Another, Vol. 1 (15 page)

“You know that thing I promised I would tell you about sometime? The truth is, this girl Mei Misaki has something to do with it.”

Ms. Mizuno blinked her goggle-eyes and nodded, murmuring thoughtfully. I explained the situation to her, trying to be as simple and systematic as possible.

“Hm-m-m.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and nodded just as she had before, then took another bite of her egg sandwich.

“You told me about her before, this girl with the eye patch. I don’t remember when. Heh. So you have a crush on little Mei, huh?”

“Wha—”

Hey…h-hold on a second, lady.

“That’s not it,” I replied, a little bit indignant. “It’s just…there’s something really strange about how she acts in the classroom. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“We call that having a crush.”

“I
said
I
don’t
.”

“Fine, fine. I get it. So let me try getting a handle on this another way.”

I waited.

“That day at the end of April—I think it was the twenty-seventh?—the girl who died at the hospital was Mei’s cousin Misaki Fujioka. Mei was very sad, and she was going to the memorial chapel to see Misaki and ‘deliver’ something to her. Right?”

“Yes.”

“And? What’s so strange about the way Mei acts in class?”

“I mean…”

I had to really think hard about how to answer.

“Um…I think she’s just strange to start out with. But…you know what I mean? At first I thought maybe the class was kind of picking on her. Or maybe they were all scared of her.”

“Scared of her?”

“It’s not quite that either, though.”

Several things that I’d seen and heard since that day when I’d first come to North Yomi floated lazily through my mind.

“I have this friend named Teshigawara, and he called me up out of nowhere and told me to ‘quit paying attention to
things that aren’t there
.’”

“What does that mean?”

“According to her, it means that she’s invisible, which…”

Ms. Mizuno folded her arms over her chest again and murmured. “Hm-m-m.”

I pressed on. “And then, with all that going on, that accident happened last week.”

“Hm-m-m. Well, the obvious interpretation is that it’s purely a coincidence. There’s nothing to link the two together, is there?”

“When you take the obvious interpretation, no.”

But…

“There’s another issue that’s been bothering me. It’s something that happened twenty-six years ago…”

And then I told her “the legend of Misaki.” Ms. Mizuno didn’t make a sound the whole time I talked; she just listened in silence.

“…Did you know that story?”

“That’s the first time I’ve heard it. I went to South Middle, after all.”

“But your little brother knows about it.”

“Oh, you think so?”

“I still don’t have any idea how the two things are related. But there does seem to be a connection, and I…”

“I see-e-e.”

Ms. Mizuno drained the coffee that remained in her cup.

“I haven’t been back to school since it happened, so I don’t know what’s going on in the class right now. You haven’t…heard anything about it from your brother, right?”

“This has really started to sound like a horror story. You aren’t going to eat your hot dog?”

“Oh, yeah. Thanks.”

It wasn’t for lack of hunger, that’s for sure. As she watched me bite into my hot dog, Ms. Mizuno said, “Why don’t I see if I can find anything out? About what happened twenty-six years ago, and about Mei. Unfortunately I’m not very friendly with my brother, so I don’t know how much he’ll tell me. You’re going to school tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah.”

My first time going to school in a week.

The thought made my anxiety ramp up instantly. And also…

What was Mei doing right now?

My chest ached dully, in a way that was different from the symptoms of a lung collapsing, or nearly collapsing.

“If I find anything out, I’ll call you. Are you coming back to the hospital soon?”

“This Saturday.”

“Saturday…June sixth? Hey, did you ever see
The Omen
?”

“When I was in elementary school, I saw it on TV.”

“I don’t think Damien is in our town, but…” Ms. Mizuno’s face took on the “novice nurse who loves horror” look and a teasing smile spread over her face. “But anyway, we’ll both be careful. Especially for any accidents that would never usually happen.”

When we left the restaurant, the rain had stopped and tiny bits of sunlight were peeking through the clouds in places.

