Another, Vol. 2 (19 page)

“What did you see?” I asked. “Did you see the ‘color of death’ on that student in the picture, Misaki Yomiyama?”

“I did,” she replied instantly. That was the first time I’ve ever looked at something people said was a paranormal photo and sensed the
color
like that. So it has to be…”

My eyes fixed on Mei’s lips as she trailed off, and the memory came belatedly back to me.

I know that I’m not “the casualty.”

The words she’d spoken that day I’d visited her house and we’d had that long talk in her living room on the third floor.

When I’d pursued her claim and asked,
So you can be sure that you’re not “the casualty,” huh?
she had started to explain,
I’m telling you…
and then she had stopped herself.

“I hope that explains it,” Mei said, slowly rising from the bed once again. “When I take my eye patch off and look at you like this, I still can’t see the ‘color of death’ on you. So it’s not you. You’re not the ‘extra person.’”

“And you know that
it’s not you
, either, for the same reason.”

“Yeah.”

Nodding, Mei picked up her eye patch. She started to put it back in place and then stopped as if thinking better of it.

“If nothing else, I believe in the mysterious abilities of this ‘doll’s eye.’ But if I search deep down inside myself, I think there’s still a part of me that doesn’t totally buy it. I still find myself doubting it sometimes, thinking maybe it’s nothing more than a delusion.

“Maybe it is only a delusion, but I just told you ‘it’s not a prophecy or some kind of power like that,’ right? But I feel like, at least for me, it might be. If Death were to come after me sometime in my future, maybe I’d be able to tell somehow. If I could make the right moves, maybe in certain cases I’d be able to escape that Death…Remember that one time, you said you were worried about me going home alone? And I said I’d be fine? That’s why.”

…Right.

I did remember that.

“Let’s say I believe everything you just told me…”

As I replied, I also rose from my chair. The chills and goose bumps had stopped. Instead, despite the air-conditioning making the room as cold as it was, the back of my neck was slick with sweat.

I was a little over one meter from Mei. She had both her eyes open—left and right—and her gaze was fixed on me. Behind me, the window shook violently once again.

“Then that means you know who it is?”

Who is “the casualty”…?

“That you looked with your ‘doll’s eye’ and now you know who the ‘extra person’ in our class is?”

Mei shifted her head in an ambiguous way that neither confirmed nor denied what I’d said. Then she replied, “I’ve tried not to take my eye patch off when I’m at school.

“Ever since I started third year and found out the facts behind the ‘curse’ from all the rumors, even after the start of the new semester, I’ve never taken it off. Not even after what happened to Misaki, or after you transferred to our school…Not even after Sakuragi died and I finally started to believe that the ‘disasters’ were something real, I never…”

“Even though you wrote that message on your desk?”

Who is “the casualty”…?

“Even though you might have been able to tell who it was just by taking your eye patch off?”

“Even if I found out—even if I knew who it was, I didn’t think there was anything I could do about it. I didn’t think it would help anything to know. I wondered about it, but…You see?”

To be honest, I wasn’t much inclined to accept Mei’s response just then.

It was true, I’d never seen her without her eye patch on at school. But could she honestly say she had never once let it slip off? Had she never tried to discover the answer to her riddle—
Who is “the casualty”?
How could she ever stop thinking about it, otherwise?

But then…

Even if she had, that was in the past. Quibbling about it now accomplished nothing. The problem was in the present moment.

“In that case…”

I rested a hand on my chest and took a deep breath. Maybe it was the incredible stress, or maybe just my imagination, but I felt a slight pain that summoned back the memories of that obnoxious collapsed lung.

“What about after that? What about now?”

Now that she’d heard what was on that fifteen-year-old tape that Katsumi Matsunaga had hidden. Now that she could no longer claim there was nothing she could do if she knew who it was.

“Do you know? Can you see them? Is
the person
here on this trip?”

Mei’s eyebrows trembled, as if my barrage of questions had thrown her slightly off balance. She was reluctant to answer. I thought she might even put a hand to her chest and take a deep breath like I had done, when her perplexed gaze fled to one side and she bit down softly on her lower lip again.

