I folded my collapsible umbrella up neatly and put it away in my bag, then pushed the door open.
The bell over the door rang dully, just like last time.
“Hello there.”
The same white-haired old woman was at the same table next to the entrance, and she greeted me in the same tone of voice as last time. It was the middle of the day, but still the inside of the shop—no, I should say the inside of “the gallery”—had the same dusky lighting as the last time I’d been here.
“What’s this? We don’t get many young men in here.”
Even that was the same…
“Are you in middle school? No school today? Then you can go in for half price.”
“…Thank you.”
As I pulled my coin purse out of a pocket, the old woman added one more thing: “You take your time and have a look around. There aren’t any other customers right now, anyway.”
Feeling faintly lightheaded, I moved into the gallery.
String instruments playing a gloomy melody. Armies of dolls everywhere, both beautiful and eerie. Fantastical landscapes decorating the walls. Every last detail was the same as before. Feeling as if I were trapped in a peculiar recurring nightmare, I set my bag down on the sofa in the back. Then…
Taking deep breaths for those who had no breath, I headed toward the stairs that led down to the basement, as if pulled there at last by puppet strings.
The chill air of the basement room, so like a crypt, and the dolls (or, their various parts) lying all over the place were just as I remembered them. And in the niche-like depressions in the wall, the girl without the right arm, the boy with thin wings and the lower half of his face covered, the twins joined at the abdomen…And, yes, the black coffin that stood all the way at the back, and the doll shut up inside it that looked exactly like Mei Misaki.
Unlike last time, I didn’t feel my head clouding or my body getting much colder. But, again as if led by puppet strings, I walked over to stand before the coffin at the very back of the room.
This doll had been made by Kirika—written to mean “fruit in the mists.” That’s what Mei had told me. I held my breath for a few moments, staring at the doll’s face, even more waxen than the real Mei; at the mouth that seemed ready to speak at any moment—when…
Something happened then that was impossible to accept as reality right away.
From the shadows of the black coffin holding the doll, slowly, silently…
…How could that be?
All at once, I felt another faint wave of lightheadedness.
You take your time and have a look around.
The words the old woman had spoken just moments ago rang in my ears.
There aren’t any other customers right now, anyway.
…Oh, of course.
The old woman had said that the last time I’d come, too. There aren’t any other customers—I was sure of it. Her words had tugged faintly at my mind that day, too. There aren’t any other customers—and yet.
Why?
Slowly, silently, from the shadow of the black coffin…
Why?
…She appeared—Mei Misaki.
She looked a little cold in this underground room, dressed in only a navy blue skirt and a white summer blouse. Her skin looked even paler than usual.
“What a coincidence. Meeting in a place like this again,” Mei said, smiling faintly.
A coincidence…Is that what it was? I was struggling for a response when Mei asked me, “Why did you come here today?”
“I’m on my way home from the hospital. I happened to be walking by,” I replied, then asked her a question in return. “What about you? You didn’t go to school?”
“Well, you know. I ended up not going today,” she said, smiling faintly again. “Are you feeling better, Sakakibara?”
“Just enough to avoid getting hospitalized again, I guess. How has everyone in class been since that—since Sakuragi’s accident?”
Mei made a low noise, “Mm,” then replied, “Everyone’s…scared.”
Scared. Ms. Mizuno had said that, too.
It looked like he was scared of something.
“Scared? Of what?”
“They think it’s started.”
“What’s started?”
Mei abruptly turned her gaze aside. She looked unsure of how to answer.
“I—”
After a silence of several seconds, she spoke.
“I guess I’ve only ever half believed it, in the back of my mind. First that happened, then in May you came to our school and I told you all that stuff, but I still didn’t believe it a hundred percent. I guess I still doubted some part of it. But…”
She cut herself off and turned her gaze back to me. Her right eye narrowed, questioning, and I cocked my head to one side, uncomprehending.
“But it really does seem like it’s one of those years,” Mei continued. “A hundred percent certain, probably.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Because it’s started. So…”
Mei’s eye narrowed again, as if challenging me, What do you think about that? But all I could do was cock my head at her.
“So you still don’t know, huh, Sakakibara?” Mei murmured, turning her back on me quietly. “Then maybe you’re not actually supposed to know. If you found out, then maybe…”
“Hold on,” I spoke up reflexively. “You tell me stuff like that and then expect me to…”
I wanted to just shrug my shoulders at her and say “no idea.” “It’s starting,” “I doubted,” “it’s one of those years”…I wish she’d cut it out with the all-knowing act already.
“Do you think you’ll be able to go to school?” Mei asked, her back still turned to me.
“Yeah. I go back tomorrow.”
“Ah. If you’re going, then I should probably stay away.”
“What? Now come on. What are you—”
“Be careful.”
She turned slightly as she spoke.
“And you shouldn’t tell people that you saw me here.”
Then she turned her back on me again and walked off, her feet making no sound, to disappear behind the black coffin.
After a few moments, I tried calling to her softly. “C’mon, Misaki.”
