A group of girls went down the hall laughing merrily.
Morino Yuu listened to them for a moment, until their voices faded and the hall was silent again.
“You’re right,” she said. “I’m the younger sister. I was the one who was always crying, always ordered around.” She frowned, looking at me. “How did you know?”
“Yuu didn’t know that people take off their shoes when they hang themselves. That made it all clear. When you were playing at suicide, Yoru might’ve told you, but I imagine you forgot.”
I told her about the pictures I’d seen in the house, the pictures they’d drawn of themselves playing at hanging.
“Those pictures were drawn during summer vacation nine years ago, just before Yoru’s death—which means whatever can be gleaned about the artist’s personality at the time is also true about her personality on the day Yoru died.”
Yoru and Yuu had drawn the same thing, but there had been a number of differences: In Yuu’s picture, both girls had been wearing shoes. But in Yoru’s picture, the girls’ legs had been flesh toned all the way down. At first, I’d thought Yuu had drawn more details—but later, I changed my mind.
I began to think that Yoru had drawn the picture correctly, from memory. Yuu had drawn the sun, but Yoru’s picture had a gray background—further evidence. At the bus stop, Morino had told me the hanging game had happened on a rainy day. It was not that Yoru had forgotten to draw the shoes—it was simply that they had both been barefoot.
“You said it yourself at the bus stop: you knew more about death than Yuu did; you were much crueler than she was. You were saying that as Yoru; so as a child, Yoru must have known about the strange custom of people taking off their shoes before hanging themselves.”
When the twins had played at hanging themselves, they’d probably taken off their shoes and placed them aside. Yoru had known that was what you did, and she had probably insisted on it. That knowledge was reflected in her drawing.
But not so with Yuu: She had taken off her shoes when they were playing and then forgotten all about it. She didn’t know the custom, and so she’d drawn herself hanging with shoes on.
The corpse in the shed had been barefoot, though. If Yuu had been playing at being hanged all by herself and had died when the support rope broke, then her body would’ve been wearing shoes.
Yuu was silent, listening carefully to nothing. Then her lips parted slowly and she spoke. “My sister with the black shoes died. And maybe I did hate her a little. But your guess isn’t completely accurate.” Her voice was very quiet. “You didn’t see the rope around her shoulders, did you? I didn’t cut it. It broke on its own.”
At around noon that day, her older sister Yoru had suggested they pretend to have hanged themselves, to surprise everybody.
Yuu had agreed, and the two had set to work in the shed just as it began to rain.
The dog was alive then, and it watched them work, looking puzzled.
“My sister piled up the boxes and wrapped the ropes around the beam. I stayed below, making sure the boxes didn’t fall over.
Yoru was on the boxes before the rain turned the ground soft, so her footprints were not in the shed.
Yoru alone was going to pretend to be dead, and Yuu was supposed to guide someone to the shed. Their preparations continued, and soon Yoru had both ropes around her body.
“And then my sister jumped.”
Yoru had kicked away the boxes and fallen. The moment it looked like she was hanging from her neck, though, she was actually caught by the rope around her shoulders.
She had looked down at Yuu and smirked.
“When she was tricking people, she always had a little twisted smile. She never used any expressions when she was talking with our family; when she was tricking people was the only time she seemed to be enjoying herself.”
But a moment later, the rope around her shoulders broke.
“I didn’t do anything. The rope simply wasn’t strong enough for my sister’s weight. It broke close to the ceiling. If you had seen the rope or had been told more about it, you would’ve guessed correctly. It broke much too high for me to have reached.”
Yoru hung there for a moment.
“I quickly tried to help. I wrapped my arms around her body and held her up. I was holding her in midair, trying to keep her from dropping any lower.”
In the shed, there had been a girl hanging from the ceiling by a rope around her neck, desperately supported by a girl who looked just like her. The hanging girl struggled, kicking her legs wildly in the air. The dog had been tied up next to them, and it began barking furiously. The sound of the dog barking and the girl suffering was deafening in the tiny room. It seemed like that moment lasted for eternity.
“I tried to stop my sister from dying. I wasn’t very strong, but I held her up. She kept screaming, though, her heels slamming into me.”
Morino sat hunched over in her chair, staring at the wall across the room, seeing nothing but the events of that day. The girl’s memories were nothing but a nightmare to her now.
If Yuu’s grip were to slip, her sister’s body would fall, and the rope would tighten.
Yoru’s eyes had been wide open in terror as she screamed at her sister—but she hadn’t been screaming encouragement.