Another, Vol. 1 (16 page)

A cold breeze was blowing from the air conditioner, making the room incredibly cold. Come on, Reiko! You’re going to catch a cold napping in a place like that. I was just about to leave the room to go shut the air conditioner off, at least, when—

“Koichi?”

She called out to me. I jumped and turned around. Reiko’s eyes were lazily open.

“When did I doze off…? Argh, this is no good. No good!”

She shook her head heavily. Just then someone on TV laughed shrilly. Reiko’s eyebrows dove into a scowl and she picked up the remote and turned the TV off.

“Are you all right?”

“Huh? Sure, I guess.”

Reiko moved from the couch to a chair in the dining room. She poured water into a glass from a pitcher that was on the table, then swallowed some sort of pills.

“I’ve got kind of a headache,” she said as I watched her. “It only takes this weak stuff to make it go away. But I’ve been getting so many headaches lately. It’s getting annoying.”

“You’re just tired, aren’t you? You’ve got all sorts of stuff to deal with, and um…”

She sighed softly, then replied, “I guess. More importantly, are you all right, Koichi? You went to the hospital today, right?”

“My condition has stabilized and there are no further issues, they said.”

“Oh. That’s good.”

“Um, Reiko?”

I sat down in a chair in the dining room, too, directly across from her.

“Do you remember how you said there’s a time for finding out about things? How there’s a time for everything? But—how can you tell when it’s time?”

I asked the question in all seriousness. But Reiko looked back at me with a morose expression.

“Did I say that?”

She cocked her head to one side. I was bewildered. Ray’s shrill voice asking “Why?” rang through my mind.

Was she playing dumb, or did she really not remember? Which was it?

“Um…okay, then can I ask you something I just thought of?” I collected myself and went with a different question. “When you were in your third year at North Yomi, what class were you in?”

“When I was a third-year?”

“Yeah. Do you remember?”

When I said that, Reiko rested her cheek in one hand, her face morose again, and replied, “I was in Class 3.”

“Class 3?…Really?”

“Mm-hm.”

“So then in your year…I mean, did they say ‘the curse of Class 3’ about your class or anything like that back then?”

“Mm-m-m.”

Her head still resting on her palm, Reiko seemed to be searching for an answer. But in the end she gave a soft sigh like she had before and said, “That was fifteen years ago. I forget.”

Ignoring whether or not her excuse was genuine…

Fifteen years ago?

All of a sudden, I felt uncomfortable, but I wasn’t sure why.

Fifteen years ago would have been…Oh. I see. Of course. But that was…

“You’re going back to school tomorrow, right?” Reiko asked.

“Yeah. That’s the plan.”

“I taught you the ‘North Yomi fundamentals,’ right? Do you remember what to do?”

“Uh, yes. I already…”

“Even number three?”

“…Yeah.”

Of course I remembered. I remembered number one and number two, which seemed like superstitions, and number four, which had the greatest meaning for me. And number three…I believe that one was…

“Obey whatever the class decides, at any cost—was that it?”

“That’s right.”

Reiko nodded slowly.

“What about it?”

Reiko suddenly gave a drawn-out yawn, then shook her head back and forth rapidly. Then, shaking it off, she said, “Oh, uh…What was it…?” and craned her head all the way to one side.

“We were talking about number three of the ‘North Yomi fundamentals.’”

“Oh, were we? Let’s see. You should adhere to all of them, really. I mean…”

“Uh. Are you all right?”

“Mm-m-m. I guess I really am pretty tired. Sorry, Koichi. I just can’t do it.”

Lightly thumping herself on the head with a fist, a feeble smile came over Reiko’s face. I started to feel irritated, pained, but my emotions were more complex than just that.

I could tell Reiko about Mei, couldn’t I? In fact, didn’t I
have
to force the subject? I’d often thought so, but I couldn’t manage to bring it up. The end result of my internal conflict this time, once again, was that I decided not to pursue it.

I wasn’t very good at talking to Reiko like this. She made me so nervous…The biggest reason for that was because I would suddenly see in her the shadow of my mother, whom I knew only from photographs. So, see? I had already gone through the self-analysis. So why did I feel like that tendency was only getting worse? It had to be a problem with me after all. Or maybe…

I decided to go back to my room for the night and try to get to sleep as early as I could.

