Another, Vol. 1 (10 page)

Even so, I couldn’t really grasp
what it was
fully. There was a mountain’s worth of things I didn’t understand or couldn’t form opinions about—actually, I suppose the things I didn’t understand still far outnumbered everything else. There was also what Ms. Mizuno had told me about. I struggled trying to figure out how I should interpret the information she’d given me, but nothing came together. Honestly, I was pretty much at a loss.

Asking her would be the quickest way, I knew. I knew that, but…

“…Ack!”

Something close to a scream escaped me. I had just noticed something set all the way in the back of this bizarre space that had been created in the basement, something my eyes had so far missed.

It was…

Standing there, easily as tall as a child, painted black, was a hexagonal box. A coffin? Yeah, that’s a coffin. A large, Western-style coffin had been secreted away down here, and inside it…

My head was starting to cloud and I shook it fiercely. Rubbing my chilled shoulders with both hands, I walked up to the coffin. The doll inside it—it was of a style different than the other dolls on this floor. My eyes were arrested by it.

Inside the coffin was a doll of a young girl, complete with all its parts—hands, legs, head—clothed in a thin, pallid dress.

It was a bit smaller than life-size. I could say that with certainty because I knew someone who looked exactly like this doll.

“…Mei?”

That was why my voice trembled slightly as I spoke.

“Why would…”

Why would it look like Mei?

The hair was reddish-brown, unlike Mei’s, and went past the shoulders, but the features, the build…all of it was exactly the same as the Mei Misaki I knew.

The right eye, fixed on empty space, was a “blue eye empty to all.” The left eye was hidden behind her hair. The skin tone was even more pale and waxen than the real Mei. Her mouth, edged with a pale tint on the lips, was slightly open and looked as if it might start speaking at any moment…

What would it say?

To whom?

What
are
you…?

I grew even dizzier. I cradled my head gently in both hands and stood frozen before the coffin, spellbound, stunned. Just then—

Out of nowhere,
her
voice came to my ears, though I don’t know how I could possibly be hearing it.

“Huh. So this stuff doesn’t bother you, Sakakibara?”

Obviously the doll in the coffin hadn’t spoken—that was impossible. But for just a moment the delusion had me in its grip, and I’m not even exaggerating when I say I was so surprised, I thought my lung was going to collapse again. I fell back a step, uncomprehending, my eyes locked credulously on the doll’s lips.

The next moment, I thought I heard a snort. But of course the doll’s lips hadn’t moved at all.

“Why”—again it was her voice that spoke—“are you here?”

That was definitely the voice of Mei Misaki. So then it really was coming from the doll right in front of my eyes.

Was it a hallucination? It couldn’t be…

I pulled my hands away from my head and swung my head around. When I did, I saw a new figure.

A dark red curtain that had been pulled aside, in the shadow of the coffin that stood before it. That was where she had appeared from, without a sound—the real Mei Misaki.

To me, it was as if the doll standing before me were casting a shadow that had materialized there, solid and real, though she wore the uniform of North Yomi and not a dress.

I gurgled, purely reflexively, “How did you…”

“I wasn’t trying to hide in here and scare you,” Mei said in her usual curt tone. “You only just got here, after all.”

…So then what have
you
been doing in a place like this? More importantly, how did you suddenly appear in a place like that? I mean, geez…

Mei passed quietly by the coffin. She wasn’t carrying her schoolbag.

She came to a stop in front of the coffin and cast a glance at the doll behind her.

“Did you think she looked like me?” she asked.

“Uh, yeah.”

“She does. But she’s only half of what I am. Maybe not even that.”

With those words, she slowly reached her right hand out to the doll and stroked its reddish-brown hair. That exposed its hidden left eye. It had no eye patch like Mei’s, but instead a “blue eye empty to all,” just like the right one.

“What are you doing here?”

I finally got the question out.

Mei drew a quick finger down the doll’s cheek. “I come down here sometimes. Since I don’t hate it in here.”

…Which didn’t tell me much.

It didn’t answer the question of why she’d come into this building in the first place.

