more and crossing her arms. “So we have that other room, and this former darkroom…Hmmm.”
Unfolding her arms, she cast a glance back at me.
“There isn’t, say…a floor plan of this mansion, is there?”
“I don’t think so.”
I dipped my head to the side, my face serious.
“At least, I’ve never seen one.”
6
When we left the second room and came back into the hallway, Mei peeked once more into the room next door, and this time went in and picked her way around the junk. When she finally came back out, she crossed her arms again and held her head cocked to one side in silence for a bit.
At this point, I, too, had begun to feel, tickling at the edges of my brain, that something somewhere was off. But after a little while, Mei said, “Well, let’s go,” and turned on her heel back toward the stairs.
“There’s nothing more we can do here, anyway…,” I heard her murmur, but I didn’t follow her meaning—
We went back to the grand entry.
It was already past five thirty. The sun would be setting soon.
7
“I have to head home soon,” Mei Misaki had said, but I held her back for a few more moments.
“Listen. I’m going to ask you something kind of strange.”
Once we had returned to the grand entry, standing beside the hall clock that had stopped at 6:06…I looked at her.
“Have you ever been in love?”
“Wha—?”
Caught off guard, Mei blinked both her differently colored eyes.
“Love? You mean…”
I suppose it would be surprising to be asked something like that out of the blue. I was surprised, too, and I was the one who had asked the question…Or rather, I was terribly perplexed. Even I didn’t have a clear idea of why I had asked a question like that.
“…You know, I’m not sure. Ummm.” Mei Misaki cocked her head quite introspectively.
“Er…well.” I was a bit flustered, but while I failed to find the words to smooth the situation over, a different question occurred to me, and before I had thought it through, I had given it “voice.”
“Do you…want to grow up and be an adult right away? Or would you rather not?”
Mei blinked again, and this time she inclined her head slightly, murmuring, “Mmm…”
Finally—
“Either way, I guess,” she answered quietly. “It doesn’t really matter what I want, after all, since I’m going to grow up either way. If I live, of course.”
“…”
“What about you?”
When she turned the question back on me, I was at a loss for a quick answer.
“Did you want to grow up? Or not?”
“Well…”
—But you know, it isn’t that great being grown-up.
“I…”
—I wish I could go back. To being a kid.
“…I wish I could go back to being a kid.”
“Huh. Why is that?”
“Oh, I…”
—Because I want to remember it, I suppose.
“So what about love?”
“Huh?”
“Have you ever been in love?”
“Oh, er…Well…”
I floundered about for a response, and Mei Misaki kept her gaze fixed on me, her right eye crinkling coolly.
“No?”
At her prodding, I answered with what rose in my mind. “No, I…I have, I think.
“But…”
—I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer these questions.
“…I can’t really remember.”
—I can’t really remember. That’s why…
Her right eye still narrowed, Mei Misaki cocked her head to one side, regarding me curiously.
8
“Say, did you…?”
After a space of a few seconds, I started to speak again, but I realized that Mei’s eyes were fixed not on me, but on the telephone stand resting next to the wall. The base unit of the cordless phone was on it.
Mei walked over to stand before the phone. She looked down at the black telephone in silence, then lifted her eyes toward me and asked, “This is the phone you heard Arai’s message on, right?”
“Uh, yes,” I answered, unable to guess her reason for asking. She nodded, an expression of some sort of acceptance on her face.
“The handset in the library was out of battery power.”
“Oh…was it?”
“Yeah. So it wouldn’t be able to ring when there’s a call…”
An old friend, what’s-his-name Arai, who’s supposed to be dead. Why, despite that, had I gotten a phone call from a man with that name?
Did she have an idea about this mystery? Before I could ask—
“Here’s what I think about the Arai issue.”
I tried to pluck one thought from my mind, which was, as always, full of indistinct patches and impossible to grasp in full.
“When a person—” I said. “When a person dies, they can connect in some way with everyone…”
“When they die, they’re connected?” Mei Misaki twisted her head in intense interest again, just like before. “Is that true?”
“I get that feeling.”
“And…when did you start thinking that?”
“Before I died…A long time before, I think.”
“…”
“I really did die and became this ghost…But—I think I’ve said this before—I really don’t think what I am right now is the actual state of death. Not this halfway, unnatural, unstable condition.”
“So in any case, that’s why you’re looking for your missing body. That’s what you’re getting at, right?”
“Right. And then…If I find my body and Teruya Sakaki is properly mourned and recognized as deceased, then I’ll finally be able to die right. I’ll go to my rightful death. That’s how I feel.”
“Hmm. I get the feeling we’ll find out at least that much somehow.”
