iv
✦ ✦ ✦
On Monday, Morino was clearly glancing sideways at me, wondering. She obviously wanted to ask what I’d been up to in the country. But I spent the entire day pretending not to notice her gaze.
I didn’t speak to her until all the other students had left the room after the final class of the day. A few students had suggested I walk home with them, but I ignored their requests—which is not to say that I didn’t respond. Without any conscious participation on my part, my mind created some believable excuse, smoothly deflecting their invitations. I had no idea what excuses I’d made. I had no interest in my classmates whatsoever, and such interactions were always carried out automatically, allowing me to live without making waves.
Finally, the sound of my classmates’ footsteps faded, and the hall outside the room grew quiet. Only Morino and I remained. She was hunched over in her seat like a sinking ship, glaring sidelong at me.
I slowly crossed the quiet classroom toward her seat. She sat three rows from the window, three rows from the back.
“I hear you spent the night in the country. My grandmother called to tell me about it,” Morino said sleepily. The lines under her eyes had grown worse.
“She’s a good cook.”
I sat down in the seat in front of her, sideways, with the row of windows in front of me. It was still light out, and the sky was only slightly yellowed. In the distance, I could hear some sports team running and calling out as they did. The lights in the room were off, and the only illumination in the room was pouring through these windows.
“I heard a number of things at the house where you once lived.”
“For example?”
“The pranks you and your sister pulled as children. That Yoru would never cry no matter how much they scolded her, but that Yuu always cried instantly, hiding behind her sister.”
“She always depended on me.”
We sat in silence for a long moment. There was a quiet tension in the air. I looked at her again.
“I’ve figured out a number of things about Morino Yuu. I’m not sure about every detail, but …”
Morino stopped glaring at me. She slowly looked away, closing her eyes. Her lashes seemed to tremble above the dark lines under her eyes.
“I thought you might,” she said bitterly. She asked me what I had figured out.
“Yuu died when she was eight, nine years ago now,” I said. Morino did not open her eyes. “Nine years ago, that day, you found her body hanging in the shed, and you went to tell your grandmother. But you’d known there was a body in there already. You’d been waiting in the entrance for someone to come home so you could pretend to discover your sister’s death while someone was watching.”
I stopped, waiting for Morino’s reaction. She was silent for a moment and then she asked if that was all.
“You already knew your sister was dead. But you were acting, trying to hide that fact. When I try to imagine what would make you do something like that, I always come to one conclusion. In other words, you had something to do with your sister’s death.”
Morino nodded.
I continued. “Yuu had tied two ropes to the ceiling beam, one around her neck and the other under her arms, supporting her body.”
The little eight-year-old girl had jumped off the wooden box. For a moment, it must’ve looked like she was hanging from the rope around her neck. But in fact, the rope around her chest was keeping her from falling too far.
Then another girl appeared, a girl with the same face. That girl took the pruning shears from the wall and went over to the girl hanging from the ceiling. She cut the rope around the girl’s chest with the shears.
The rope broke, and this time the girl was hanging from the rope around her neck.
“You killed her.”
Morino opened her eyes a little, not looking at me—not looking at anything for long.
“Didn’t you hear about the footprints? My footprints were nowhere in the room.”
I imagined the girl hanging there barefoot. The ground in the shed had been softened by the rain.
“No, you left footprints all over the shed. But nobody knew the truth. After you cut the rope and killed her, you saw your own footprints on the ground. And you knew you couldn’t just walk away without arousing suspicion. You had to do something …”
Morino had looked up at the hanged corpse she’d made and down at the footprints on the ground, knowing she was in trouble. Then she saw the shoes that were placed next to each other on the ground, and she made up her mind.
She took off her own shoes, stepping onto a fallen box. Careful not to leave any more footprints, she put on the shoes that had been placed under the corpse, replacing them with her own.
Now the footprints belonged to the dead girl.
“All you had to do then was slip out through the dog door. The ground was still dry there, and you wouldn’t leave any footprints.”
Morino finally opened her eyes and looked at me. “And my motive?”
“Hatred,” I said.
Morino looked very sad. “When you said you’d ‘figured out a number of things about Morino Yuu,’ I knew you’d caught me.”
I nodded.
It had baffled me: Why had her grandmother been so sure it was Yoru standing there when she’d opened the front door? They were twins, and they looked exactly alike—nobody could tell them apart at a glance.
But if she had been wearing black shoes, then it would’ve been obvious.
“lt must’ve been hard to go nine years without telling anyone, Morino Yuu.” That was Morino’s real name.
✦ ✦ ✦
†