3.
I had to swear to keep it a secret before Kyoko would tell me anything.
“We…we were at the same Junior High,” she said. “We were all on the table tennis team. Even in Junior High, we hung out together. Kusatsu was one of us, but a year younger. She was team captain when we were third years, so we sort of stopped thinking of her that way.
“So, three months ago, Kusatsu called to say she had something good, and that everyone should hook up with her.
“It was a weird sort of drug.
“No, not uppers; I think it was something else. It was a sort of bluish, see-through liquid. You took a sniff of it, and it was like your head opened up, like you became transparent, like every corner of your body was washed clean.
“Glue? No…I don’t know, but it didn’t have that strong of a smell.
“Kusatsu didn’t tell us much, but she said some pharmaceutical company had created it as a test product. Yeah, it was probably bullshit. But, hey, it was free, so we all tried it out…
“Right. She never charged us anything.
“She was never exactly a generous person, so I’m not sure why…
“And a little while later, people from our group started running away.
“No, I don’t know where they went! They didn’t tell anyone. They just, you know, vanished. Yeah, girls from other schools too.
“And then, Kusatsu vanished. By this point, the rest of us were starting to wonder if it had something to do with the drugs. We didn’t know where she got it, but maybe it was something nobody was supposed to know about it and they were taking us out. Then suddenly one of us announced that she wasn’t gonna have anything to do with us anymore.
“This made us nervous. We had to know why.
“She said Kirima Nagi had threatened her. Somehow, she had found out about the drugs, and she had told her to never touch them again…
“Not just the one, though. She hit every girl…in order. I was the last one.
“Started two weeks ago, right after she was suspended. That’s why I said she had intentionally gotten herself suspended—so she would have a good reason for not coming to school, and so that she could move freely.
“No! I’m never touching drugs again!
“Hunh? No way! Why would I know Kirima Nagi?! I’ve always avoided her up to now.
“Please, don’t tell anyone, Suema! Keep it a secret! I probably should never have told you either. But I had to. I just had to!
“Keeping quiet was just too frightening…it was crushing me…” She trailed off.
I held Kyoko, comforting her until she stopped crying. Then we killed some time in a booth at First Kitchen, so that her face could return to normal before I took her back home.
It was night by then, and as I walked through the darkened streets, I thought things over.
Her fragmented story suggested that she had only seen a small part of what was really going on. I couldn’t guess much from what she’d told me, but it sounded like she hadn’t been one of the ringleaders of this group of ex-table tennis team players. More like she did whatever the much less stable girls told her to; just a third wheel, hanging on to the cool kids.
She wasn’t even a victim. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Nagi had said Kusatsu Akiko had been killed…
And she knew about my past.
But…how?
Who was she?
Should I tell the school…or the police?
(But I promised Kyoko…)
If word got out that Kyoko had done drugs, that would be it for her—she’d be finished. It wouldn’t end at suspension, either; she’d be expelled as an example to the other students. I didn’t want to do that to her.
It was very dark outside.
The streetlight above me had clearly not been changed in years, and it was flickering madly.
“…………”
I stopped walking.
I opened my bag under the unsteady light, and thanks to my bad habit of carrying far too much stuff around with me all of the time, I had the class directory with me. It listed not only phone numbers, but also addresses.
I looked up the address of the person three names before my own.
Somewhat surprisingly, Kirima Nagi, like me, lived close to school. I could walk there.
(Okay, let’s do it!)
I snapped my bag closed and walked as fast as I could in that direction.
But why did I have to meet her?
Kyoko, who was actually part of it, was running away as fast as she could. That was the more natural reaction. Anyone normal would do the same.
I was clearly a third party; I had nothing to do with anything.
But I didn’t like that.
Five years ago, things had all happened without me knowing about them. I only found out when everything was finished. My own will played no part in the matter.
If there was danger, I wanted to see it.
That’s why I had chased after Boogiepop, even though there was clearly no such thing. It was all the same to me. I didn’t care what it was…I just wanted to confront something.
(No more blissful ignorance for me.)
Kirima Nagi might really be a witch. I hoped she was.