Finally, she gave a terse bob of her head.

“The ‘extra person’ is here.”

“…So they did come.”

Sweat rolled down my skin under my shirt. I fixed my eyes on Mei’s lips.

“Who is it?”

“I don’t…”

Just then, a loud noise came from the door to the room and put a stop to the discussion. Someone outside was pounding on the door. Not like a knock—more like someone’s body had crashed into it.

“Who’s there?”

Simultaneous with Mei’s question, the door was knocked open violently. The second I saw who came tumbling inside, I forgot what I’d been doing only seconds before and shouted loudly, “Teshigawara?! What happened?”

Just by looking at him, I could tell something was off.

His breathing was oddly labored, as if he’d just run flat-out all the way here. His shirt clung to the sweat coating his skin. His hair and face were dripping with sweat, too. And yet he was terribly pale. His expression was rigid and his eyes looked unfocused.

“What happened? Is there…”

When I moved closer to him, Teshigawara made a choking noise and he shook his head fiercely. Then he looked from my face to Mei’s and back again. Showing no reaction whatsoever to the fact that Mei had her eye patch off, he finally formed the words—between heaving breaths—“Y-yeah. Sorry. L-look, sorry to bust in here, but…Could I ask you guys a question?”

He wanted to ask
us
a question? That was weird. Unquestionably weird.
You feeling okay, Teshigawara?
What in the world was…

“I just want to ask something, real quick.”

His breathing still ragged, Teshigawara maneuvered past me and headed for the window. The window faced the inner garden, surrounded by the building on three sides, and had a balcony attached that allowed a person to stand outside.

He went up to it, then turned back to look at us.

“S-so, do you guys know anyone named Tomohiko Kazami?”

He threw the question out there.

“Say what?”

My head tilted to one side reflexively. Mei’s reaction was about the same.

“Could I get a little context?”

“Look, I’m just asking you a question.
Do you know who Kazami is?
Could you describe him?”

Repeating his question, though, Teshigawara’s voice was as serious as I’d ever heard it.

“Sure, I know him, but that’s not—” I answered his question, the weight of a terrible premonition closing in on me. “He’s the class representative for the boys in Class 3. Your friend from way back.”

“Oh-h-h ma-a-an…”

Teshigawara’s face twisted and he groaned.

“…What about you, Misaki? Do you know him?”

“Of course I know who he is.”

Teshigawara groaned, “Oh man,” again and then feebly murmured, “Y-Yeah, of course.”

His knees buckled and he collapsed into a squat. Pale as he was, his face lost even more color and a fine tremor played across his lips.

“Come on, Teshigawara, why are you asking? What happened?”

He stayed squatting on the floor, but when I walked up to him, his head swung haggardly back and forth. “This is bad,” he answered in a voice like a smashed toad. “Something real bad…”

“What are you talking about?”

“Maybe I was wrong…”

“Wrong? About what?”

“I…Look, I was convinced he was the ‘extra person.’ So just now, I…”

“‘He’? You mean…”

Was he talking about Kazami?

“Kazami.”

“…You didn’t.”

“I killed him.”

He
killed him
? Had he really murdered Kazami?

“You can’t be serious.”

“Why would I lie about that?” Teshigawara cradled his head in both hands. “I’ve been checking into him lately, on the sly. Talking to him about all this stuff from when we were kids, seeing if he remembers it or not, you know. And he…”

“No…Really?”

“He was acting weird, I swear,” Teshigawara appealed to us, his voice almost a sob. “I asked about this place, our secret base by the river where we played all the time when we were third-years in elementary school, and he just said, ‘I don’t remember that.’ I asked him about the summer of our fifth year in elementary school, when we wanted to ride our bikes all the way to see the ocean, but in the end we gave up as soon as we were outside town. And he said ‘That doesn’t sound familiar.’ So…”

“So what?”

“I wasn’t really sure whether that was a sign or not, at first, but then I thought about it and thought about it, and it started to seem suspicious…So I thought he wasn’t himself. That the real Kazami had died a long time ago and this Kazami was the ‘extra person’ who’d snuck into our class this spring…”

Wow, I mean—Teshigawara had seriously misunderstood things. The “extra person”/“casualty” probably wasn’t going to act like that.

