He said she’d given him the tape. Did he mean my sister wanted me to hear what was on the tape? What did “Voice 1: Kitazawa Hiroko” mean?
The train slowed, and my body moved out of habit. I stood up and got off the train.
There were a lot of people around the station, but once I stepped onto the residential side street, there was nothing more than the asphalt road, shrouded in darkness. Shivering in the cold wind, I walked toward home. The only light in the darkness came from the houses on either side of the street. There was a family in each of them, seated at the dinner table, going about their lives—a notion that suddenly struck me as amazing.
The windows of my house were dark. However, this didn’t mean that no one was home. I opened the front door and went into the living room, calling out to let my parents know I had returned.
They were sitting on the sofa, watching TV, not talking, not bothering to turn on the lights. The light from the screen was the only light in the room. I flipped the switch, and they looked toward me, listlessly welcoming me home.
“You forgot to lock the front door again,” I said. My mother nodded absently before returning her gaze to the TV. There was no life in her at all; it was as if she no longer cared about anything.
They were not actually watching TV. Nothing shown on that screen reached their eyes. I turned my eyes away from the wrinkled clothes on their backs and went upstairs to my room.
Without changing out of my uniform, I dropped the bag on my bed and put the tape into my stereo. It was a small stereo, and a slightly bluish silver. It was on the second shelf from the top. I stood in front of it and took a deep breath to calm myself.
I remembered my sister’s face—not how she’d looked at me around the time just before she died, annoyed, but how she’d looked when we were younger and she’d grinned at me as we’d walked hand in hand.
I pressed Play. There was a whir as the motors began to move, and the tape began to play. I stared at the speakers.
The first few seconds were silent, and then came a hiss, like wind. My heart was beating quickly, betraying my nervousness.
What I had thought was the wind was not—it was someone breathing into the microphone.
Natsumi …
Suddenly, I heard my sister’s voice. She sounded very weak, exhausted—but it was definitely her voice. It must have been her breathing. The boy had not been lying. My sister really had left the tape for me.
Natsumi, will you ever hear this? Right now I’m talking into a microphone in front me, but I have no way of knowing if this message will ever reach you.
Where and when had she recorded this? Her voice was so thin that it almost vanished. She spoke slowly, haltingly, as if she was suffering, as if in desperation, leaving long silences between her words. But that made it sound all the more genuine—this was no scripted speech but an attempt to put her thoughts into words.
Listen, I’ve been allowed to leave you a message … told to say anything I want into the microphone, anything at all … but I can only speak to one person.
I thought of you instantly—I realized I have so much I need to tell you. I know it seems strange that I need to speak to you and not Akagi . . .
He’s holding the microphone out toward me … I can’t talk about him—he won’t let me. Sorry. He said he would deliver this message to you. He wants to enjoy seeing how you react to my words. I think that’s a really nasty thing to take pleasure from, but if my voice reaches you, I don’t really care …
I couldn’t move. A horrible suspicion was welling up inside me. A voice echoed through my head, warning me not to listen to any more of this. Terror awaited, and if I listened to that, I could never go back. So certain of this was I that I could barely stand it, and my breath came out like sobs.
I was not going to stop the tape. I stood perfectly still, listening to my sister’s voice.
Natsumi, I’m in a dark room. I can’t move. Concrete all around … It’s cold … I’m on a table.
I slapped my hands over my mouth, fighting back a scream. I knew exactly where my sister had been when she’d spoken into this microphone.
My sister was speaking through her tears now, sniffling.
This is … some sort of abandoned building …
There was a mournful echo as her quiet voice bounced off the cold, dark concrete walls around her. Her pain pierced my heart.
Without realizing it, I had reached out toward the tape deck speakers, touching the mesh that covered them with trembling fingers as if trying to capture my sister’s voice.
I’m sorry, Natsumi.
Her words passed through my fingertips and vanished. My fingers sensed the slightest of vibrations, like I had snared a slight portion of her voice. The sound of my sister’s breathing vanished, and all sound faded from the speakers. The recording was finished.
I turned the tape over and listened to the other side, but there was nothing recorded on it.
I was sure this tape had been recorded just before my sister died. I remembered receiving the tape from the boy in the bookshop: the tape had been inside an envelope, and he’d made me take it out and give the envelope back.
He hadn’t touched the tape, not even once. The entire exchange had been designed to avoid his leaving fingerprints. Had he been holding the microphone? Had he killed my sister?
I should give this to the police; that was the right thing to do. But I had no intention of doing so. As the boy had left, he’d told me not to tell the police if I wanted to hear the other tapes.
There was more to the message. I wanted to hear the rest.
✦ ✦ ✦
†