Goth (17 page)

Which of them had owned this? Looking at it, I was reminded again that they had lived here when they were very young.

The brooch in hand, I looked down the long hallway into the house. Morino’s grandmother had already gone into the living room and was out of sight.

I stood there thinking.

In my mind’s eye, the two doll-like twin girls from the photograph were walking down the hallway toward me, whispering to each other and gravely thinking about how they could next pretend to be dead. In my imagination, they went all the way to the end of the hall and turned the corner. Trying to follow them, I took off my shoes and stepped up into the house. I looked around the corner where they had vanished, but of course, there was nothing there—just a quiet, dark space at the end of the dimly lit corridor.

iv

On Monday, Morino was clearly glancing sideways at me, wondering. She obviously wanted to ask what I’d been up to in the country. But I spent the entire day pretending not to notice her gaze.

I didn’t speak to her until all the other students had left the room after the final class of the day. A few students had suggested I walk home with them, but I ignored their requests—which is not to say that I didn’t respond. Without any conscious participation on my part, my mind created some believable excuse, smoothly deflecting their invitations. I had no idea what excuses I’d made. I had no interest in my classmates whatsoever, and such interactions were always carried out automatically, allowing me to live without making waves.

Finally, the sound of my classmates’ footsteps faded, and the hall outside the room grew quiet. Only Morino and I remained. She was hunched over in her seat like a sinking ship, glaring sidelong at me.

I slowly crossed the quiet classroom toward her seat. She sat three rows from the window, three rows from the back.

“I hear you spent the night in the country. My grandmother called to tell me about it,” Morino said sleepily. The lines under her eyes had grown worse.

“She’s a good cook.”

I sat down in the seat in front of her, sideways, with the row of windows in front of me. It was still light out, and the sky was only slightly yellowed. In the distance, I could hear some sports team running and calling out as they did. The lights in the room were off, and the only illumination in the room was pouring through these windows.

“I heard a number of things at the house where you once lived.”

“For example?”

“The pranks you and your sister pulled as children. That Yoru would never cry no matter how much they scolded her, but that Yuu always cried instantly, hiding behind her sister.”

“She always depended on me.”

We sat in silence for a long moment. There was a quiet tension in the air. I looked at her again.

“I’ve figured out a number of things about Morino Yuu. I’m not sure about every detail, but …”

Morino stopped glaring at me. She slowly looked away, closing her eyes. Her lashes seemed to tremble above the dark lines under her eyes.

“I thought you might,” she said bitterly. She asked me what I had figured out.

“Yuu died when she was eight, nine years ago now,” I said. Morino did not open her eyes. “Nine years ago, that day, you found her body hanging in the shed, and you went to tell your grandmother. But you’d known there was a body in there already. You’d been waiting in the entrance for someone to come home so you could pretend to discover your sister’s death while someone was watching.”

I stopped, waiting for Morino’s reaction. She was silent for a moment and then she asked if that was all.

“You already knew your sister was dead. But you were acting, trying to hide that fact. When I try to imagine what would make you do something like that, I always come to one conclusion. In other words, you had something to do with your sister’s death.”

Morino nodded.

I continued. “Yuu had tied two ropes to the ceiling beam, one around her neck and the other under her arms, supporting her body.”

The little eight-year-old girl had jumped off the wooden box. For a moment, it must’ve looked like she was hanging from the rope around her neck. But in fact, the rope around her chest was keeping her from falling too far.

Then another girl appeared, a girl with the same face. That girl took the pruning shears from the wall and went over to the girl hanging from the ceiling. She cut the rope around the girl’s chest with the shears.

The rope broke, and this time the girl was hanging from the rope around her neck.

“You killed her.”

Morino opened her eyes a little, not looking at me—not looking at anything for long.

“Didn’t you hear about the footprints? My footprints were nowhere in the room.”

I imagined the girl hanging there barefoot. The ground in the shed had been softened by the rain.