Mei moved away from the telephone stand and also put some distance between us as she stood in the center of the grand entry.
Just then, in the sunset light that had dimmed the space considerably, the figure of the girl looked somehow like a “gray shade,” lacking a physical body just as I did.
“When a person dies, they can connect in some way with everyone,” I repeated.
“Who is ‘everyone’?” Mei asked.
“I mean everyone who died before them,” I replied.
“When a person dies, they melt into something like a sea of the unconscious shared by all peoples. And maybe in there, everyone becomes connected.
“What do you think of that?”
The gray shade didn’t move in the slightest, and the girl said nothing in reply. I went on.
“I died three months ago, but since I’m still like this, I haven’t been able to melt into the sea. Although since I definitely did die, maybe an incomplete link forms sometimes. Namely, that—”
“I see.”
Mei glanced back at the telephone stand.
“That call from Arai?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. Although I wasn’t fully convinced myself
yet. “The Arai who called me was indeed someone who had already died. Probably in the disasters eleven years ago. My death formed a link between us since we were both dead, and then…”
“You got a phone call.”
“Which didn’t sound much like a message from a dead person somehow…But well, that’s at least one hypothesis.”
“It’s a pretty bold hypothesis,” Mei Misaki said, folding her arms again, but the girl had transformed back into that shade of gray and I couldn’t make out the expression on her face.
9
“I really have to go home now,” Mei had said, walking briskly toward the rear entrance. I had chased after her, outside the house.
“Can I see you again tomorrow?”
This is the opposite of yesterday— I thought, as I hesitantly made my request. Mei stopped in her tracks, turned back to look at me, and in that moment, I thought I saw a faint smile cross her lips.
“Tomorrow…I’ll meet you here.”
It was a mystery even to me why I had suggested it. Did I want to get together with her and conduct a search for the body like we’d done today? Or perhaps…Well, no, the reason didn’t matter.
I decided to stop thinking so hard and asked, “You can come?” watching her reaction.
“Hmm…tomorrow…”
Mei pulled her cap down low over her eyes.
“I have some stuff I need to do during the day…I’m not sure. Late afternoon should be fine. Maybe four thirty.”
“Oh…okay.”
“How about you and your ghost stuff?” she asked teasingly. “Will you be able to appear at that time? It won’t be too much trouble?”
“Um, well…”
Even if I wanted to appear at a set time and place, that wasn’t any guarantee that I would be able to do it. But hadn’t I managed to appear exactly how I wanted to today? So yes, if I made an effort, surely I could do it again tomorrow…
“I’ll try and put in some effort.”
When I gave this answer, Mei’s eye (not her doll’s eye) grew a little round.
“Oh,” she whispered. “Okay. Well…see you tomorrow at four thirty, then.”
“I’ll be in the hall like I was today. Go ahead and come in.”
“—I will.”
With that, Mei spun around.
As I watched the girl walk away under the deep purple of the evening sky, I rested a hand on my chest. I felt the tiny rhythm of that relic of life. For some reason it beat a little wildly, th-thmp, as if it would begin racing, but just as quickly it disappeared…The hollow darkness opened its mouth. I was swallowed up helplessly.
Sketch 8
What does it feel like to be in love? Is it fun? Does it hurt?
It’s…Oh, I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer these questions.
Why not?
…Because I can’t remember.
……
I can’t really remember. That’s why…
…Why not?
……
Why can’t you remember something like caring so much about a person?
Caring so much…Yeah, that’s definitely true. I remember that. I think I cared…a lot. But…
But what?
I just can’t remember. No matter how hard I try, I can’t remember who that person was.
1
And so the next day came: August 2.
Just as I had promised the previous day, I appeared at Lakeshore Manor.
I was in the grand entry on the first floor, just as I had said the day before. I think I’m right on time, too…I had a visceral sense of it.
I could hardly check the stopped clock in the hall, but listening carefully I heard a whoo from the second floor. It was the owl clock in the library. Half past four. I’m pretty sure, that sounds right.
Mei Misaki had not yet arrived.
Just as I had that afternoon of May 17 when I experienced my first awakening after death, I stood before the mirror hanging in the room. The mirror in which, on the verge of death, I had witnessed myself passing away…
…And yet.
As with every other time, my figure was not reflected in the mirror. Even though it faithfully showed everything other than me.
Though I had gotten used to being this way, having it brought to my attention like that made the existence of that girl, Mei Misaki, who could see me in this form, seem all the stranger. How did I appear to her in that blue eye of hers that could see death—the color of it?
Standing before the mirror I remained, waiting for Mei to come. But—
After some time had passed, she still hadn’t come.
