And so, per the physician’s orders—
Since I’d been shut up in my house all week, I hadn’t been to school. So I had almost no idea what was happening in the class after the accident.
The barest of information that I’d gotten was that Sakuragi’s mother, who’d been in a car accident, had died the same day. That the funeral for mother and daughter had been conducted quietly, for close relatives only. That, of course, everyone in class couldn’t hide the intense shock they felt. That was about it.
I didn’t know what Mei Misaki had been doing since then. I wasn’t utterly without means to find out, of course, but I didn’t want to use those means on her or on the other issues. For some reason I felt an overriding hesitation and I lost my nerve.
I still didn’t have a class list, so the only student I could call directly and feel out was Teshigawara, whose cell phone number I had. And him, I’d tried to call a couple times during the previous week, but he never once answered. Maybe he knew it was me calling and he wasn’t picking up on purpose.
My grandmother had heard about the accident, but all she had done was effusively repeat “How frightening” or “I feel so bad for them.” It seemed her concern lay completely with the health of her grandson. Whether or not my grandfather understood what was going on, he bobbled his head to every word my grandmother said. Reiko was incredibly concerned about my mental state, but she still wouldn’t get into the subjects we’d touched on. I couldn’t bring it up, either. The mynah bird Ray shrieked as energetically as ever. There wasn’t so much as a peep from my dad in India and I hadn’t told him any of the news yet, either.
In the midst of it all, there was, in fact, one person I could talk to relatively casually. Funnily enough, that was Ms. Mizuno from the municipal hospital. It was two days after Sakuragi’s death that she called me, the day after I’d gone to the hospital, in the afternoon.
“Are you all right? How are your lungs?”
She cut right to the point.
“After all, you did see a horrible accident up close. That’s going to have an effect on you, physically.”
“You know about that?”
“I heard from my little brother. You know, my youngest brother who’s in the same class as you at North Middle? Takeru Mizuno. He’s on the basketball team.”
So that really was him.
“You came to the hospital instead of going to school yesterday, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Nothing bad enough to hospitalize you, I guess?”
“Thankfully, no. I managed to pull myself through it, they said.”
“When are you coming back? To the hospital, I mean.”
“Next week, Tuesday morning.”
“Okay, you want to get together after that?”
“Huh?”
Why…? Before I could say anything more, Ms. Mizuno went on. “Something’s been bothering me. All kinds of things. I don’t know what’s connected to what, or how, and what’s not connected at all. Plus there’s still that thing we need to talk about.”
That thing—about why I’d been asking all those questions about the girl who’d died at the hospital at the end of April?
“So now you’re convalescing at home?”
“I’m trying.”
“Don’t start brooding. If you do have to be hospitalized again, I’ll put everything I’ve got into taking care of you.”
“Uh…okay. Thank you.”
That’s what I told her, but I wanted to avoid that happening at any cost.
“Well, I’ll see you at the hospital on Tuesday, then. I’ll call you before that, though.”
Ms. Mizuno was being very considerate of my frame of mind, because she didn’t once start talking about our common interest. She hadn’t even called me “Horror Boy” like she always did, and deep down I was relieved.
I’d just witnessed real-life blood and gore two days earlier and, unsurprisingly, my emotions had suffered for it.
The nauseating red that had spread across the umbrella that day, the way Yukari Sakuragi had looked with the metal spike stabbed through her throat, the profuse amounts of fresh blood that had pumped out of her. It was all burned into my eyes and wouldn’t go away. The sound of the umbrella snapping and her body rolling onto its side, Mr. Miyamoto’s voice shouting, the siren on the ambulance, the screams and soft weeping of the students…All of it still lingered in my ears, raw.
As much as I tried to tell myself they were two separate things, I was taking a break from horror novels and horror movies for a little while—just then, in my state of mind, I genuinely couldn’t take it.
2
Rain was falling again, just like the week before. Apparently the rainy season had truly begun, much earlier than most years. As usual, my grandmother had offered to take me to the hospital in the car, but I had firmly refused and come to the hospital alone.
I had promised to meet Ms. Mizuno as soon as my checkup was over. She’d said that she had to work the night shift and she’d go straight from that to the dorm at the hospital to nap. We’d arranged that I would call her when I was done.
Standing near the front entrance to the outpatient area, I called Ms. Mizuno’s cell phone, then spent the time while I waited gazing at the rain-soaked scenery outside.
It was then that I thought about how the rain in Yomiyama was clammier than in Tokyo.
Considering the pollutants in the air, the opposite was probably true. So it was just an issue with my perceptions.
Maybe the word “clammy” isn’t exactly right. Maybe I should say something more neutral, like “it had a richer quality.”
The walkways to the building, the ebb and flow of people, the plants in the foreground and the mountains in the distance…The rain drenching all of these things seemed to take on intrinsically different shades and elements for each. I certainly don’t mean that it was dirty.
My eyes came to rest on the puddles that had collected on the ground.