With that decision made, I stood up from my chair.

“Why?” a small voice whispered, though without any deeper meaning or intention.

“Cut that out!” Reiko said, her tone surprisingly harsh. “I can’t stand that bird.”

The next day was June 3, Wednesday.

Mei Misaki wasn’t in the classroom at lunchtime.

And she hadn’t left the instant fourth period ended, either. She hadn’t been there all day. She was staying away today, just as she’d told me yesterday.

I hadn’t been in school for a week, and the way my classmates acted toward me was, to put a positive spin on it, sensible—but in a more penetrating analysis, they were acting cool and perfunctory.

“Were you in the hospital again?”

No, I was resting at home.

“Same thing you had before? What’d you call it, a spontaneous pneumothorax?”

I got really close to having one, but it turned out all right.

“So you’re okay now?”

Yeah, thanks. But no strenuous activity—doctor’s orders. So that means I’m still sitting out of gym class.

“Well, I hope you feel better.”

Me, too, thanks.

Not a single person mentioned the deaths of Yukari Sakuragi and her mother. The teachers were the same. The desk where Sakuragi had sat in the classroom was left empty. There weren’t even any flowers set on it, like people sometimes do…Everyone was trying to avoid acknowledging her death. More than necessary, it seemed. I couldn’t help interpreting their behavior that way.

When lunch started, Tomohiko Kazami was the first one to speak to me. I had called out to him as he was leaving the room.

“Oh…hey.”

As he pushed the bridge of his silver-rimmed glasses as far up his nose as they would go, Kazami’s stiff expression morphed into an awkward smile.

You know, I’m pretty sure this is how he acted when I first met him in April, too, when he came to see me at the hospital. Having known him for a month now, I’d thought he had opened up a little bit, but it felt as if we’d been reset back to zero.

The first time we’d ever seen each other and now—the main thing underlying them both, I would say, was “tension.” The second-biggest thing was what seemed like a kind of “wariness.” The realization hit me all at once.

“I’m glad you’re better. I was worried about you. You were out for a whole week, so I thought maybe you’d relapsed.”

“I was worried, too. To be honest, I’m sick of being in the hospital.”

“You don’t really need any of the notes from classes while you out, right?” Kazami said it sheepishly. “You’re pretty good, huh?”

“I learned some of it already at my other school, that’s all…I’m not really
that
good.”

“Oh, so then do you want copies of the notes?”

“I think I’m still okay for right now.”

“Ah. Okay…”

Even as we carried on this meaningless conversation, the stiffness never left Kazami’s face. Tension and wariness and maybe, on top of that, “fear”…?

“The accident last week must have been really traumatic for you.”

I decided I would be the one to bring it up.

“You were both class representatives, and you both came to see me at the hospital, and then for something like that…”

As I talked, I looked over at Sakuragi’s desk. Kazami looked a little flustered.

“We’re going to have to pick a new class representative for the girls. We’re probably going to do that at the extended homeroom tomorrow…”

Then he hurriedly broke away from me and left the classroom.

“A new representative, huh?”

Kazami and Sakuragi had practically been twins, but I suppose there were tons of people who could fill in as class representative at a middle school…

Still sitting at my desk, I took a cautious look around the room. It was June now, and most of the students were wearing their summer uniforms.

There were girls who had constructed “islands” to eat at, here one, there a second. A group of boys had gathered in a corner by the windows to chat. There was one who was strikingly taller than the rest of them. He was pretty tanned and his hair was cut in a sporty buzz. That had to be Mizuno. Takeru Mizuno, from the basketball club. So his first name was written with the character for “ferocity.”

I momentarily considered going over to talk to him.

I could use his sister to break the ice, and depending on how things went, I could talk about how I’d met up with her yesterday, and…No. That was a bad idea. For now, what I needed to do was wait for news from Ms. Mizuno. She’d told me, “Why don’t I see if I can find anything out?” She’d said she and her brother weren’t very close, so if I made a fumbling attempt to reach out to him now, it would just set off alarm bells in his mind and she might not be able to get anything out of him.

