Another, Vol. 2 (23 page)

I knew I’d told Mochizuki something like that, and yet…

“Sakakibara.”

Ms. Mikami—Reiko—trapped under the lumber and unable to move, and Mei, lifting the heavy pickax in both hands. For a long moment, standing between the two of them, I could think of nothing to say. I just stood there.

Then Mei spoke to me, her voice forceful.

“Think it over, Sakakibara. Think carefully.
Does any other class at our school have an assistant head teacher?
”

“Huh? Well…I mean…”

“They don’t,”
Mei declared flatly. “For some reason, no one ever thought about it. We just accepted it. I did the same thing at first. But don’t you think that’s odd? Third-year Class 3 is the only one in the whole school that has an assistant head teacher.”

I couldn’t say a word.

“I think Ms. Mikami must have died the year before last, the year she was the head teacher for Class 3. After the second semester started and that boy Sakuma abandoned his role and stopped being ‘not there,’ and the ‘disasters’ started. The real reason the art club was on hiatus until this spring has to be because Ms. Mikami was the sponsor for it, and then she died.”

Meaning that the reason it had been resumed in April was that Reiko, reawakened as the “extra person,” had filled the role of sponsor. That the actual events had been expunged from everybody’s memory as well as all the records, which had been corrupted into false memories and records?

I searched intently through the recesses of my own heart.

And yet, however, restoring the memories doctored/corrupted in this “phenomenon”
from the inside
was probably impossible as long as I was part of this world. That’s how it seemed. The only thing possible was to extrapolate from a handful of objective facts I’d managed to collect, to a truth that had to be…

Maybe…this wasn’t the first time I’d come to Yomiyama since starting middle school. Hadn’t I come here once, one and a half years ago, the autumn of my first year in middle school?

If that had been…a visit to attend the wake and memorial service when Reiko died the autumn before last…

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

The meaning behind my grandfather’s wail thudded home.

Poor, poor Ritsuko. It’s so sad, Ritsuko and Reiko both…

His sorrow at outliving his oldest daughter, Ritsuko, fifteen years ago. The sorrow of outliving his second daughter, Reiko, as well two years ago had, in his memories muddled by senility, mingled with the sorrow of fifteen years ago and made him say those things…

In order to relieve the shock and grief and loneliness Reiko’s sudden death had brought with it the autumn before last, my grandparents had impulsively purchased a myna bird they discovered in a pet shop. And then they had named the bird after their deceased daughter, shortening the name to “Ray.”

Before long, Ray had one human word that she could speak—“Why?”

That could have been a question my heartbroken grandfather or grandmother asked their deceased daughter when they sat in the room by the veranda each day, facing the family altar. Something like “Why? Why did you die, Reiko? Why?” Maybe Ray had learned from that and started to say “Why?” all the time.

Cheer…Cheer up.

That probably came about the same way. Perhaps they had been the words of encouragement my grandmother spoke day after day to my grandfather, who was sunken in continual despair, his heartbreak never lessening. And then Ray had learned it and…

Cheer…Cheer up.

“There were enough desks in the classroom, even though the ‘disasters’ for this year actually started in April…And this explains why, no?” Mei pointed out, lowering the pickax momentarily to her feet. “They really were one desk short at the start of the semester. But not in the classroom—it was in the teachers’ office.”

“Yeah…”

“Wh-what are you two saying?”

Just then, I heard Ms. Mikami’s—Reiko’s—perplexed voice.

“You don’t believe that! Koichi, I’m not…”

Propped up on both of her elbows, craning her chin up, Reiko was looking up at me. Her face, black and smudged with ash and mud—that face that held a shadow of my mother in it—was shockingly twisted. Probably from the combination of physical pain and psychological shock.

“Sakakibara,” Mei said, once more lifting the pickax in both hands and taking a step closer to me. “Move.”

“Misaki…”

I took the full brunt of the iron conviction on her face, then found myself caught and held by the spark in Reiko’s confused, terrified eyes as she lay on the ground behind me. And then…

“No,” I said, taking the pickax from Mei’s hands.

