“The stars are so far away,” Kamikishiro said, gazing up at the night sky.
“They're farther away than our lives,” I said. I'm not sure what her story really meant, but she'd managed to get the answer that she'd wanted out of me, as I told her, “But if you open your heart to Echoes, then I'm sure he'll learn to like humanity.”
“You think so?”
“I want to think so. Because the story you told me leaves us no salvation.”
“Yeah. I hope you're right,” she said, turning towards me and smiling.
But at the time, I didn't want her to smile. I wanted her to get angry with me for saying something so stupid. I tried to think of something even stupider to say, but instead we headed back home. I walked off down the road to the station, and she went back towards the school, saying that she'd take the bus.
That's the last time I ever saw her.
She didn't come to school the next day. Or the day after that. She never came again.
***
Two cups of American coffee appeared in front of Miyashita Touka and me. Miyashita picked up on the waitress’ look of keen interest and cooled down a little.
“Sorry, I shouldn't have slapped you. Still...” she said in a hushed tone.
“Don't worry. I know. I'm an idiot.”
“I really do think that you need to let her go. She's... what was her name?”
“Kamikishiro Naoko.”
“Oh, right. I didn't know her very well, but I think if she really did like you, Akio, that she'd want you to move on now. That's why she didn't say anything when she left. Make sense?”
“That... that'd be nice.”
Truth is, I'm pretty sure she never thought twice about me.
Eventually, Miyashita Touka let me go, forcibly exhorting me to cheer up.
We parted at the door to the coffee shop.
“Take care. You know, you really ought to do something about that hero complex of yours. Gonna get you into trouble someday. You've got tests to study for.”
“I guess,” she said with her head to one side. “But still...”
“Suit yourself,” I said, turning to leave. It was then that she called after me.
“Kimura-kun!”
I looked back and nearly tripped over my own feet.
It was certainly Miyashita Touka standing there, but for some reason, I felt like I was looking at a completely different person -- a boy. It was as if she'd transformed or something.
“Wh-what?”
“Kamikishiro Naoko performed her duty admirably. You should perform your own duty, and make her proud. That's the only thing you can do for her,” she proclaimed like she was giving some speech on stage.
Then she spun on her heel and was lost in the crowd.
“............”
I stared after her, watching the crowd flow onwards.
***
When my bus reached the stop in front of Shinyo Academy, it was already past sunset, and there were no students in sight. Apparently, even the sports teams gave up on practice and called it a day, once it got dark. This must be why none of our teams has ever even so much as qualified for the national tournaments. It hadn't changed a bit since I was last there.
The gates were closed. Outsiders had to identify themselves over an intercom to get in, so I passed right by them.
I entered the school through a gap between the fences that Kamikishiro had shown me.
The darkened school grounds were silent like an abandoned building. The towering school building looked kind a like a giant, looming tombstone.
Until about a year before, I had actually come here every day. But now, I was a stranger.
Not much that I can say that was good about my years in high school, but I felt a pain in my chest when I thought about how little connection that I had now to my past. I remember Kamikishiro, and the abuse that I took after the incident like it was yesterday, but the rest of it was all far too long ago.
“............”
Why did I come here? If I was looking for the source of the letter, this place wasn't going to be of any use.
But this high school was the only remaining connection that I had with Kamikishiro. Someone else had moved into her apartment. There were no traces of her left.
There was nowhere else for me to go.
She just wasn't here.
Yeah. Somewhere inside, I had wondered if Kamikishiro herself had sent the letter.
But that was probably wrong. Even here in school, she wasn't around. The letter was nothing but a prank.
Everything was over. It was all in the past.
“............”
I looked up at the sky. It was cloudy, and I couldn't see the stars. And yet, I felt like I could see them like I had when I used to lay with her on the river bank.
She had told me all of her secrets, metaphorically. Told me; not Tanaka Shiro, not anyone else. And I never understood what she meant by it.
Wasn’t that enough? That's all the reason I needed to love her for the rest of my life. No matter how much I fell in love with some other girl, she will always live inside of me in the way that she was then -- impossible to understand, and more than a little crazy.
“Life is brief, young maiden, fall in love.”
I whispered a snatch of the gondola song that she always used to sing while I wandered around the school.
I found myself in front of the gym. Suddenly, I wanted to see the storage room where the interloper had hidden himself. Their exact relationship remained a mystery, but it was the last known trace of her.
I grabbed a flashlight from the emergency supplies, and shone it around the gym. I had forgotten half of the features of the place. Guess I really wanted to forget all about high school.
I found some kind of door or cover or something down by the floor, near the main entrance. Figured that must be it. So I hunkered down and opened it.
It was just an empty space. Iron pillars, concrete floor, bare ceiling. The foundations of the gym, I guess. Designed to absorb the impact of an earthquake.
I'd been here three years and never known it was here.
(Guess this isn't it... )
I turned to leave.
But something moved near my foot.
