Another, Volume 1

by Yukito Ayatsuji

  I lightly poked the back of the student in front of me, then asked in a whisper, “Did something happen this morning?” But the boy, named Wakui, didn’t turn around or respond.

  This was why Ms. Mikami had been coming down the stairs, anyway. The lightbulb went on for that, at least. As the assistant teacher, she had been present for this class meeting until a few moments ago, and then…

  I swept my eyes furtively around the room.

  As expected, Mei wasn’t there. There were two other empty seats: Yukari Sakuragi’s and—right—the boy who had died suddenly over the weekend, Ikuo Takabayashi’s.

  Kazami and Akazawa came down from the platform and went back to their seats. Mr. Kubodera took their place in the center of the platform.

  “It was a brief two months, but we should all offer our thoughts and prayers for Takabayashi, who studied with us in this room.”

  Mr. Kubodera strung the words together with a solemn expression and yet, somehow, sounded as if he were reading an example sentence out of a textbook.

  “His memorial service will be at ten o’clock this morning, so Kazami and Akazawa will attend on the class’s behalf. I’ll be going as well. Should you need anything during that time, please talk to Ms. Mikami. Are there any questions?”

  The classroom remained utterly silent.

  Though he’d been addressing everyone, Mr. Kubodera was looking at an angle up at the ceiling, and his eyes never moved.

  “We’ve had yet another sad event, but we can all pull through it without losing heart, and certainly without giving up, if everyone works together.”

  Pull through without giving up? If everyone works together? Hm-m-m. I couldn’t quite pinpoint what he meant by that.

  “Now then…We must all respect the decision of the class. Even Ms. Mikami, who is in a very difficult position, told us earlier that she would do ‘whatever possible.’ So…are there any questions?”

  After the third repetition of “are there any questions?” Mr. Kubodera lowered his gaze to the students’ faces for the first time. Probably every student but me, all probably wearing the same solemn expression as their teacher, nodded deeply.

  Ah. So I really hadn’t understood what he was getting at. Even so, this was not exactly an atmosphere where I could put my hand up and declare “Question!”…

  Right up until he left the classroom a few minutes later, Mr. Kubodera never once looked my way. I don’t think it was my imagination.

  2

  First period was social studies. When that class ended, I immediately stood up and called to Yuya Mochizuki.

  After receiving the phone call two days ago, on Saturday, when he’d learned of Takabayashi’s death, he had hurried home, his face ashen. Obviously the news had bothered him. But then—

  In a certain sense, his reaction was extremely honest.

  He must have heard me call to him, but he didn’t react at all. He had looked around, seeming twitchy, then scurried out of the room, as if fleeing from me. It was driving me crazy chasing him down, so I let him go.

  What’s his deal?

  That was all I thought of it at the time. That he really didn’t want people to find out that he’d snuck over to my house on Saturday.

  But that wasn’t the end of it. Between the end of that class and lunch, I became uncomfortably aware of something.

  It wasn’t just Mochizuki.

  For instance, the boy in front of me, Wakui. Before second period started, I poked him in the back again and asked, “Got a second?” But he didn’t turn around.

  What’s up with him? I frowned.

  Wakui had chronic asthma, I guess, so he would use a portable inhaler, even during classes. I, at least, had felt a kind of kinship with him as a fellow sufferer of a respiratory condition, and now…What’s up with this cold-shoulder treatment?

  I was vaguely annoyed, but even so this was nothing more than one example. In other words…

  Not a single person in the class came over to talk to me. Even if I tried to talk to them, they didn’t react at all, like Wakui, or they left without ever saying a word, like Mochizuki. Even people whom I’d chatted with pretty casually up till last week, like Kazami and Teshigawara and a couple of others.

  At lunch, I tried calling Teshigawara on his cell phone. But all I got was the standard message that “This phone may be turned off or in an area without adequate signal…” I tried calling him back three times during the break, and got the message three times. I spotted Mochizuki and called out to him again but, just like after first period, he didn’t respond.

  And so it went all day.

  In the end, I never had a full conversation with anyone from class that day. Really, forget that, I never once had a chance to even be called on during class by a teacher, and pretty much never spoke out loud except to talk to myself. Even if I did talk, no one answered me, and that treatment just went on and on and on.

  Given all of that…

  I was forced to take a fresh look at things.

  To reconsider the alienness ( = “enigma”) surrounding Mei Misaki, whether piece by piece or the overall picture of it, that I had detected since first becoming a part of this third-year Class 3 at the beginning of May. To rethink what it meant, which I had almost but never quite managed to grasp all this last month. What lay behind it. And the form of this “reality” that encompassed it all…

  3

  What became my focus was the question—which shouldn’t have needed asking—of whether or not Mei Misaki existed.

  Was she there, or wasn’t she?

  Was she present in this class, in this world, or wasn’t she?

  So many questions that had started to bother me as soon as I transferred here. I couldn’t even start to list them all.

