…Please connect.
Please. Even if it’s just for one second.
The short electronic buzz of “attempting connection.” It repeated enough times that I should have given up, and then—
The sound changed to a ring. After the fourth ring, someone picked up.
“…Sakakibara?”
There was a lot of interference that made it hard to hear, but I knew: that was Mei’s voice.
“Thank goodness…I can’t believe I got through.”
With my free hand, I covered my mouth and the end of the phone in order to focus my voice and said, “This is Misaki, right? So you’re safe.”
“What about you? And everyone else?”
“We ran to the gate. But not everybody’s here. Maejima’s gone, but Mr. Chibiki came back and he saved me, and the murderer was Mrs. Numata and…”
I realized I was blathering on with no real point, and I cut myself off abruptly.
“Where are you?”
I asked the question foremost on my mind.
“The backyard,” Mei answered. “Near something that looks like a storage shed.”
She was there? Then…
“Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” she said, her tone listless. Then, after an ambiguous pause, she continued. “But I can’t move yet.”
“What?”
She was fine, but she couldn’t move? I didn’t understand what she meant. But before I even tried thinking about it, I said, “I’m coming. I’ll be right there, so stay where you are.”
But when I said that—
“You shouldn’t come here.”
That was Mei’s response. Kksshhhksshhk…Unpleasant static overlaid itself on her voice.
“Why not?”
“You shouldn’t come, Sakakibara.”
“Come on, why not?”
“I…”
The noise started to get much worse, and her words were getting cut off. I tightened my hand, pressing the phone against my ear so that I wouldn’t miss a thing.
“I…have to stop it.”
“Do what?”
Stop it?…She couldn’t mean…
A fuzzy image buried deep in my mind swelled up larger just then and took on concrete form. She couldn’t mean…
“Misaki, you aren’t saying…”
I spoke louder, but through the Kkshhhkkkshhhk, vmmmvvvmmvmvm noises growing worse and worse, I don’t know how much of what I said got through to her.
“Is anyone with you over there?”
“I’m…”
“Who is it? Misaki?”
“…might regret it, so I…”
…And that was it.
Her voice disappeared, almost like a fade-out. In that brief instant on this midsummer night of such cruel “disasters,” the tenuous thread that had almost miraculously connected us snapped. The clock was approaching midnight and we were closing in on August 9.
10
I started running immediately, without a word of explanation to anyone.
The flames that continued to burn through the building serving as my light, I ran full-speed away from the gate, down the path that wound around to the east side of the backyard. Ash created by the fire was dropping on the ground, already damp from the rain, making it extremely difficult to find any purchase. But somehow I managed not to go sprawling even once, and, at last, the storage shed I sought came into view. I don’t think it had taken even five minutes.
The heaving of the wind paired with the roar of the mounting flames so nearby. Distinct from those sounds, I became aware of the distant, resonating sirens of fire trucks…
As I ran up to the storage shed, I searched for Mei.
A generous estimate would put the shed at a distance of less than ten meters from the main house, so depending on the direction of the wind, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it catch light at some point. But luckily, the building was still intact—it seemed.
“Misaki!” My voice was strangled. “Where are you? Misaki!”
There was no answer. But—
I had circled around to the north side of the shed, continuing to call her name, when finally I spotted her. She—Mei was standing by herself, her back against the wall of the shed.
“There you are…”
Her blouse and skirt, as well as her hair, face, arms, and legs…All were caked in ash. But just as she’d told me over the phone, she didn’t seem to have any major wounds…
“Misaki?”
When I called to her, she turned a fraction toward me. But her gaze returned immediately to its original object. And then…
She was looking at something at a distance of four or five meters…It was someone besides her—another person.
The person was lying facedown on the ground. Their entire body was covered in even more ash than Mei’s. Plus their lower body was buried under several large pieces of heavy lumber. Given that, naturally I couldn’t easily tell who it was, or even judge their height or gender from where I stood.
“The force of the explosion knocked over the lumber,” Mei said, her eyes locked on the person. She didn’t have her eye patch over her left eye. “So they can’t move anymore…”
“We have to help them.”
I said it without a second thought; then my breath caught with a gulp.
Mei was silently shaking her head from side to side.
That was when I noticed she was holding something in her hands. It was…a pickax? Her right hand gripped the haft and the red-painted “head” part was resting on the ground. It must have been lying around nearby. Or she’d gone and gotten it out of the shed.
“We can’t do that.” Without ever turning her eyes toward me, Mei went on to declare, “That’s the ‘extra person.’ So we…”
That idea had gelled while I was running over here—that she might have been with the “extra person” right at that moment. But even so, a strangled cry escaped me. “Wha—?…Really?”
“I can see it…They have ‘the color of death.’”
“Did you…just now see it?”
“…It was a while ago.”
Her voice sounded sad, somehow.
“I knew, but I couldn’t say anything.”
Very, very sad, somehow…
“But…Well, after I heard that tape for myself, I thought: I have to stop it. I never expected such terrible things to happen tonight. I have to put a stop to it. If I don’t stop it now, everyone will…”
Mei lifted her face sharply. She put both hands back on the haft of the pickax.