“More importantly, I have something I want to ask you.” Turning her back on the doll in the coffin, Mei faced me again. “Why did you come here, Sakakibara?”

“Uh…I was—”

I couldn’t admit that I’d followed her all the way from school.

“I’ve been wondering about this shop for a while. I wandered past here last week and saw it. So today I decided to come inside.”

Mei’s expression didn’t change particularly; she just nodded. “Oh. That’s an interesting coincidence. Some people think dolls like the ones in this gallery are creepy. You’re not one of them, huh?”

“Well…”

“What did you think? When you came in here?”

“I thought it was amazing. I can’t really express it, but they’re beautiful. It’s like they’re not of this world, and when I’m looking at them, this turmoil starts up in my chest…”

I tried hard to find the words, but all I could manage were these clumsy descriptions. Mei gave no response. She walked over to one of the depressions formed in the wall.

“I like these ones the best.”

She peered into the depression. The dolls inside were the beautiful conjoined twins I’d seen earlier.

“They have such peaceful faces. They can be so calm, even though they’re linked like this. It’s strange.”

“Maybe they’re calm because they’re linked.”

Mei muttered, “I doubt it,” then went on, “If they were calm because they’re
not
linked to each other, I could see it.”

“Hm-m-m.”

Wasn’t it usually the opposite? That’s what I thought, but I said nothing and simply watched her movements. She shifted, and I thought she was going to turn back toward me, but suddenly she proclaimed, “You’ve been wondering why I wear an eye patch over my left eye, haven’t you?”

“No, I—”

“Why don’t I show you?”

“Wha—?”

“Why don’t I show you what’s under this eye patch?”

As she spoke, Mei rested the fingertips of her left hand on the white eye patch. The fingers of her right hand held the string that ran over her ear.

Massively shocked, massively confused, I couldn’t tear my eyes from the movement of her hands. The string music playing in the background had ended at some point. In this bizarre basement room, filled with silence, surrounded only by the voiceless dolls, I was seized by the feeling that she was doing something indecent and I hurried to shake it off…

Any second now…

Mei’s eye patch came off. I saw her exposed left eye and gulped.

“Th-that’s…”

A blue eye, empty to all.

“Is that…a fake eye?”

Just like the doll in the coffin.

It was obviously no match for the jet-black eye on her right side, which was fixed on me. She had a blue eye exactly like the one nestled in the doll’s eye socket, harboring a lifeless light…

“My left eye is
a doll’s eye
,” Mei told me in a whisper. “It can see things better not seen, so I usually keep it hidden.”

…Which didn’t really explain much.

I didn’t understand what she meant. Or her reasoning.

My head had started swimming again. My breathing was getting pretty ragged, and it felt as if my heart was pounding right inside my ears. Underneath it all, my body felt even colder than before.

“Are you feeling all right?”

I shook my head feebly in response. Mei narrowed the eye that was not a doll’s eye to a slit.

“Maybe this place isn’t so great if you’re not used to it.”

“What do you mean?”

“The dolls…” Mei started to say something, then trailed off. She put her eye patch back in place, then started over. “The dolls are empty.”

Empty, in the twilight of Yomi…

“Dolls are emptiness. Their bodies and hearts are total emptiness…a void. That emptiness is like death.”

Mei continued speaking, as if covertly exposing a secret of the mortal world.

“Things that are empty want to fill themselves with something. When they get put into an enclosed space like this, with the balance this place has…it gets bad. That’s why. Don’t you feel it being
sucked out of you?
Everything you have inside you?”

“Yeah…”

“You don’t really mind, once you’re used to it. Let’s go.” With that, Mei slipped past me and started up the stairs. “Upstairs it’s not so bad.”

The old woman was no longer at the table beside the entrance. I wondered where she’d disappeared to. The bathroom? The string music was still gone, and the gloomy shop—gallery—was eerily quiet. So quiet, in fact, it seemed “death” might even be nearby…

Mei showed no sign of fear and sat down on the sofa where I’d left my bag. She said nothing, and I followed her example, sitting to face her at an angle

“Do you come here often?”