“No, you left footprints all over the shed. But nobody knew the truth. After you cut the rope and killed her, you saw your own footprints on the ground. And you knew you couldn’t just walk away without arousing suspicion. You had to do something …”

Morino had looked up at the hanged corpse she’d made and down at the footprints on the ground, knowing she was in trouble. Then she saw the shoes that were placed next to each other on the ground, and she made up her mind.

She took off her own shoes, stepping onto a fallen box. Careful not to leave any more footprints, she put on the shoes that had been placed under the corpse, replacing them with her own.

Now the footprints belonged to the dead girl.

“All you had to do then was slip out through the dog door. The ground was still dry there, and you wouldn’t leave any footprints.”

Morino finally opened her eyes and looked at me. “And my motive?”

“Hatred,” I said.

Morino looked very sad. “When you said you’d ‘figured out a number of things about Morino Yuu,’ I knew you’d caught me.”

I nodded.

It had baffled me: Why had her grandmother been so sure it was Yoru standing there when she’d opened the front door? They were twins, and they looked exactly alike—nobody could tell them apart at a glance.

But if she had been wearing black shoes, then it would’ve been obvious.

“lt must’ve been hard to go nine years without telling anyone, Morino Yuu.” That was Morino’s real name.

†

A group of girls went down the hall laughing merrily.

Morino Yuu listened to them for a moment, until their voices faded and the hall was silent again.

“You’re right,” she said. “I’m the younger sister. I was the one who was always crying, always ordered around.” She frowned, looking at me. “How did you know?”

“Yuu didn’t know that people take off their shoes when they hang themselves. That made it all clear. When you were playing at suicide, Yoru might’ve told you, but I imagine you forgot.”

I told her about the pictures I’d seen in the house, the pictures they’d drawn of themselves playing at hanging.

“Those pictures were drawn during summer vacation nine years ago, just before Yoru’s death—which means whatever can be gleaned about the artist’s personality at the time is also true about her personality on the day Yoru died.”

Yoru and Yuu had drawn the same thing, but there had been a number of differences: In Yuu’s picture, both girls had been wearing shoes. But in Yoru’s picture, the girls’ legs had been flesh toned all the way down. At first, I’d thought Yuu had drawn more details—but later, I changed my mind.

I began to think that Yoru had drawn the picture correctly, from memory. Yuu had drawn the sun, but Yoru’s picture had a gray background—further evidence. At the bus stop, Morino had told me the hanging game had happened on a rainy day. It was not that Yoru had forgotten to draw the shoes—it was simply that they had both been barefoot.

“You said it yourself at the bus stop: you knew more about death than Yuu did; you were much crueler than she was. You were saying that as Yoru; so as a child, Yoru must have known about the strange custom of people taking off their shoes before hanging themselves.”

When the twins had played at hanging themselves, they’d probably taken off their shoes and placed them aside. Yoru had known that was what you did, and she had probably insisted on it. That knowledge was reflected in her drawing.

But not so with Yuu: She had taken off her shoes when they were playing and then forgotten all about it. She didn’t know the custom, and so she’d drawn herself hanging with shoes on.

The corpse in the shed had been barefoot, though. If Yuu had been playing at being hanged all by herself and had died when the support rope broke, then her body would’ve been wearing shoes.

Yuu was silent, listening carefully to nothing. Then her lips parted slowly and she spoke. “My sister with the black shoes died. And maybe I did hate her a little. But your guess isn’t completely accurate.” Her voice was very quiet. “You didn’t see the rope around her shoulders, did you? I didn’t cut it. It broke on its own.”

At around noon that day, her older sister Yoru had suggested they pretend to have hanged themselves, to surprise everybody.

Yuu had agreed, and the two had set to work in the shed just as it began to rain.

The dog was alive then, and it watched them work, looking puzzled.

“My sister piled up the boxes and wrapped the ropes around the beam. I stayed below, making sure the boxes didn’t fall over.

Yoru was on the boxes before the rain turned the ground soft, so her footprints were not in the shed.

