lt was a Saturday, two days after Morino Yoru had told me about her sister’s death. It dawned cloudy.
There was no school, so I boarded a train early in the morning. The train took me away from the city, into more and more remote areas. As we swayed from side to side, the crowd of passengers got off one by one, until only I was left. I looked out the window, watching the sunless, dark-green farms slide past me.
I got off the train at a station near a few remote farmhouses. I got on the bus outside the station, riding it for a while, until it started up a slope and the trees began to thicken. We were high enough to look down on the village now. The road was thin, barely wide enough for the bus to pass. On both sides of the road, the trees were growing over the guardrails and tapping on the bus windows.
I got off at a stop in the forest. When the bus had driven away, there were no vehicles on the road. I checked the schedule. There was only one bus an hour. There were no buses going back in the evening, so I would have to leave before then. There was nothing around me but trees, but I walked awhile, and it soon opened up so that I could see a few houses ahead.
This was where Morino had been born, where she had lived as a child.
Once, I stopped and looked around me. When it was sunny, the autumn leaves must’ve made the mountains look red. But under these clouds, everything looked drab.
I began walking toward the house where Morino had lived. As my feet carried me forward, I remembered the conversation I’d had with her the day before, at school.
Friday at lunch, the library had been almost empty. There were bookshelves lining the walls, and the rest of the space was filled with desks and chairs for reading. Morino was sitting in the back, the most deserted part of the room. When I found her, I went over and spoke.
“I want to see the house where you used to live.”
She looked up from the book she was reading and frowned. “Why?”
“Have you forgotten that I like to visit places where people died?”
Morino looked away from me and back to the book in front of her. As I stood next to her, I could only see the curve of her neck. She was attempting to ignore me, focusing on the book.
I looked down at the book she was reading. On the corner of the page, it said, “Chapter Three: You Are Not Alone … How to Live Positively.” This came as something of a shock to me.
Her head still down, Morino corrected my assumption. “I thought this book might put me to sleep.”
There was a long, uncertain silence, until finally she looked up. “I regret ever telling you about Yuu. If you’re going, go alone.”
The house and shed were still standing. Her grandparents lived there, farming.
I asked why she didn’t want to go, and she said lack of sleep meant she was just too tired.
The next day was Saturday, and there was no school, so I decided to go to the country then. I had Morino give me the address and directions. It looked like I could make it out there and back in the same day. I gave Morino a notebook to have her draw a map.
“They’ll be surprised if a strange high school boy shows up out of the blue,” I said. She nodded, and she promised to call them and tell them I was coming. We decided to say I was going to take some photographs of the country.
“Is that all?” Morino asked, as expressionless as always.
I looked at the map she had drawn. “Your maps always give me goose bumps,” I said, and then I turned my back on her. I could feel her staring at me all the way to the library doors. It was as if she wanted to say something, but the words were caught in her throat.
Blackbirds flew against the low, ashen clouds. I looked down at the notebook in my hand and the map Morino had drawn. According to the map, the road went through the middle of a kindergarten. I found it hard to believe any parent would send their children to a school like that.
Deciphering the map, I headed in the direction of Morino’s old home. I had the house number and several landmarks, so I was sure I could get there even if the map proved unhelpful.
As I walked, I ran over the story Morino had told me on the bus bench again, the story of a girl with a cruel mind and her twin sister.
Yuu had been found hanging from a rope.
But there was one thing that didn’t make sense about Morino’s story—namely, the part where she found her sister’s dead body.
Yoru had opened the door to the shed and screamed at once. Then she had run to her grandmother and told her that Yuu was dead.
Why had Morino known instantly that Yuu was dead? They were always pretending to be dead and surprising people, so why didn’t she assume her sister was simply faking it?
Shrieking in surprise when you saw something like that was only natural, and a real corpse probably looked much more horrible than someone pretending … but the fact that she had never even considered the idea that it was a prank, instead instantly running to tell her grandmother … that seemed very unnatural to me.
