Another, Vol. 1 (17 page)

“Oh, Sakakibara? You’re at lunch, right? Is it okay to talk right now?” Ms. Mizuno’s voice sounded a little skittish just then. “I’m at the hospital right now.”

“Huh? I thought you had today off?”

I was conscious of Teshigawara listening in, so I covered my mouth with my left hand and lowered my voice.

“Someone called out today, so they told me to come in. This job is seriously tough. Especially when you’re a newbie.”

After moaning about the cruelty of it all, Ms. Mizuno changed her tone and went on.

“So. I stole a couple seconds from the insanity and came up to the roof of the inpatient ward. That’s where I am now.”

“What’s going on? Did you…?”

“I tried talking to him last night.”

“Your brother? About that thing?”

“Right. When I talked to him…Well, there’s one thing I want to confirm with you before I say anything else.”

“What’s that?”

“Ready?”

Ms. Mizuno made her voice a little louder. She was definitely on the roof—or at least outside—since I could clearly hear the shrill sound of the wind.

“That girl Mei you told me about yesterday. Mei Misaki,” Ms. Mizuno said.
“Is she actually there?”

“Excuse me?”

I didn’t know what to say to that…

“Yes, she’s really there.”

“Right now? Is she nearby? Are you sure?”

“No, she didn’t come to school today.”

“So
she’s not there
.”

“What are you talking about?” I felt my voice getting louder. “Why would you ask…?”

“I told you, I talked to my brother last night.”

Ms. Mizuno quickly gave me what information she had.

“I tried asking him about that thing twenty-six years ago and about the accident last week, but he just stalled me on all of it. He still looked like he was scared of something, too, like he was at the end of his rope. But then last of all, I tried asking about Mei.”

Kksshh
…I heard some interference on the line and her voice crackled.

“When I did that, his face went all red and he demanded, ‘Why are you asking me that? There’s no one like that in my class.’ He looked totally serious, like I’ve never seen him before. So I thought maybe this girl named Mei Misaki really didn’t…”

“He’s lying.”

I saw Teshigawara’s face, looking over at me suspiciously. I turned my back on him, then recruited my right hand, which gripped the phone, to completely cover my mouth. Then—

“He’s lying,” I repeated fiercely.

“But…he was so serious. I don’t see why he would have to lie…”

Kshhkkkshhsshk
…I heard the interference again and Ms. Mizuno’s voice broke off. I didn’t care. I told her, “Mei Misaki exists.”

Mei
exists
. I’d seen her dozens of times. Talked to her dozens of times. I’d seen her yesterday, even. Talked to her yesterday. How could she possibly
not exist
? It was crazy.

“…Wha—?”

Her voice cut through the interference, sounding somehow different than it had before.

“Uh…what’s happening?”

“What is it?”

Kksshsshkksh…rmbbmmblrrrmmb…kkssh!

“Ms. Mizuno? Can you hear me?”

“…Sakakibara?”

Her voice crackled much louder than before.

“I got off the roof. I’m on the elevator. I need to get back soo—”

“Oh, so that’s why the signal’s so bad.”

“…But this is…No! What’s—!”

Rrmmrrmbbl…
The interference grew thicker and more intense. Ms. Mizuno’s voice seemed to be swallowed up in it, and then it broke off.

“Ms. Mizuno!”

I squeezed my hand tighter around the phone reflexively.

“Can you hear me? What’s going—”

My words came to a stop; a strange sound was coming through the phone. It’s hard to describe what it sounded like. A really strange, horrible noise…

I took the phone from my ear, unable to listen anymore.

What had happened?

She’d gotten on the elevator, and her signal had deteriorated…Was that why? Was that what the sound was? No, before that she’d…

Terrified, I put the phone back to my ear. Instantly I heard some kind of hard, violent sound. It sounded—yes, it was exactly as if the phone had been dropped on the floor.

Kkssshhkshhskkkshh, rrmrrmmmblrrmb…
The interference finally grew more intense. In the last moment before the connection between the two phones was lost…

I heard, faintly but clearly, the sound of Ms. Mizuno groaning in pain.