  Here was someone that not a single person in the class had any contact with—or even tried to. Thinking back on it now, I had never once seen anyone from class go up to her, or talk to her, or call her name, or even say it out loud.

  And the reactions everyone had when, in the midst of this treatment, I approached her or talked about her…

  The reactions of Kazami and Teshigawara that first day, for instance, when I had spotted Mei on a bench in front of Building Zero and talked to her. The reaction of Yukari Sakuragi that same day when I had spoken Mei’s name in conversation while we sat out of gym class. The reactions of Teshigawara and Mochizuki—had it been the next day?—when I’d gone into the secondary library after seeing Mei there. And there were others. A lot of others.

  In the end, Teshigawara had been thoughtful enough to call and give me a warning.

  Quit paying attention to things that aren’t there. It’s dangerous.

  And there was what Ms. Mizuno’s little brother Takeru had said to her, too.

  He demanded “Why are you asking me that? There’s no one like that in my class.” He looked totally serious, like I’ve never seen him before.

  Is she actually there?

  The way no one made contact with Mei, or even tried to, wasn’t limited exclusively to the students. Overall, the teachers involved with third-year Class 3 seemed to do the same.

  None of the teachers ever took attendance at the start of class by calling out names. So they never spoke the name “Mei Misaki.” I had never yet seen Mei get called on in class to read from the text or solve a problem.

  I couldn’t fault her for going up to the roof by herself during gym class instead of watching from nearby. Even if she was late to class, or skipped completely, or left in the middle of a test, or was absent for days at a time…Neither the teachers nor the students seemed to take any notice.

  The circumstances under which I first encountered her at the hospital—that had probably helped, and even though I believed it was impossible, there were times when even I considered the possibility of “the nonexistence of Mei Misaki.”

  Because I don’t exist.

  She’d even said it herself at some point.

  To them, I’m inv
isible. You’re the only one who sees me, Sakakibara…what would you do then?

  And I had seen firsthand the uncanny way she suddenly appeared and vanished in that basement room in “Twilight of Yomi”…

  Maybe Mei Misaki really isn’t there and she doesn’t exist, after all.

  Maybe she is like a ghost that only I can see and hear, and not real at all.

  The fact that her desk was the only one in the whole classroom that was such an incredibly old model and the fact that the name tag pinned to her chest was made of such stained, wrinkly paper seemed to corroborate that idea somehow.

  …However.

  Thinking about it realistically, no—there was no way such a ridiculous thing could be true. In which case I had to explain all of these various events and facts some other way…In fact, there was a conclusion that made much more sense, thinking about things this way.

  Mei Misaki is there, she really does exist.

  But everyone around her deliberately acts as if there’s no such person as Mei Misaki. That was the conclusion.

  I even wondered if this was some sort of “bullying,” which you hear so much about. Bullying in the form of every member of the class flat-out ignoring her. But—and I was pretty sure I’d talked to Ms. Mizuno about this, too—even if that were the case, there was still something strange about it.

  I’d been dragged into that “Sakakibara” issue last year and had real experience with how terrible that had made me feel. So maybe that was just making me oversensitive. This was totally unlike simple bullying by snubbing. This is going to sound vague, but something in the air around this case was very different. Too different.

  It could be that they’re all afraid of her.

  Oh, right. Ms. Mizuno had said something like that, too…

  …Anyway.

  Did Mei Misaki exist or not?

  I pondered over which was true and which was false, but it was incredibly hard to figure out the answer. That was the problem. Unless I took some sort of decisive action.

  I had wavered again and again between the two theories, between the opposite extremes, swayed by the situation or my state of mind in the moment. Telling myself that I didn’t have any choice. But…

  Today, at last, I felt as if I had reached at least one answer thanks to my own visceral experience. I couldn’t say I had it all, but I felt as if I understood the “shape” of what lay at its heart.

  That being, in other words, this. What was happening to me.

  Something like this must have been happening to Mei this whole time.

  To test it out, I stood up from my seat without asking in the middle of sixth-period language arts class and left the room. A minor commotion had popped up across the room momentarily, but Mr. Kubodera didn’t say a word to reproach me. Ah. So it was true.

  I went over to a window in the hallway and looked up at the rainy sky where low clouds were piling. I was feeling pretty depressed; but on the other hand, my heart felt a little bit lighter.

  I thought I now understood “what is this?” to a certain degree.

  The next question was “why?”

  4

  Exactly as sixth period ended, I went mutely back into the classroom. Mr. Kubodera left without saying anything to me or even sparing me a glance. As if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

  I headed to my desk to grab my bag when, by chance, my eyes met Mochizuki’s as he was getting his things together to go home. Just like before, he swiftly turned his eyes away; but as he did it, his lips moved slightly, briefly. I read the word “sorry” in the movement.

  Something might happen soon that you’ll think is really unpleasant.

  The words Mochizuki had spoken to me when I’d seen him on Saturday rose unbidden.

  But even if something bad happens to you after this…we need you to put up with it.

