Another, Vol. 1 (12 page)

“That’s it for tonight. It’s bed for me. I’ll shower after I get up tomorrow. Good night.”

Reiko was getting unsteadily to her feet, but I screwed up my courage and called out to stop her. I needed to find out what had happened twenty-six years ago as soon as I could.

“…You know the story, don’t you, Reiko? About what happened twenty-six years ago?”

She’d just lifted herself from the sofa, but now fell heavily back onto it.

“Yeah. They’ve told that story forever.”

“Is it one of the ‘Seven Mysteries’?”

“This is on a different level.”

“Did you find out about it after you started middle school, too, Reiko?”

“Yup. Not from any particular person, though, just from rumors.”

“When my mom was in her third year at middle school, she was in the Class 3 from the story. Did you know about that?”

“…After.” Reiko brushed her bangs away from her face and slowly leaned back to stare at the ceiling. “Ritsuko told me about that later. But…”

“What’s the rest of the story?”

Riding my momentum, I peppered her with questions, hoping. But that made Reiko’s face harden and she quickly buttoned up. A long moment later, she said, “I don’t know that, Koichi.”

Her voice was several pitches lower.

“You do know, Reiko.”

She said nothing.

“Reiko, c’m—”

“People have added a lot of embellishments to that story.”

I heard a sigh and turned around to find my grandmother sitting at the dining room table, her hands covering her face. It was a pose that suggested she had been struggling not to see or hear our conversation.

“Maybe it would be best if you don’t think about it for now,” Reiko said at last. She stood up, stretched her back, then looked straight at me. She’d gone back to her usual relaxed tone that I knew so well. “There’s a time for finding out about some things. And maybe once you miss your chance, sometimes you’re better off not knowing. At least, until the next chance comes along.”

The next day, Thursday, I didn’t see Mei Misaki all day.

Exams were coming up soon…Was she all right?

I didn’t know how good Mei was at school or how her grades were. In fact, I had never once seen her called on in class to read from the book or solve a problem. But more importantly, if she kept being out all the time, her attendance might not be good enough to graduate.

Though I had a feeling that if I expressed that concern to her, she would probably snap back, “Is that your business?”

I considered trying to get in touch with her. But then I realized that I still hadn’t received a class list or anything like that since transferring here. So there was no way for me to find out her phone number or where she lived. Though I had to admit, that would be easy enough to find out if I really wanted to…

She probably lived near that doll shop—I mean, the doll gallery. And she probably went over there occasionally to look at the dolls, like she had that day. Yes. I was convinced of it.

What are her parents like? I wondered.

Does she have a close friend somewhere?

How did her left eye, the one she kept behind that eye patch, get that way? Maybe she just wasn’t that sturdy, physically. There were reasons to think so. That could be why she always sat out of gym, and why she was out of school so much…Ah, but maybe…

…And on, and on.

I continued to rack my brain, but I was the only one in the class doing it—I never saw anything to suggest otherwise. Although I suppose nothing was going to come of my ruminations right now anyway…

In the midst of all this—

After lunch, when we were heading to Building Zero—where the art studio was—for fifth-period art class, I casually turned and looked up at the roof of the school building and spotted her.

It was almost exactly like that time I’d been sitting out of gym class, in the shade of a tree by the field, on my first day at school two weeks ago. A figure standing alone, right behind the iron railing that circled the roof.

I was heading over with Mochizuki, the Munch aficionado, but all I told him was “Give me a second” before I left him behind and ran back into the iron-ribbed school building we had just come out of—Building C. I sprinted up the stairs and pushed open the cream-colored steel door leading to the roof without a moment’s hesitation.

But just then—

As it happened, I had slipped my cell phone into an inside pocket on my school uniform that day, and it started vibrating, groaning dully. What the…? Who could that be? At this precise moment? Why would anyone…?

I burst through the door and scanned the area for Mei as I pulled out my phone and put it to my ear. It was Teshigawara calling.

“You okay?”

“What? Why are you calling me?”

