“I wonder if it gets into stuff like split personalities or being possessed or something.”
Sou Hiratsuka, so firmly convinced that he was “the ghost of Teruya Sakaki,” who when he appeared had felt things, thought, and behaved to the utmost as that. These were the words and concepts that bubbled to the surface all on their own when I thought about his state of mind. However.
“I don’t think it was quite like that.”
I had put the thought out there, then immediately wished I could take it back.
Because a flicker of doubt crossed my mind: Was it really enough just to apply some trendy label to this? Apparently Mei had the same feeling.
“Treating Sou’s behavior like an ‘emotional illness’ and getting a specialist to analyze him and fit him into some ‘-osis’ would be so empty, I think. Though I suppose there are plenty of people who would be happy to do it,” she said, drawing her lips still tighter.
“Sakakibara, you said a little while ago that it’s ‘so complicated and nuanced.’”
“Yeah…I did.”
“I agree it’s nuanced. But what looks complicated is actually just a lot of simple bits of naïveté all coming together and getting tangled up with each other. You could think of it that way.”
“What kind of simple things?”
“Let’s try listing off some key words.”
Mei slowly closed her right eye, then opened it.
“Child. Adult. Death. Ghost. Sadness…And maybe connected.”
“Er, that’s…”
“Each word is simple by itself, right? But they mingle together little by little while holding onto their individual meanings and get distorted…And the end result was Mr. Sakaki’s ghost appearing inside Sou.”
“Umm…could you explain that?”
“Wouldn’t it be crass to go into any more detail?”
With those words, I couldn’t tell whether purposely or not, a slightly sadistic smile crept over Mei Misaki’s face. “It’s not like this is a question on a language arts test…Right?”
I muttered, unsatisfied, and leaned back in the armchair.
“All the same, though—” Mei said, her smile vanishing. “I’ll try and straighten out what happened at Lakeshore Manor on May 3, at least. Because I think it’s best to leave it at that.”
2
She said that Teruya Sakaki must have been living in sorrow for a long time.
The sorrow of losing so many of his friends in the tragedy of ’87 eleven years earlier. Then, the sorrow of losing his mother—
Well, enough for him that he and his family fled from Yomiyama in order to escape the disasters, but people he knew in class and had left behind in the city continued to lose their lives to the unrelenting misfortune. There was no question he had also felt guilt that he alone had fled and been spared. That guilt that the passage of years couldn’t erase…And still the sorrow.
At some point in the midst of it all, Sakaki had begun to be fascinated by death, even as he feared it.
Perhaps dropping out of college and traveling all over the place had, from his perspective, been similar to caring for the animals and putting a row of grave markers for them in the garden: a ritual to explore the meaning of death.
In the end, his thoughts had settled in a single direction.
It would be much better for him to die, too, rather than to continue living like this, carrying his indelible sorrow. Then, he would be liberated from it. Then, he might be able to connect to everyone who had died before him.
And so he had reached the certainty that it was time. He had forsaken his own life, thinking that there was nothing else he wished for. And then—
Sakaki had decided to go through with it on the night of May 3, which was also his twenty-sixth birthday. He had written some words in Memories 1998, reminiscent of a suicide note, and then he had set up a rope to hang himself and taken sleeping pills with alcohol…And at the moment he had thought it was done, unexpectedly Tsukiho had come over with Sou.
It probably made sense for Sou to believe that the subsequent events, of Sakaki having the misfortune to fall from the corridor on the second floor and die, were facts remembered as “the ghost of Teruya Sakaki.” Although in reality, they were based on the memories of events Sou himself had witnessed when he followed Tsukiho up to the second floor, which he had reconstructed from the perspective of “Sakaki’s ghost.”
Witnessing the life slipping out of Sakaki’s body, the man he had adored like a father or big brother, the shock had put Sou into a vacant-eyed stupor, from which he had tumbled into an almost insensate trance. Meanwhile, Tsukiho’s first response had been to run over to where Sakaki had fallen, where she saw that he had already stopped breathing. The decisions and choices she made at that point determined how things developed.
She had put Sou, still half-senseless, to bed in a decent location and then made a phone call. Before calling an ambulance or the police, she first called her husband Shuji Hiratsuka.
“Something terrible has happened. Something awful…”
Hearing Tsukiho’s voice in snatches—Sou would tell Mei that memory later.
“…What?”
Tsukiho’s voice sounding surprised.
“But…but that’s…”
She was talking to someone on the phone. Probably Shuji. Sou said he guessed it from the way she talked.
“Right…a-all right. I…understand. Just please hurry…All right…Yes, please. I’ll be here.”
A short while later, Shuji Hiratsuka rushed into the house. He had a doctor’s license and confirmed Sakaki’s death, and Tsukiho told him the details of what had happened…At this point, Sou’s memories became patchier and patchier, more like guesses.
Should they inform the police of what happened or not?
