Another, Novel 02

by Yukito Ayatsuji

  And though he’d been the head teacher for the class, Mr. Chibiki said he simply couldn’t remember who the “extra person” had been. He’d collected information later on and found the name of a person who seemed to be a likely candidate, but the memories weren’t there as something he’d actually experienced. He’d forgotten. At that point he hadn’t fully grasped this problem with the memories of those involved…

  As we listened to him tell the story, fifth period ended and the start of sixth period had left us far behind.

  Outside, the rain continued to fall. Over the course of this hour, it had grown quite heavy. The old, grimy windows of the library shook in the wind and raindrops occasionally slapped against the glass.

  “…And then three years after that, I once again had the chance to be head teacher for third-year Class 3. I considered quitting my job, but I wasn’t in a position to do it. I prayed for that year to be an ‘off year,’ but that’s not what happened.”

  Mr. Chibiki continued his tale in a low voice, and Mei and I continued to listen, not moving a muscle.

  “That year was the first that we tried a modest countermeasure suggested by the school. We changed the class designations from the old ‘Class 1,’ ‘Class 2,’ and so on to ‘Class A,’ ‘Class B,’ et cetera. Third-year Class 3 became third-year Class C. We thought that perhaps if the name of the ‘site’ were to change, the curse might be broken, but…”

  So it hadn’t worked.

  I’d heard that from Mei, so I already knew about it. They’d considered and implemented all kinds of different “countermeasures,” but none of them had had any effect. Because finally, after all the rest, they had found “an effective way to counter the situation”—namely, this tactic of “treating someone as if they’re ‘not there’ in place of the ‘extra person’ in the class.”

  “…The result was the same. Many people died that year, too.”

  Mr. Chibiki let out a long, frustrated sigh, then looked up through his bangs at us to gauge our reactions. All I could manage was a silent nod.

  “It seems that the ‘extra person’ that year was a girl who’d died in third-year Class 3 in ’76. Once the graduation ceremony ended and that became apparent, I immediately made a note of her name. So that even after my memories about the ‘extra person’ had disappeared, I was able to assure myself that ‘that’s what it says happened.’ It was around this time that I also began to realize that the ‘extra person’ who infiltrated the class seemed to be a ‘casualty’ appearing at random from the ranks of people who had lost their lives in the ‘disasters’ brought about by the ‘phenomenon’ up to that point.”

  Mr. Chibiki gave another long sigh.

  “That was the last year before I quit being a teacher. It’s been eighteen years now. The principal at the time was adamant that talk of a curse or whatever this is not become public. But at the same time, he gave me what consideration he could and I was able to remain at the school as a librarian.

  “I’ve been in here ever since. In here, just keeping an eye on things, as I still do. I decided I would observe each year’s ‘phenomenon’ as a third party. And, well, sometimes students pop up to talk with me, like you two did.”

  Mr. Chibiki broke off and then once again looked up at us to gauge our reactions. His face showed that the tension he’d borne all through the conversation had eased considerably.

  “Um,” I interjected. “Can I ask you something?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Misaki told me that while the ‘extra person’—‘the casualty’—is hiding in the class, records and memories seem to get tampered with all over the place. So the details that would normally never make sense do make sense and no one realizes the true identity of ‘the casualty.’ Does that really happen?”

  “It really does.”

  I didn’t detect even a breath of hesitation in Mr. Chibiki’s answer.

  “But it’s no use asking why or how it’s done. Because no matter how much you question it, it can’t be explained with perfect logic. All you can do is tell yourself, that’s how the ‘phenomenon’ works.”

  I couldn’t say anything.

  “Maybe you don’t believe that.”

  “Well, it doesn’t make me doubt the idea any more than I already did.”

  “I see-e-e.”

  Mr. Chibiki languidly removed his glasses, and then dug around in a pocket of his pants before pulling out a wrinkled handkerchief. He wiped his lenses clean for a long moment; then—

  “Well, then—” Lifting his head, he restored his glasses to their place and fixed his eyes on us. “Yes, I may as well show it to you. That’s probably the fastest way.”

  Then he opened a drawer in the desk built into the other side of the counter. After rummaging noisily through its contents for a few moments, he took something out.

  It was a binder with a dark black cover.

  9

  “Have a look at these examples. They illustrate the situation pretty well.”

  Mr. Chibiki held the binder out to us across the counter. I took it from him, my fingers resting nervously on the cover.

  “I keep copies of the third-year Class 3 class lists in here. Twenty-seven years’ worth, from 1972 through this year. They’re filed in order with the newest lists on top, so the years go backward.”

  I turned back the cover as he explained his system.

  And he was right: The first two pages were for 1998—in other words, the class list for the current third-year Class 3. Mr. Kubodera and Ms. Mikami—the names of the head teacher and the assistant teacher—were proclaimed clearly, and below that stretched the list of students’ last names.