“Wait—” I jumped out in front of her. My body moved reflexively.
I proceeded then toward the person lying facedown on the ground, who Mei had proclaimed to be the “extra person.” I wanted to see who it was for myself.
I’d thought the person was unconscious, but just then they moved dramatically. With a pained moan, they planted both hands on the ground and lifted their upper body to try and slither out from under the lumber. But, utterly exhausted, the person fell back into the dirt.
I walked up to them. I went right up beside them and bent over, holding my breath as I looked into their face.
Their eyes, vacantly wide, met mine by chance.
“Uh…”
Her lips trembled.
“…Koichi.”
“N…” I barely avoided howling. “No…”
…It couldn’t be.
Was this some kind of joke?
I blinked repeatedly, and looked back at the person’s face. But it was still, without question, her.
“You mean this is the ‘extra person’?” I staggered back to an upright position and turned to look at Mei. “Her? Really?”
Mei nodded mutely, then lowered her eyes.
“No…Not her. How could that even…”
Vvvmmmmm…A familiar, low-pitched sound was coming from somewhere.
It started rumbling, as if trying to grind down my heart—my thoughts and my memories. The rumble that
, once noticed, became unspeakably menacing and unnatural. During intervals in its hum…
How many times have I visited this town now?
This was my—Koichi Sakakibara’s—soliloquy, delivered at the start of it all, when I moved here in April from Tokyo.
Maybe three or four times in elementary school. Was this the first time since starting middle school?…Or maybe not.
Or maybe not…?
By the way, Koichi.
On some phone call or other with my father, currently in India.
How does Yomiyama seem, a year and a half later? Not much different?
Yomiyama, a year and a half later…?
Why? Why?
And that was the myna bird my grandparents kept as a pet.
Cheer…Cheer. Up.
The enthusiastic, shrill voice of that bird.
They named it “Ray.”
Ray? Yes, of course. The bird’s name is Ray.
It was—and this gets another “probably” attached—two years old. They’d bought it on an impulse at a pet shop two years ago, in the fall.
Two years ago, in the fall…In other words, a year and a half ago. When I was a first-year in middle school.
Was this the first time since starting middle school?…Or maybe not.
…Yomiyama, a year and a half later.
A year and a half ago, I’d…
When someone dies, there’s a funeral.
I don’t…I don’t want to go to any more funerals.
That had been my grandfather, who was turning senile.
Poor, poor Ritsuko. It’s so sad, Ritsuko and Reiko both…
Ritsuko and Reiko both…
“…Oh,” I muttered, almost entirely vapor-locked. “So that’s what it was.”
Vvvvmmmmm…The continuous rumbling of that creepy, low-pitched sound that threatened to deaden all thought was pressing down relentlessly on a corner of my brain.
Do teachers die, too?
I remembered a conversation with Mr. Chibiki, I don’t remember when it was.
If they’re the head teacher or the assistant teacher, yes. Because they’re members of third-year Class 3.
If someone is a member of the class—of third-year Class 3—they might die in the “disasters.” In which case—of course—they could also come back as the “extra person”…
But…
“Come on, really?”
Even so, I couldn’t stop myself from checking one more time with Mei. It was not, after all, something I could believe right away just because she told me to.
“Is she…Ms. Mikami—I mean, is Reiko really the ‘extra person’?”
11
“At school, I’m ‘Ms. Mikami,’ got it? Try to remember that.”
The night before my first day at the new middle school, Reiko had told me the “North Yomi fundamentals”…
“The First” and “the Second” had been half-joking school superstitions; and “the Third,” which said to “obey at all costs whatever the class decides,” had been, I realized now, her hinting at a crucial rule that tied into the issue of the “extra person.” But at least at that point, the preparation that had had the greatest meaning for me was, of course, “the Fourth.”
“You must strictly respect the distinction between public and private life. Try not to call me ‘Reiko’ at school, even by mistake.”
Of course, I’d assented obediently.
My mother, Ritsuko Sakakibara (née Mikami), had died fifteen years ago. Her little sister, eleven years younger than her, was my aunt by blood, Reiko Mikami. The fact that Reiko was a teacher at the school I would be transferring to—plus that she was the assistant head teacher of my class—was, in a certain sense, an extremely reassuring coincidence. However, it would also be a relationship that could easily be a source of stupid misunderstandings and trouble if I wasn’t sufficiently careful. I freely accepted that, so…
So I had faithfully respected her instructions, which she had deliberately highlighted to me as “the Fourth of the North Yomi fundamentals.” I had called her “Ms. Mikami” at school and “Reiko” at home, treating her as if she were two entirely separate people.
Reiko had done the same. At school, she never called me “Koichi” and never forgot to treat me as “Sakakibara, the transfer student”…So there had been plenty of times when we had both behaved with more reservation to each other than strictly necessary.
