†
✦ ✦ ✦
The next day, Morino sent a message to my cell phone from hers: “Return the notebook.”
Her messages were always short and simple, nothing unnecessary. Likewise, Morino had no detestable clattery key holders or straps attached to her phone.
I had taken the notebook home with me. After we left Mizuguchi Nanami, I hadn’t given it back to Morino.
On the train home Morino had stared into the distance, not yet recovered from the shock.
Before we left, she had picked up Mizuguchi Nanami’s clothing off the ground, stuffing it into her pack. The clothes had been cut to pieces, but the girl’s hat and bag—and everything inside—remained untouched.
Inside Mizuguchi Nanami’s bag were her makeup, her wallet, and her handkerchief, all of which we looked over on the train coming home.
From the student ID in her wallet, we learned that Mizuguchi Nanami had been a high school student in the prefecture next to ours. In the bag, there was a small book designed to hold purikura; in those pictures and in the one on her ID, we could see what she had looked like while alive. Mizuguchi Nanami and an impressive number of friends smiled at us from the tiny purikura stickers.
I met Morino in the McDonald’s near the station in the afternoon, after having received her message.
Morino was not wearing her customary dark clothes. At first I didn’t even recognize her. The hat she was wearing was the same as the one we’d found lying next to Mizuguchi Nanami’s body, though, so I was able to work out that she was dressed like the dead girl.
Her hair and makeup were the same as Mizuguchi Nanami’s had been in the purikura. The girl’s clothes had been cut to pieces, so Morino must have gone shopping for look-alikes.
As she took the notebook, she appeared to be enjoying herself immensely.
“Should we tell Mizuguchi Nanami’s family that her body is in the woods?” I asked.
Morino thought about this for a moment, but then she shook her head. “The police will find her eventually.” Morino spoke about Mizuguchi Nanami’s death dressed exactly as the girl had been until a few minutes before she died.
What was Mizuguchi Nanami’s family doing now? Were they worried because she was missing? Did she have a boyfriend? What had her grades been like?
Morino seemed a little different. As we talked, the way she spoke and gestured moved gradually away from her usual behavior. She worried about where her bangs were, and she mentioned how the couple at the booth across from ours looked very much in love—neither was the kind of thing that Morino had ever done before.
I had never met Mizuguchi Nanami—but now, watching Morino, I imagined that this was what Mizuguchi Nanami had been like.
Morino had her elbows on the table, and she looked happy. Next to her was the bag that had once belonged to Mizuguchi Nanami—on the clasp of the bag, a key holder with an anime character on it.
“You plan to dress like that for a while?”
“Yeah. Fun, isn’t it?”
It let Morino pretend. But the way she smiled or looked in a mirror, examining her eyebrows, was not a copy of an ordinary high school girl—it felt as if Mizuguchi Nanami had slipped inside Morino.
As we left McDonald’s, Morino very naturally took my hand, not even realizing she had done so until I pointed it out. Mizuguchi Nanami was dead, but I was sure it was her who had taken my hand.
We split up at the station.
When I got home, I turned on the TV. The news was talking about the serial killings, the first and second victims—the same information that had been covered countless times, nothing new at all. No mention of Mizuguchi Nanami.
There were images of the victims’ friends and family looking sad. Pictures of the victims enlarged to fill the screen …
I remembered Morino and worried—but that kind of thing almost never happened. I dismissed my own concerns.
The victims in the photographs had hair and clothes like Mizuguchi Nanami’s—which meant Morino was now the killer’s type.
✦ ✦ ✦
iii
✦ ✦ ✦
Three days after we had met at McDonald’s, my phone rang in the afternoon, indicating that I had received a message from someone … from Morino.
“Help.”
That was it, just that one word.
I quickly tapped out a reply: “Something happen?”
I waited awhile, but she didn’t respond, so I called her. I couldn’t reach her phone—it was either off or broken.
In the evening I called Morino’s house. She had given me the number once before—not because she thought I might ever need to call, but because the letters standing for the numbers coincidentally formed a deranged sentence, making the number easy to remember.
Her mother answered; she had a high voice and spoke very quickly.
I said I was a classmate and that I needed to talk with Morino about some class business.
She had not come home.
I had dismissed the idea that she would be attacked. Yet the contents of that notebook had been accurate, so it was probably also true that the killer had been in the same café as Morino. There was a chance that he had happened to see her in town dressed like Mizuguchi Nanami. The killer might have been surprised to see someone dressed just like the girl he had recently killed, and it might have tempted him … but the odds of his actually targeting her were very low. After all, any number of girls dressed that way.
The biggest reason to suspect that the killer might’ve captured Morino was the possibility that they lived near each other. They had been in the same coffee shop. Unless the killer had been far from home that day, his path might well cross Morino’s regularly. The chances of his seeing her were high.
I thought about it that night. It seemed likely that Morino had been killed by then. Her body was probably scattered on some mountain.
I fell asleep imagining it.
✦ ✦ ✦
†
✦ ✦ ✦
The next day, I called her house again.
Morino still wasn’t home. According to her mother, this was the first time she had ever stayed out all night without calling. Her mother was worried.
“So are you her boyfriend?” Morino’s mother asked.
“No, not at all.”
“You don’t need to deny it so firmly. I know all about it.”
Morino’s mother had absolutely no doubt that her daughter had a boyfriend. Her daughter had never had any friends, and this was the first time anyone had called for her since she was in elementary school.
“Recently, she’s been dressing in brighter colors, and I knew a boy was involved.”
I began to worry about the cost of the call.
“Is there a small brown notebook in her room?”
The mother went and checked, putting the phone down. There was a short silence. Then her voice came on the line again. “There was something like that on her desk … I hope it’s the one you meant.”
It seemed Morino hadn’t been carrying the notebook around. If she had, I’d been considering the possibility that the killer had seen her reading the notebook and had attacked her to keep her silent.
I told Morino’s mother that I would come get the notebook, asking for the address.
After I hung up, I headed for Morino’s house. I had known she lived not far from the station, but I had never been there before.
She lived on the third floor of an apartment complex behind the station.
I rang the bell and heard the voice from the phone call out as the door opened. Undoubtedly, it was Morino’s mother.
“Come in, come in, come in.”
Morino’s mother was wearing an apron; she was a very domestic-looking, ordinary housewife—completely different from Morino. I wondered how a mother like this had produced a girl like Morino.
She invited me in, but I refused. What I was here for could be handled in the doorway.
I mentioned the notebook, and she had it ready. I took it, asking if she had read the contents.
She shook her head. “I can’t be bothered to read such tiny handwriting.”
She seemed much more interested in me than in the notebook.
“When second year started, that girl suddenly started going to school all the time. Now I know why!”
The year before, Morino had said school was boring and rarely went. I had not known that. Her interests were unusual, but more than that, she was awkward, unable to blend in. It was only natural she had ended up the way she was.
I asked her mother when she had last seen Morino.
“Yesterday, just past noon, I think. I saw her leaving the house.”
“Did she say where she was going?”
Morino’s mother shook her head. “Will you look for her?” she asked, as I turned to leave.
I nodded. “If she’s still alive,” I added. Her mother thought I was joking and laughed.