“I’m calling ’cause I thought you might be in trouble. Akazawa’s pretty wound up. She might start having some kind of hysterical episode.”

“Meaning what? Why does Akazawa care?”

“Look, Sakaki…”

Hhshssshhshshh
…Hissing obscured his voice in a sandstorm of noise. I didn’t think the two things were related, but just then a fierce wind gusted across the roof, howling.

“…Okay? I’m not trying to give you a hard time here.”

I could barely make out Teshigawara’s voice, surfacing between the sound of the wind and the interference.

“Got it, Sakaki? Quit paying attention to
things that aren’t there
. It’s dangerous.”

…What?

What was he saying?

“Plus…You listening? Hey, Sakaki!”

“Yeah.”

“That story you were talking about yesterday, from twenty-six years ago…Is that bothering you?”

“I mean…”

“I talked to someone about it after that. Once we get to June, I’ll tell you about it. So for the rest of this month, could you…”

Hshssshhshshh, kksshhkkshhkk
…The interference got ten times worse and the call dropped with a
bztt
.

What had that been about? I could hardly understand what was happening. I was more than a little irritated, so I turned my phone off and shoved it back into my pocket so he couldn’t reach me even if he called back. My eyes swept every corner of the roof where the wind still blustered fiercely…

But there was no one there.

The next day, Mei showed up in the classroom, as normal.

However, I wasn’t able to say a single word to her. It wasn’t that Teshigawara’s call the day before had me worried. No, I don’t think so. It was just that somehow, in her silence, she seemed to be denying me any contact.

I hadn’t said a word to Teshigawara, either, after that. There was so much I wanted to get out of him, but—and maybe he was avoiding that questioning—he never came near me. Seriously, what was going on here?

Tomorrow was the fourth Saturday of the month, so there was no school again. I had an outpatient appointment at the municipal hospital, but there hadn’t been any major changes in my condition, so I was considering canceling it and rescheduling for next week. I doubt my grandmother would nag much if I did that. Midterms were starting first thing next week, too. The best thing to do was probably to get some studying in. I kind of did think I’d ace the exams, but to be honest, I’m a pretty big chicken…or maybe just an enormously serious student.

…And so.

Fighting back the desire to check out the doll gallery in the town of Misaki again, I spent the weekend nights secluded at home and didn’t go anywhere.

I got two calls on my cell phone.

The first was from a faraway Hindu nation.

Like last time, my father, Yosuke, kept exclaiming, “Sure is hot here!” but basically he was checking up on me: “Have you been all right since then?” When I told him that midterms were coming up soon, he came back with “Don’t stress yourself too much over them.” Considering I was totally incapable of not stressing over them, though, that advice made me wonder whether this man understood his son’s personality at all.

The next person who called me caught me a little by surprise. It was Ms. Mizuno, from the municipal hospital.

“Staying healthy?”

Since that was the first thing she said, I knew who it was right away. At the same time, a faint nervousness hit me.

“You remember that thing from before—I guess it was two weeks ago now—about that girl? The one who passed away at the end of April, in the inpatient ward?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I kept thinking about her after we talked, and I checked into something. When I did, I found out her name really was Misaki, not Masaki.”

“Was Misaki her last name? Or—?”

“No, it was her first name.”

So it wasn’t the same as Mei Misaki. Which meant what?

“How did she write it?”

“With the characters for ‘future’ and ‘flowers blooming’—to make Misaki.”

“Misaki…”

“Her last name was Fujioka.”

Misaki Fujioka, eh?

I couldn’t help falling into deep thought over it.

What made Misaki Fujioka “half my body” to Mei Misaki? What could it be?

“Why did you want to know about her?” Ms. Mizuno asked me. “You did promise you’d tell me.”

“Oh, uh…about that.”

“You don’t have to tell me right this second. But sometime.”

“Okay.”

“By the way, Horror Boy. What are you reading recently?”

And so she dropped the talk about promises just like that. As I was responding, “Oh, uh,” my eyes fell to the book right next to me. “Um, volume two of the paperback version of
Lovecraft: the Complete Works
.”