There was a dry rustle.
“Mm...?”
I shone the light at my feet.
There was something black and dried. I thought it was a glove at first, maybe forgotten by a workman, but it was too thin for that.
It wasn't meant to be put on over a hand. It was a hand.
“............”
I stared at it in shock for a moment... then screamed.
It was a mummified human hand.
(W -w-w-w-what the hell is this?!)
My knees gave out and I fell on my ass.
When Kamikishiro had vanished, she hadn't been the only one. A number of other students had vanished both before and after her.
I'd never connected them before... but I could think of no other reason why a hand would be lying on the floor of the school.
Maybe it was because I'd kicked it or maybe it was the exposure to the outside air, whichever the case, the hand crumbled away to dust before my very eyes. And within seconds, there was nothing left of it at all.
(What does it mean? What the hell happened here two years ago?)
But there was nothing to give me those answers. There was nothing for me to do but sit there in the dark, shuddering in fear...
Chapter Five
Heartbreaker
Niitoki Kei
second year, class F
1.
“Kei, there's a first year boy asking for you,” my classmate Mishima said.
I looked up from my book and asked, “Who?”
“Dunno. But he's cute. Tch, the discipline committee president, eating all the young boys...” she cackled.
I gave her a pained smile, stood up, and went into the hall.
When he saw me, he bowed his h
ead politely. “Niitoki-sempai? I'm Tanaka Shiro, 1-D.”
“Tanaka-kun? You wanted to see me?”
“You were on the gate this morning, weren't you?”
One of the duties of the discipline committee members, which we all took turns doing, was to stand at the gate and monitor the students coming in and out.
“Yeah. What about it?”
“Did you see 3-F’s Kamikishiro-san arrive?”
“Naoko-san? I know her, but no, she didn't come today. But she's nearly always late...”
“She's not in class either,” he said gravely.
“Really? Must be skipping.”
“No,” he said, quite sure of himself. “Recently, she had some sort of reason why she had to come to school every day.”
(Is this kid in love with her...?)
Seemed like it. Maybe he was gonna ask her out today.
“Hunh. I don't know. If she's not here, ask her tomorrow.”
“That might be too late!” he exclaimed anxiously. “You really don’t know anything?!”
“You call her house?”
“There’s never anyone there.”
“Eh?”
“Her parents are in the middle of an ugly divorce. Her mother's gone to her parents’ house, and her father never comes home.”
“Really?”
“Everyone in the apartment building’s talking about it. Everybody I asked told me all about it.”
“Hunh ...” I said.
Suddenly, a voice cut in from the side. “You should ask Kirima Nagi.”
Both of us swung around in surprise. My kouhai on the discipline committee, Saotome-kun, was standing there.
“Masami? What do you...?” Tanaka-kun said, wide eyed. Later, I found out these two were in the same class.
“I was just passing by; happened to overhear. Thought you might like to know.”
“Know what?”
“I don't know any details, but Kamikishiro Naoko-sempai and Kirima Nagi have been friends since Junior High. She's just off of suspension, so she might know something about Kamikishiro-sempai.”
I blinked. It was the first 1'd heard of Naoko-san being friends with the legendary Kirima Nagi from the class next door. And here I thought I knew about most people in the school.
“How do you know that?” I asked Saotome.
“Oh, I asked Kirima Nagi out once. Picked up a few things back then.”
“You asked her out?!”
It took guts to even talk to the Fire Witch. I'll give him that.
“She said no,” he admitted.
“What class is this Kirima person in?” Tanaka-kun asked forcibly. Somehow, he'd never heard of her.
“Second year, class D. Right next door.”
“Okay!”
“W-whoa, hold on there! No telling what'll happen if you just burst in on her!” I said as if she were some sort of lion. But it was true. She’d punched out one boy's front teeth before.
I couldn't let them go alone, so I followed them to class D. I asked a girl I knew near the door. “Ah, Suema-san. Is Kirima-san here? I've got a first year boy who wants to talk to her...”
“She's not here today.”
“Really? She came in the gate.” I knew my words to be true. I was on the gate. I'd seen her arrive.
“So, she is here? I haven't seen her come to class, though,” Suema-san said, shrugging.
We looked at each other.
“What... what's going on?” Saotome-kun asked.
“Sounds like she is involved,” Tanaka-kun said in a shrill voice.
“Hmmm...” I was seriously worried myself now. Naoko-san and Kirima Nagi... what were they up to?
As we stood there in front of the door, someone asked, “Could I get in here?” We turned around to find Yurihara Minako, the best student in the school, standing right before us.
“Oh, sorry,” Saotome-kun said, moving aside.
She nodded, and strode regally into the room like some sort of queen.
The bell rang, so we all split up and headed back to our respective rooms.
***
“Naoko's vanished. I can't find her anywhere,” Kirima Nagi said in a place steeped in shadows.