  My name, Koichi Sakakibara, had been handwritten in the very last row on page two. Because I was a transfer student who’d started late. And then—

  To the left of two names—Yukari Sakuragi and Ikuo Takabayashi—an X had been written in red pen. Their names and contact information were on the list, and in the space to the right someone had written in beside Sakuragi “May 26—accident at school” and “Same day—mother (Mieko)—car accident”; and beside Takabayashi “June 6—illness.” There was one other: in the space to the right of Takeru Mizuno’s row was written “June 3—older sister (Sanae)—accident at work.”

  “Take a look at the year before last.”

  Last year had been an “off year.” That must be why he told me to look up the year before, I reasoned. I did as I was told and opened to the page where the class list from 1996 had been filed.

  “I’m sure you’ve already realized this, but the names with a red X beside them are the people who died that year. There are also notes on the date and manner of their deaths. There are also similar notes when family members have died, you see?”

  “Yes…”

  I counted the number of Xs next to students’ names for that year and found there were four. Three names of family members who died. So altogether there were seven people…

  “You see the name written in at the very bottom of the second page, in blue ink?”

  “…Uh, yes.”

  Mami Asakura

  That was the name.

  “That was the ‘casualty’ that year,” Mr. Chibiki said.

  At my side, Mei’s body jerked closer to me to examine the file in my hands. I could feel her breath right against me, which scattered my thoughts in all directions.

  “The girl named Mami Asakura was a student mixed up in the class from the beginning of April all the way to the graduation ceremony in March the following year. Without anyone ever realizing that she was an ‘extra person’ who couldn’t possibly have been there.”

  “Um, Mr. Chibiki?” I asked. “There are seven people who died that year. Meaning that it wasn’t ‘at least one person dying a month,’ right?”

  “Ah, yes. That’s because they enacted the ‘countermeasure’ that year.”

  “They did?”

  “It was the talisman I believe you’ve become quite fam
iliar with by now. They treated someone in the class as if they were ‘not there.’”

  “Oh, right.”

  “They were successful, too, so no one died in the first half of the year. But then soon after the second semester began, something unexpected occurred.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The student who had taken on the role of being ‘not there’ couldn’t bear the pressure and alienation any longer and compromised the class’s ‘decision.’ The student started begging with them, saying, ‘You think I’m not here? But I am. Take a good look, everybody! You’re gonna treat me like I’m here’…The strain became too great.”

  “You’re saying that’s why the ‘disaster’ started?”

  “It seems that way.”

  I couldn’t help hearing a faint sigh escape Mei’s lips.

  I didn’t know who they’d made “not there” that year, but because he (or maybe she) had abandoned that role partway through the year, seven people linked to the class had lost their lives. How had he (or maybe she) taken this cruel fact? How had he faced everyone in class, and himself? When I pictured it, tiny goose bumps rose on both my arms again.

  “So,” Mr. Chibiki continued. “‘The casualty’ for 1996 was a student named Mami Asakura, whose name you see written there. But that name isn’t actually on the class list for that year. She was originally a student in third-year Class 3 three years earlier, in 1993. If you look back, you’ll see that she lost her life in the ‘disasters’ of that year.”

  I flipped through the pages in the file and checked the class list for 1993.

  Just as Mr. Chibiki had said, Mami Asakura’s name was listed there, right alongside a red X. In the space to the right, he had written “October 9—illness.”

  “…This is what I mean when I say that at the time everything is consistent, the way it’s supposed to be. Incidentally”— Mr. Chibiki leaned forward across the counter and lightly flicked his index finger on an edge of the binder—“between April two years ago and the following March, this didn’t look like this.”

  “It didn’t?”

  “As far as I remember, anyway. In April 1996, Mami Asakura’s name should have been on the class list since she was part of the class. And I’m going off of my memory now, but her name wasn’t where it belonged on the class list for ’93. Which tells me that it disappeared. And of course that includes the X next to her name and the note about her death.”

  “You’re saying all of it disappeared?”

  “Yes.”

  Mr. Chibiki nodded without a smile.

  “So you see, while the ‘phenomenon’ is in effect for a given year, it doesn’t matter where you search. You accomplish nothing. And it isn’t just the class lists. The same sort of thing happens to other records at school and official documents, even to people’s diaries or notes or photos or videotapes, and even computer data. It doesn’t matter what it is. Some kind of tampering or corruption occurs that common sense would tell you is impossible, and it conceals the contradictions that ought to arise when ‘the casualty’ mixes in with everyone. Details that shouldn’t match up just do.”

  “But it wasn’t just things like records, was it? It affected the memories of the people involved, too, right?”

  “That’s right. Take the example of two years ago. Even in my role as an ‘observer,’ I never had the slightest suspicion about the presence of Mami Asakura, even though she shouldn’t have been there. In reality, she passed away at the age of fourteen in October 1993, but everyone had forgotten that fact. Her family, her friends, her teachers…Everyone.

  “Not to mention that she was still fourteen at the point that she slipped in as ‘the casualty’ in ’96 and everyone believed the false reality that she was starting her third year. Absolutely no one doubted it. No one could have. The memories of the past and all the other details that involved her were tampered with and altered to make sense of it. And so a year went by, and when ‘the casualty’ vanished after the graduation ceremony, all our memories and records finally went back to the way they were supposed to be. And all of the people who’d been close to her—the minds of people like her classmates and family were at the core of it—they all lost their memories that she had ever appeared as ‘the casualty.’”

