Another, Vol. 1 (2 page)

“Oh…uh…”

I lifted the top half of my body off the bed and squinted in the direction Reiko was pointing.

“Oh, that wide, white spot?”

“That’s it.” Reiko turned back around toward me and smiled faintly. “That’s Yomiyama North Middle. The school you’ll be attending.”

“Interesting.”

“You went to a private school in Tokyo, right? One of those escalator schools with integrated middle and high schools?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You might feel a little out of place at public school…But you’ll do fine, won’t you?”

“Probably, yeah.”

“You’re going to be behind on the work for April, what with this sudden hospitalization.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about that. At my last school, we were already halfway done with the stuff for third-year middle school.”

“Well, well, impressive. Studying’s going to be such a breeze for you.”

“I don’t know if it’ll be that easy.”

“I suppose I’m obligated to tell you not to get cocky.”

“Did you go to that school, Reiko?”

“Yup. I graduated fourteen years ago, I think it was. Now you’re going to figure out how old I am.”

“So then my mom went there, too?”

“Yup. Ritsuko came out of North Middle, too. There’s also a school called Yomiyama South Middle in town, which is South Middle. Some people also call North Middle ‘North Yomi.’”

“North Yomi? Oh, I get it.”

Reiko, dressed in a black pantsuit and beige blouse, had a slender build and a fair-skinned, slender face. Her stick-straight hair grew past her shoulders.

With that haircut, her features seemed somehow to resemble my mother’s, whose face I knew only from photographs. When that realization struck me, every atom of my heart began to ache helplessly, as if infused with a flush of fever. I said that I’m bad at talking to Reiko face-to-face like this because I get nervous; that’s eight-tenths of the problem, and this was probably the root.

“I guess if you’re not worried about the schoolwork, then the problem really will be the difference in how they do things at public school. You’ll probably be confused about some things at first, but I’m sure you’ll get used to it soon enough.”

And then Reiko told me that once I came home from the hospital and could start attending school, she would tell me “the North Yomi fundamentals.” Then her eyes fell to the paperbacks on my bedside table.

“Huh. I didn’t know you liked these kinds of books, Koichi.”

“Oh, uh…I guess.”

There were four books in all. They were both long books broken into two volumes: ’
Salem’s Lot
and
Pet Sematary
by Stephen King. I’d finished the first volume of
Pet Sematary
right before Reiko came by.

“In that case, I’ll tell you about the ‘Seven Mysteries’ of North Yomi, too.”

“‘The Seven Mysteries’?”

“Every school has them, but North Yomi’s are a little bit different. It’s gone up to more than eight since I went there. You’re not interested?”

Honestly, I didn’t really care about real-life ghost stories like that, but…

“No, you’ve definitely got to tell me,” I replied, crafting a smile for her.

Before lunch on the next day—the 26th. A Sunday.

Like always, my grandmother had come to present me with miscellaneous odds and ends. Then, with a formulaic “All right, I’ll see you again tomorrow,” she left me and returned home. She must have passed right by them. I never would have expected or even thought to dream up these visitors who had come to see me.

There was a knock, and the door to my room opened. It was a young nurse named Mizuno whom I had been relying on completely ever since I’d been admitted. “Go ahead,” she said, ushering them in: a boy and a girl I had never seen before in my life. I was, of course, surprised, but since they were both roughly my age and wearing school uniforms, I soon guessed where this visit had originated.

“Hello. You’re Koichi Sakakibara, right?”

The ambassador (or so it felt to me) on the right spoke—the boy. Medium build, medium height. Black school uniform with a standing collar. Silver-rimmed glasses accented his smooth, soft-featured face and narrow eyes.

“We’re students from Yomiyama North Middle, third-year Class 3.”

“Ah…hi.”

“My name is Kazami. Tomohiko Kazami. And this is Sakuragi.”

“Yukari Sakuragi. Nice to meet you.”

The girl wore a navy blazer. They were both completely run-of-the-mill middle school uniforms, but the style was totally different from the private school I’d attended in Tokyo.

