At some point I had detected that, despite the way he was acting and talking, there wasn’t the slightest hint of a smile in his eyes.
Chapter 15
August II
1
I told Mochizuki, who was sharing my room, the overall situation and then slipped out of the room before ten o’clock.
Putting my cell phone in my pocket before I left was a reflex. No, that’s not quite true. Everything that had just happened in the dining hall must have imprinted the idea on me. That it was better to have my cell phone with me in case of emergency. After all, I’d connected with Mei’s phone once tonight, even if the signal had been terrible…
I encountered no one on my walk down the shadowy second floor corridor from room 202 to room 223. Apparently everyone was following Mr. Chibiki’s instructions and obediently shutting themselves in their rooms.
Outside Mei’s room, I glanced through a window in the hall.
The wind was as fierce as ever, but it looked as though the rain had stopped. The clouds blanketing the sky had grown diffuse, revealing the ghostly round glow of the moon. In its light, I could make out the somber shapes of the wood surrounding the yard.
Just this side of the forest, in a corner of the back lawn, I noticed a small, one-story building. It wasn’t even big enough to be called an annex or a side building. Maybe a shed or a tool house.
Observing the scene absentmindedly, I watched as a window in the building suddenly lit up. Apparently someone had just now turned on a light inside.
It wasn’t enough to make me seriously question who it could have been. Obviously, it would be one of the Numatas. They’d probably gone out there to get something they needed.
I moved away from the window, took one slow, deep breath, and then knocked on the door to room 223.
After a long moment, Mei opened the door. She had a lightweight ivory cardigan on over her summer uniform and her complexion looked even more waxen than usual.
“Go ahead,” she said tersely, gesturing me in without even a smile. The night wasn’t that hot, and yet the air conditioner in her room was pumping at full strength. “Sit down, at least.”
It was the same thing she’d told me the first time I’d been allowed up to the living room in her house. I settled myself lightly in the chair at the table next to the window. Mei sat down on the edge of one of the two beds in the room; then, out of the blue, she said, “We were talking about Misaki.”
She turned an unflinching gaze on me. I nodded silently.
Naturally, the “Misaki” she was referring to was not the “Misaki” of twenty-six years ago, nor the “Misaki” of her own last name, nor even the “Misaki” that was the town she lived in. She meant her cousin, Misaki Fujioka, who had died at the Yumigaoka Municipal Hospital that day at the end of April.
“I’ve honestly been thinking about it ever since I first saw you at the hospital, wondering why you got off the elevator at the second basement level.”
I spoke as if to refresh my own memory.
“Misaki was hospitalized there, but that was the day she passed away, right? So her body was in the memorial chapel on the second basement level, right? And you said you were taking that doll to her. But even so…”
“You thought it seemed odd?”
“Well, yeah.”
“The situation is a little complicated.”
Mei lowered her eyes as she spoke.
“I never really wanted to tell anyone this, but…”
“Do you mind if I ask? Will you tell me?”
After a slight pause, her eyes still lowered, Mei replied, “Okay.”
2
“Misaki Fujioka and I were cousins. We were the same age. But—how should I put it? We didn’t start out that way.”
Mei lifted her eyes slightly as she began speaking, her voice soft. She had chosen such a suggestive way to lead into her story. I cocked my head, struggling to extract the meaning behind her words.
She went on, unconcerned: “Misaki’s mother’s name is Mitsuyo, and my mother—Kirika’s real name is Yukiyo. They were sisters, exactly the same age.”
“You mean they’re—” I cut in, my head still cocked to one side. “They’re twins?”
“Fraternal, apparently. And their last name is Amane. They said that my Grandma Amane never got married her whole life.”
I thought “Grandma Amane” was Mei’s great-aunt on her mother’s side—the old woman in “Twilight of Yomi”?
“They’re fraternal twins, but even so they looked a lot alike, and they grew up in the same environment, were raised the same way, all the way to adulthood…Mitsuyo was the first to get married. She married a man named Fujioka. I’ve heard he was an office worker at a small food-related company, very young and no-nonsense.
“A little while later, Yukiyo married Kotaro Misaki—my father. He’s a competent businessman, rich, and flies all over the place all year round. Pretty much the exact opposite of Mitsuyo’s husband, you might say.
“And Mitsuyo was the first to have kids, with her husband Mr. Fujioka.”
“And that was Misaki?”
Mei nodded in silence, then her eyes slid smoothly in my direction and she added, “And one other.”
“What?”
“She had twins.”
Mei’s eyes dropped again.
“Two girls. Who were also fraternal twins, but they also looked amazingly alike.”
Misaki Fujioka had a twin sister?
I cocked my head to one side yet again.
Then could that mean…? Impossible.
“Meanwhile, Yukiyo got pregnant, too, a year after Mitsuyo. But there were problems when her baby was born.”
“You told me about that.”
“Yukiyo was incredibly, incredibly sad. To the point that she was going crazy. The sucker punch came when she learned that, because of the stillbirth, she wouldn’t be able to have any more children in the future.”
