He’d sat at the bar drinking, never answering Tomoka’s question either “yes” or “no,” until suddenly he cradled his head in his hands. Then at last, in a halting stutter, the story started to pour out of him without any further prompting. It went like this:
“The ‘curse’ that year…It was because…
“It…wasn’t my fault.
“I didn’t do anything wrong…
“Because of me, everyone…
“…I saved them. I saved them!
“I wanted to tell someone.
“I felt obligated…
“…I left it there.
“I hid it…
“I hid it, in the classroom…”
His tongue thick in his mouth and his voice a groan…
After that, he got so thoroughly drunk that he fell into a stupor, and he left the shop without another word.
“I don’t get it. What does that mean?” I asked, the words coming unbidden.
Tomoka angled her head to one side, looking troubled. “I’m not really sure.
“What I just told you happened one night last week, and Mr. Matsunaga’s been back here a couple of times since then. Whenever he comes in, I try to bring it up with him, but he doesn’t remember it at all.”
“What he said, you mean?”
“Right. No matter how many times I ask, he just gets this blank look on his face and tells me he doesn’t know.”
We were silent.
“I get the impression that he remembers the fact that ‘disasters’ brought about by a ‘curse’ kept happening fifteen years ago in third-year Class 3. But of course the essential questions, like who the ‘extra person’ was for his year or why the ‘disasters’ stopped that year, he doesn’t remember at all.”
“Do you think he might know and he’s just hiding it?”
“It doesn’t look that way.”
Tomoka cocked her head once again.
“He was so drunk that night, maybe he just happened to recall a shadowy memory of something. That’s more the feeling that I get.”
After a certain point, the victims’ memories involving “the casualty” for that year grow faint and disappear. Almost certainly, that’s what had happened to this former student, Mr. Matsunaga.
Now, fifteen years after the fact, perhaps a fragment of memory had reawoken at a random moment in his drunken mind. And that? No one could definitively state that it was impossible. That was my opinion.
“There’s something about this story, right?” Teshigawara asked, looking into my face.
“It totally gets into your head, right?” he asked, turning next to look at Mochizuki’s face.
Mochizuki lowered his eyes and I, biting down on the straw in my glass of iced tea, replied, “Definitely.”
That made Teshigawara nod solemnly and say, “I don’t mind going on this camping trip and asking the gods for help, but I dunno about just hiding in a corner until then, you know?”
“…Meaning what?”
“Doesn’t Tomoka’s story kind of give you an idea? What was that guy Matsunaga trying to tell her?”
“So what’s your idea?”
“I’m saying, he told her ‘I saved them,’ right? He said he saved everybody. But in order to pass that information on, he left ‘it’ behind.”
“He hid it in the classroom?”
“Right. He left it behind secretly—meaning no one knows where it is. I have no idea what ‘it’ is, but you gotta know it’s something tied to the ‘curse’…It really gets into your head, right?”
“When you put it like that, sure.”
“See? See?” Then, his face earnest, Teshigawara said, “We should go look for it.”
I let out a loud “We should what?” and looked over to see Mochizuki’s reaction. His head was bowed, his body hunched and small. I looked back at Teshigawara and mildly asked, “When you say ‘we,’ who are you talking about?”
“I mean us,” Teshigawara said. His expression suggested the answer was obvious. Though it wasn’t entirely clear just how deeply he’d thought out this suggestion. “You, me, and Mochizuki. After all, he got the info out of Tomoka in the first place.”
Still curled into a tight ball, Mochizuki gave a grandiose sigh.
“I want to get Kazami in on this, too, but as serious as he looks, it’s all an act. He’d be a quivering baby about something like this. Hey, Sakaki, why don’t you invite Mei?”
I pursed my lips indignantly and glowered at Teshigawara. “Would you give it a rest already?”
5
That’s what I said, but…
Just over an hour later, I found myself at the doll gallery “Blue Eyes Empty to All, in the Twilight of Yomi” in the town of Misaki. I’d called Mei’s house after leaving “Inoya” and parting ways with Teshigawara and Mochizuki. I’d gotten into a frame of mind that made it impossible not to.
Kirika was the one who answered. Just like that first time I’d called a month and a half ago, her voice sounded slightly surprised—or uneasy—but when I told her my name, she acknowledged me right away—“Oh, it’s you, Sakakibara”—and handed the phone to her daughter.
“I’m out near the school,” I told Mei, donning as casual an attitude as I could manage. “Do you mind if I come by your house?”
Without even asking why I wanted to come over, she replied, “Sure. Let’s meet in the basement of the gallery again. There probably won’t be any customers.”
“Sounds good.”
The old woman, Amane, waived the entry fee for me, and I headed straight for the display room in the basement. Mei had already come down. She was standing next to the black coffin that sat in the back of the room, lined up next to the doll inside that looked exactly like her.