I waited awhile longer.
Through the silence I heard whoo five times in a string from the owl clock. Five P.M.—
What was keeping her?
Perhaps her afternoon plans had gone long and she was running late?
Deciding that standing rooted to the spot accomplished nothing, I started to move away from the mirror. Just then, almost at the same moment—
The scene from the night of May 3, when I died in this spot, flashed into the mirror as I watched. Like a replay video that had been queued up at someone’s request…
2
My/Teruya Sakaki’s body lying facedown on the deep black floor. A white long-sleeved shirt and black pants. An outfit that made me look somehow like a middle or high school student. Arms and legs splayed out, twisted to bizarre angles. No longer able to move even if I tried.
Head twisted sharply, all the way to the side. Blood fountaining from a crack somewhere in the skull, staining the forehead and cheeks red, a pool of blood spreading slowly over the floor…
…Any moment now.
The bizarrely contorted, rigid face suddenly slackened, giving way to a mysterious, peaceful expression, as if freed from suffering and fear and uncertainty…And then.
The lips moved.
Slightly. Trembling.
“Tsu,” “ki”—and then.
I heard a sound from inside the mirror.
The reverberations of a ponderous bell tolling half past eight. And as if superimposed on that sound…
“…Ah!”
A quiet cry.
“Ahh!”
It was Sou’s voice. Calling my name.
“…Teru…ya.”
Sou’s voice. The child’s figure captured in a corner of the mirror. The child’s face. Terribly shocked.
“Teru…ya?”
Terribly frightened.
“Teruya!”
The child’s eyes popping, stunned.
“Teru…ya.”
Reflexively, I found myself turning to look at the place where the image of Sou in the mirror showed he ought to have been. At the first steps on the staircase up to the second floor…But of course there was no sign of anyone there now. There was no reason to think there would be.
When I turned my eyes back, the image in the mirror had vanished, but—
All at once, a premonition not unlike fear swelled within me. I hurriedly moved away from the mirror and withdrew to the center of the hall. I then heard—
An alarming noise from above.
Looking up, I saw the railing in the second-floor corridor broken and a person falling headfirst from it…
…Me.
It was me. That was me.
On the night three months ago. Slightly earlier than the scene that had just played out in the mirror.
I turned my eyes away from the unendurable sight of my/Teruya Sakaki’s body crumpled in front of the mirror and looked upward again. A human figure wavered beyond the broken railing. It was—
Tsukiho?
With both her hands planted on the floor, she stuck her head out over the foyer and peered down. In that moment.
“Eee…!” A frail sound slipped out of her. Then, she opened her mouth wide, but no scream followed. All I heard was a strangled sound. I could see her ashen face. I could see the panicked, unfocused movement of her eyes.
“
Tsukiho…My sister…”
This…yes, this too was an illusion. Just like what I’d seen in the mirror…An illusory scene projected onto that, collecting the fragments of my own memory to reconstruct the events of that night.
—Even knowing that, I couldn’t help calling out to her. I couldn’t help going up to the hall on the second floor where Tsukiho huddled.
I bolted up the stairs. But I only made it partway up.
I noticed that time was running further back.
“…What are you doing?” I heard Tsukiho’s voice saying.
From the hallway on the second floor at the top of the stairs. Those words that had been on the verge of coming back to me so many times, yet whose meaning eluded me. And there—yes—the scene I had been able to imagine or infer, but unable to recall with any sense of reality…
“What are you doing…? Teruya?”
I had just ascended the stairs and run down the hall a ways when I saw two figures before me.
One was Tsukiho.
The other was me/Teruya Sakaki.
The two were moving down the hallway toward me. Tsukiho was following behind Teruya’s wobbling, unsteady gait, apparently trying desperately to reason with him…
“Oh…stop it,” Tsukiho said, grabbing his arm, but Teruya shook free of her grip and shot back, “Just…don’t worry about it.”
“Wh-what are you saying?”
“I’d appreciate if you left me alone,” Teruya replied roughly, his words suspiciously slurred like his gait. “I want to…”
I want to die—that’s what he/I wanted to say. That’s why he said not to worry about it, to leave him alone.
“…You don’t mean that.”
Tsukiho grabbed his arm again. Teruya shook her off.
“I’m done.”
“You can’t…Don’t do it!”
They came into the part of the hall that opened up to the foyer and their struggle grew more heated.
Teruya’s steps were more unsteady than ever, but he stubbornly shook off Tsukiho’s hands. Even so, Tsukiho chased after him, trying desperately to stop him. A dangerous imbalance was growing in their strength.
Another Episode S / 0 Page 12