It was November 30. On the way home from school, I’d stopped by a big bookstore in town, as I needed to buy a book of problems related to college entrance exams. I had no great desire to go to college now. There were loads of things I’d wanted to learn when my sister was alive, but not anymore. I simply kept on studying for lack of anything else to do, going on just as I had been before.
The shelf with the workbooks was at the back of the store. I stood in front of it, gazing up at the top shelf and reading the spines in order from the left. When I got to the right end of the shelf, I dropped my eyes a shelf, looking for one that seemed like what I needed.
I didn’t see any good matches, though, so I bent down, searching the bottom shelf. I checked each spine in turn, gradually moving my eyes from left to right … until they rested on a pair of shoes at the edge of my vision.
They were black shoes, pointed at me, standing with me in front of them. When I looked up, the shoes quickly moved away, vanishing into the rows of shelves.
I felt like someone had been staring at me. Feeling suddenly nervous, I looked back at the shelf.
This time, I felt someone standing behind me. The fluorescent lights were casting my fuzzy shadow on the shelves in front of me, and that shadow had just grown larger.
I hadn’t heard any footsteps, yet someone was standing right behind me, close enough to touch. I could hear him breathing.
I knew he was going to try to grope me. I had heard from someone else that it had happened in this store before. But I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t run away either. My legs wouldn’t move. I was too scared to even turn around. My body was petrified, turned to stone.
“Excuse me,” someone said suddenly, on my right. It was a young man’s voice. “You would be a groper then? I saw you in the mirror—see the one fixed near the ceiling? Most interesting. But I need to get through here, so do you mind moving to one side?”
Relief that someone else had come worked like magic, freeing my body. When I turned toward the voice, I saw a boy in a black uniform standing between the shelves.
The person behind me quickly ran away, moving away from the boy. I saw his back. He looked like an ordinary man in a suit jacket, and he looked so comically flustered as he ran that all my fear quickly melted away.
“Thank you,” I said, turning back toward the boy.
He was taller than me, and thin. There was something about him that made him look rather frail. I recognized the black uniform he wore; I knew a boy who went to that same school.
“No need. I wasn’t actually trying to help you,” he said flatly, his expression never changing.
“You mean you really just wanted to get past?”
“I wanted to speak to you, actually. You’re Kitazawa Natsumi, aren’t you? You look a lot like your sister. I recognized you immediately.”
This was so out of the blue that I couldn’t form a response. Before I could say anything, the boy was already talking again.
“I met Hiroko before she died. She told me about you.”
“Wait a second … Who are you?” That was all I could manage.
The boy didn’t answer me. Instead, he took something from his uniform pocket—a plain brown envelope, the kind you could find anywhere. There was a bulge in the corner, something inside.
“This is for you,” he said, holding it out. Confused, I took the envelope. I opened the flap and looked inside. There was a cassette tape in a clear case.
“Sorry, but could you remove the contents and give the envelope back to me?” I did as he asked, removing the tape and handing the empty envelope back to the boy. He folded it up and put it back in his pocket.
It was an ordinary cassette tape, the kind you could buy at any convenience store. There was a sticker on it that read, “Voice 1: Kitazawa Hiroko.” It wasn’t handwritten but had been printed.
“What is this? Why does it have my sister’s name on it?”
“You’ll understand when you listen to it. Kitazawa Hiroko gave that to me when she was still alive. I wanted you to hear it, so I kept it. There are two other tapes. I’m saving those for another time. If you tell anyone about me, that time will never come to pass.”
The boy turned to leave.
“Wait …” I said, and I tried to follow him. But I couldn’t do it. My legs wouldn’t move; they were frozen, like they’d been when that groper had been standing behind me. I didn’t know why I was responding this way; the boy hadn’t threatened me—in fact, he’d rescued me. But without being consciously aware of it, my whole body had tensed up. I was sweating all over.
A moment later, the boy had turned the corner and was out of sight. I was left standing alone, holding the tape.
On the train back home, I sat down in my seat, staring at the tape he’d passed to me. The sun had already set, and it was dark outside. The windows were pitch-black, as if charcoal had been rubbed all over them, and I could see almost nothing through them. It felt like the train wasn’t moving. The sun had already moved on to its winter schedule. When my sister was killed, it had still been light out in the evenings.
Who was that boy? He’d been wearing a high school uniform, so he must be my age, or a year or two younger. He’d claimed to know my sister, but she’d never mentioned him to me.
If he’d first met her only shortly before she died, then it was more than likely she hadn’t had time to mention him, though.