Yoru alone was going to pretend to be dead, and Yuu was supposed to guide someone to the shed. Their preparations continued, and soon Yoru had both ropes around her body.

“And then my sister jumped.”

Yoru had kicked away the boxes and fallen. The moment it looked like she was hanging from her neck, though, she was actually caught by the rope around her shoulders.

She had looked down at Yuu and smirked.

“When she was tricking people, she always had a little twisted smile. She never used any expressions when she was talking with our family; when she was tricking people was the only time she seemed to be enjoying herself.”

But a moment later, the rope around her shoulders broke.

“I didn’t do anything. The rope simply wasn’t strong enough for my sister’s weight. It broke close to the ceiling. If you had seen the rope or had been told more about it, you would’ve guessed correctly. It broke much too high for me to have reached.”

Yoru hung there for a moment.

“I quickly tried to help. I wrapped my arms around her body and held her up. I was holding her in midair, trying to keep her from dropping any lower.”

In the shed, there had been a girl hanging from the ceiling by a rope around her neck, desperately supported by a girl who looked just like her. The hanging girl struggled, kicking her legs wildly in the air. The dog had been tied up next to them, and it began barking furiously. The sound of the dog barking and the girl suffering was deafening in the tiny room. It seemed like that moment lasted for eternity.

“I tried to stop my sister from dying. I wasn’t very strong, but I held her up. She kept screaming, though, her heels slamming into me.”

Morino sat hunched over in her chair, staring at the wall across the room, seeing nothing but the events of that day. The girl’s memories were nothing but a nightmare to her now.

If Yuu’s grip were to slip, her sister’s body would fall, and the rope would tighten.

Yoru’s eyes had been wide open in terror as she screamed at her sister—but she hadn’t been screaming encouragement.

“She said, ‘Hold tighter, stupid.’ ” Morino closed her eyes tightly, holding her emotions in check. “When I heard that, I stopped trying to save her. I let go.”

Yoru’s body had fallen.

Her toes had stopped just above the ground. Yoru had not been wearing shoes; she was barefoot. Her toes were spread wide, all the muscles contracted, shaking at first. The dog barked furiously, hurting Yuu’s ears. The convulsions and that barking seeped deep into her mind.

“Finally, her strength ebbed away, and her toes stopped moving.”

Yuu had stepped backward and felt the ground stick to her shoes. She’d left footprints.

“If it had been my weight alone, there wouldn’t have been footprints.” Her sister’s shoes had been placed on the ground next to her.

“I remember seeing those and deciding to lie to everyone. In that little shed … my sister’s body still swaying slightly, like the pendulum of a clock.”

The little girl’s immature brain had thought desperately and seen a path before her. She had changed into the black shoes, putting her own white shoes in their place.

Walking on dry ground, she had slipped out through the dog door. Her shoes were black, and black shoes identified her as Yoru. She had to call herself Yoru and act like Yoru.

“I could no longer smile like I used to. I had to keep my face blank, like my sister’s. We were always together, and I knew what my sister was like. I could imitate her. For nine years, no one ever guessed that I was Yuu.”

She gave a long, weary sigh.

At eight years old, she had watched her own funeral. She had lived most of her life never saying her real name. Nobody knew what was going on inside her, and those emotions had built up until she had slashed her wrist … all because of her sister and the name that had been buried with her. The road the young girl had decided to follow was one of sadness and isolation, one on which her entire existence depended.

The light from the windows was fading, turning gold. The pale yellow curtains were half-drawn, dimming the sun. I could hear the sound of the baseball team at batting practice echoing through the air. Time in the empty classroom ticked by in silence.

At last, Morino opened her mouth, still not sure if she should say it. “Do you remember where and when we first met?”

I believed it was in this classroom, at the beginning of our second year of high school. She looked a little disappointed to hear that.

“In junior high, I saw you at the museum, looking at a human body cut into slices. Then, in the spring when we entered high school, I saw you in the library reading a medical text on autopsies. I recognized you at once.”