I accepted Ms. Mizuno’s offer to drive me home and got into the passenger seat of her car, but on the way there I realized we were in a familiar part of town, and I asked her to let me out. We were in the town of Misaki, near the doll gallery “Blue Eyes Empty to All, in the Twilight of Yomi.”

“You live in Furuchi, don’t you, Sakakibara? It’s still pretty far.”

She glanced over at me dubiously, so I told her, “I’ve been cooped up for so long, I want to walk a little,” and I got out of the car.

I found “Twilight of Yomi” almost immediately.

Outside the entrance, a middle-aged woman wearing bright, marigold-colored clothes stood on the landing of the outdoor stairway that ran up the side of the building. Our eyes just happened to meet—or so it seemed.
Is she from the doll workshop upstairs?
I wondered, giving her a casual nod, but she simply climbed the stairs in silence, without the slightest reaction.

I folded my collapsible umbrella up neatly and put it away in my bag, then pushed the door open.

The bell over the door rang dully, just like last time.

“Hello there.”

The same white-haired old woman was at the same table next to the entrance, and she greeted me in the same tone of voice as last time. It was the middle of the day, but still the inside of the shop—no, I should say the inside of “the gallery”—had the same dusky lighting as the last time I’d been here.

“What’s this? We don’t get many young men in here.”

Even that was the same…

“Are you in middle school? No school today? Then you can go in for half price.”

“…Thank you.”

As I pulled my coin purse out of a pocket, the old woman added one more thing: “You take your time and have a look around. There aren’t any other customers right now, anyway.”

Feeling faintly lightheaded, I moved into the gallery.

String instruments playing a gloomy melody. Armies of dolls everywhere, both beautiful and eerie. Fantastical landscapes decorating the walls. Every last detail was the same as before. Feeling as if I were trapped in a peculiar recurring nightmare, I set my bag down on the sofa in the back. Then…

Taking deep breaths for those who had no breath, I headed toward the stairs that led down to the basement, as if pulled there at last by puppet strings.

The chill air of the basement room, so like a crypt, and the dolls (or, their various parts) lying all over the place were just as I remembered them. And in the niche-like depressions in the wall, the girl without the right arm, the boy with thin wings and the lower half of his face covered, the twins joined at the abdomen…And, yes, the black coffin that stood all the way at the back, and the doll shut up inside it that looked exactly like Mei Misaki.

Unlike last time, I didn’t feel my head clouding or my body getting much colder. But, again as if led by puppet strings, I walked over to stand before the coffin at the very back of the room.

This doll had been made by
Kirika
—written to mean “fruit in the mists.” That’s what Mei had told me. I held my breath for a few moments, staring at the doll’s face, even more waxen than the real Mei; at the mouth that seemed ready to speak at any moment—when…

Something happened then that was impossible to accept as reality right away.

From the shadows of the black coffin holding the doll, slowly, silently…

…How could that be?

All at once, I felt another faint wave of lightheadedness.

You take your time and have a look around.

The words the old woman had spoken just moments ago rang in my ears.

There aren’t any other customers right now, anyway.

…Oh, of course.

The old woman had said that the last time I’d come, too.
There aren’t any other customers
—I was sure of it. Her words had tugged faintly at my mind that day, too.
There aren’t any other customers—
and yet.

Why?

Slowly, silently, from the shadow of the black coffin…

Why?

…She appeared—Mei Misaki.

She looked a little cold in this underground room, dressed in only a navy blue skirt and a white summer blouse. Her skin looked even paler than usual.

“What a coincidence. Meeting in a place like this again,” Mei said, smiling faintly.

A coincidence…Is that what it was? I was struggling for a response when Mei asked me, “Why did you come here today?”

“I’m on my way home from the hospital. I happened to be walking by,” I replied, then asked her a question in return. “What about you? You didn’t go to school?”

“Well, you know. I ended up not going today,” she said, smiling faintly again. “Are you feeling better, Sakakibara?”

“Just enough to avoid getting hospitalized again, I guess. How has everyone in class been since that—since Sakuragi’s accident?”