Teruya Sakaki had absolutely intended to kill himself that night, but in the end the one who had caused him to fall was Tsukiho. The reality was that it was an unfortunate accident, but she was afraid that she would be investigated for her role in involuntary manslaughter. And that the police might wrongly suspect her of even worse.
In any event, the fact that a family member—a brother-in-law, from Shuji’s perspective—had attempted suicide would be an immense scandal for a distinguished local family like the Hiratsukas that they wouldn’t want to be widely known. And when Tsukiho had a connection like that to the event, they wanted even less for it to become public. There was going to be an election in the fall…After talking it over, the two came to a decision.
Namely, the cover-up.
To erase the fact that Teruya Sakaki had died there that night. To say instead that he had gone on a long trip somewhere by himself. He really did have a streak of wanderlust like that, so it wasn’t a far-fetched scenario. He had few close friends, so Shuji and Tsukiho were probably also planning to wrap it all up in the end by saying he had disappeared on his trip.
In that case, they would have to dispose of the body. They would have to dump it or hide it somewhere that no third party would find it.
“At least…do it here.”
At that point, Sou thought, Tsukiho had probably spoken up. This, too, was a fragment of conversation that Sou had heard in his flickers of awareness and remembered.
“…In this house.”
They probably had a lot of options for hiding the body: burying it in the forest or sinking it in the ocean or the lake…But on that one point, she would not budge.
The Lakeshore Manor her deceased father had so loved, and for which Sakaki had also held a fierce attachment, was a special house. Tsukiho knew that well. So even though they were covering up his death to serve their own purposes, she begged that his body be buried there, at the very least.
At least…do it here.
In this house.
Somewhere inside the house—
In the end, Shuji relented to her request. In the future, when the time came that Teruya Sakaki was declared missing and presumed dead, Lakeshore Mano
r would pass to his natural-born sister, Tsukiho. There would be no problems taking possession of it. Perhaps his decision had been made with that expectation. And then—
The place they selected for hiding the body was that room in the basement that had gone totally unused for so many years that very few people even knew existed.
The two carried the body down there and decided to make the room itself disappear. They likely decided to have Shuji himself do the construction work to seal up the door and outside windows or to make secret arrangements to have it done. Since he also had his hand in construction-related businesses, it wouldn’t have been very difficult to arrange…
When they sealed up the body, they brought Sakaki’s single-lens reflex camera and set it beside him, which had no doubt been at Tsukiho’s behest. One could imagine with the same intention as placing a favorite object of the deceased with them in the coffin…
As for the diary that had been placed with him, that had probably been to hide evidence. They thought it was a bad idea to leave something that could be read as a suicide note lying around to be found in the bedroom or library. In which case, it might have been better to tear it up and throw it out or burn it. But perhaps they hadn’t done so in order to use it as “insurance” in the worst-case scenario.
If by some small chance the existence of the disappeared basement room were revealed and the body were to be discovered, the “suicide note” in the diary would be important. It could be powerful evidence to make the excuse that Sakaki’s death had originally been suicide. Done with that in mind…
3
“Apparently that room in the basement was originally built as a stove room.”
Appending that explanation, Mei glanced at the round tabletop. Her eyes had landed on the sketchbook she had closed and set down there.
“They would light a big coal stove in there, and chimneys to let the smoke out ran to all the important parts of the house to heat the house in the winter. They stopped using that a really long time ago, so after Mr. Sakaki’s dad got the house they just ignored that room.”
“So that little black rock Sou was holding really was coal?”
Mei nodded. “Yeah. I think it was a piece of coal someone dropped a long, long time ago, and he picked it up while he was groping around in that pitch-dark room.”
…But still.
How had Sou Hiratsuka managed to get into that room the night of August 2? The door and outside windows were all sealed up, and there shouldn’t have been any gaps big enough for him to get in through.
When I voiced this question, Mei answered casually.
“Purely by luck, apparently.”
“By luck?”
“Given what that room was originally used for, there would have been a chute or hole or something for throwing coal in there directly from outside. Like a tunnel slanting down from above-ground into the room.”
You could probably imagine it like a trash chute in a building.
“People forgot it even existed a long time ago, and Tsukiho and her husband didn’t know about it, either. And nobody noticed it when they did the work to seal up the door and windows. From inside the room, the hole the coal fell out of probably just looked like it was half blocked with junk or something anyway.”
“And Sou found that?”
“It looks like it really was purely by chance. Sure, he noticed there were fewer skylights to the basement that day, but he couldn’t possibly have phased through the wall or anything since he’s not a real ghost. So while he was wandering around near there in a stupor, he just happened to find an old iron lid in the ground, and when he opened it up…”
“That’s how he got in.”
“I don’t think he really understood what happened. It probably felt like falling down a hole. He even said he felt an unexpected impact. And he was covered in cuts that he probably got from that…”
On the night of August 2, Mei had rescued Sou from the basement room. Apparently there was a lot of trouble afterward. All I could think was, I imagine there would be, yeah.