I took a step forward—“Look, why are you…”—but my legs tangled slightly. A moment too late, I started to feel an odd, wobbly dizziness.
Don’t you feel it being sucked out of you?
Everything you have inside you?
The words Mei had spoken the last time I’d seen her here flowed through my spinning head like a spell.
Dolls are emptiness. Their bodies and hearts are total emptiness…a void.
That emptiness is like death.
Somehow I managed to take a step forward and keep my balance.
Like death…
With trepidation, I peered behind the coffin. But there…
I found Mei was gone.
There was no one else there, either.
The dark red curtains hanging in front of the wall were fluttering slightly in the breeze of the air-conditioning. A shudder ran through me as I was touched by a sudden midwinter chill.
5
“Why? Why?”
Ray the mynah bird repeated the question with her (…I think) usual enthusiasm.
Why? Look you, I’m the one who wants to know why. I was glaring into the cage, but she never wavered.
“Why? Ray. Why? Morning. Morning.”
After dinner, I went out to the porch on the first floor, where the signal was good, and tried calling my dad in India. Apparently his phone was turned off, though, because I called him three times and three times it didn’t go through. Maybe he was still at work. Night hadn’t fallen yet over there.
Well, whatever. I gave the idea up quickly.
Even if I told him about the accident last week or the bad turn I’d taken physically, he couldn’t exactly give me advice on anything beyond that.
The only thing I wanted from my dad, if anything, was to hear about my deceased mother’s time in middle school. But of course I was still a long way from having a concrete idea of how her stories would tie into the events that were happening right now, or if they even would at all.
Part of me also wanted to ask if there were any pictures of my mother from back then. Or maybe a yearbook, but the school would be more likely to still have one of those. In fact, yeah—if I went to the secondary library in Building Zero…
I left the porch, abandoning Ray, and peered into the living room, where Reiko was watching TV for once. There was a stand-up comedy variety show on, which didn’t seem like the sort of thing she would enjoy watching, but looking closer I saw that Reiko was sunk into the sofa, both her eyes shut tight…So she’s asleep.
A cold breeze was blowing from the air conditioner, making the room incredibly cold. Come on, Reiko! You’re going to catch a cold napping in a place like that. I was just about to leave the room to go shut the air conditioner off, at least, when—
“Koichi?”
She called out to me. I jumped and turned around. Reiko’s eyes were lazily open.
“When did I doze off…? Argh, this is no good. No good!”
She shook her head heavily. Just then someone on TV laughed shrilly. Reiko’s eyebrows dove into a scowl and she picked up the remote and turned the TV off.
“Are you all right?”
“Huh? Sure, I guess.”
Reiko moved from the couch to a chair in the dining room. She poured water into a glass from a pitcher that was on the table, then swallowed some sort of pills.
“I’ve got kind of a headache,” she said as I watched her. “It only takes this weak stuff to make it go away. But I’ve been getting so many headaches lately. It’s getting annoying.”
“You’re just tired, aren’t you? You’ve got all sorts of stuff to deal with, and um…”
She sighed softly, then replied, “I guess. More importantly, are you all right, Koichi? You went to the hospital today, right?”
“My condition has stabilized and there are no further issues, they said.”
“Oh. That’s good.”
“Um, Reiko?”
I sat down in a chair in the dining room, too, directly across from her.
“Do you remember how you said there’s a time for finding out about things? How there’s a time for everything? But—how can you tell when it’s time?”
I asked the question in all seriousness. But Reiko looked back at me with a morose expression.
“Did I say that?”
She cocked her head to one side. I was bewildered. Ray’s shrill voice asking “Why?” rang through my mind.
Was she playing dumb, or did she really not remember? Which was it?
“Um…okay, then can I ask you something I just thought of?” I collected myself and went with a different question. “When you were in your third year at North Yomi, what class were you in?”
“When I was a third-year?”
“Yeah. Do you remember?”
When I said that, Reiko rested her cheek in one hand, her face morose again, and replied, “I was in Class 3.”
“Class 3?…Really?”
“Mm-hm.”
“So then in your year…I mean, did they say ‘the curse of Class 3’ about your class or anything like that back then?”
“Mm-m-m.”
Her head still resting on her palm, Reiko seemed to be searching for an answer. But in the end she gave a soft sigh like she had before and said, “That was fifteen years ago. I forget.”
Ignoring whether or not her excuse was genuine…
Fifteen years ago?
All of a sudden, I felt uncomfortable, but I wasn’t sure why.
Fifteen years ago would have been…Oh. I see. Of course. But that was…
“You’re going back to school tomorrow, right?” Reiko asked.
“Yeah. That’s the plan.”
“I taught you the ‘North Yomi fundamentals,’ right? Do you remember what to do?”
“Uh, yes. I already…”
“Even number three?”
“…Yeah.”
Of course I remembered. I remembered number one and number two, which seemed like superstitions, and number four, which had the greatest meaning for me. And number three…I believe that one was…
“Obey whatever the class decides, at any cost—was that it?”