“…Man.”
It was at this point that I started to get an inkling of what was coming.
“The Fujioka family, which had been blessed with twins, also had some financial concerns and weren’t sure that they would be able to raise two children at the same time. In contrast, the Misaki household needed to do something to save Yukiyo’s spirit, which had fallen into the deepest despair. I’m sure Mitsuyo felt sorry for Yukiyo, too. And so at that point, you could say the balance was struck between supply and demand.”
“Supply…and demand?”
“Yeah. You know what I mean, right?” Mei asked, never spoiling her quiet narrative. “One of the twins born to the Fujiokas was sent to the Misakis as a foster daughter.”
“So then…”
“That was me. I changed from Mei Fujioka to Mei Misaki when I was around two years old. I don’t have any memory that might suggest why I was chosen instead of Misaki.”
Mei broke off subtly at that point, and then continued, as if to push the question away.
“I figure it was probably because of our names.”
“Your names?”
“If Misaki had been adopted by the Misakis, she’d be Misaki Misaki. I’ve decided to think that they made the decision based on some stupid reason like that.”
A ghost of a smile came over her pale, peach-like lips before quickly disappearing.
“And so, since before I can remember, I’ve been raised in the Misaki family as Yukiyo’s—as Kirika’s only daughter. Without ever being told that I was adopted. So when I was younger, I was totally convinced that Mitsuyo was my Aunt Mitsuyo. And I thought that Misaki was my cousin, who was the same age as me and just happened to look a lot like me. Even knowing that we had the same birthday, it was just like, wow! What a coincidence! Chalk it up to our moms being twins, I guess.
“I was in the fifth year of elementary school, I think, when I found out the truth. Grandma Amane let something slip by accident, and then she explained it to me, but that day Kirika…my mother completely lo
st it. I think she would have kept it hidden from me my whole life if she could have.”
Despite the fact that she was revealing something significant about her own origins, Mei’s tone was unutterably soft and her expression almost perfectly still. Having no idea how best to react, all I could do for a long while was listen to her talk.
“For her, I was essentially a substitute for her own stillborn child. A replacement. It was something similar for my father, too. I think they cherished me more than most people would have. And when I had the issue with my eye, they did everything they could for me, and my mother even made this special glass eye for me…I’m grateful to them. But…”
I’m one of that woman’s dolls.
“But a replacement is still a replacement. At some point, she started to see her own child, the one she should have had, in me.”
I’m alive, but I’m not the real thing.
“I’m sure the reason she shuts herself up in her workshop and keeps creating all those dolls is because of the intense heartbreak she still has deep down for her child. I can’t help thinking that. And from my point of view, once I found out the truth, she’s been nothing but the mother who raised me, not my actual mom…”
Mei’s words trailed off, so I interjected a question. “So what did you think when you found out?”
After much fumbling over her words, Mei replied, “I…wanted to see her. My mother, Mitsuyo. And my father.”
I thought I saw her cheeks flush with the words, though only slightly.
“I didn’t intend to be bitter or blame them for sending me out to be adopted instead of Misaki. I really didn’t. I just wanted to see them and have a real talk with them and confirm the fact that these were the people who had given me life.
“But around then, the Fujiokas moved away. Until then, Misaki and I had gone to neighboring elementary schools and our houses were pretty close to each other’s, but then Misaki changed schools and even though we lived in the same city, our houses were far apart and we couldn’t see each other very easily anymore. Even so, I wanted to see my mother, and I told Kirika that. She got such a sad look on her face when I said that, and then she got so angry…”
“What, because she didn’t want to let you see your birth mother?”
“Right.” Mei nodded, her shoulders slumping very slightly. “I think I mentioned this before. How she’s hands-off about making up rules for where I can go and what I can do, but she worries a lot and gets really sensitive about certain things.”
“Yeah…I remember.”
“That’s what I meant. Getting closer to my mother Mitsuyo. I think it’s natural for her to be nervous about it. Especially because the other woman is her own twin sister. Forcing me to have a cell phone is probably a manifestation of that anxiety. We’re always connected by it. I kind of understand how she feels, but still…”
Again Mei fumbled for words for a moment.
“But…While all that was going on, I would sometimes meet up with Misaki secretly. Especially after we moved up to middle school and we started participating in more activities. And around that time, she found out that the two of us were originally sisters, too.
“Maybe it was a strange idea, but she and I felt this unbreakable connection. We’d been linked by sharing time together inside the same mother. We were each half of the other, which is such a clichéd thing to say, but that’s how it seemed.
“Oh, but in case you’re wondering, I don’t think it felt that nice. This mysterious sensation…that my other half is right over there…that was the strongest impression I got. Beyond that, well, Misaki had grown up in a family with her real mom and dad, while her other self had been sent to live with a foster family, where she had even lost an eye as a young child…I might have come out a little more cynical than her.”
All of a sudden, the windowpane rattled violently. Had the wind shifted direction? I started to feel as if someone were peering in through the window from outside—though that was impossible—and I instinctively turned to look behind me.