“Sakuragi and I are the class representatives for Class 3, so we’ve come on everyone else’s behalf.”

From my perch in the bed, I grunted, then cocked my head and asked the most obvious question. “Why are you here?”

“You’re transferring to our school, right?” Yukari Sakuragi asked. She, too, wore silver-rimmed glasses, just like Kazami. She had a slightly chubby build and a simple haircut that came to her shoulders. “You were actually supposed to start last Monday, but then you got sick all of a sudden…that’s what we heard. So we decided to visit you as class representatives. Um, this is from all of us.”

She held out a bouquet of colorful tulips. Tulips mean “considerateness” or “philanthropy.” I learned that later, when I looked it up.

“The teacher was asking how you were doing, too,” Tomohiko Kazami continued. “We heard it was a lung condition called pneumothorax. Are you all right?”

“Oh, yeah. Thanks.”

As I answered, I stifled the smile that was rising on my face. I’d been caught off guard by their sudden visit, but I was also genuinely pleased by it. Plus, the way the two of them had come here was so picturesque—they almost seemed like “class representative” characters you’d see in an anime or something. So that also struck me as oddly amusing.

“Fortunately…I guess that’s what I’m supposed to say, even in a situation like this. I’m recuperating on schedule, so I think they’ll be able to take the tube out soon.”

“That’s a relief.”

“What a horrible thing to have happen so suddenly.”

As they spoke, the two emissaries of third-year Class 3 looked at each other.

“We heard that you moved here from Tokyo, Sakakibara,” Sakuragi said as she set the tulips on the windowsill. For some reason, it sounded as if she was gently feeling me out.

I nodded, “Yeah.”

“You were at K*** Middle School, weren’t you? That’s amazing. It’s such a famous private school. Why did you…?”

“We came here for family reasons.”

“Is this your first time living in Yomiyama?”

“It is…But why would you ask that?”

“I just thought maybe you’d lived here, even if it was a long time ago.”

“I’ve visited before, but I never lived here.”

“Did you ever stay for very long?” Kazami came with the follow-up.

What weird questions—
The thought nagged at me slightly, and I gave a vague response. “Eh. My mom is from here. I guess when I was still little I might have, but I don’t really remember…”

Their rapid-fire interrogation ended there, and Kazami walked toward the bed. “Here.” He pulled a large envelope from his bag and handed it to me.

“What’s this?”

“Notes for classes since the start of first semester. I made a copy, so if you want them, you can have them.”

“Wow. You didn’t have to do that! Thank you.”

When I peeked at the contents of the envelope in my hands, I saw it was, indeed, all stuff I’d already learned at my old school. Still, his consideration touched me, and I thanked them again. If this was how it was going to be, I might actually be able to forget all the terrible stuff that had been happening since the previous year.

“I think I’ll be able to start school after we get back from Golden Week. I’m looking forward to it.”

“Us, too.”

I thought I saw Kazami shoot Sakuragi a wink, and then, with a vaguely hesitant expression, he held his right hand out to me.

“Err, Sakakibara? Would you shake hands?”

That left me speechless for a second.

Shake hands? The boy who was class representative was suddenly asking to shake hands, the very first time we’d ever met each other…in a place like this? What did that even…?

I considered that maybe I should just let it go and say, well, public school students are different. Or maybe it was a difference between Tokyo and the countryside? A difference in attitudes?

The thoughts went around and around in my head, but I could hardly reject him and say “Uh, no.” I played it innocent and extended my right hand, too.

There wasn’t much force behind Kazami’s handshake, even though he was the one who’d offered. And maybe it was my imagination, but I thought I felt
dampness
, as if he was in a cold sweat.

My eighth day in the hospital, Monday, was the day of a modest liberation.

When they confirmed that the “leak” of air from my lung had stopped completely, they took out the drainage tube. This meant I was finally freed from my link to the machine. When the procedure wrapped up in the morning, I left my room to escort my visiting grandmother out of the building so that I could breathe the open air for the first time in a long while.

According to the doctor, they would watch my condition for another two days, and if there was no change, I could be released. But I would have to rest as much as possible for a little while. I understood that part painfully well without having to be told, given my experience six months earlier. So I couldn’t go to school until May 6, which was after the break, after all.