Ms. Mizuno was dead.

I learned the frankly debilitating truth that evening. The only information I was able to get so far was that there had been an accident at the hospital, but I think I had been prepared for the worst, even before that.

That phone call during lunch…

There was no doubting the fact that some kind of abnormal calamity had befallen her. But no matter how many times I tried to call her back, I never got through. As a result, I had no way of finding out what happened, so I was forced to spend hours tortured by anxiety and restlessness.

“Ms. Mizuno? That young nurse?”

When she heard about it, my grandmother seemed truly shocked, too. She had met Ms. Mizuno several times while I’d been hospitalized in April.

“Mizuno…Sanae, wasn’t it? You two got along so well. She would talk to you about your books…”

“I saw her once at the hospital, too, I think. The day I came to visit you, she was…”

Reiko looked extremely depressed. After dinner, she’d taken the same medicine as the night before. I guess she had a headache again.

“She was still so young. I hope her little brothers will be okay.”

“She had brothers?” my grandmother asked.

I replied, “One is named Takeru. He’s in my class, actually.”

“Oh, my.” My grandmother’s eyes went round. “How awful. Didn’t a girl from your class just pass away in an accident?”

I knitted my brows pensively, my temples throbbing.

“They said there was an accident at the hospital…I wonder what it could have been.”

Nobody could answer.

But the horrible sound I’d heard over the phone at lunchtime boomed again in my ear. And Ms. Mizuno’s pained moaning, fading in and out of the intense interference.

Unable to bear it, I shut my eyes tightly.

I thought about telling them, right then, what had happened at lunch. As I thought it over, there was no reason for me to hesitate so much over it…and yet.

I didn’t tell them. No—I couldn’t tell them. I think because I felt something akin to guilt deep down and I couldn’t shake free of it.

My grandfather had been quiet, but now he let out an “Ah-h, ah-h” in his papery voice. He pressed both hands to his wrinkled, colorless forehead.

“When someone dies, there’s a funeral. I don’t…I don’t want to go to any more funerals.”

For whatever reason, maybe because there was an inauspicious day coming up, the wake was the day after tomorrow and the memorial service would be the day after that, on Saturday. Saturday? Oh, right…June 6.

Did you ever see
The Omen
?

I vividly recalled the conversation Ms. Mizuno and I had had at the restaurant. It was only yesterday.

We’ll both be careful. Especially for any accidents that would never usually happen.

She was dead.

The day after tomorrow was her wake, and the day after that was her memorial service. It seemed so unreal. Shock was the only thing I felt at first. Emotions like sadness couldn’t get a grip on me yet.

“…I don’t want to go to any more funerals.”

As I listened to my grandfather sluggishly repeat himself, the word “funeral” created a dark stain somewhere in my heart. Before I could even react, a black whirlpool had begun to turn slowly around it, until finally—how can I put it?—a strange, low frequency sound rose up from everywhere at once,
Vmmmmm
…

I closed my eyes tightly again. At the same moment, something in my mind came to a halt.

The next day, June 4, an oppressive climate filled the classroom in third-year Class 3 within moments of starting the day.

Ms. Mizuno’s little brother Takeru hadn’t come in. By the time second period was over, the rumor that he was absent because of his older sister’s sudden death had spread through the class. And in third period, before starting the language arts class, the head teacher, Mr. Kubodera, openly told everyone
it was true
.

“Mizuno’s older sister met with a sudden and unfortunate incident yesterday…”

Instantly, an odd silence smothered the room. As if the breath of every student had crystallized in the air in an instant…

Worst of all, Mei Misaki entered the room just then.

Without so much as apologizing for her tardiness, without showing any self-consciousness whatsoever, she sat down in her usual seat, silent. I watched her as she went, uneasiness thrumming in my chest. Then I turned my attention to the reactions of everyone else in the class, too.