Her outfit was spartan: skinny jeans and a plain T-shirt. But her shirt was an ashen color, as if it had been coordinated with the dress on the doll inside the coffin…
“Heya,” I said with a wave. I walked up to her and asked a question. It had been nagging at me for a long time, but I still hadn’t worked out the answer. The words came out inadvertently.
“Hey, about that doll—” I pointed at the doll in the coffin. “It was modeled on you, right? The first time I saw you down here, you told me something…That it was only half of you? But what does that mean?”
“Maybe not even half.”
That was Mei’s response. Right—she’d said something similar that other time, too.
But she’s only half of what I am. Maybe not even that.
“She’s—”
Mei’s eyes slipped over to the coffin.
“This girl is the child my mother bore thirteen years ago.”
“Kirika? So then she’s your little sister?”
But didn’t Mei say she didn’t have any sisters?
“This is the child that woman bore thirteen years ago, who died before she was ever born. Before Kirika even had a name picked out for her.”
“Wh—”
Do you…have an older sister, or a younger sister maybe?
But when I’d asked her that before, Mei had shaken her head in silence. Why was that? If I were to ask her that now, I imagined I would get an answer like, Because your question was in the present tense.
“It’s true that she used me as a model, but Kirika made the doll with her thoughts on her own child. The child she was unable to bring into the world. That’s why I’m only half of it. Maybe even less.”
I’m one of her dolls, see.
Which reminded me of the way that Mei had described her relationship with Kirika. It was…
I’m alive, but I’m not the real thing.
Feeling incredibly confused somehow, I couldn’t figure out anything to say in response. Moving calmly away from the coffin, Mei asked, “Anyway, what’s going on?”
She changed the subject smoothly.
“You called me up out of nowhere. Was there some kind of crisis?”
“Were you surprised?”
&n
bsp; “A little.”
“Actually, I met up with Teshigawara and Mochizuki a little while ago. They asked me to come out to this café Mochizuki’s sister runs.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“And then…Well, I thought I should talk to you.”
Teshigawara’s smarmy grin floated through my mind, seeming to say You’re bringing Mei after all, eh? Inwardly, I glowered at him…while I told Mei the “new information” I’d learned at the “Inoya” café.
Once I’d run through it all, there was a brief silence before Mei spoke.
“Where’s he going to look for it?”
“The old school building,” I answered. “The classroom in Building Zero, the one they used to use for third-year Class 3. You said that’s where they get the old desk for the one who’s ‘not there,’ right?”
“Yeah. The rules say you’re not allowed to go up to the second floor of that building, you know.”
“Well, it’s summer break…We said we’d pick a time when there probably wouldn’t be anyone around and then try to sneak up there. Though who knows what we’ll find—maybe nothing. But we have to try.”
“Hm-m-m.”
Mei sighed and brushed back a lock of hair.
“You’re not going to tell Mr. Chibiki? I bet you he’d help if you did…”
“Yeah, I thought we ought to tell him, too. But Teshigawara…I don’t even know. He’s in this weird adventure mode now. He was saying we should do this on our own and I don’t think anything’s going to change his mind.”
“Oh” was all the response Mei gave before falling silent. No way she’s not interested…I thought, and then asked, “So then, did you want to come?”
“To search the old school building?”
A faint smile came over Mei’s lips. “I’ll leave the search to you boys. You can’t have too many people involved in something like that anyway.”
“You’re not interested? Don’t you wonder what’s hidden in that classroom?”
Mei replied, “Yeah, I do,” without any posturing. “So if you find something, let me know.”
“Well, sure…”
“Anyway, I have to leave for a little while, starting tomorrow.”
“Leave?”
“My father’s back.” Mei’s face darkened a shade. “He wants to go to our vacation house with my mother. I’m really not thrilled about it, but this happens every time, so I can’t exactly say no.”
“You have a vacation house? Where?”
“By the beach. It takes about three hours to get there by car.”
“Outside Yomiyama?”
“Well, yeah. There’s no beach in Yomiyama, is there?”
“So you’re making a break for it?”
At that, Mei shook her head firmly.
“I’m coming back in a week.”
“So then…”
“I haven’t told anyone in my family about the ‘disasters.’ And I intend to go on the camping trip after I get back.”
“…Oh.”
After that, I talked for a time about all the stuff I’d been doing. Mei was basically silent, her right eye occasionally crinkling in a cool smile as she listened to me talk.
“You got that convinced that you might be ‘the casualty’ all over again?”
That was the first thing Mei asked me after everything I’d said.
“How seriously did you question it?”
“…Pretty seriously. Once you start thinking about it, you just spiral out.”
“You work through all your misgivings?”
“Enough, yeah.”
Seeing my ambiguous nod, Mei turned languidly around. Then she disappeared beyond the black coffin without another word.
What’s she doing? I thought, hurrying after her. Was she going upstairs in the elevator that was back there?
As I started around the coffin, I let out an involuntary cry. “Oh!” I hadn’t noticed it this whole time, but something was different from before.