These were the same. How can I put it? They seemed to have more colors, and deeper colors, than the puddles in Tokyo. Perhaps the problem wasn’t the rain itself, but the difference in the objects seen through it. Or maybe it really was nothing more than a mirror for the images in my mind.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.”
I heard a voice beside me. This was the first time I’d seen Ms. Mizuno without her white nurse’s uniform. She wore a light blue shirt and a black denim jacket.
“How was your checkup?”
“It looks like I won’t have to burden you, at least.”
“That’s too bad.”
“I can go to school tomorrow, too.”
“Oh yeah? That’s great,” she said with a sunny smile. She pulled her cell phone from a pocket of her denim jacket and glanced down at it. “It’s a little early, but do you want to get lunch somewhere?”
“You were on the night shift, right?” I offered her the most basic level of courtesy. “I mean, you must be wiped out…”
“Oh, I’m fine! I’m off tomorrow, and I’m still plenty young. How do you feel about that restaurant over there?”
“Up to you.”
Ms. Mizuno had driven over. She had a cute blue compact car, a huge contrast to the rugged black car my grandmother drove around.
3
The restaurant chain was the same one we had in Tokyo, but the table we sat at was much roomier than the ones there. After we’d ordered, Ms. Mizuno put both hands to her mouth and yawned hugely. “Fwa-a-a-h!”
“You’re not getting enough sleep, huh?”
“Hm? Well, that’s par for the course.”
“I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have…”
“What are you talking about? I’m the one who said we should meet up. Don’t worry about it.”
Her coffee and sandwich finally came. Ms. Mizuno first dumped a bunch of sugar into the coffee, then took several sips before biting into her egg sandwich, at which point she murmured, “Let’s get started
then,” and turned back to me.
“First off, I had a chat with my little brother Takeru Mizuno, who I usually barely talk to. I wanted to ask him a couple things. The class you two are in seems to have some special circumstances.”
“Special circumstances?”
“Yup. He wouldn’t give me any details, although I didn’t really know what I should be asking either, which is kind of a problem, but anyway: definitely special circumstances. You must know what.”
“The circumstances behind the special circumstances, you mean?” I dropped my eyes and shook my head slowly. “I don’t really know much, either. I’m pretty certain that something’s going on, but I just transferred here and I guess no one’s going to tell me about it yet.”
“The girl who died at your school last week, her name was Sakuragi, right? She was your class representative for the girls?”
“…Yeah.”
“I heard about what happened. And about how you apparently witnessed it. She fell on the stairs and some horrible twist of luck made her umbrella impale her in the throat?”
“…Yes, that’s what happened.”
“It looked like he was scared of something.”
“Your brother?”
If he’d been shocked by the freak death of a classmate, that was only natural. But “scared”? What did that mean?
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not like I asked him outright. But somehow it looked like he didn’t think the accident last week was just an ‘accident.’”
“Not an accident?”
I scrunched my forehead.
If it wasn’t an accident, then was it suicide? Or maybe murder? That was impossible. Neither of those things could possibly be true.
It wasn’t suicide, it wasn’t murder, and it wasn’t “just an accident.” So what could it possibly…?
“What was he afraid of?”
“Who knows.” Ms. Mizuno cocked her head uneasily. “Nothing specific.”
Hey, Sakakibara, d’you believe in ghosts or curses or whatever? Is that your thing?
I suddenly recalled the questions Teshigawara had asked me. Was that the first day I’d transferred in?
So-called supernatural phenomena in general?
That had been the same conversation, a question from Kazami.
Of course I didn’t believe in “ghosts or curses or whatever” or in “supernatural phenomena in general” and I didn’t want to start believing in them now. Sure, the “Seven Mysteries of North Yomi” were all kinds of strange, but they were harmless ghost stories you just expected to find somewhere like a school. In the end, even that story about “Misaki from twenty-six years ago” had to be…
But then…
What if the death of Yukari Sakuragi last week really wasn’t “just an accident”?
I dredged the memories back up.
That day, Sakuragi had come flying out of the classroom when she heard the news about her mother’s car accident. She’d taken her umbrella out of the umbrella stand and, her legs tangling under her, she had first tried to come toward the East Stair, which was closest to where she stood. But then—yes, she had stopped. Maybe because she’d seen us standing by the window at the top of the stairs. The next moment, she had turned on her heel and run off in the opposite direction—to the West Stair.
What if…I wondered.
What if she had gone down the East Stair, following her initial impulse?
Then maybe that accident wouldn’t have happened.
She’d bolted down the long hallway and run down the West Stair with all that momentum. And to top it off, the floor might have been wet right there and she’d slipped…That unbelievable accident had resulted from so many factors piling one on top of another. So…
Why had Sakuragi behaved that way? Why, as soon as she saw us—Mei and me—had she done what she did?
“Have you ever heard the name Mei Misaki?”
Even when the hot dog I’d ordered came, I didn’t feel like picking it up. But I wet my parched mouth and throat with the iced tea I’d also ordered before posing the question to Ms. Mizuno.
“Misaki?”
Naturally, she reacted to the name. She must have recalled the name of the girl who’d died at the hospital in April, whose first name was Misaki.