The man with her said nothing. His expression never wavered. Nagi grew irritated at his lack of reaction, and shook her head violently.
“I called her cell, but she didn't answer. You don't know anything?” she pressed on.
The man was unable to talk, so he simply shook his head slowly.
“She may have gotten caught in its net. That thing Naoko said was your sibling.”
“............ “ The man did not respond.
Kirima Nagi scowled at him. Finally, she spat, “We should never have listened to you. We should have just called the cops, or the Self-Defense Force. If the world knew about it, it would’ve just washed its hands of the whole business and vanished to some place where we couldn't follow. But if Naoko’s dead, then we're already too late...”
She buried her hands in her face, her nail digging into her cheeks and forehead.
“............”
The man didn't move.
“Say something! You talked to Naoko, didn't you?! Try and let me know what you're thinking!” Kirima Nagi shouted, grabbing his collar. It was a Brooks Brothers cotton shirt that Kamikishiro Naoko had bought for him.
“............ “ Even when she shook him roughly, he did nothing but stare back at her in silence.
“God damn it! I will find you, Manticore!” she howled, uncharacteristically angry. “And you're gonna help, Echoes!”
He nodded. But, yes, there was something remote about that motion.
As if he were monitoring Nagi’s reactions.
***
It bugged the hell out of me, so I took gate duty again that day after school. In the morning, we had to check the cards as they went through, but on the way home, the job was simply boring.
“You are nosy,” laughed the first year kid who should have been on duty. He gave up his place happily.
Nosy?
I guess so.
There's a part of me that can't stand to see something unclear, something uncertain. That part of me wants to fix those things. Once when I was at a friend's house, they left me alone in their room with a half-done jigsaw puzzle, and when they came back, I had already finished it. They were pretty angry too.
The reason that I was on the unpopular discipline committee, and the president of it, no less, was simply because of this “clarity impulse” of mine.
“Anyone?” “Who wants to do it?” they’d all ask, but nobody ever raised their hand. They just sat there in silence. And before I knew it, my hand was up.
It's like a disease, I know.
With Naoko-san missing, if I hadn't been asked, I'd never have gotten involved, but now that I had been, I wouldn't be able to sleep until I'd cleared things up.
My friends tell me, “You're like a big sister. There's just something reliable about you,” which I took as a compliment (though, they may have been making fun of me.) But the truth is, it's just my neurosis.
(Talking to the Fire Witch is scary, but if I don't, I can't settle down!)
But even when most of the students had gone home, and the sky was starting to darken, Kirima Nagi had yet to appear.
It was well past the time when the gate guard was free to go home, and I was starting to wonder what else I could do, when Tanaka-kun and Saotome-kun came up.
“Ah, sempai! Did Kirima Nagi go home?” Saotome-kun asked.
“No, not yet.”
“Oh,” said Tanaka-kun, hanging his head.
“Why don't we look for her together? I'm sure she's still in the school somewhere,” I suggested.
“That's what we were going to do,” Tanaka-kun nodded. “We were talking about it in the classroom.”
“I'm a little worried about Kirima Nagi,” Saotome-kun said. She may have rejected him, but it seemed that he still liked her.
“Somewhere where nobody would notice her... on the roof, or maybe under the gym? Oh, or the pool changing rooms...” Saotome-kun suggested.
“Why would she be in a place like that?” Tanaka-kun said in an irritated voice.
“I don't know. But everyone knows her, so she must be someplace like that, or somebody would've noticed.”
“Let's check them out,” I said, and we headed back into the eerily quiet school.
***
While on our way to the roof, I couldn't help but ask, “Tanaka-kun, were you and Naoko-san...?”
“Urn,” he said, worried.
“Kamikishiro-sempai asked him out,” Saotome-kun interjected.
“What?!” I yelped.
“Masami! That was a secret!”
“Don't worry, sempai won't tell.”
I was still reeling as they spoke. “You're joking, right?”
“I certainly thought so. I kept asking her if it was a joke, but she kept saying that she was serious.”
“Hunh... “ I stared at his face closely.
“Please don't tell anyone.”
“Okay, I won't. But still...”
“It was pretty confusing, but I couldn't think of a reason to say no, so I ended up going out with her.”
“But I could swear that Naoko-san had a different boyfriend...”
“Yeah, she does. Second year guy named Kimura Akio. Never really worked up the nerve to ask about that...”
“Kimura? He picked up Naoko-san too? But it can't be too serious with a guy like that...”
Kimura-kun was from the class next to mine, and he was an infamous playboy. Legend had it that he'd made a pass at every second year girl in the entire school. He'd even flirted with me -- the discipline committee president!
“Maybe, maybe not. Either way, I was never able to figure out what she really wanted.”
“Do you like Naoko-san?”
“D-do I?”
“Be clear,” my fixation popped right up and out of my mouth.
“If we're going to the roof, the fire escape round back is better,” Saotome-kun said, glancing around us.
Boogiepop and Others Page 11