  My eyes still fixed on the class list in the binder, my response died on my lips. That’s beyond ludicrous. Even if I were to say it aloud, it wouldn’t change anything. That’s how I felt.

  “Why do these things happen? As I said before, the logic is utterly inscrutable. And the mechanisms behind it are inexplicable, as well. It could very well be that no physical change is actually occurring to make names appear or disappear on the class list. I’ve tried to picture the situation in that way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Mei was the one who asked the question.

  Deep vertical lines creased the skin between Mr. Chibiki’s eyes. “I mean that maybe the problem only arises in the minds of the people involved. Maybe it’s us. Our minds are all interpreting physical changes that aren’t actually happening as ‘changes that are happening.’”

  “Like collective hypnosis?”

  “Right. Maybe it’s something like that. Centered on this school and extending out to the entire town of Yomiyama. And sometimes farther, into the outside world.”

  At that point, Mr. Chibiki gave another drawn-out sigh.

  “Still, even that is just the irresponsible conjecture/delusion that I’ve reached after long years as an ‘observer.’ I have no evidence, and there’s no way to prove it. Even if it could be proven, I don’t know what that would mean.”

  Neither of us could offer a response.

  “Basically, I’ve given up.” Mr. Chibiki lifted both of his hands in an echo of his words. “You could say that after all this time, there’s pretty much only one thing that I’ve learned has any appreciable effect. That being the ‘strategy’ you two are currently using: the ‘strategy’ of turning someone in the class into someone who’s ‘not there.’ It’s a strange countermeasure that someone thought up ten years ago, I believe. But despite the years when the ‘strategy’ successfully contains the ‘disaster,’ there are also cases like two years ago where the ‘strategy’ fails partway through the year.”

  “Two years ago…” Mei’s voice was unexpectedly reedy. Her body leaned snugly against mine again as she looked down at the binder in my hands. “Wasn’t Ms. Mikami the head teacher for third-year Class 3 that year?”

  “Wha—?” I started and looked down at the class list again. And there it was. Ms. Mikami’s name was listed as the head teacher. “Hey, you’re right.”

  “You didn’t know?” Mr. Chibiki wore a faint look of surprise on his face. He tapped the center of his pale forehead with the tip of the middle finger on his right hand. “She must have had a terrible time with it, too. And then for her to become the assistant teacher for Class 3 again this year…”

  10

  Mr. Chibiki told us a few other stories about the “phenomenon” for a little longer.

  Speaking for myself, I was getting a lot of information for the first time. But that couldn’t have been true for Mei. Didn’t she already know more than a little of what she was hearing?

  Information I was getting for the first time. One example of that was the rule about the “range” for the “disasters.” Mr. Chibiki, the self-identified “observer,” had worked it out based on the facts he’d been recording all this time.

  “It seems the ‘disasters’ only reach as far as the members of the class and their family members within two degrees,” Mr. Chibiki told us with deep gravity. “Meaning parents, grandparents, and siblings. Blood relationship is a condition, as well. Never once has a relative with no blood ties died, like stepparents or stepsiblings. I think it’s safe to consider them out of range.”

  “Related by blood, huh?”

  Mei had murmured the question.

  Parents, grandparents, and brothers and sisters rel
ated by blood. So then aunts, uncles, and cousins weren’t included.

  “The ‘range’ also includes the issue of geographic range. I believe I mentioned earlier that the occurrence of this ‘phenomenon’ centers on this school and the town of Yomiyama. So it seems that the farther away from town you go, the weaker its effect on you.”

  “You mean if you go far enough away, you’re safe?”

  “To make a simplistic comparison, it’s similar to getting no service on a cell phone. To date, there hasn’t been a single case of a family member living in some other, distant location being affected by the ‘disasters.’ And there are extremely few examples of someone who lives in Yomiyama dying outside of town. So…”

  Didn’t that mean that if it came down to it, you could just leave town?

  “Um…Do you mind if I ask you something?” The memory hit me suddenly, so I wanted to ask. “Did anything ever happen on a class trip, a long time ago?”

  I wasn’t surprised to see Mr. Chibiki’s brows knit morosely at that. “The tragedy of ’87.”

  “…What?”

  “There was a terrible accident during the class trip in 1987. At the time, the class trip was held during the first semester of third year. But since the trips went to other prefectures—were ‘out of range,’ in other words—the students in Class 3 had never been affected by the ‘disasters.’ But then—”

  The lines between Mr. Chibiki’s brows furrowed even more deeply and as he spoke, his voice betrayed the faintest hint of pain.

  “That year, the students were put onto buses by class number and then left Yomiyama for the airport. There was an accident on the way there. They were on the highway, right on the edge of town, when a truck going the opposite direction plowed into the bus the students in Class 3 were riding on. The driver had been asleep at the wheel.”

  My eyes widened as a stab went through my heart. I looked to my side to see Mei’s reaction, but her expression hadn’t changed in the slightest. She must have known about this already.