“Around then…This was happening last spring. That’s when Misaki got sick.”
Mei continued with her story.
“It was a really serious illness, in her kidneys. She would have to be on dialysis the rest of her life. The only way to avoid that was to get a kidney transplant.”
“A transplant…”
“Yeah. So Misaki got one kidney from her mother, Mitsuyo, and got admitted to a big hospital in Tokyo for the surgery. Actually, I wanted to give her my kidney. I mean, we were twins, even if just fraternal, and we were the same size, so wouldn’t you think that’s the best option for a transplant? They said transplanting an adult’s kidney into a child was pretty hard, what with the size difference and everything, so…
“But apparently there’s some guideline that says children under fifteen years old can’t be live organ donors, so I couldn’t do it. No matter how much I swore I wanted to. Although…Even if the hospital had made an exception, if she—if Kirika had found out, she would have dug her heels in and refused to let me do it.”
So that had been the “major surgery at another hospital” Misaki Fujioka had had before coming to the municipal hospital. All at once, Ms. Mizuno’s voice reawakened vividly in my mind, speaking those same words over the phone, and I squeezed my eyes shut reflexively.
“The surgery was at the beginning of the year and it was a complete success. But they needed to monitor her progress afterward, so when her condition stabilized, Misaki transferred to the hospital here. Even after the transfer, her recovery was on schedule. I would secretly go and visit her. Without telling Kirika what I was doing, of course.
“Misaki and I talked about all sorts of things, but then she said, ‘You have all those amazing dolls at your house. I’m so jealous.’ So I made her a promise. I showed her a picture of the dolls in my room and asked her which one she liked, and I told her ‘I’ll give you the one you like best to celebrate when you get out of the hospital.’ And that…”
“That was the doll you took to the memorial chapel that day?”
“…I promised her.”
Mei blinked slowly, sadly.
“I never thought she would die like that, all of a sudden…I really didn’t. She wasn’t having any problems in her recovery and they were saying she’d be able to go home soon. And yet, all of a sudden, she…”
…Right.
Ms. Mizuno had said that, too.
Misaki Fujioka’s condition had taken a sudden turn and before anyone could do anything, she had passed away. That had been April 27, a Monday. Ms. Mizuno had told me, “She was an only child, and apparently her parents were incoherent with grief.”
Certainly, I’d gotten an answer to the question that had so long been on my mind, but when I imagined what must be going through Mei’s mind, my heart clenched tight. It was hard to keep the tears from pouring down my face. However, at the same time…
A critical fact became inescapably clear.
“So she was never your cousin in the first place: You were sisters.”
Feeling an intense, tumultuous bewilderment, I reiterated the fact.
“Meaning that you and Misaki were actually second-degree blood relatives…”
“That’s right.”
“So that’s why you said what you did that day?”
My first day at school, the first time I’d encountered her there. During that conversation next to the flower bed where yellow roses were in full bloom, outside Building Zero…
You should be careful. It might have started already.
“When you told me ‘It might have started already’?”
“You’ve got a good memory. That’s right.”
“So it had started,” I said, my eyes locked on Mei’s face. “The ‘disasters’ for this year had already started in April.”
“…Probably.”
“Why didn’t you say so at the time?”
“I…Well, I…”
With
out turning her eyes in my direction, Mei once again blinked, slow and sad.
“The fact that something like that had caused her—had caused Misaki’s death…I didn’t want to believe it. I could accept that something as irrational as a curse had caused it. So I…
“That’s why even when you asked me if I had any brothers or sisters, I couldn’t say yes. And when you asked me about Misaki, I could only say that she was my cousin. I didn’t want to say it.”
I remembered that.
After Yukari Sakuragi died as one the “deaths of May,” when I’d run into Mei for the second time in the basement of the gallery, she’d said, I guess I’ve only ever half believed it, in the back of my mind.
First that happened, then in May you came to our school and I told you all that stuff, but I still didn’t believe it a hundred percent.
“First that happened” must have meant Misaki’s death in April. And then if “telling me all that stuff” had been an allusion to her saying that “it might have started already”…
Mei’s head was bent, her fists balled around the sheets on the bed where she sat. Even as I tried earnestly once again to imagine what she must be feeling, I compiled the facts I had come to understand and couldn’t help speaking them aloud, sounding out the truth of them.
“The ‘disasters’ for this year’s third-year Class 3 started in April, just like they did for all those other classes. When Misaki Fujioka died in the hospital, she became the first victim…The ‘death of April.’ Which means…”
The gusts of wind rattling the window barreled into my body and clamped sharply down on my body heat. When that sudden sensation assaulted me, a chill carved down my spine and raised goose bumps over my entire body.
Mei’s head moved as if to say, I know…She lifted her face languidly. “I thought of that, too.”
“Meaning what?”
“After you got out of the hospital, you first came to school at the beginning of May. That was when we realized there weren’t enough desks in the classroom, so everyone believed that this year’s ‘disasters’ were erratic and starting in May. But if Misaki was the ‘death of April,’ that would mean we were wrong…”
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