I compared the map and the road again. There was a deep river valley in front of me. According to the map, this was a dry cleaner’s. The clothes would get wet as soon as they were cleaned, I thought.
As I crossed the bridge, I looked up at the sky. The clouds were hanging low around the mountaintop, and the trees up there looked very dark.
After walking awhile longer, I found the house where Morino had once lived. Built in the mountain’s embrace was an old building, the roof covered in moss, just as she had said. There was nothing around but trees and fields, and it must have been pitch-black at night. No gates or walls—I simply followed the road until I found myself in their yard.
As I headed toward the front door, I noticed the shed on the left. This must be the shed where Yuu’s body had been found. The walls were of dry, white wood. There was a blue tarp over the top, tied in place with plastic string. It was very old and leaning to one side.
Glancing sidelong at the shed, I stood at the entrance. The door was made of glass set in a wooden frame, and it slid open to one side. I rang the doorbell, and someone called my name from behind.
When I turned around, an old woman was standing there, a hoe in one hand.
Her back was curved, and she was wearing loose work trousers, with a towel around her neck. I decided she must be Morino’s grandmother.
The hoe in her hand had dirt stuck to it. She was standing a fair distance away, but I could smell the earth on her.
“Yoru called last night. I was worried you weren’t coming!” she said. The grin on her wrinkled face made it hard to see any resemblance to Morino, who always seemed as if she had already died, sharing nothing of the vitality and sunny disposition her grandmother radiated.
I bowed my head and explained that I would leave as soon as I had a few good pictures. But Morino’s grandmother ignored me, hustling me into the house.
There was a shoe box inside the door and a number of what looked like souvenirs placed on top of it. The hall led away into the house, which smelled of air freshener and strangers.
“You must be hungry!”
“Not really.”
She ignored me, sitting me down at the dining room table and placing a dish laden with food in front of me. Eventually, Morino’s grandfather appeared. He was a tall old man with white hair.
The two of them seemed to think I was engaged to Morino.
“You must marry Yoru someday,” her grandfather said suddenly, bowing his head as I reluctantly ate. I glanced out the window, wondering if I would be able to see the shed and get back before it started raining and the final bus left.
There was a picture on the side of the kitchen cabinets. In the picture were a pair of doll-like little girls. They both had long black hair, and they were staring directly at the camera, not smiling at all. They were dressed all in black, and they were holding hands. It looked like the picture had been taken out front. I could see the door to the house behind them.
“Yoru and Yuu,” the grandmother said, catching my gaze. “You heard about her twin sister?”
I nodded.
“That was when they were six,” the grandfather said. Neither one of them had anything else to say about the picture.
After I had eaten, I was allowed to clasp my hands in front of the shrine. I knew that showing my manners like this allowed a number of other things to move forward smoothly.
Looking at the photograph of Yuu in the shrine, I imagined that her death must seem like only yesterday to her grandparents. It had been nine years ago. Nine years to Morino or me was more than half our lives—but to people her grandparents’ age, nine years was probably not much different than one or two to us.
After I had clasped my hands, Morino’s grandparents sat me down in the living room and asked what their granddaughter was like at school. Before I could begin to answer, they were telling stories about what Morino had been like as a child. I assumed they had no interest in anything I had to say.
“Oh, right, we have some pictures she drew in elementary school!” her grandmother exclaimed happily, standing up and vanishing into the back.
The grandfather watched her go, and then he bowed his head to me apologetically. “My wife’s getting a little carried away, I’m afraid.”
I shook my head—a generic reaction seemed appropriate.
“Yoru has never really brought any friends home, you see. When we heard you were coming, she got excited.”
Morino’s grandmother came back in carrying a paper bag, which she set down on the table before pulling from it a number of pages of old drawing paper—pictures Morino had drawn in elementary school using paint and crayon. I had guessed as much from her maps, but Morino appeared to have no artistic talent at all.