It was medium-sized, its haft sixty or seventy centimeters long, but when I held it, it pulled against my arm. Both
ends
on the iron “head” were pointed and sharper than I would have thought. With this weight and sharpness, it wouldn’t be hard at all to inflict deadly wounds on a person.

“No. You can’t do this.”

“But Sakakibara…If we don’t…”

“I know.” I nodded, feeling the full weight of my decision. “I know. I’ll do it.”

I heard Reiko’s terse scream. I slowly turned back around to face her and adjusted my hold on the pickax I’d taken from Mei.

“K-Koichi—Wait, what are you…”

The look on her face screamed
No!
and she shook her head in small, tight tremors.

“Returning ‘the casualty’ to Death…”

I was fighting back pain and the wild rush of my heartbeat as I spoke.

“That’s the only way to stop the ‘disasters’ once they’ve begun. Your old classmate Matsunaga from fifteen years ago told us that.”

“What are you talking about? You can’t…Stop acting so crazy. Stop this instant!”

“I’m sorry, Reiko.”

Planting my feet, I gathered all the strength I had in my body and lifted the pickax over my head.
It’s the only way. It’s the only way.
Repeating that to myself over and over.

And then…

Aiming the pickax for the spot on her back where Reiko’s heart would be as she lay facedown on the ground, in the instant before I started to swing the pickax down—

Is this right?

Is what I’m doing right?

Is this truly right? We’re not wrong about this, are we?

There was only one piece of evidence that said Reiko was this year’s “extra person.” A judgment made with Mei’s special ability—her “doll’s eye” that could see the “color of death”—that was all the overt evidence we had. The rest was nothing more than a guess based on a series of circumstantial events. It wasn’t as if I had a strong conviction about it and could deny the memories I had of Reiko. And yet…

Is this right?

To believe her and return Reiko to Death?

Is this really right? We’re not wrong, are we?

What if Mei had misunderstood everything? What if being able to see the “color of death” was really just something she’d talked herself into believing, nothing more than a delusion?

That would mean I was killing Reiko, by my own hand, even though she wasn’t “the casualty.” The person on whom I couldn’t help overlaying the image of my mother, Ritsuko, whom I knew only from photographs. The person I couldn’t help seeking out. The person who held probably one of the most important roles in my life. The person whom I wasn’t really “bad at dealing with,” but instead had probably loved ever since I was a child.

I mean, in broad strokes, the “reality” here in Yomiyama was that a phenomenon was occurring that doctored/corrupted and modified people’s memories and records, those memories growing indistinct and vanishing over time…And it happened all the time. In the middle of all that, was I supposed to uncritically accept something that Mei Misaki alone could see, something she swore was the “truth”? Was it right to do what I was about to do, because she said so?

My doubts, anxiety, and confusion swirled together. I became unable to move, as if literally petrified.

Just then, a monstrous roar came from the main building, where the fire continued to burn. The frame of the building had burned through and the roof had finally collapsed. A huge billow of sparks flew into the air accompanied by a swirl of thick smoke. Some of them even fluttered down around me, where I stood frozen. If the fire went on like this, we would be in danger here, too, at some point.

So…

I couldn’t vacillate over this forever.

Is this right?

Is this really right?

Still questioning myself, I turned back to look at Mei.

She hadn’t budged in the slightest from the place she’d stood this whole time, and she was looking straight at me. Her right eye, narrowed coolly, and the “doll’s eye,” the “blue eye, empty to all”—neither of them held the slightest doubt or hesitation. Only…Yes, they were filled only with a terrible sadness.

Her lips moved very slightly.

I couldn’t hear what she said, but I could read the words from the movement of her lips. “Trust me,” they said.

…I…

I closed my eyes tightly and took a deep breath.

I…

I opened my eyes, then turned back to Reiko. Violently conflicted, whipped by hesitation, fear, and despair, still I saw in her face the shadow of the mother I knew only from photographs. But…

I’m…going to believe Mei.

I’m going to believe her.

Gritting my teeth, I made my decision.

I’ll believe Mei.

Maybe I don’t mean “I’m going to believe her” as much as “I want to believe her.” But that’s good enough. I’m okay with that.

