Another, Vol. 2 (8 page)

With this plan in mind, I told Reiko, “It’s fine; don’t worry,” and pasted on a clumsy smile for her. “Please don’t push yourself too hard, Reiko. It’s fine.”

The morning of the 17th, a Friday.

The nightmares had stopped tormenting me the night before. It could have been Teshigawara’s assurances, which had come down in a wisecracking tone, or I could have been more relaxed. So I guess I owed him thanks, as things stood right now.

“Sakakibara, wasn’t it?”

Someone called to me when I was coming into school that morning, just as I came into sight of the front gate.

It was an unfamiliar man’s voice, from up ahead. Caught by surprise, I looked into the man’s face. A middle-aged man I’d seen before was coming toward me. A kind smile came over his face and he raised one hand in a friendly gesture.

“Um, you’re…” I searched my memory hastily and recalled his name. “Mr. Oba, right? From the Yomiyama Police Department.”

“I’m flattered that you remember me.”

After Ms. Mizuno’s accident, two detectives had questioned me in the teachers’ office. He was the older of the two, with a plump, round face.

“Um…Can I help you?”

“Oh, no, I just spotted a familiar face and thought, you know.”

“Are you here about the thing that happened to Mr. Kubodera on Monday? Are you investigating it, too?”

I asked the question flat out.

The smile disappeared from the detective’s round face and he nodded. “Well, yes. You witnessed the incident in the classroom that morning, correct?”

“…Yeah.”

“It must have been a shock. For your teacher to suddenly…”

“Yeah, it was.”

“We’re treating the incident as a suicide. The circumstances don’t allow much room for suspicion. The issue remains the motive for his suicide.”

“I’ve heard rumors. How Mr. Kubodera’s mother was bedridden and he…”

“That’s gotten out already, has it?”

The detective’s lips bent in a rueful arc, but who knows what thoughts were behind it, because he then told me the following story. In the same overly soothing voice as the last time we’d met.

“After killing his mother, it appears that your teacher spent the time before heading into school sharpening the knife he used to kill himself. Quite vigorously, at that. Signs of the activity were left in his kitchen. It paints a scene much stranger than we had even imagined.

“No matter who we ask, we’re told that Mr. Kubodera was an extremely serious, placid man. And then he pursued these acts out of the blue. It’s truly odd.”

“…Definitely.”

What was this detective trying to accomplish by latching onto me in a place like this? What did he want me to tell him? Just then—

“The accidental death of Ms. Sanae Mizuno last month.”

Out of nowhere, he spoke her name.

“The accidental death of Ms. Yukari Sakuragi the month before. And her mother’s death in a car accident the same day.”

“Um, yes?”

“I’ve looked into all of them, and there’s no possible explanation except that they were purely accidental. Since there’s no sign of foul play, we have no business sniffing around.”

“…Oh.”

“And yet—how should I put it? These cases continue to nag at me. I’ve heard that there was another boy who died last month, although that was from an illness. A student named Takabayashi. It’s a fact that quite a few people all linked to the same middle school class have lost their lives in a very short period of time. Trying to ignore it is a waste of effort. Don’t you agree?”

As the detective spoke, his eyes were fixed searchingly on my face. But all I could do was murmur “I mean…” and crane my head to one side.

“I can’t shake it from my mind, so I’ve been making the rounds asking people about it,” the detective went on. “Purely out of personal interest.”

I stayed silent, and my head stayed tilted to the side.

“In the process, here and there I picked up on a peculiar rumor. They call it ‘the curse of third-year Class 3.’”

I didn’t say a word.

“You’ve heard of it, haven’t you, Sakakibara? That third-year Class 3 at Yomiyama North Middle is cursed and there are ‘cursed years’ that roll around on an irregular schedule. In those years, someone linked to the class will die every month. This is one of the ‘cursed years,’ they say. I thought it was ridiculous, but I looked into it a little, all the same. And when I did, I found that there have been years in the past when quite a lot of students and people with connections to this school really
do
die.”

“I…don’t know anything about that.”

I shook my head firmly, filling the gesture with a note of denial. I wonder how very unnatural a reaction it seemed, however, in the detective’s eyes.