As far as I understood from Mei’s and Mr. Chibiki’s explanations, you couldn’t ask if
it
was the “real thing” or a “fake.”
It
was the “real thing” through and through: The actual person who’d died came back to life without any awareness that they had already been a “casualty” and slipped back into the world. So it didn’t mean anything if they could remember stuff from when they were little. It wouldn’t be a clue or give you any proof to help you identify them. And yet…

The kinds of childhood experiences Teshigawara was talking about were memories that might have faded or disappeared for anyone. And yet…

“And then tonight, a little while ago, I…tricked him into coming with me.”

His voice thickening now and again, Teshigawara described what had happened.

“I was sharing a room with him, but I didn’t want anyone in the next room to overhear, so I took him somewhere else. I’d found a rec room at one end of the second floor, so I said we should go check it out…

“When we got there, I psyched myself up and then I tore into him.
You’re not the real Kazami, are you? You’re the ‘extra person’ in our class, aren’t you?
He got all shaken up, then he panicked, and then finally he blew up at me. So I thought, man, look how guilty he’s acting. And like it said on that tape, if he dies…I had to return him to Death to save everyone.”

“…So you killed him?” I controlled my voice, which was threatening to turn a little hysterical. “Really?”

“At first it was like a shoving match with a bunch of arguing. I didn’t think ‘Okay, time to kill him’ and then start hitting him or anything…Aggh, I don’t even know what I was thinking. Somehow we wound up outside on the balcony. And then before I realized it, he…”

“He fell?”

“…Yeah.”

“Did you push him?”

“…I might have.”

“And that killed him?”

“He was lying on the ground, and he wasn’t moving. His head was bleeding, too.”

“Okay…”

“But right then, I got spooked. I couldn’t stop shaking.”

Teshigawara lifted one knee to his chest and dug into his sweaty hair with both hands.

“I ran out into the hallway…and came here. ’Cause I knew you were coming to Misaki’s room. I thought I should tell you guys first.”

“What about Mochizuki?”

“You can’t rely on that guy.”

“…In any case, why did you ask us those questions?”

“’Cause of that tape. Remember?”

Teshigawara lowered his hands from his hair and looked up at my face. His bloodshot eyes were rimmed with tears that seemed ready to pour down his face any second.

“Like Katsumi Matsunaga said, after he killed the ‘extra person’ on the camping trip fifteen years ago…You heard what he said, right? As soon as the ‘extra person’ died,
he ceased to exist
. No one in the whole class remembered that he’d ever been there, except for Matsunaga, ’cause he’s the one who did it. That’s why I…”

“You wanted to make sure if Kazami was really the ‘extra person’ or not.”

“Right. But you said you know who he is.”

Teshigawara’s shoulders heaved. His voice desperate, he asked me, “Did I really get it wrong? Sakaki—did I?”

Searching for a way to answer him, I saw two possibilities at this point, when considered calmly.

The first was that the “extra person” was not Tomohiko Kazami, just as Teshigawara feared. In other words, the possibility that Teshigawara had “gotten it wrong.”

The other was the possibility that even if the “extra person” was Tomohiko Kazami, he wasn’t dead yet. As far as I knew from what Teshigawara had told us, he hadn’t gone down from the balcony to check if Kazami was truly deceased. So he might still be…

“He might not be dead.”

“What?”

“Falling from the second story wouldn’t necessarily kill him. He could still be breathing but just unconscious.”

“Oh, man—”

Teshigawara got unsteadily to his feet and turned to the window. He reached out, practically pitching forward, to open the window and stepped out onto the balcony. I hurried after him.

A humid breeze blew against us. In the sickly light of the moon, pouring down between the clouds…

Pressing his chest against the railing of the balcony, slippery still from the rain, Teshigawara stretched his right arm out diagonally ahead. To the left of the front door, on one end of the building’s second floor…There we saw the cloudy glow of several lit windows. That must have been the rec room.