Not a single one of them turned to look at Mei. They all had their eyes fixed, almost unnaturally, straight ahead. Mr. Kubodera was exactly the same. He didn’t look at Mei or speak to her. It was as if…

Yes, it was as if there simply was no student named Mei Misaki in this class. As if she didn’t exist.

When the language arts class ended, I quickly got out of my seat and hurried over to Mei.

“Come with me,” I said, pulling her into the hall. Ignoring whoever might be listening, I asked, “Did you hear about what happened to Mizuno?”

She cocked her head slightly and asked “What?” so apparently she didn’t know about it yet. The eye not hidden by the eye patch blinked wonderingly.

“She died. His older sister died yesterday.”

I thought I saw surprise color her face for an instant. But it disappeared almost immediately.

“…Oh.” Her voice revealed no emotion. “Was she sick? Or was it an accident or something?”

“They say it was an accident.”

“Ah.”

Several students had clumped up near the door to the classroom. There were a couple of boys and girls whose names and faces I knew, but whom I still hadn’t really talked to. Nakao, Maejima, Akazawa, Ogura, Sugiura…Teshigawara was among them, too. He hadn’t spoken a word to me since lunch yesterday.

I knew they were all shooting looks over at us. As if watching how things developed from a distance.

Could it be? I had to give the idea pretty serious consideration now.

Could it really be that what they saw now was only me?

And—

When the next class started, Mei had vanished from the classroom. Naturally, no one but me paid it any attention.

As soon as lunch started, I went over to Mei’s desk, farthest back in the row by the windows that faced the schoolyard, and gave her desk a fresh inspection.

It was a wooden desk, of a clearly different shape than the rest of the desks in the room. The chair that went with it was the same. Like something that had been used dozens of years ago. An incredibly old desk and chair.

Why was that?
I asked myself, feeling behind the curve.
Why is Mei’s desk the only one like this?

By now I’d decided to ignore the watchful eyes of those around me, so I sat down in her seat. The surface of the desk was notched all over and uneven. I doubted it was possible to fill out a test, say, and write clearly at all without a backing sheet.

There was a lot of graffiti among all the cuts in the desk.

Most of the graffiti was old—extremely old—like the desk. Some was written in pencil. Some in pen. Some carved in, probably with the tip of a compass. Some had almost vanished; some was only barely legible. And there in the middle…

My eyes fixed on a row of letters that looked freshly written. They were recent.

They were written small, on the right edge of the desk, in blue pen. There was no real way to judge the penmanship or anything, but as soon as I saw it, I knew that Mei had written it.

Who is “the casualty”?

That was what she had written.

“…I wonder how Ms. Mikami’s doing.”

From his seat beside me at the worktable, Yuya Mochizuki voiced his concern rhetorically.

“I wonder if she’s really feeling that bad. She looked pretty out of it the other day…”

Fifth period was art class with Ms. Mikami, but there was no sign of her in the art room on the first floor of Building Zero yet.

A different art teacher came in at the start of the period and told us, “Ms. Mikami is out today,” before instructing us in a businesslike tone that we would be having an art class study hall. We were told, “Each of you draw your own hand in pencil,” a completely uninteresting subject, and as soon as the teacher left the room, there were apathetic sighs here and there in the room. It was a natural reaction, really.

I opened my sketchbook, and then—why not, after all?—rested my left hand on the table and stared at its every detail. But honestly, my motivation was as close to zero as you could get. If I’d known, I would have brought a book. Though I didn’t feel much like reading King or Koontz or Lovecraft.

When I looked over at Mochizuki, the Munch aficionado, I saw that he’d never had any intention of drawing a hand. But it was not a blank page in his sketchbook; he was working on a half-finished drawing in pen. A person—I could see at a glance that it was a woman modeled on Ms. Mikami.

What’s with this guy? I almost wound up saying it out loud.

Did he seriously have a crush on her? This kid? On his teacher, who was at least ten years older than him? I guess that was up to him.

Still, I was already in an ambiguous mood when I heard his mumbled wondering about Ms. Mikami, so…

“…No way.”

Suddenly Mochizuki looked over at me.

“Hey, Sakakibara…”

“Wh-what?”

