At that voice and the sight of the faint lights, the prickling in my body swelled in one dramatic moment to a fever pitch and then vanished as though it had never been. I felt so horribly at ease that I thought I might cry.
“I’m so glad to see you…!”
I almost thought the words had come out of my mouth, but in fact they had been hers.
“There’re so many things I’ve been wanting to ask you,” she said.
“Me too. I’ve wanted to ask you some stuff, so…”
I sat down, a bit shaken that I said something so sappy in my own elation. She only replied with a simple “Yeah…” in her usual husky voice.
“I actually thought you’d only be here at later hours,” I said, checking my watch to see it was not even 8 p.m. yet.
“It’s not always the same time. Plus, there are a lot of ××××××, so I figured it might be a while before we could see each other again.”
As I once more heard that strange noise, I knew for certain that this day was connected to the other, that it had not been a dream.
“Sorry, a lot of… What was that again? I couldn’t hear you.”
“‘Safe houses.’ How about that?”
“Ah, yeah.”
“I wonder why you can’t understand certain words. Maybe it’s a lack of knowledge or something.”
What a rude way to put it.
“No, I mean, it’s not just that they’re words I’ve never heard before, I literally can’t hear them. It’s like they’re buried under some kind of shhhhh sound.”
“Curiouser and curiouser…”
The girl, who as before was made up only of her eyes and nails, lined up her ten fingernails around what I supposed would be her lower abdomen if she were a human, moving them back and forth. Maybe she was scratching her knees. Speaking of curious things, perhaps it was even more odd that I could simply accept someone who looked like this enough to have a conversation with them. Of course, standing around there forever was going to get me no closer to my goal, so I had to force myself to accept what I saw in front of me.
“First off,” I said, “there’s something I’d like to establish.”
I figured it was best to start off with the simplest question, putting aside whether or not the person I was conversing with actually existed in this world. There was no telling how much time I had, so I needed to hurry up and get to the point.
“Who are you?”
It was a stupid sounding question, but the girl just laughed.
Thinking about it, I actually couldn’t remember the last time I had actually been interested enough in another person to want to know about them.
“Me? Well, what do you want to know about me?”
“Um, like, assuming you’re a person, what gender are you?”
“Female. And you’re male I presume?”
Apparently “she” had been the right pronoun for her.
“Yep. How old?”
“You mean how many years has it been since I was born?”
“Yeah. I’m sixteen by the way.”
“I’m a bit older. I’m eighteen now.”
So she was a third year in high school—or maybe even a university student. Though, if she was a ghost and that had only been her age when she was alive, there was no telling how old she actually would be now. For a fraction of a second, I wondered if I should be speaking more formally to her, but I put that aside and continued questioning the owner of this voice that sounded a bit husky for her age.
“What’s your name? I’m Suzuki Kaya.”
“Su-zu-ki-ka-ya. Sounds strange. I’m ××××××××××××××××.”
My ears were assailed by a static noise longer than any before.
“Sorry, I couldn’t make out your name.”
I apologized, thinking this might annoy her, but she didn’t seem bothered. Though it might have shown in her nose and mouth and eyebrows, which I could not see.
“Guess my name’s a no-go either. That’s rather inconvenient.”
I supposed so.
“Why don’t you decide, then? If there’s some universal name that you might have for a woman, you can call me that. Anything’s fine.”
“Universal?”
“I mean that you can really just call me whatever, y’know.”
It occurred to me that this girl might have an odd way of thinking. Regardless of whether she was a ghost, it was one thing to say that you didn’t care what someone else was called, but much different not to care about one’s own name.
“Also, is that name Suzukikaya just your personal name? You don’t have a family name?”
“Oh, uh, Suzuki’s my surname, so I guess you’d call that my family name. Kaya is my personal name.”
“Oh, Kaya, that’s shorter and much easier to say. Weird though. Are you from another country, Kaya?”
Suddenly being called by my first name by someone I had barely interacted with felt almost like a violation. More importantly, though…
“Another country? This is Japan.”
“Jappan…?”
“Japan.”
“Jappan…?”
This was getting us nowhere.
“Um, that’s the name of this country.”
Never did I think the day would come when I’d have to explain to someone that the name of this country was Japan while I stood upon its shores. Putting beside my own bewilderment at this bizarre experience, however, the girl’s glowing eyes opened wide.
“The name of this country? You’re saying that’s the country we’re in right now?”
What a strange question.
“That’s right.”
“What could that mean?” she asked, moving her eyes and nails as though in thought, before saying with her unseen mouth, “The name of the country that I’m in anyway is, well, it’s called ××××××××××.”
Another word I could not hear.
“Couldn’t hear it, hmm?” she confirmed.
I wondered if she could tell that from my expression, which would mean that she really could see me clearly, even here in the dark. I gave an earnest nod. She then nodded as well (judging by the movement of her eyes) and muttered, “I see. Guess there’s a lot I need to think about here.”
“…Such as?”
“First off, Kaya, I need to tell you that I have never heard of a country called Jappan, and moreover, I don’t think such a country even exists in the world I’m in. Probably.”
“Wha…?”
Didn’t exist? But we were in Japan right now. As I seriously considered this incomprehensible thing she was telling me, she suddenly let out a loud, “Oh!”
“It’s the siren,” she explained. “I have to go. Didn’t have much time today, huh?”
She had mentioned something similar before.
“What siren?”
“The one that means it’s over up top.”
I looked reflexively upward. It was faint in the dark, but all I could make out was the rusting, dusty ceiling.
“What’s over?”
“Right, of course you wouldn’t know. The ××××××.”
I knew that she wasn’t making fun of me, but the way she phrased it really sounded like she was. She then made a move that looked like she was standing up.
“Hey, wait a sec.”
“‘War.’ Do you understand that?”
“Huh?”
I stopped myself from reaching out pointlessly into the void.
“I’ll explain more next time I see you, but I’ve gotta go now. I think we…” the girl, the girl whose name I had not yet decided, began, then turned toward the wall and said, “…might not be in the same world.”
And then she disappeared.