I started off the questions gingerly.

“I guess,” Mei replied dryly, mumbling.

“Do you live near here?”

“Well, yeah.”

“This place…on that sign outside, it says ‘Blue Eyes Empty to All…’ Is that the name of this shop—this gallery?”

Mei nodded in silence, so I pressed on.

“What about ‘Studio M’? There was a placard for that underneath the sign.”

“The second floor is a doll workshop.”

“So they make these dolls there?”

“They make
Kirika’s
dolls there,” Mei corrected.

“Kirika?”

“It’s written with the characters for ‘mist’ and ‘fruit.’ That’s the person who makes the dolls in the studio upstairs.”

Now that she mentioned it, I remembered seeing that artist’s name on several of the placards that accompanied each of the dolls in the gallery’s horde. And maybe even next to some of the pictures on the wall.

“The dolls in the basement, too?” I glanced over at the stairs in the back. “None of those had placards on them.”

“She probably made them all.”

“The one in the coffin, too?”

“…Yeah.”

“That doll…why does it—” I just had to ask the question then. “Why does it look so much like you?”

“Who knows,” Mei cocked her head slightly, but let the question slide right past. Was she just feigning ignorance? That’s what it looked like.

I’m sure there was a reason for it. I’m sure she knew exactly what it was. And yet…

I sighed quietly and looked down at my knees.

I had a bunch of other questions. But what should I ask, and how to phrase it? How should I lead into it? Bleh. It was no use philosophizing over it. These were problems that didn’t really seem to have an answer I could point to and say, “That’s it! That’s the best option.”

Steeling my nerves, I spoke again. “I asked you about this that time we talked on the roof. When I met you that first time in the hospital elevator, you had something with you. Was that a doll, too?”

The last time I’d asked her that, she’d refused to answer. But today, Mei’s reaction was different.

“Yeah, it was.”

“You said you were ‘dropping it off’ somewhere?”

“…Yeah.”

“You got off at the second basement level, right? Were you going to the memorial chapel?”

At that, Mei’s eyes darted away from me, as if fleeing something, and silence plunked back into place. If the answer had been no, at least, she wouldn’t have done that. That’s how I saw it.

“That day—it was April twenty-seventh. I heard there was a girl who passed away at that hospital. Did you…”

Maybe the lights were playing a role. Mei’s face seemed even more pale and waxen than usual. Her colorless lips seemed to be trembling slightly.

Uh-oh…She’s about to turn into a doll, just like that one in the coffin downstairs.
That idiotic thought flitted through my mind, and my heart seized tightly.

“…Um…”

I fumbled for something to say, searching for a way to keep the conversation moving.

“Um, what I meant was…”

Going by what Ms. Mizuno had told me over the phone last Saturday…

The girl who had died at the hospital on the day in question was named “Misaki” or “Masaki.” What did that mean? Did it imply anything? It wasn’t too hard to come up with some conjectures that would make everything add up, but even so…

“Misaki, do you…have an older sister, or a younger sister maybe?” I asked boldly. There was a slight pause and then, her eyes still turned away, still silent, Mei shook her head.

She was an only child, and apparently her parents were incoherent with grief.

Ms. Mizuno had also told me that when she’d called.

The girl who’d died was an only child. And Mei didn’t have any sisters. And yet there was nothing inconsistent in their stories. If she wasn’t her sister, she could be her
cousin
, or maybe…All kinds of possibilities occurred to me. It was the same with the question of whether the girl was named “Misaki” or “Masaki.” It could just be a coincidence, or it could be totally inevitable. Or there could have been some mistake in the story I got…

“Then why were you…?”

When I tried to ask her more, I met with flashing resistance.

“I wonder why!” Mei said, turning her eyes back onto me. I could feel a coldness from her jet-black eye—the eye that had never belonged to a doll—that seemed, somehow, to see right through everything. This time, without meaning to, I was the one who looked away.

Small goose bumps were prickling on both my arms. I felt as if tiny bugs were scurrying around inside my head.

What was this? What was going on?

I was a little bit disconcerted.