Cutting through my indecision, I swung the pickax overhead. Even Reiko’s scream of “Stop!” (Reiko…) didn’t penetrate my brain (Good-bye…Reiko…).

Filling the movement with all the strength I possessed, I swung the
point
of the pickax down into her back (Good-bye…Mother…), slicing through the flesh to reach her heart…

As if that single impact had rebounded into my own body, a pain more intense than any I had experienced before cut through my flimsy chest. The image that flashed instantly to mind was the X-ray of my shriveled and distorted lung after the third collapse.

I pulled my hands away from the pickax lodged in Reiko’s back and pressed them against my chest, crumpling to the ground where I stood. Panting at the ferocious shortness of breath as my consciousness grew ever fainter, I felt the heat of tears spilling from my eyes in ceaseless streams. Obviously the pain and shortness of breath were not their only cause.

Let me give a rundown on the facts that came to light in the following days.

Before dawn on August 9, 1998, the efforts of the firefighters who rushed to the scene were for naught, and the Sakitani Memorial Hall was almost entirely destroyed. They found a total of six bodies at the scene.

The confirmed identities and locations are as follows:

The results of the coroner’s inquest and court-ordered autopsies revealed that not a single one of them had died as a result of the fire.

The caretaker Mr. Numata had been stabbed in the neck by a large number of metal cooking skewers, which had been the cause of his death, and thereafter had been burned in the fire. Of the other five, who were all students, four of them—Maejima, Yonemura, Sugiura, and Nakao—had died from blood loss due to being stabbed and cut in multiple locations by a sharp blade. Akazawa appeared to have died due to snapping her spine in her fall from the second-floor balcony.

With the various circumstances and witness testimony, the fact that Mieko, the wife of Kensaku Numata, who had shared the role of managing the Sakitani Memorial Hall, had brought about the deaths of these six people was found to be conclusive. It was thought that Mieko had also tossed kerosene around the kitchen to set the fire after murdering Mr. Numata. Mr. Chibiki had restrained her, but, before being surrendered to the police, she had died. She had bitten through her tongue in an effort to commit suicide, and had apparently succeeded.

Why had Mieko Numata perpetrated such a string of crimes that night? Regardless of whether she possessed an exceptionally aberrant psychology, the root cause was still unclear.

Wakui, who’d suffered an asthma attack during dinner on August 8, emerged unscathed due to treatment received at the hospital to which Mr. Chibiki had delivered him. As to why he should have neglected to check how much medicine was in his inhaler, he supposedly admitted that it perplexed him, too.

Kazami, who had met with such unexpected misery due to an outrageous misunderstanding by his childhood friend, had suffered no substantial injury beyond a sprained ankle. Even after testing, no abnormalities were found in his head, which had suffered a not-insignificant loss of blood from the impact of his fall, and he came through without major incident. I haven’t heard yet how he and Teshigawara talked things over after that. But, well—given their personalities, I don’t think it turned into any major conflict.

The cause of the intense pain that I, Koichi Sakakibara, experienced was, as suspected, due to a spontaneous pneumothorax in my left lung, which then went on to suffer a collapse somewhat more severe than my previous two experiences. I didn’t entirely lose consciousness at the scene, but the pain and shortness of breath that I continued to feel until I was treated at the hospital were not minor…So, to be honest, I have little memory of the events around that time, such as what happened after my lung collapsed or how I was rescued.

In any case…

By the time my symptoms eased to a certain degree and I had calmed enough to be able to think things over, I was in a room in the same ward of that old, familiar municipal hospital in Yumigaoka where I had received treatment only a few months earlier.

My grandmother had come running to my side, and after talks with the head physician, the suggestion was made that I consider simply having surgery at this point. The overall determination was that surgery would be a better option in order to prevent any further recurrences. And so my father in India, ignorant of all that had occurred, was speedily contacted and his permission obtained, and two days later I underwent the surgery.

Unlike before, the trend was now toward thoracoscopic surgery for this sort of lung surgery. They would make a few incisions in my body about one centimeter in length, then insert an endoscope and other instruments through these to complete the necessary procedures from outside my body. The burden on the patient from this method was far smaller than that from open-chest surgery, and the postoperative recovery was faster as well.