“Oho,” I heard her say in her normal tone. “How very refined of you! Aren’t you about to start midterms at your middle school?”

“You know, it’s just for breaks in studying,” I replied. But considering the amount of time I spent on each, the truth was exactly the opposite: I was studying a little bit during breaks in reading the book.

“You’re so responsible, Horror Boy,” Ms. Mizuno said, sounding amused. “I wish my little brother would learn from your example. He doesn’t care about reading at all, let alone horror. His head’s only got room for basketball. We usually don’t have anything to talk about, even though we’re brother and sister.”

“You have a little brother?”

“Two of them. The basketball boy is in the same exact school year as you.”

“Wow, I didn’t know that.”

“My other brother’s a second-year in high school, but he’s another musclehead obsessed with exercise. I don’t know if he’s ever read anything that wasn’t a comic book. Quite a problem, no?”

“I guess.”

I had a feeling that the fifteen-year-old reading the Cthulhu mythology alone in his room on the weekend was more of a problem, but…whatever, I guess.

Actually—that made me realize something.

Wasn’t there a boy in my class named Mizuno? He was tall and really tan and had a sporty look. I’d never talked to him, but could he be Ms. Mizuno’s youngest brother?

It was a small town. This kind of coincidence might not be so unusual.

“Um, Ms. Mizuno…did you go to North Yomi for middle school, too?” I posed the question to her, suddenly concerned.

“I was at South Middle,” she replied. “My house is right on the border between the two schools, so depending on what year it is, we go to north or south. So my first brother and I went to South Middle, and my youngest brother is going to North Middle.”

…I see.

Then Ms. Mizuno probably wouldn’t know about the Misaki from twenty-six years ago.

I felt relieved somehow, and the two of us went on with our frivolous conversation about our shared hobby.

May 26, Tuesday.

The second day of first-semester midterm exams.

Rain had been falling steadily since the night before, threatening the start of the rainy season. I thought it was pretty unusual for a school nowadays (and this was my first experience of it), but North Yomi didn’t require indoor-only shoes. Except for the gymnasium, everyone kept their outside shoes on, even inside the school building. So on days like this when it rained, the floors in the hall and the classrooms became a mess of wet footprints.

In second period, the proctor for the language arts exam, our last subject, was Mr. Kubodera.

He passed out the exam papers; then, with the directive, “All right, you may start,” the room fell silent. The sound of mechanical pencils tracing over paper was enhanced by an occasional restrained cough or a low sigh. I may have changed schools, but the atmosphere during a test was the same everywhere.

After about thirty minutes had passed since the start of the test, a student got up from their desk and left the classroom. I reacted to the sound and to some impression they’d made, and reflexively I looked over toward the window. Mei wasn’t there.
Geez, she finished early and left again, huh?

After a bit of internal debate, I put my answer sheet facedown on my desk and got up from my chair. I started to leave the room silently, when—

“Finished already, Sakakibara?”

Mr. Kubodera stopped me.

I lowered my voice a shade. “Yes. So I was going to…”

“Don’t you think you should use the rest of the time to check over your answers?”

“No. That’s okay.”

I was conscious of a low buzzing that had sprung up here and there in the room as I answered.

“I’m confident in my answers. May I leave?”

I looked over at the door Mei had so recently opened and shut. Mr. Kubodera was at a loss for a moment, but finally he lowered his gaze. “I suppose so. You may leave the room, but don’t go home. Just wait quietly somewhere. We’re having an unscheduled homeroom after this.”

The buzzing spread through the whole classroom. I could feel everyone’s eyes flicking toward me to an uncomfortable degree.

They were probably thinking I was a snob. And if they did, they did: there was nothing I could do about it. And yet…

I couldn’t help cocking my head to one side and wondering why.

We’d done exactly the same thing, so why had it turned out this way for me, but no one said anything to Mei? Wasn’t that pretty odd? Now it really did seem as though something was…