Throwing a glance at Ms. Mikami, Akazawa added harshly, “If Misaki had carried out her role as the one who’s ‘not there’ like we all agreed at the start, then no one would have died. The reason she couldn’t do that was because Sakakibara talked to her. That’s why we—”
“Hold it.”
The one who cut her off was Teshigawara.
“Don’t you think that was, I dunno, kind of inevitable? Something no one could help happening?”
“Who knows.” Akazawa put one hand on her hip before continuing in a totally dismissive tone. “Maybe we screwed up by not telling Sakakibara what was going on ahead of time. When I think about how I was out sick the first day he came to school, it’s gut-wrenching…But even so, if Misaki had stuck to her act and completely refused to deal with him, if she had just ignored him, the ‘strategy’ should have worked. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“I don’t…”
“Even if I acknowledge that we failed when the ‘strategy’ of having two people ��not there’ didn’t work…Still, the original blame for the failure lies with Misaki, in my opinion. Am I wrong?”
For a moment, Teshigawara looked cowed, but then he came right back at her. “And? So what? What are you saying we should do about it now?”
At that, Akazawa gave a conspiratorial look to the girls at her table, then ran her gaze over the boys at the other tables.
“An apology,” she proclaimed. “We still haven’t heard a word of apology from Misaki. And yet, Misaki, the second you stopped being ‘not there,’ you were acting like nothing had ever happened, as if…”
Her ferocious gaze pounced on us. I felt rage and hatred and resentment in it, but more than that, I detected a fierce irritation…However.
How irrational can you get…I couldn’t hold back irritation of my own. Mei’s gotta be…I looked over at her again. But she was as calm as before—no, she looked icy.
“For Sakuragi dying.”
It wasn’t Akazawa who spoke those words out of nowhere. It was Sugiura, the girl sitting next to her. She had a “loyalty first” look to her, and was constantly glued to Akazawa’s side.
“My seat was by the hall window, so I saw what happened that day. How she…”
��Ah.
I couldn’t help remembering it myself. That day, the last day of midterm exams, when Mei and I, and Yukari Sakuragi…
“When she found out about her mom’s accident, Sakuragi ran out of the classroom in a huge hurry. At first, she started going toward the East Stair like usual, but then you and Sakakibara were standing in front of the staircase. So Sakuragi panicked and changed direction, and she headed for the West Stair…”
…Yes. Sugiura was right about that.
“When she saw Misaki and Sakakibara together even though Misaki was supposed to be ‘not there,’ she must have gotten scared. That because they were together, the talisman hadn’t worked and that’s why her mom was in that accident…So in order to avoid you two, she ran the opposite direction down the hall.”
“If you two hadn’t been there right then—”
Akazawa picked up Sugiura’s argument.
“If Sakuragi had gone down the East Stair like usual, that accident might never have happened. That’s what I’m talking about.”
“You can’t be…”
The words came out of my mouth unconsciously.
“The same kind of thing happened to Mizuno’s older sister, too.” Akazawa pressed on. “After it happened, Mizuno told me that his sister was friends with you, Sakakibara. And that you’d been spilling all kinds of details to her about this problem in third-year Class 3.”
“Uh, that’s…”
“Maybe because you talked to her about that stuff, she wound up as one of the ‘deaths of June.’ You could interpret it that way, right?”
“Uh…”
…My fault.
It was my fault that Ms. Mizuno had died in that accident.
Having someone point it out officially made the sadness, regret, and self-reproach—though faded—rear their heads as fresh as ever. Yeah. Maybe Akazawa was right. I hadn’t understood anything about what was happening then, but still, blazing in and getting Ms. Mizuno involved was absolutely my fault…
“This is irrelevant.”
Just then, Mei spoke. In the cold, detached voice she always used, that I knew so well.
“However much you want to talk about these things, it’s not going to solve anything.”
“‘Solutions’ aren’t what we’re looking for right now.”
Akazawa’s words were pretty harsh.
“What we’re trying to tell you, Misaki, is that you need to recognize your own responsibility and apologize to everyone.”
“And if I do, it’s going to mean something?”
Mei quietly rose from her seat and returned her accuser’s gaze straight on.
“If so, I’ll do it.”
“Misaki—” I tried to stop her. “No…You can’t apologize for this kind of—”
If anyone needed to apologize, it was me. If I had never transferred to North Yomi this spring, then none of this…
Mei ignored me, though. Without waiting for Akazawa’s response to her question…
“I’m sorry.”
She said it matter-of-factly, then slowly dipped her head.
“I’m sorry. This is my fault…”
“No!”
I shouted the word without thinking.
At almost the same moment, a loud voice cried out, “Stop it!” It was Mochizuki.
“This is stupid.”
That from Teshigawara. He banged both hands down on the table angrily.
“It doesn’t mean anything having her do that. The only thing that matters is finding out who the ‘extra person’ is!”
Hold on.
No, Teshigawara—wait. I know how you feel, but if you tell them about it at a time like this…
…Just then.
A fresh commotion started, clearing the foul air of the place.