“Mei…Misaki? Who’s that?”
“She’s a girl in my class—third-year Class 3 at North Yomi. Your brother’s never said anything about her?”
Ms. Mizuno puffed out one of her cheeks slightly. “Remember, we hardly ever talk to each other most days. What about her, though? Did something happen?”
“You know that thing I promised I would tell you about sometime? The truth is, this girl Mei Misaki has something to do with it.”
Ms. Mizuno blinked her goggle-eyes and nodded, murmuring thoughtfully. I explained the situation to her, trying to be as simple and systematic as possible.
“Hm-m-m.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and nodded just as she had before, then took another bite of her egg sandwich.
“You told me about her before, this girl with the eye patch. I don’t remember when. Heh. So you have a crush on little Mei, huh?”
“Wha—”
Hey…h-hold on a second, lady.
“That’s not it,” I replied, a little bit indignant. “It’s just…there’s something really strange about how she acts in the classroom. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“We call that having a crush.”
“I said I don’t.”
“Fine, fine. I get it. So let me try getting a handle on this another way.”
I waited.
“That day at the end of April—I think it was the twenty-seventh?—the girl who died at the hospital was Mei’s cousin Misaki Fujioka. Mei was very sad, and she was going to the memorial chapel to see Misaki and ‘deliver’ something to her. Right?”
“Yes.”
“And? What’s so strange about the way Mei acts in class?”
“I mean…”
I had to really think hard about how to answer.
“Um…I think she’s just strange to start out with. But…you know what I mean? At first I thought maybe the class was kind of picking on her. Or maybe they were all scared of her.”
“Scared of her?”
“It’s not quite that either, though.”
Several things that I’d seen and heard since that day when I’d first come to North Yomi floated lazily through my mind.
“I have this friend named Teshigawara, and he called me up out of nowhere and told me to ‘quit paying attention to things that aren’t there.’”
“What does that mean?”
“According to her, it means that she’s invisible, which…”
Ms. Mizuno folded her arms over her chest again and murmured. “Hm-m-m.”
I pressed on. “And then, with all that going on, that accident happened last week.”
“Hm-m-m. Well, the obvious interpretation is that it’s purely a coincidence. There’s nothing to link the two together, is there?”
“When you take the obvious interpretation, no.”
But…
“There’s another issue that’s been bothering me. It’s something that happened twenty-six years ago…”
And then I told her “the legend of Misaki.” Ms. Mizuno didn’t make a sound the whole time I talked; she just listened in silence.
“…Did you know that story?”
“That’s the first time I’ve heard it. I went to South Middle, after all.”
“But your little brother knows about it.”
“Oh, you think so?”
“I still don’t have any idea how the two things are related. But there does seem to be a connection, and I…”
“I see-e-e.”
Ms. Mizuno drained the coffee that remained in her cup.
“I haven’t been back to school since it happened, so I don’t know what’s going on in the class right now. Yo
u haven’t…heard anything about it from your brother, right?”
“This has really started to sound like a horror story. You aren’t going to eat your hot dog?”
“Oh, yeah. Thanks.”
It wasn’t for lack of hunger, that’s for sure. As she watched me bite into my hot dog, Ms. Mizuno said, “Why don’t I see if I can find anything out? About what happened twenty-six years ago, and about Mei. Unfortunately I’m not very friendly with my brother, so I don’t know how much he’ll tell me. You’re going to school tomorrow, right?”
“Yeah.”
My first time going to school in a week.
The thought made my anxiety ramp up instantly. And also…
What was Mei doing right now?
My chest ached dully, in a way that was different from the symptoms of a lung collapsing, or nearly collapsing.
“If I find anything out, I’ll call you. Are you coming back to the hospital soon?”
“This Saturday.”
“Saturday…June sixth? Hey, did you ever see The Omen?”
“When I was in elementary school, I saw it on TV.”
“I don’t think Damien is in our town, but…” Ms. Mizuno’s face took on the “novice nurse who loves horror” look and a teasing smile spread over her face. “But anyway, we’ll both be careful. Especially for any accidents that would never usually happen.”
4
When we left the restaurant, the rain had stopped and tiny bits of sunlight were peeking through the clouds in places.
I accepted Ms. Mizuno’s offer to drive me home and got into the passenger seat of her car, but on the way there I realized we were in a familiar part of town, and I asked her to let me out. We were in the town of Misaki, near the doll gallery “Blue Eyes Empty to All, in the Twilight of Yomi.”
“You live in Furuchi, don’t you, Sakakibara? It’s still pretty far.”
She glanced over at me dubiously, so I told her, “I’ve been cooped up for so long, I want to walk a little,” and I got out of the car.
I found “Twilight of Yomi” almost immediately.
Outside the entrance, a middle-aged woman wearing bright, marigold-colored clothes stood on the landing of the outdoor stairway that ran up the side of the building. Our eyes just happened to meet—or so it seemed. Is she from the doll workshop upstairs? I wondered, giving her a casual nod, but she simply climbed the stairs in silence, without the slightest reaction.
Another, Volume 1 Page 14