The result was a successful surgery with no complications. My recovery was also a quick one, and I was informed that the prognosis was that I could be discharged after only one more week.

Mei came with Mochizuki to visit me only three days before my release, on August 15th. I’m sure they weren’t aware of it, but it was the day when, many years ago, our country had seen the end of a war.

“…Even so.”

Mochizuki was the one who’d spoken.

“I wonder what made Mrs. Numata do such crazy stuff all of a sudden. She didn’t look like she was about to do anything like that at dinner.”

And so the events of that night had spontaneously become the focus of the conversation. As soon as he’d learned about the fire that night, Mochizuki had escaped out the emergency exit on the western wing of the building. He had then fled to the area near the gate, apparently just missing me as I was heading for Mei’s location.

“There’s no way to know, since she died. That’s what the police said.”

The day before yesterday, I’d received a visit from Detective Oba of the Yomiyama Police Department. That was also when I’d learned the details of the incident.

“I heard she bit her tongue off,” Mochizuki said, his eyebrows knitting in disgust. “That’s a pretty tough way to kill yourself.”

“Sometimes people bite their tongues off, and the piece gets stuck in their windpipe, so they suffocate. That’s probably what happened to Mrs. Numata.”

“Hm-m-m.”

“So we wound up with seven ‘deaths for August.’”

I heard Mei’s blank statement and cocked my head. “Seven? Are you counting the Numatas?”

“Mr. Chibiki looked into it more, and he found out the Numatas were Takabayashi’s grandparents. On his mom’s side.”

“What? You mean…”

Ikuo Takabayashi, who had died of a heart attack in June.

“Since they were his grandparents, that means they were blood relatives within two degrees. So they were actually linked to the class and
in range
. Incidentally, the Numatas became the caretakers there around ten years ago. So someone else was working there for the trip fifteen years ago.”

Feeling thoroughly defeated for some reason, I sighed. I gently rubbed my ribs through my pajamas, where the incision from the surgery still was.

“Of course, that’s all purely a coincidence,” Mei said, sighing as I had done. “It would be wrong to think any kind of unseen will had intervened there.”

“Did Mr. Chibiki say that?”

“He probably would, huh?”

“…Even so,” Mochizuki said again. “I sure am glad you’re getting better, Sakakibara. When I heard you were having surgery, I was really worried about you.”

“The surgery was really simple,” I replied with as blasé an expression as I could muster, but I could see the tears pooling in Mochizuki’s eyes.

“But come on, considering the ‘disasters’ for this year, you could imagine the surgery being botched or all kinds of terrible things.”

“You’ve got a soft heart, boy. But it’s fine. The ‘disasters’ are over.”

“They are?”

Mochizuki looked from my face to Mei’s, suspicion plain on his own.

“Misaki says that, too…But still.”

“I think the ‘extra person’ must have died in the fire that night.”

“Misaki said that, too. I wonder if it’s true.”

Mochizuki blinked his watering eyes and folded his arms over his chest, frowning.

“It was one of the five students who died that night? But no, because according to what Matsunaga said on that tape, once the ‘extra person’ dies, they instantly cease to exist. Hm-m-m…”

“It means that the ‘extra person’ existed until that night, but we can’t remember who it was anymore,” I told him, struggling to keep the morose feelings at bay. Then I changed my tone slightly and asked him, “How many people went on that trip?”

“Um…Fourteen people. Fifteen, if you include Mr. Chibiki.”

“There must have been sixteen people originally. It’s just that no one remembers that anymore.”

No one…No one except Mei and me, who had been so deeply involved in
her
“death.”

Not Mochizuki, not Teshigawara, not Mr. Chibiki…No one remembered her anymore. No one remembered that an art teacher named Reiko Mikami had existed since April, the assistant head teacher of third-year Class 3. Or that she had become the “substitute head teacher” after Mr. Kubodera’s death, had half-remembered her own experience fifteen years ago and planned the camping trip—which must have seemed to her like a desperate measure to take—and had been there that night as the chaperone.

It was on a phone call with Mei that I learned
that
. The day before my surgery, with some effort I escaped my hospital room and called her house on the ward’s green phone. I had my cell phone with me in my room, but it was out of battery and I couldn’t use it anymore.