Naturally Mr. Kubodera knew the truth from the very beginning, and so did most of the class. That was why, for instance, when discussing the new “tactic” for June and deciding to treat both Mei and me as if we were “not there,” Mr. Kubodera had addressed the class with these words:
We must all respect the decision of the class. Even Ms. Mikami, who is in a very difficult position, told us earlier that she would do “whatever possible.”
Ms. Mikami’s “difficult position.” Obviously, that was the position of having to ignore her nephew at school as if he were “not there,” even though he shared the same house as her after school.
And a little before that, Yuya Mochizuki had come to our house in Koike and was loitering around outside.
I was just, uh, worried.
My house is near here, in this town, so I thought I might, uh…
Mochizuki had explained himself in that halting, hesitant way when I’d unexpectedly appeared, but I wasn’t the object of his worry, even though I’d missed school that day to go to the hospital. I knew for certain that his primary goal had been to check on Ms. Mikami/Reiko, who had been out of school for several days around the same time.
After graduating from an art school in Tokyo, she’d come back home to Yomiyama and gotten a job teaching art at the middle school she’d attended. She dubbed the side house her “office/bedroom” and used it as her studio on the side, focusing intently on the creation of paintings that she called “my real job”…
I had for these last four months—not even—been groping my way toward just the right degree of distance from/involvement with her.
After Yukari Sakuragi’s death, Mei had stopped coming to school for several days in a row…And I had wanted to find out how she was doing. Even then, I’d had a simple “means of finding out” by asking Reiko to show me the class list.
Nevertheless, I didn’t pull it. I didn’t tell her that I wanted a class list for myself and I never attempted to ask her outright about the discomfort I felt at school and all the questions I had…And that, too, was due to my hesitation and nervousness that resulted from struggling to maintain a sense of distance from her, I think.
I’ll worry about me, and I can tell you I’ve got some pretty touchy emotional issues going on.
I knew I’d told Mochizuki something like that, and yet…
“Sakakibara.”
Ms. Mikami—Reiko—trapped under the lumber and unable to move, and Mei, lifting the heavy pickax in both hands. For a long moment, standing between the two of them, I could think of nothing to say. I just stood there.
Then Mei spoke to me, her voice forceful.
“Think it over, Sakakibara. Think carefully. Does any other class at our school have an assistant head teacher?”
“Huh? Well…I mean…”
“They don’t,” Mei declared flatly. “For some reason, no one ever thought about it. We just accepted it. I did the same thing at first. But don’t you think that’s odd? Third-year Class 3 is the only one in the whole school that has an assistant head teacher.”
I couldn’t say a word.
“I think Ms. Mikami must have died the year before last, the year she was the head teacher for Class 3. After the second semester started and that boy Sakuma abandoned his role and stopped being ‘not there,’ and the ‘disasters’ started. The real reason the art club was on hiatus until this spring has to be because Ms. Mikami was the sponsor for it, and then she died.”
Meaning that the reason it had been resumed in April was that Reiko, reawakened as the “extra person,”
had filled the role of sponsor. That the actual events had been expunged from everybody’s memory as well as all the records, which had been corrupted into false memories and records?
I searched intently through the recesses of my own heart.
And yet, however, restoring the memories doctored/corrupted in this “phenomenon” from the inside was probably impossible as long as I was part of this world. That’s how it seemed. The only thing possible was to extrapolate from a handful of objective facts I’d managed to collect, to a truth that had to be…
Maybe…this wasn’t the first time I’d come to Yomiyama since starting middle school. Hadn’t I come here once, one and a half years ago, the autumn of my first year in middle school?
If that had been…a visit to attend the wake and memorial service when Reiko died the autumn before last…
I don’t…I don’t want to go to any more funerals.
The meaning behind my grandfather’s wail thudded home.
Poor, poor Ritsuko. It’s so sad, Ritsuko and Reiko both…
His sorrow at outliving his oldest daughter, Ritsuko, fifteen years ago. The sorrow of outliving his second daughter, Reiko, as well two years ago had, in his memories muddled by senility, mingled with the sorrow of fifteen years ago and made him say those things…
In order to relieve the shock and grief and loneliness Reiko’s sudden death had brought with it the autumn before last, my grandparents had impulsively purchased a myna bird they discovered in a pet shop. And then they had named the bird after their deceased daughter, shortening the name to “Ray.”
Before long, Ray had one human word that she could speak—“Why?”
That could have been a question my heartbroken grandfather or grandmother asked their deceased daughter when they sat in the room by the veranda each day, facing the family altar. Something like “Why? Why did you die, Reiko? Why?” Maybe Ray had learned from that and started to say “Why?” all the time.
Cheer…Cheer up.
That probably came about the same way. Perhaps they had been the words of encouragement my grandmother spoke day after day to my grandfather, who was sunken in continual despair, his heartbreak never lessening. And then Ray had learned it and…
Cheer…Cheer up.
“There were enough desks in the classroom, even though the ‘disasters’ for this year actually started in April…And this explains why, no?” Mei pointed out, lowering the pickax momentarily to her feet. “They really were one desk short at the start of the semester. But not in the classroom—it was in the teachers’ office.”
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