  He had told me that, looking very serious. Hanging his head and sighing feebly.

  Just tell yourself that it’s for everyone’s benefit. Please.

  For everyone’s benefit…maybe the answer to “why?” lay there.

  I went back to my desk and stuffed my textbook and notes into my bag. Then, checking to make sure I had everything, I glanced inside my desk and—

  I noticed something that I had no memory of putting in my desk.

  There were two sheets of paper, folded in half.

  When I took them out and opened them, a whispered sound escaped me. “Oh—” I looked around quickly, but Mochizuki wasn’t in the room.

  The two sheets of paper were a copy of the class list for third-year Class 3. Mochizuki must have done this, giving me what I’d asked him for on Saturday…

  On the back of the first sheet, he had written something in green pen. His handwriting was pretty bad, and it was all scribbly…but I could just barely make out what he’d written there.

  I’m sorry.

  Ask Misaki what’s going on.

  I looked around one more time, then consciously lowered my voice and murmured, “Okay.”

  He had clearly written “Misaki” on the paper. Her name was being conveyed to me point-blank by a third party in the class. The existence of “Mei Misaki” was being directly acknowledged. This was the first time that had happened, I do believe.

  Mei is there after all. She really does exist.

  When I came to my senses, I fought back fiercely against the growing threat of tears.

  I turned the paper over to the front and checked the list of students’ names. I found it right away.

  The name “Mei Misaki” was written there, unmistakably. But it was written between two rows and her address and phone number, written beside her name, were struck through with two lines. What did this mean? How was I supposed to interpret that?

  Despite the strike-through, I could read the address and phone number written there easily enough.

  4-4 Misaki, Yomiyama

  That was Mei Misaki’s address.

  Obviously I knew the name of the town “Misaki,” and I also had some recollection of the area in the “4-4” block. I was pretty sure of it.

  “Blue Eyes Empty to All, in the Twilight of Yomi”—the building with that doll gallery—was, in fact, Mei’s house.

  5

  A woman who might have been Mei’s mother answered the phone.

  “Um, is Misaki…is Mei there? My name is Sakakibara. I’m in her class.”

  “I’m sorry?” she replied, her voice sounding slightly taken aback, or maybe uneasy. “Sakakibara, you said?”

  “Koichi Sakakibara, yes. I’m in the third-year Class 3 at North Yomi with…Um, this is the Misaki household, right?”

  “It is…”

  “Um, is Mei there right now?”

  “I’m not sure…”

  “She didn’t come to school today, so…uh, if she’s there, could you put her on the line?”

  Once I’d figured out her address and phone number, there was no way I was putting this off. I left the school building and went to an unfrequented corner of the schoolyard, where I had quickly dialed the number on the class list on my cell phone.

  The woman who might have been her mother stalled, sounding more than a little confused. “I’m not sure.”

  I gave her one more push. “Please, ma’am.”

  After a moment she said, “All right. Hold on a moment, please.”

  There was a long pause after that, and I listened to a crackly version of Für Elise (even I know the name of that song) play on a loop, until finally…

  “Hello?”

  I heard Mei’s voice in my ear. My grip tightened on my cell phone.

  “Uh, this is Sakakibara. Sorry to call you out of the blue like this.”

  There was a weird pause of two or three seconds; then she curtly asked, “What do you want?”

  “I want to see you,” I replied, refusing to waver. “There’s something I want to ask you about.”

  “You have something to ask me?”

  “Yeah.”
I followed that up right away: “That place is your house, huh? That doll gallery in Misaki.”

  “I thought you already knew that.”

  “In the back of my mind, maybe…but I wasn’t sure until I saw the class list. Mochizuki gave me a copy. But he told me to ask you what’s going on.”

  “Oh, really?”

  Her reaction was apathetic—or more like a deliberate play at being uninterested. In contrast, I just got louder.

  “Did you hear that Ikuo Takabayashi died?”

  “What?!”

  This time I got the right reaction: a short burst of surprise. Apparently she hadn’t heard about him.

  “It was sudden, on Saturday afternoon, of a heart attack. Though they said he’d always been pretty sick.”

  “…Oh.” She had returned to her distant demeanor, even more staunchly than before, it seemed. “The second one to die in June.”

  The second one to die in June. Meaning that Ms. Mizuno had been the first?

  “And then today…” I went on, undaunted. “When I went to school, the class was acting weird. It was like everyone had agreed to act like I wasn’t there.”

  “You?”

  “Yeah. The whole day, as soon as I got there. So I figured, maybe it’s the same as what they’re doing to you…”

  A brief silence intervened, and then at last—“So they decided to try that,” Mei said, her voice a heavy sigh.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, putting force behind my words. “Why…Why would they all do something like this?”

  I tried waiting the length of her previous silence, but there was no answer. This time I held my voice in check more.

  “Anyway…that’s why I want to see you and ask you what’s going on.”

  No answer.

  “Come on, can we meet up?”