“Ah, no…Obviously that’s not enough for me to be able to do anything about this issue. If I tried to tell the other detectives or my boss about this, they’d just laugh me out of the department.”

At that, the gentle smile returned to the detective’s round face.

“Even if we assume that this talk about a ‘curse’ is true, there’s nothing we can do about it. That’s the reality. I just have an individual interest. I’d like to determine what’s true and what’s not, if I can.”

I couldn’t say why, but I felt as if I had understood what was in the man’s heart. And, being me, I couldn’t help giving him my candid opinion.

“Still, Detective, I really don’t think you should get involved in this. It probably won’t help anything to have the police around. And if you’re not careful, you could be putting yourself in danger, too.”

“Someone else gave me the same warning.” The smile on the detective’s round face shifted into a rueful smirk. “I suppose you’re right. It hardly seems likely, but then again…”

Trailing off, the detective rummaged in his pockets. He pulled out a battered business card and handed it to me.

“I may be a useless police officer, but if you ever think I might be able to help, don’t hesitate to get in touch. I’d appreciate if you could call my cell phone. The number’s on the back of the card.”

“…Okay.”

“The fact is, I have a daughter in her fourth year of elementary school.”

The detective added this, last of all.

“If she goes into a public middle school like she’s supposed to, then she might wind up at North Yomi. And given that, well, this issue has been nagging at me. I ask myself, what if my daughter is in third-year Class 3 someday?”

“Yeah…” Even as I nodded, I added, “She’ll be okay,” a completely irresponsible thing to say. “I’m sure the curse will be broken by then. I’m sure…”

That day after classes, Mei and I went to the secondary library together. Naturally, we were going to see Mr. Chibiki. Teshigawara and Kazami—back in school starting that day—seemed to want to come with us, but thankfully they decided to hold off. I wanted to avoid too many people coming and having the conversation go all over the place.

“Why, hello. How have you two been?”

The tone and smile Mr. Chibiki greeted us with seemed totally artificial. My mind locked up over how to respond, thinking,
I haven’t exactly been great…
But at my side, Mei replied with a demure look on her face, “We’re doing fine, thank you. Avoiding bizarre accidents and sudden illnesses.”

“Now that there’s been a ‘death for July,’ it seems the ‘not there’
game
has come to an end, as well.”

“Yes. Although I kind of feel like that’s actually thrown everything off balance somehow.”

“Hm-m-m. I would call it the overall cohesiveness, rather than ‘balance.’ But I suppose you’re right. Everyone is going to be at a complete loss for how to behave going forward, after all.”

At this point, Mr. Chibiki’s face became serious and, returning to his usual tone, stripped of all excess emotion, he said, “Actually, Ms. Mikami came in here today.”

“She did?”

I reacted instantly.

“Is that surprising?”

“Oh, uh, no…”

“She knows my history here, too, so she wanted to have a serious discussion with me.”

“A discussion? Like what she should do now that she’s the substitute head teacher for Class 3?”

“Something like that,” Mr. Chibiki replied ambiguously. Then, without pausing, he turned the question back on us. “What about you two? Did you have something you wanted to discuss with me?”

“Um, yeah.”

I nodded soberly.

“There’s something I wanted to check, and something I wanted to ask.”

“Oho.”

“The truth is…”

Then I told Mr. Chibiki the story.

About “the year when the ‘disasters’ began, but then stopped partway through.” How it had happened in 1983, fifteen years ago when Reiko was in third-year Class 3, and how apparently
something
had happened during a class camping trip over summer break that year. I had already told Mei about it.

“Eighty-three…Yes, I believe that was indeed the year.”

Pushing the bridge of his glasses up his nose, Mr. Chibiki slowly closed his eyes and then opened them again.

“The single year in these last twenty-five when it stopped partway through.”

Then he pulled the binder with the black cover out of a drawer on his side of the counter. It was the binder with the class lists for the past third-year Class 3s.

“First of all, let’s take a look at this.”

He held it out to us. It was already open to the page for 1983.