Before, a deep burgundy curtain had hung directly behind the coffin, but now the coffin was placed much farther out. And in the space created between the coffin and the curtain—
A second coffin had been placed.
The same size, the same shape…Only the color wasn’t black: this coffin had been painted red. It had been set back-to-back with the black coffin in front of it.
I heard Mei’s voice say, “She’s working on a new doll up in her workshop. I guess she’s planning to put it inside this one.” Her voice seemed to have come from “inside this one,” as she’d put it.
There was still a little space left between the red coffin and the curtain, rustling in the flow of the air-conditioning. I slowly moved forward. Twisting my upper body to push aside the curtain with my right shoulder, I peeked inside the red coffin.
Mei was inside it.
Mimicking the doll in the black coffin. It was much too small for her, but her knees were bent slightly and her shoulders hunched a little.
“…You’re not ‘the casualty.’”
Her face was only centimeters from my face as I peered into the coffin. She’d taken the eye patch from her left eye, though I don’t know when she’d done it. The “doll’s eye” resting in the socket was fixed on me, blue and empty.
“Relax.”
Her voice was a whisper, and yet somehow forceful. Seeming somehow unlike her own.
“It’s not you, Sakakibara.”
“Y-you…uh…”
She was too close. I scrambled backward, off balance, trying to put some distance between us. My back ran up against something hard right away: the steel door of the elevator hidden behind the curtain.
“What about your mom’s photo?” Mei asked, still resting inside the coffin. “That group photo from after the graduation? You said it might be at your grandparents’ house. So did you find it?”
“No, not yet…”
I’d asked my grandmother and she was in the process of looking for it.
“When you find it, would you let me see it?”
“Sure, no problem.”
“In that case—”
Finally Mei came out of the coffin and moved into the center of the room. Yet again, all I could do was chase unsteadily after her.
“Here.”
Mei turned around and held something out to me. It was—
“If anything happens, call this number.”
It was the size of a business card, with the contact information for the gallery printed on it. The number she referred to was written on the back in pencil.
“This is”—I accepted the card, then looked at the numbers written on the back—“a phone number? For a cell phone?”
“That’s right.”
“Your cell phone?”
“Yup.”
“You have one? I thought you said they’re awful machines?”
“They are awful.” Mei’s right eyebrow bunched in consternation. “It feels gross being connected by radio waves twenty-four hours a day. Really, I wish I didn’t have it.”
I looked hard at her face.
Mei repeated, “I wish I didn’t have it, but…,” then continued in a depressed tone. “She makes me use it.”
“You mean…Kirika?”
“Apparently she goes crazy worrying sometimes…So she’s the only person I ever talk to on it. I’ve never once used it except with her.”
“Huh.”
The whole thing felt surreal as I looked down once again at the cell phone number written on the card. Mei put her eye patch back on to hide her “doll’s eye,” sighing softly.
“If you find out anything with your search or that photo, let me know. Direct, at that number.”
6
Before I started elementary school, back when I can only barely remember, I saw a video called Dracula. It was one of the most famous movies by a British company called Hammer Film Productions, filmed way, way before I was even born. It was the first time I remember watching a horror movi
e. After that, I constantly watched—or, should I say, was forced to watch—videos of the Dracula series my father had collected because he adored it so much.
Despite my age, I had some deep-seated questions back then, when I was little.
Why does the sun set as soon as the main character visits Castle Dracula?
Dracula is a scary monster, but he has so many weaknesses. Chief among them, weakness to the light of the sun. In the middle of the day, he wouldn’t be any problem at all. So then if the main character is going to fight Dracula, why does he head out for the castle when he’ll only get there right before the sun goes down?
I understand it perfectly now. The answer is “in order to advance the plot,” obviously. But still.
It sounds strange, but when Teshigawara, Mochizuki, and I hammered out our plan to sneak up to the second floor of Building Zero, that was the very first thing I thought of.
Purposely waiting until nighttime to go was crazy. We weren’t heading out to fight vampires or anything, but even so, we had to avoid the sun going down while we were up there at all costs. I guess it was kind of a personal obsession.
In contrast, Teshigawara wasn’t convinced about going in the middle of the day. And sneaking in early in the morning “doesn’t sound right, either,” he had declared.
It wasn’t purely a question of what we liked better, though. We had to choose the right time of day for three third-year boys to be wandering around the school grounds during summer break, or else we’d probably stand out in a bad way. That was a concern, too. And so—
After compromising between all of our different schedules and opinions and whatever else, we decided we would go at three o’clock in the afternoon on July 30. Sunset was going to be before seven o’clock, so it probably wouldn’t get dark outside while we were searching the room.
In the end, we never consulted with Mr. Chibiki about our plan. And of course I didn’t tell my grandmother or Reiko about it, either. Maybe Teshigawara’s influence had gotten me caught up in the idea of “a secret adventure over summer break.”
On the day of action, we gathered at the art club room on the western end of the first floor of Building Zero. Mochizuki had opened the room up for us ahead of time, since he was in the club.
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