“I wasn’t sure what to do, but obviously I had to call Kirika first. I gave her a rundown of the situation and asked her to tell my father, too, and then come over as soon as she could.”
“What about the Hiratsukas? Weren’t they panicking because Sou wasn’t there?”
“Apparently they hadn’t noticed,” Mei replied. Her voice a touch glum. “After the incident in May, when Sou was at home, he started staying in his room. And I don’t think Tsukiho knew that Sou had gone out after the sun went down that night.”
“Hmm. When you say that, it makes me think of…”
I felt like the isolation Sou experienced in the Hiratsuka house was being shoved into my face. I was sure his home environment had been basically the same even before what happened in May.
“After that, all kinds of stuff happened…In the end, the police came. Sou went to the hospital. And one of the police officers asked me a ton of questions, but…”
There were a lot of questions about how the incident was handled after that. The fact that a body had been discovered in the basement was never announced publicly, and for some reason, neither of the Hiratsukas wound up being arrested for suspicion of illegally disposing of a body or anything else.
The only change was that Shuji Hiratsuka withdrew from the election he had planned to join for the fall. I don’t know what grown-up dynamics were at work there. Even when Mei asked Kirika what was going on, she only got fake-sounding answers.
4
How had Sou Hiratsuka become convinced that he was the ghost of Teruya Sakaki?
I know it makes me look crass, but I attempted to work out an explanation for it afterward. I couldn’t stop myself. Using the key words Mei pointed out earlier as clues—
“Sou cared a lot about Mr. Sakaki. Because to Sou, Mr. Sakaki played a role more like a father or an older brother…”
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.
“On the other hand, Sou hated adults. I imagine he probably disliked most adults who weren’t Mr. Sakaki. Including Mr. Hiratsuka, who was Tsukiho’s second husband, and Tsukiho who poured all her affection onto little Mirei, her child with Mr. Hiratsuka, and probably the teachers at his school, too…And that’s why.
“That’s why Sou thought that.
“That if he could be a grown-up he liked, he’d want to grow up right away. In other words, if he could be like Mr. Sakaki, he would want to grow up as fast as he could…”
What happens to people when they die?
—Hmm?
Do they move on to the afterlife when they die?
Well…who can say?
Do ghosts exist? If a soul stays in “the world of the living,” does it become a ghost?
There’s no such thing as ghosts. It’s the job of a proper adult to say that…But hmm. I suppose they might.
Hmmm.
Maybe I just want them to exist.
“And Mr. Sakaki, who he idolized so much, died right in front of Sou.
“The person he loved most and who was most important to him in that moment. The only adult he wanted to grow up to be…That’s who died.
“Sou didn’t want to accept the reality that Mr. Sakaki was gone. But the dead didn’t come back to life for him.
“Sou had lost the ideal adult he wanted to grow up to be. If he couldn’t be like him, he’d rather stay a child, without any freedom. But even if he didn’t want to, he would still grow up…”
Do some people turn into ghosts when they die and other people don’t?
They say people who die with grudges or regrets in this life become ghosts.
What if something horrible happens to you and you die? Like Oiwa-sa
n?
That’s turning into a vengeful spirit and taking revenge on the person who did the horrible thing to you. There’s also when someone dies without being able to tell someone important how they feel about them or when someone doesn’t get a proper burial…
“Maybe if Tsukiho and her husband had called an ambulance or the police that night. If Mr. Sakaki’s death had become public and they had held a proper funeral and burial—
“Then maybe Sou wouldn’t have become a ‘ghost.’
“But the reality turned out different.
“When Tsukiho ordered Sou to forget what had happened that night and it became subliminal…and combined with the major shock he had undergone, he really did seal away his memories of that night and shut down emotionally. Mr. Sakaki’s death was covered up and he couldn’t be properly mourned by everyone…And then ‘the ghost of Teruya Sakaki’ awoke inside Sou and started to appear occasionally. But from Sou’s perspective, that was also linked to granting his own desire under a different guise.
“In one sense, there was his desire for Mr. Sakaki to stay among the living. For him to turn into a ghost and be by Sou’s side, even if he was dead.
“In another sense, there was Sou’s desire to not become one of the grown-ups he hates, but instead to become the grown-up he likes best of all, as fast as he could. If he was going to turn into a grown-up he hates, then he preferred to stay a kid. But he was going to grow up whether he liked it or not. So given that, he would want to become the ‘adult’ who was ‘the ghost of Teruya Sakaki, who he liked best.’ Maybe he also wanted to, in some sense, stop time for himself by doing that…”
When a person dies, they can connect in some way with everyone. I get that feeling.
Who is “everyone”?
I mean everyone who died before them.
“The fact that Sou woke up as ‘the ghost of Teruya Sakaki’ and started to search for Mr. Sakaki’s missing body, while occasionally popping up here and there to go through his memories as a ‘ghost’…that might have been an act on Mr. Sakaki’s behalf.
Another Episode S / 0 Page 16