But—but if Tohko was crying like that, couldn’t I at least be at her side?
At the very least, couldn’t I give her a handkerchief?
A brilliant light flashed through the sky with a rumble.
The innumerable trees it had illuminated looked like a band of ghouls mocking me.
All I could hear was the thunder, the wind, and the rain.
If this was all a dream, how amazing that would have been.
Gritting my teeth, I steeled my nerves until it felt as if my temples would split and moved forward, relying on the single, momentary flash of lightning.
Mud was clinging to the bottoms of my slippers. They were totally sodden.
Just then, panting raggedly, I saw a tiny light dart faintly across my vision.
A firefly…?
It couldn’t be. Not in this violent rain.
Besides, Maki had told us the season for fireflies was over and that no matter how much she waited at the pond, she hadn’t managed to see a single one.
Even so, there was definitely a faint, elusive light that seemed as if it would wink out at any moment bobbing before my eyes.
The light glided over the ground.
Thinking the pond might be its destination, I chased after it desperately.
I don’t believe in ghosts.
When people die, they just return to the earth.
But still the hope the little light brought me was immense and filled me with unshakable strength. It instantly lifted my spirits. I even thought Amemiya’s spirit had come to save me, something I would ordinarily be mortified of to the point of blushing.
When I pushed back the tree branches, now loaded with raindrops, I found the lake, filled with glossy black water.
Above it, a single faint light bobbed, flashing.
There was just one road from here to the house! I was sure of it!
I was saved. I could go back!
Just then, I heard a voice.
“…Aaaaa.”
“Ko…haaaaa.”
“Konohaaa.”
Once again, a shock of disbelief shot through me.
The voice was coming closer and closer, and I held my breath and listened hard.
A voice calling my name in the darkness.
A voice searching for me.
Warm, orange lamplight was bouncing through the branches.
At last, the figure of Tohko appeared, wearing a plastic raincoat over her head and holding a flashlight in one hand.
I’m sure my face looked totally idiotic.
My hands fell limp at my sides and I stood there, soaked to the bone by the rain. Tohko was looking at me, sniffling.
The thunder had grown distant, but the rain still fell fiercely.
For a while, the two of us stood at a distance, looking at each other.
“Konoha…?”
Looking crestfallen, Tohko spoke my name timidly, as if to confirm it was me.
“…Yes,” I answered, dazed.
Still looking at me with fright, Tohko tilted her head slightly to one side, and she asked, “You…have feet. So you’re…not a ghost, right?”
“I’m cold and soaked and have cuts all over and I’m wearing slippers and everything’s terrible, but I’m still alive.”
Her slender body, swaddled in the plastic raincoat, sent drops of water flying as she came to hug me.
Water splashed up into my face. Since I was already soaked in the rain, I didn’t mind.
“Oh, thank goodness, I can actually touch you. You really are alive. I thought I would have to dredge the lake. That I should have brought a rake. I’m so glad you’re alive!”
“Why would you assume I was dead?”
“But I mean, I heard you took your stuff and went home all by yourself, so I was really worried. It’s weird that you would leave without saying anything. But then you didn’t come back when it got dark, and I couldn’t get hold of Ryuto, either, and it started raining, and there was lightning even, and I just couldn’t stay inside.”
“It was reckless to come looking for me on a night like this, with the rain and storm and lightning.”
With her arms still wrapped around me, Tohko lifted her face up and pouted.
“You’re one to talk! What were you doing out here in slippers without so much as an umbrella? Where did you go?”
“I was kidnapped by a bad person, but I escaped.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Anyway, let’s go back to the house,” I prompted Tohko. “I’ll explain on the way.”
We started walking.
Before I realized it, Tohko was squeezing my hand tightly. My hand and her hand were both soaking wet in the rain and dripping with water and freezing cold. But even so, a sliver of warmth seeped into my skin like a ray of sunlight.
Tohko’s presence, her warmth, came through my palm.
And the fact that Tohko was shivering.
“Are you afraid of ghosts?”
“N-no!”
“Your voice is squeaky.”
“It’s just because I’m cold.”