I watched my grandmother’s rugged, inky-black Nissan Cedric drive off, and then I sat down on a bench I’d found in the front lawn of the inpatient ward.

It was beautiful weather, befitting the day of my liberation.

Warm spring sunbeams. Brisk, cool breeze. I could hear the chirping of wild birds here and there, probably because the mountains were so close by. I even heard the cry of a warbler, a sound unheard-of in Tokyo, occasionally cutting into the other songs.

I closed my eyes and took slow, deep breaths. The place where the tube had been ached a bit, but the chest pain and difficulty breathing had disappeared completely. Yeah, this was good. How wondrous a thing to be healthy!

After sinking into a momentary swell of emotion that I wouldn’t exactly call youthful, I took out my cell phone, which I’d brought with me from my room. This seemed like a good enough time to call my dad. I was outside the building, so I didn’t have to be worried about the warnings against “interfering with medical devices” and whatever.

I was pretty sure the time difference between Japan and India was three hours, or maybe four. It was after eleven o’clock where I was, so seven or eight o’clock there?

After some hesitation, I ended up turning off the cell phone I’d just activated. I knew very well how my dad slept in in the morning. He was probably pretty tired what with his survey/research activities in a foreign country, too. It would have been cruel to roust him from bed for this after all this time.

I sat on the bench zoning out for a while after that. When I got to my feet, it was because lunchtime was approaching. I want to be clear: The hospital food did not taste good. But for a fifteen-year-old recovering from illness, hunger is a life-or-death issue.

I went back to the inpatient ward, cut through the lobby, and headed for the elevator bay. The doors to one elevator were just starting to close, so I quickly squeezed through them.

There was already someone on the elevator.

“Oh, excuse me.”

I apologized offhandedly for my intrusion. But the moment I laid eyes on this other person, I couldn’t help gasping.

It was a girl in a school uniform.

The same navy blazer as Yukari Sakuragi had worn when she’d visited the day before. Did that mean this girl also went to Yomiyama North Middle? Shouldn’t she have been at school at this time of day?

She was petite and slightly built and had an androgynous face, the bone structure of which was too fine. Pure black hair in a shaggy bob cut. Her skin color was quite washed out, in contrast. I’m not sure what to call it, but it looked like white paraffin, to use a somewhat old-fashioned term. Plus…

The thing that caught my attention more than anything was the white eye patch bandaging her left eye. Did she have some kind of eye disease? Or had she been hurt?

With my mind caught up in all these thoughts, I was embarrassingly slow to realize the direction the elevator I’d chosen was traveling. It was going down, not up. I wasn’t headed for the upper floors; the car had started moving toward the basement.

I looked at the buttons arrayed on the control panel and saw that “B2” was lit up. Letting my own button selection slide, I seized on an impulse and spoke to the girl with the eye patch.

“I’m sorry, are you a student at North Yomi?”

The girl barely nodded her head, silent, showing no hint of any other movement.

“You’re going to the second basement level? Is there something you need to do down there?”

“Yes.”

“But it’s not—”

“I’m dropping something off.”

Her tone of voice was cool and detached, as if all her emotions had been shut off.

“Half my body is waiting there, the poor thing.”

While I stood bewildered by those enigmatic words, the elevator stopped and the doors opened.

The girl in the eye patch slipped silently past me and went out into the hallway, her footsteps making no sound. Something sickly pale protruded through a gap in her hands, pressed tightly against her chest. My eyes fixed on it. I could see something pale, a tiny doll hand…

“Hey.”

I held the elevator doors open and stuck my head and shoulders out to call after the girl.

“What’s your name?”

The girl, the only person walking down the dimly lit hallway, reacted to my voice and came to a momentary standstill. But she didn’t turn around.

“Mei,” she answered curtly. “Mei…Misaki.”

Then the girl walked away, as if gliding over the linoleum floor. I watched her go, not breathing, while experiencing a touch of despondency and, at the same time, a foreboding that I could hardly find words to describe.