8
“Hey, Wakui—are you okay? What’s—”
Someone cried out suddenly, drawing our attention.
It was the table next to us. Tomohiko Kazami was one of the four sitting there. The voice belonged to the kendo club member Maejima, who was sitting across from Kazami. Wakui, the person he was talking to, was sitting to his left, and something was visibly wrong with him. His chair was pushed back and he was doubled over, facedown, pressing his forehead against the edge of the table. His shoulders were heaving in obvious pain.
“Hey—Wakui!”
As he called Wakui’s name, Maejima chafed the boy’s back.
“You okay? Can you breathe? Come on.”
A second later, Mr. Chibiki had run over to them. As soon as he’d gotten a look at Wakui, he murmured, “Asthma?” then turned back toward Ms. Mikami, who’d run up behind him. “Does this student have asthma?”
But all Ms. Mikami did was dither; she couldn’t answer right away.
“Yes,” Kazami answered for her. “Wakui’s got asthma. His medicine is always…”
Kazami pointed at Wakui’s right hand, which was thrown across the table. He was clinging to a portable inhaler.
“Your medicine…Can you take it?” Mr. Chibiki asked Wakui, but his shoulders were heaving more and more painfully. He was in no condition to answer the question. Heeee, heeee…The bizarre sound of his breathing was audible. He was wheezing—no, this was closer to whistling.
Wakui sat in the seat in front of me in class, but this was the first time I’d seen him have an attack like this. Since I’d suffered a collapsed lung twice this year, his difficulty breathing wasn’t hard for me to sympathize with. Pneumothorax and asthma were different, but seeing him, I felt my own breathing start to get more strained…
Mr. Chibiki picked up the inhaler and operated it to pump out the medicine. It made a soft hssh noise.
“Ah…It’s empty.” He brought his face close to W
akui’s ear and asked, “Did you bring any spare medicine with you?”
Through his labored gasping, Wakui barely shifted his head from left to right in response. It conveyed his meaning: No.
“Call an ambulance!” Mr. Chibiki ordered in a loud voice, straightening from his crouch. I had a flicker of memory of the time he’d come running into the classroom immediately after Mr. Kubodera’s suicide. “Ms. Mikami, can you please go and call an ambulance right away?”
9
It was several seconds later that we learned the phone installed in the building was unusable. Mrs. Numata ran in from the kitchen when she heard the alarm to tell us that. She said the circuit had been malfunctioning since the night before and had stopped working entirely that afternoon.
“We can’t place any calls, so we haven’t been able to arrange to have it fixed yet. But now, of all times…”
Before she had finished, Mr. Chibiki rummaged in a pocket of his coat and pulled out a cell phone.
“It’s no good.”
His voice was a dispirited—a deadened—mutter.
“The signal…”
“You can’t get through?” I asked, taking a step toward him.
“We’re out of range.”
“My cell phone worked before.”
“Then we’ll use that. Hurry,” Mr. Chibiki ordered. “Every company is different.”
“It’s in my room.”
“Go and get it, quickly!”
Then—
“I’ve got a phone.”
“Me, too.”
Two people offered theirs. They were Teshigawara and Mochizuki. Mei was silent. I guess she’d left hers in her room, like me.
“I see. Then please,” Mr. Chibiki said to them. “Try calling one-one-nine for an ambulance. It’s an emergency.”
But in the end—
“That’s weird. I’ve got one bar, but it’s not getting through.”
“Me, too…They’re not working, sir.”
Teshigawara’s cell phone and Mochizuki’s PHS had been rendered useless in this place.
In fact, when Mei had called me earlier, there had been so much noise that it was hard to make out her voice. I guess the signal was just fundamentally bad in the mountains. So then…
There was one other cell phone and a PHS among the other students. But they weren’t able to get through, either.
Wakui’s asthma attack continued the whole time. He wasn’t able to sit in the chair any longer and finally sank to his knees on the floor. Maejima was frantically rubbing Wakui’s back, which was heaving with the boy’s respiratory distress.
“This is bad. I don’t see any cyanosis developing, but we can’t just stand around.”
Mr. Chibiki pulled his lips into a stern line.
“I’ll take him to the hospital in my car.”
He looked over at Ms. Mikami, who stood unmoving and pale.
“All right, Ms. Mikami?”
“Er…Yes. I’ll go with you.”
“You can’t do that. You stay here, with the other students.”
“Oh…Yes. You’re right.”
“I’ll contact his parents from the hospital. I’ll come back once his condition has stabilized. Oh, Mrs. Numata? Could you please bring a few blankets? We have to make sure he doesn’t get cold.”
“Right away.”
Mrs. Numata pattered off down the hall.
The students who had gathered around the table and the students who were watching from a distance…All wore expressions betraying the anxiety and fear that gripped them. One of the girls was even sniffling quietly.
“It’s fine,” Mr. Chibiki addressed everyone. “There’s no need to worry. If we go to the hospital now, he’ll be fine and nothing serious will come of this. I promise you, everything is fine, so try not to upset yourselves. All right? This is an attack he’s used to suffering with his condition, not some extraordinary event. Nor is it a freak accident. So there’s no need to let your anxiety and fear take control. Calm down, and do what Ms. Mikami tells you. I’d like you all to go to bed early tonight. Understood?”