Like in all the others,
X
s had been written in red pen next to several of the names that ran down the page. These were the students who’d died. Notes on the date and
how they had died
were in the space to the right. I saw a couple of cases where the students themselves had been fine, but a member of their family had died. But there was no mention of the death of Reiko’s older sister, Ritsuko.

“There were seven victims that year, not including Ritsuko, whom I never found out about.” Mr. Chibiki added this explanation as he peered across the counter at the file. “Two in April, one in May, one in June, one in July, and two in August. You said Ritsuko died in July, I believe? So then there were two in July, and eight total. As you can see, there were no more deaths after that, starting in September. Meaning…”

“It stopped in August.”

“Correct. Take a look at the date of death for the ‘deaths of August.’”

I did as I was told. And what I discovered was…

Both of the people who’d died in August were students in Class 3. Moreover, the two of them had both died on the same day: August 9. The way they’d died was also the same: “Accident.”

“Two students died on the same day in an accident…”

The
link
was easy to see.

“Was this on the camping trip over summer break?”

Mr. Chibiki nodded without a word, so I went on, “Some sort of accident happened on the trip, and the two of them died. But during the same trip,
something
happened that made the ‘disasters’ for that year stop…”

“If you look at the space at the bottom of the page, the name of ‘the casualty’ isn’t written there, is it?” Mr. Chibiki said, directing my attention. I looked and saw that, indeed, there was nothing written there. “I wasn’t able to confirm who the ‘extra person,’ or in other words ‘the casualty,’ was for that year. Since the ‘disasters’ stopped partway through, I wonder if perhaps the ‘extra person’ disappeared without waiting for graduation. And maybe the traces of his or her presence that year had also disappeared at the same time. There was no precedent for the situation, so I didn’t know what was going on, either. By the time I sensed that’s what may have happened and did my research, the memories of those involved had already faded and there was no one left who remembered the name of the ‘extra person.’”

“Hm-m-m.”

I pressed a hand to my forehead and mulled over this information, while beside me Mei asked, “But, in any case, it is true that the ‘disasters’ for that year ended in August, right?”

“That’s right.”

“The major question is why—and how—did they stop?”

“Right.”

“You’re saying you still don’t really understand the ‘why’?”

“Not clearly, no. All I know is at the level of rumor or conjecture.”

“Rumor or conjecture?” I asked. “Saying what?”

Mr. Chibiki creased his brow in a pained look as he ran his palm over his straw-like hair.

“Just as you said a few moments ago, Sakakibara—the camping trip took place at the overnight facility belonging to the school at the foot of Yomiyama.”

“Is that facility still there?”

“It’s been maintained. The building is called the ‘Sakitani Memorial Hall,’ and it’s still used from time to time for club camping trips and that sort of thing. Though I’m sure it must be quite dilapidated by now. Incidentally, there’s an old shrine partway up the slope of Yomiyama.”

“A shrine?”

“It’s also named after the mountain: Yomiyama Shrine.”

“Yomiyama Shrine…” I murmured, looking over at Mei. She nodded without a moment’s thought. I could see she already knew that the place existed.

“During the camping trip, everyone went to visit that shrine, they say. Apparently it was the head teacher’s idea.”

“When you say they visited the shrine…” I tilted my head to one side. “You don’t mean there was some kind of divine intervention, do you?”

“Some people make that claim, actually.” Mr. Chibiki’s tone was cold. “‘Yomiyama’ was also the last name of that boy Misaki who died twenty-six years ago, after all. Not to mention that people have long suggested that the mountain’s name could have come from ‘Yomi,’ the name for the land of the dead. Yomiyama as the Mountain of Yomi. There are even oral traditions that claim the shrine built there is—how shall I say—a ‘linchpin’ separating this world from the next. That must have inspired the head teacher at the time to make the suggestion.”

“And that’s why the ‘disasters’ stopped?”

“That’s what some people say. Didn’t I say that?”

“But then, wouldn’t that mean all someone would have to do in an ‘on year’ is visit the shrine?”

“Indeed. And naturally, there appear to have been people who had the same thought in subsequent years,” Mr. Chibiki informed us, his voice still cold. “It seems, however, that it had no effect.”