Mei made a low noise, “Mm,” then replied, “Everyone’s…scared.”

Scared. Ms. Mizuno had said that, too.

It looked like he was scared of something.

“Scared? Of what?”

“They think
it’s started
.”

“What’s started?”

Mei
abruptly
turned her gaze aside. She looked unsure of how to answer.

“I—”

After a silence of several seconds, she spoke.

“I guess I’ve only ever half believed it, in the back of my mind. First
that
happened, then in May you came to our school and I told you all that stuff, but I still didn’t believe it a hundred percent. I guess I still doubted some part of it. But…”

She cut herself off and turned her gaze back to me. Her right eye narrowed, questioning, and I cocked my head to one side, uncomprehending.

“But it really does seem like
it’s one of those years
,” Mei continued. “A hundred percent certain, probably.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Because
it’s started
. So…”

Mei’s eye narrowed again, as if challenging me,
What do you think about that?
But all I could do was cock my head at her.

“So you still don’t know, huh, Sakakibara?” Mei murmured, turning her back on me quietly. “Then maybe you’re not actually supposed to know. If you found out, then maybe…”

“Hold on,” I spoke up reflexively. “You tell me stuff like that and then expect me to…”

I wanted to just shrug my shoulders at her and say “no idea.”
“It’s starting,” “I doubted,” “it’s one of those years”
…I wish she’d cut it out with the all-knowing act already.

“Do you think you’ll be able to go to school?” Mei asked, her back still turned to me.

“Yeah. I go back tomorrow.”

“Ah. If you’re going, then I should probably stay away.”

“What? Now come on. What are you—”

“Be careful.”

She turned slightly as she spoke.

“And you shouldn’t tell people that you saw me here.”

Then she turned her back on me again and walked off, her feet making no sound, to disappear behind the black coffin.

After a few moments, I tried calling to her softly. “C’mon, Misaki.”

I took a step forward—“Look, why are you…”—but my legs tangled slightly. A moment too late, I started to feel an odd, wobbly dizziness.

Don’t you feel it being
sucked out of you?

Everything you have inside you?

The words Mei had spoken the last time I’d seen her here flowed through my spinning head like a spell.

Dolls are emptiness. Their bodies and hearts are total emptiness…a void.

That emptiness is like death.

Somehow I managed to take a step forward and keep my balance.

Like death…

With trepidation, I peered behind the coffin. But there…

I found Mei was gone.

There was no one else there, either.

The dark red curtains hanging in front of the wall were fluttering slightly in the breeze of the air-conditioning. A shudder ran through me as I was touched by a sudden midwinter chill.

“Why? Why?”

Ray the mynah bird repeated the question with her (…I think) usual enthusiasm.

Why? Look you,
I’m
the one who wants to know why. I was glaring into the cage, but she never wavered.

“Why? Ray. Why? Morning. Morning.”

After dinner, I went out to the porch on the first floor, where the signal was good, and tried calling my dad in India. Apparently his phone was turned off, though, because I called him three times and three times it didn’t go through. Maybe he was still at work. Night hadn’t fallen yet over there.

Well, whatever.
I gave the idea up quickly.

Even if I told him about the accident last week or the bad turn I’d taken physically, he couldn’t exactly give me advice on anything beyond that. The only thing I wanted from my dad, if anything, was to hear about my deceased mother’s time in middle school. But of course I was still a long way from having a concrete idea of how her stories would tie into the events that were happening right now, or if they even would at all.

Part of me also wanted to ask if there were any pictures of my mother from back then. Or maybe a yearbook, but the school would be more likely to still have one of those. In fact, yeah—if I went to the secondary library in Building Zero…

I left the porch, abandoning Ray, and peered into the living room, where Reiko was watching TV for once. There was a stand-up comedy variety show on, which didn’t seem like the sort of thing she would enjoy watching, but looking closer I saw that Reiko was sunk into the sofa, both her eyes shut tight…
So she’s asleep.