She denied it, shaking her head from side to side, but it was blindingly obvious that she was terrified.
She hated ghosts so much she was trembling. But even though it was only natural that she would be afraid of going at night to a lake that a ghoul was supposed to haunt, she’d come looking for me because she was worried.
In the midst of rain and lightning, wearing a raincoat, dripping wet like a paper doll.
Each time Tohko’s fingers flinched, I felt warmth swell up in my chest.
Tohko was stubbornly silent out of embarrassment.
“M-more importantly, what did you mean about being kidnapped?”
As I moved down the path illuminated by the flashlight, hand in hand with Tohko, I told her about everything that had happened.
“Mr. Takamizawa knocked you out and took you away?”
Tohko’s eyes were round with surprise.
“I can’t believe you got away and made it here. I’m glad nothing bad happened to you.”
“Amemiya…”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
If I told her that Amemiya had saved me, she would probably laugh at me. No, maybe she would get scared that a ghost had appeared and be even more scared than she was now.
“Today was definitely my lucky day.”
I would keep the part about Amemiya my personal secret.
Tohko’s smile seemed to spill out of her. A flower bloomed in the darkness of the night.
“Yeah. It was a five-star lucky day for Pisces.”
“Isn’t that your sign?”
“I had good luck, and that’s how I found you, no?”
“I don’t know about that.”
“No, it’s a truth of the universe. If you don’t pay me even more respect and be nice to me, you’re going to get punished.”
“I can’t respect a president who tears up my English notes on the sly and sneaks bites of Bradbury’s ‘The Fog Horn.’”
“Th-that was…I just—”
Tohko fumbled for words.
“And who was it that ate the erotic story someone dropped in your goblin mailbox in the school yard and got sick, so they had to skip fifth period to go collapse in the clubroom? I had to take care of you that day and I couldn’t go to class, either.”
“It’s not a goblin mailbox, it’s a love advice mailbox. And it’s not like I asked you to stay with me. You decided to skip all on your own.”
“When someone bitterly asks you, ‘Are you abandoning your presideeeeent?’ you have to stay.”
“Well, um…that kind of thing might have happened once or twice.”
What exactly were we talking about?
While we worked our way down every digression like usual, the mansion came into view.
The gloomy mood that the deformed building gave off stirred up our forgotten anxiety and fear.
“That’s strange. There isn’t a single light on.”
“Maybe the power’s out?” Tohko murmured timidly.
We opened the creaking gate and headed to the front door. We rang the doorbell, but there was no answer.
Tohko gulped and pushed at the doors.
With a grating creak, the doors swung open to either side.
At our feet crouched a dark something. The instant Tohko turned the light of the flashlight onto it, she shrieked.
It was Baron’s corpse lying at the entrance, with foam coming out of his mouth and his eyes bulging out.
“B-Baron…”
Tohko whispered in a wavering voice, rooted in place.
I felt a shudder, too, as if a cold hand had taken hold of my neck.
The mass murder that had occurred at the mansion eighty years earlier—the man at the souvenir shop had told us that one of the five casualties had been a dog. That it had died with foam coming out of its mouth—
When I came back to my senses, I realized the sprinklers, which were fixed on the ceiling, were whining in the darkness and spinning around. The water spewing out of them soaked the floor and stairs.
“Let me see your flashlight.”
I took the flashlight from Tohko and shone it on the stairs. When I did, we saw several gashes cut into the wall by a sharp blade and a spray of red that could have been blood.
What on earth had happened?
There was a powerful gust of wind behind our ice-cold backs, and the doors we’d left ajar slammed shut loudly. Tohko jumped, surprised by the noise, and just then there came a noise from the second floor.
Tohko jumped again.
I felt a tremor run down my spine, too.
I pressed down on my chest, which was raging almost painfully, and listened hard. I definitely heard someone on the second floor!
I could clearly hear the sound of something falling, the sound of a chair scraping, the sound of steps on the floor.
Unsettling sounds, as if people were struggling—!
The sound of a gunshot punctured my ears.
We ran up the stairs as if drawn by it.