“Ms. Mikami doesn’t have some kind of life-threatening disease, does she?”

“What? Uh…” I was completely flabbergasted. All I could offer was a tepid response. “I’m sure she’s fine.”

“You’re probably right.” Mochizuki’s voice was incredibly relieved. “No, you’re right. It wouldn’t be anything weird like that. Yeah.”

“Are you
that
worried?”

“I mean…Sakuragi and her mom both died recently, and now there’s Mizuno’s sister. So I figured…”

“Are you saying they’re related?”

I cut straight to the point.

“There was the thing with Sakuragi and the thing in Mizuno’s family, but let’s just say as a for-instance that something happened to Ms. Mikami. Are you telling me there’s some kind of relationship? That there’s a connection there?”

“Uh, well…”

Mochizuki started to answer, then shut his mouth. He turned his eyes away, as if to escape my question, and gave a helpless sigh. Argh, even this kid’s got
something
he can’t tell me shut up inside him.

I thought about putting the screws to him a little more; but, thinking better of it, I changed the subject. “How’s the art club? How many members do you have now?”

“Just five…” Mochizuki’s eyes darted back to me. “You joining?”

“…No way.”

“You really should.”

“If you’re recruiting, forget about me. Why not Misaki?”

I said it to put some pressure on him. Mochizuki reacted exactly as I’d expected, spluttering. He went dead quiet and didn’t answer, turning his eyes away from me again. This time he didn’t even breathe.

“She’s pretty good at drawing,” I went on, unconcerned. “I saw some of the stuff she’s got in her sketchbook.”

Yes—that had been in the secondary library. That day when I had passed by with Mochizuki and Teshigawara after art class…

The drawings of beautiful girls with globes at their joints, like dolls.

I’m going to give this girl huge wings, last of all.
Mei had told me that then. Had she drawn the wings yet?

I gave up on Mochizuki, whose eyes were still turned away and who had not yet attempted to offer so much as a word in response. I shut my own sketchbook. Not even thirty minutes had gone by since the start of fifth period, but I had decided to abandon this independent study.

“Where are you going?” Mochizuki asked when I stood up from my seat.

“The library. The secondary one,” I answered, deliberately curt. “I need to look something up.”

When I told Mochizuki I had something to look up, it was pretty much the truth. The part that wasn’t included in that “pretty much” was the faint hope that Mei might be there. But that hope was not realized.

There were no students there. The only person in the ancient library was the librarian, Chibiki.

“Here’s a face I’ve seen before.”

He spoke to me from behind the counter-style table that was set up in one corner. Today, again, he was tricked out in all black, his hair, sprinkled with white, as straw-like as ever. He fixed his eyes on me through the lenses of his homely black-rimmed glasses.

“Sakakibara, the transfer student.”

He spoke my name.

“Third-year Class 3, was it? My memory’s not as bad as all that. Why aren’t you in class?”

“It’s art, and um, the teacher is out today, so it’s a study hall.”

I told him what was going on, and the all-in-black librarian didn’t pursue it any further.

“What can I do for you?” he asked. “It’s rare that a student comes here, most days.”

“Um, there’s something I’m looking for.” Again I told him the situation. I walked slowly up to the counter where he sat, then asked him, “Do you have old yearbooks here?”

“Oho, yearbooks, is it? We have a full set of them.”

“Can people look at them?”

“They can.”

“Then, uh…”

“I believe they’re over there.”

At long last he stood up and extended an arm in front of him. He was pointing at the bookcases covering the wall shared with the hallway, to the right of the entrance.

“They’re on that shelf, second from the inside, I think. Somewhere around there. You probably won’t need a step stool, with your height.”

“Okay, thank you.”

“What year are you looking for?”

“Well…” I faltered just a little. “From twenty-six years ago…the one from 1972.”

“Seventy-two?”

The librarian’s brows knit sharply and he looked straight into my face.

“Why would you want to see that?”

“Well, actually…”

I did everything I could to regain my equilibrium and struggled to give a harmless answer.