I stuffed myself with my grandmother’s homemade lunch, filled with incredible gratitude as always, then I went out into the hallway by myself. The whole time, I’d felt as if Mizuno/Little Brother by the windows was constantly glancing over at me, and I don’t think it was just my mind playing tricks on me.

Just as I’d done last Tuesday, I stood at the windows at the top of the East Stair.

There were a few clouds in the sky. It wasn’t raining, but the wind was blowing too hard. Even though the window was closed, I could hear its high, intermittent howling.

Turning my back on the window and leaning against the wall, I pulled my cell phone from the pocket of my pants. I looked up Teshigawara’s number in my call history, then pushed the call button without a moment’s hesitation.

Teshigawara was at school that day. But he hadn’t spoken to me once and he looked as though he would prefer to avoid even eye contact with me. By the time I’d looked around after lunch started, he had already disappeared from the classroom. Seriously, who does he think he is, Mei Misaki?

“H-hey.”

After however many attempts, he finally answered the phone. I instantly asked, “Where are you?”

“Er…”

“No, you’re not in ‘er.’ Tell me where you are.”

“Outside…walking around the courtyard.”

“The yard?”

I turned to look out the window and scanned the ground through the glass. There were more students milling around out there than I would have expected, so I couldn’t tell where Teshigawara was.

“I’m coming down right now. Wait for me by the lotus pond?”

“Wha—uh, come on, Sakaki…”

“I’ll be right there.”

I cut the call before he could say anything and hurried to the place I’d told him to be.

Just as I’d instructed, Teshigawara was waiting for me at the pond where a bloody human hand was rumored to rise out of the water occasionally. The pond’s surface was covered by the round leaves of water lilies, not lotuses. There were no students I recognized nearby. Apparently he’d been “walking around the courtyard” alone.

“I tried calling you a bunch of times last week, but you never answered.”

I said it in the coldest voice I could manage. Teshigawara made an exaggerated gesture, bringing his hands together in front of him, and said, “Yeah, sorry ’bout that,” but the whole time he was trying to keep his gaze from landing on my face.

“Whenever you called, I was always in the middle of something. I kept thinking about it, but it’s not like I could call you. I mean, you weren’t feeling good, right? So I didn’t want to bother you.”

It sounded like a flimsy excuse to me.

“You promised me,” I said. “You said you’d tell me in June.”

“Er…”

“I told you, ‘er’ is not an answer!”

The bleached moppet didn’t try to hide how shaken he was. I fixed him with an uncharacteristically harsh stare. “I want you to keep your promise. You’re the one who offered, after all. Something happened twenty-six years ago. There was a popular kid named Misaki in the third-year Class 3 that year, and they were killed in a freak accident…Then what happened?”

He didn’t say a word.

“You guys said something about that being
the year it started
…So? What happened to third-year Class 3 after that?”

“Hey, hey, hold on, Sakaki.”

For the first time, Teshigawara looked me straight in the face.

“Yeah, you’re right, I did promise you. I said I’d tell you once we got to June. And what I meant was that I wanted you to sit tight the whole rest of the month.”

Teshigawara gave a dejected-sounding sigh. A powerful wind moaned in the sky overhead.

“The situation has changed.”

He turned his eyes away again as he said that.

“Things are different now than they were when I said that. So…”

“So you’re saying you want out of the promise?”

“…Yeah.”

How could he…? Obviously I had a lot of trouble accepting that. But judging from the way I could see Teshigawara acting, I got the feeling that it would be pointless to try and question him any more right now. Still.

There was one question I couldn’t let slide. Which was…

“Remember that day you warned me to ‘quit paying attention to
things that aren’t there
’?”

Teshigawara nodded silently, his expression pulled tight.

“You told me ‘it’s dangerous.’ So what did you—”

Just then, a crude buzzing came through the pocket of my pants. Who could that be? I ran through the names as I pulled out my cell phone, its incoming call light flashing. The name on the screen was Ms. Mizuno. I’d just seen her yesterday.