“That’s right.”
Reiko nodded slowly.
“What about it?”
Reiko suddenly gave a drawn-out yawn, then shook her head back and forth rapidly. Then, shaking it off, she said, “Oh, uh…What was it…?” and craned her head all the way to one side.
“We were talking about number three of the ‘North Yomi fundamentals.’”
“Oh, were we? Let’s see. You should adhere to all of them, really. I mean…”
“Uh. Are you all right?”
“Mm-m-m. I guess I really am pretty tired. Sorry, Koichi. I just can’t do it.”
Lightly thumping herself on the head with a fist, a feeble smile came over Reiko’s face. I started to feel irritated, pained, but my emotions were more complex than just that.
I could tell Reiko about Mei, couldn’t I? In fact, didn’t I have to force the subject? I’d often thought so, but I couldn’t manage to bring it up. The end result of my internal conflict this time, once again, was that I decided not to pursue it.
I wasn’t very good at talking to Reiko like this. She made me so nervous…The biggest reason for that was because I would suddenly see in her the shadow of my mother, whom I knew only from photographs. So, see? I had already gone through the self-analysis. So why did I feel like that tendency was only getting worse? It had to be a problem with me after all. Or maybe…
I decided to go back to my room for the night and try to get to sleep as early as I could.
With that decision made, I stood up from my chair.
“Why?” a small voice whispered, though without any deeper meaning or intention.
“Cut that out!” Reiko said, her tone surprisingly harsh. “I can’t stand that bird.”
6
The next day was June 3, Wednesday.
Mei Misaki wasn’t in the classroom at lunchtime.
And she hadn’t left the instant fourth period ended, either. She hadn’t been there all day. She was staying away today, just as she’d told me yesterday.
I hadn’t been in school for a week, and the way my classmates acted toward me was, to put a positive spin on it, sensible—but in a more penetrating analysis, they were acting cool and perfunctory.
“Were you in the hospital again?”
No, I was resting at home.
“Same thing you had before? What’d you call it, a spontaneous pneumothorax?”
I got really close to having one, but it turned out all right.
“So you’re okay now?”
Yeah, thanks. But no strenuous activity—doctor’s orders. So that means I’m still sitting out of gym class.
“Well, I hope you feel better.”
Me, too, thanks.
Not a single person mentioned the deaths of Yukari Sakuragi and her mother. The teachers were the same. The desk where Sakuragi had sat in the classroom was left empty. There weren’t even any flowers set on it, like people sometimes do…Everyone was trying to avoid acknowledging her death. More than necessary, it seemed. I couldn’t help interpreting their behavior that way.
When lunch started, Tomohiko Kazami was the first one to speak to me. I had called out to him as he was leaving the room.
“Oh…hey.”
As he pushed the bridge of his silver-rimmed glasses as far up his nose as they would go, Kazami’s stiff expression morphed into an awkward smile.
You know, I’m pretty sure this is how he acted when I first met him in April, too, when he came to see me at the hospital. Having known him for a month now, I’d thought he had opened up a little bit
, but it felt as if we’d been reset back to zero.
The first time we’d ever seen each other and now—the main thing underlying them both, I would say, was “tension.” The second-biggest thing was what seemed like a kind of “wariness.” The realization hit me all at once.
“I’m glad you’re better. I was worried about you. You were out for a whole week, so I thought maybe you’d relapsed.”
“I was worried, too. To be honest, I’m sick of being in the hospital.”
“You don’t really need any of the notes from classes while you out, right?” Kazami said it sheepishly. “You’re pretty good, huh?”
“I learned some of it already at my other school, that’s all…I’m not really that good.”
“Oh, so then do you want copies of the notes?”
“I think I’m still okay for right now.”
“Ah. Okay…”
Even as we carried on this meaningless conversation, the stiffness never left Kazami’s face. Tension and wariness and maybe, on top of that, “fear”…?
“The accident last week must have been really traumatic for you.”
I decided I would be the one to bring it up.
“You were both class representatives, and you both came to see me at the hospital, and then for something like that…”
As I talked, I looked over at Sakuragi’s desk. Kazami looked a little flustered.
“We’re going to have to pick a new class representative for the girls. We’re probably going to do that at the extended homeroom tomorrow…”
Then he hurriedly broke away from me and left the classroom.
“A new representative, huh?”
Kazami and Sakuragi had practically been twins, but I suppose there were tons of people who could fill in as class representative at a middle school…
Still sitting at my desk, I took a cautious look around the room. It was June now, and most of the students were wearing their summer uniforms.
There were girls who had constructed “islands” to eat at, here one, there a second. A group of boys had gathered in a corner by the windows to chat. There was one who was strikingly taller than the rest of them. He was pretty tanned and his hair was cut in a sporty buzz. That had to be Mizuno. Takeru Mizuno, from the basketball club. So his first name was written with the character for “ferocity.”
Another, Volume 1 Page 15