There was no change in the firmness of his expression, but his tone was impossibly calm. More than half the students nodded obediently, myself among them, but…
He’s lying.
The words whispered through my heart.
Obviously what Mr. Chibiki had just said was a lie. And if the word “lie” is too harsh, well—it was a desperate maneuver to assuage everyone’s distress ever so slightly.
None of the “disasters” befalling the class were simply “freak accidents.” Hadn’t Ikuo Takabayashi, one of the “deaths of June,” always had a weak heart? And yet he had lost his life to an attack involving his heart.
It wasn’t out of the question that Wakui would just happen to forget to check the amount of medicine he had left right when he was going on this trip, even though he used it every day for his asthma, but it was hard to see the situation as normal. In addition to the tension and anxiety we’d all felt, his stress just happened to be heightened by the eruption of that shouting match…And the result had been an attack. When we’d tried to call an ambulance, the phones at the lodge just happened to have been out of service all day. And then on top of everything, the signal strength made it hard for mobile phones to get through.
The fact that so many coincidences and instances of bad luck had collided was, in fact, an example of the risk bias peculiar to third-year Class 3 in an “on year.” How could we not think so? To use Mei’s words, this class was “close to ‘death’”…
Finally, Mrs. Numata brought blankets and bundled Wakui up in them, then Teshigawara and I helped take him to the building’s entrance. The car Mr. Chibiki had come in was parked in the driveway, close to the front door. It was a mud-spattered silver sedan. I couldn’t tell what model it was, but I was pretty sure it was something pretty old.
It was almost nine o’clock at night.
The rain was still falling in a drizzle, but the wind gusting through the night was getting stronger and stronger. I even convinced myself that I could hear, now and again, the high-pitched scream of some creature or other rising up from the woods around us on the wind that stirred through the branches…
When Wakui was settled in the backseat of the car, I ran over to Mr. Chibiki, who was getting into the driver’s seat, and called out to him. “Um, Mr. Chibiki, there’s actually something I…”
The cassette tape Katsumi Matsunaga had made: I wanted to tell him about it, even if only to give him the barest description, but there was simply no time for that anymore.
“It’s all right. I promise you, I’ll help Wakui,” Mr. Chibiki said, almost as if to convince himself.
“Um…Be careful.”
“I will. But you look after yourself, too. You have a time bomb in your lungs.”
“…I will.”
“All right, we’re off. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Mr. Chibiki raised a hand in a casual wave, then closed the door.
I realized Ms. Mikami was standing alongside me, though I hadn’t noticed her approach, so I decided to ask, “Are you all right?”
She turned her ashen face to look at me, and nodded. “Yeah. No need to worry about me…Okay?”
Running a hand down her rain-slicked hair, she put on a smile whose frailty was unmistakable.
“Um…Maybe we really should cancel going up the mountain tomorrow.”
In a hoarse voice, she replied, “Maybe.” And then even the smile she’d worn a moment earlier vanished from her face.
10
We watched Mr. Chibiki’s car drive off and were just retreating back inside when—
“Sakakibara—hold on.”
Mei stopped me.
“Thank you for what you did.”
“Wha—?” The question slipped out of me.
“When they were saying all that stuff about me in the dining hall.”
“Oh, you don’t need to…”
“It wasn’t just me. Mochizuki and Teshigawara were…”
“Thanks,” she repeated, almost in a whisper, then she took a step closer to me. “Will you come over later?”
Once again a “Wha—?” escaped me.
“No one’s sharing my room with me.”
There were five girls on the trip. When they split up two to a room, there was one left over. And of course, Mei was that one.
“I’m in room two-twenty-three. On the opposite end from your room.”
“…Do you think I should?”
“I told you there was something I’d tell you later, remember? I want to keep that promise.”
“…Okay.”
“And also…”
Just then, over Mei’s shoulder, I saw Teshigawara. He was standing in front of the door, ogling us with a “well, well!” look on his face.
I got flustered and before Mei could finish, I said, “Okay, okay. I get it.”
“How about ten o’clock or so?”
“Okay. I’ll be there.”
“All right.”
Mei turned smoothly on her heel and went back into the building by herself. I waited a few seconds, then followed her inside. Just as I’d expected, as soon as I was inside the front door, Teshigawara pounced.
“Hey, there.”
He thumped me on the back.
“Major score, Sakaki. I heard you guys planning your little rendezvous.”
“Hold it, what do you mean ‘rendezvous’? It’s not like that.”
“Don’t get so embarrassed! I’ll never tell a soul.”
“Cut it out. You’re just making stuff up. Me and her have something serious to talk about, okay?”
“A serious talk about your future together?”
Teshigawara’s unrelenting needling got me kind of irritated, so I told him, “Seriously, I’m getting angry.”
He just put his hands in the air with a jovial “Woah, woah.” But…
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