“Nobody remembers Ms. Mikami,” she had told me without even asking how I was doing, coming onto the phone after Kirika had handed it to her, as usual. “They keep saying she died two years ago in the fall.”

“Two years ago…”

“Yeah. That kid Sakuma abandoned his role of being ‘not there’ right after summer break, and as soon as October started, one of the students died…followed by Ms. Mikami. They said she drowned in Yomiyama River. You still don’t remember?”

“She drowned…?”

“There was a lot of rain at the end of October, and the river was swollen. The next day, they found her body downstream. They don’t know if she jumped or got swept away by accident…”

I couldn’t speak.

“I can’t remember yet, either, but
that’s what really happened
. Someone linked to the class who died in the ‘disasters’ two years ago. So it was actually eight people, not seven. And everyone’s memories went back to normal. Lots of records and data did, too. Probably all of it. I looked at the class list, and the part where it said ‘Assistant Head Teacher: Reiko Mikami’ is gone, too.”

“So then she really was…”

That would be the best proof that Reiko had been the “extra person.”

“People are saying that after Mr. Kubodera died, Mr. Chibiki filled in as the substitute head teacher. It was an exception, and he was still serving as the librarian of the secondary library. They also say that Mr. Chibiki was the one who planned and led the trip…Just him.”

“What about the art club?”

The thought occurred to me suddenly, so I asked.

“I wonder what’s going on with the art club now, after it got revived in April.”

“It’s true that after Ms. Mikami died, the teacher who was supervising it with her transferred the next year. The new art teacher who came in said they didn’t want to run the art club, so it went on hiatus. But now they’re saying that teacher agreed to do it this spring.”

“Oh.”

I had guessed a lot of things about Reiko’s existence from talking with my grandmother when she came running to the hospital. She never questioned the safety of her daughter, who had participated in the trip as its chaperone, and had only dabbed at her eyes and said, “Oh, if only Reiko were alive right now.”

She even told me, “You know how she was. She thought of you as her own child, Koichi.

“She would say that if Yosuke had been a cruel father to you, she would have taken you in and raised you. Even though she only saw you every once in a while when you were small.”

I wondered what it was like now inside the side house Reiko had used as her office/bedroom.

For at least the brief window of four months, she had continued her life in this town, in that house, as a “casualty made flesh.” Some trace of it must have…But no, even that would have disappeared. Or taken on some other identity with some other meaning.

“Obon is almost over, but when you get out of the hospital, would you like to visit Reiko’s grave?”

When she said that, it was all I could do not to turn my face away from my grandmother’s well-intentioned gaze.

“I know it would make her happy if you came with me.”

…

…

…

I thought it would be all right if I talked to Mochizuki and Teshigawara, and even to Mr. Chibiki, about
what had really happened
. Although I got the feeling that, aside from Mr. Chibiki, no matter how much I explained it to them, it wouldn’t feel real to them and they’d just be confused.

I don’t know if Mochizuki was trying to be considerate, but eventually he went home, leaving Mei with me. As he was departing, he murmured, “Oh, right,” and pulled something out of his bag.

“I meant to give this to you. I’ll make a copy for you, too, Misaki.”

What Mochizuki then handed me was the “commemorative photo” we’d taken in front of the gate when we’d arrived at the Sakitani Memorial Hall the evening of August 8.

“So, Misaki—how long did you know?”

I waited until Mochizuki left before I asked Mei the question that I’d been wanting to ask the whole time I’d been hospitalized.

“That Ms. Mikami…Reiko was the ‘extra person’? When did you…?”

“When was it?” Mei put a hand to her forehead in a deliberate gesture. “…I forget.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I piled on another question, my face earnest.

“I thought it wouldn’t help anything even if I did tell you. Until I heard what was on that tape. Plus…” Shifting the hand on her forehead to the eye patch over her left eye, Mei continued, “I just couldn’t tell you. How could I have? Ms. Mikami looked so much like your mother, who was already gone. When I saw the yearbook and when you showed me all those pictures at your house…I thought,
They’re exactly alike.
She was important to you, right? Ms. Mikami—Reiko.”