When the door opened, it was immediately apparent that something hideous and nasty escaped through the crack.
It didn’t feel like a living presence. At most, it was a chill, like a burst of white slipping free when the freezer door was opened. Something bad, something unbearably horrible, seeped outside. Whatever the presence was, this entire place brimmed with it.
Mio had asked Kaname to take her along so she could see this event to its end, yet now she wanted to be anywhere but inside that apartment.
Kaname entered without a word. The apartment carried a musty odor in addition to the chilling presence. Maybe it was more than just mold. Despite it being a clear day outside, it seemed as though rain had fallen inside this home.
What was this desolate sensation?
According to the people at the tea party on a higher floor of the building, Kaori Kanbara had moved into Unit 302 two months earlier. It hadn’t been that long, but the place looked as if it had been ransacked.
The unit’s pretty sparse, so why is it so messy? Mio wondered—and then she realized the answer.
There were a few pieces of furniture and other items in the apartment, but their placement had no guiding design or reason. A frying pan, vanilla extract, and an empty flour container sat on top of the living room table. A large stuffed animal, the sort you could win from a crane game, stuck out of a cardboard box sitting on the couch. Elementary-school-age learning implements were scattered across the floor rather than placed on the shelf. Clothes—women’s, men’s, and children’s—were placed on hangers and piled up in a corner of the room. The curtains were pulled firmly shut, leaving the whole place extremely dark.
It was a chaotic mess, yet it felt bizarrely uninhabited. It was impossible to imagine people living here, turning the lights on, and having conversations and meals in this environment.
According to what the women had said earlier, the Kanbara family had two children.
A big brother around college age, and a little brother in elementary school. No one knew where the older brother went to school. Rumors said he was a shut-in. The little brother attended the nearby elementary school. After hearing that tidbit, Kaname placed a phone call. It was the first time Mio had seen him contact someone using his phone.
“I’m going to need backup,” he’d told his contact on the other end. Mio was stunned, but it quickly made sense to her. There were others like Kaname. He’d told the other person the name of the elementary school and that of the apartment complex. And with firm resolution, he’d said to his associate, “I’m going to end it right here.”
After the call, he’d told Mio, “Let’s go. The sooner, the better.”
“Sooner? What do you mean?” she’d asked.
Kaname’s lips had pursed. “They’ll notice us. As shameful as it is to admit, they’ve escaped me at the very last moment on a number of occasions before.”
Mio hadn’t known what that meant, but she followed Kaname to this apartment.
Unit 302. The Kanbaras’.
A sliding wooden door stood on the far side of the living room. There would be a tatami room beyond it.
Kaname didn’t hesitate. He headed straight for the door as though drawn by some invisible force. He already had that bell-like object in his hand.
I’m scared.
The sheer tension of the moment vibrated through the air. Mio wanted to run away, but she made sure to keep a step behind Kaname. However, she was fighting to stay on her feet, to keep from clinging to his back out of terror.
Kaname slid open the door. Immediately, the smell of mold and rain intensified. There was something else mixed into the odor, though—something cloying, like the smell of candy.
Mio screamed when she saw what was inside.
It was a person.
There was absolutely no sense of any life in this place, but now, seemingly out of nowhere, someone was here. A low bed had been placed in the far corner of the room, and someone sat up in it, utterly still. Initially, it seemed more like a mannequin than a person. The face was covered by long, scraggly hair, and it stared unmoving into vacant space. Mio found herself clutching the sleeve of Kaname’s uniform shirt; her pulse quickened. Inside her head, a voice repeated, Oh no, oh no, oh no… Is that…?
“…Hanaka.”
Mio hardly managed to choke out the name. Her mind couldn’t catch up to what it perceived—the word simply dropped from her mouth. Sudden, powerful, aching pain gathered in her chest. She took one step at a time, watching carefully, waiting to see if the person would move.
“Hanaka…!”
A moment ago, Mio had been frozen with fear and nervousness, but now she released Kaname’s shirt, gripped by an imperative to examine the face of this person sitting on the bed.
The features she could discern through the long hair over the face were quite changed from what she remembered. However, they were undoubtedly Hanaka’s. She didn’t react to Mio. She was blinking, but that was all; her mind seemed elsewhere. Her eyes weren’t focused, either, and Mio worried she might be blind.
Her hair was long, enough so that she might not have cut it once since disappearing. Rapunzel popped into Mio’s mind. She couldn’t help but see the fairy-tale girl in Hanaka. A girl trapped in a high tower, unable to leave or do anything but grow her hair.
Her locks were black. At least, they should have been. Mio knew that, and perhaps that’s what was so eerie. For in the darkness of that room, there seemed to be white, glowing hairs on Hanaka’s head. It felt like she’d lost all vitality and somehow aged decades.
Hanaka didn’t react to her. Mio had no idea what to say to her shockingly changed friend.
And there were so many things to say.
Have you been like this the entire time? Nearly two years, since the day you disappeared? While I graduated high school, went to college, and started a new chapter of my life?
“You’ll be taking college entrance exams soon. That’s great,” Hanaka’s mother had said. Mio was on the verge of tears now.
Hanaka was dressed in pajamas with a blue-and-yellow checkered pattern. But something about them struck Mio as wrong. Eventually, she realized the button order differed from what she was accustomed to. The left and right sides were reversed. Hanaka was wearing men’s pajamas.
Mio couldn’t begin to imagine the meaning behind this. She turned to Kaname as she felt the tears coming.
“Kaname. It’s Hanaka…”
He nodded and rang the bell in his hand. Hanaka’s expressionless face suddenly contorted and scrunched, as though threatening to crack apart.
Many things happened in the blink of an eye.
Hanaka screamed, bolting and leaping up where she had been utterly still before. She held her head and clawed at her chest. The sound of her shriek shocked Mio into action.
“Hanaka!” she cried, holding the girl’s body down on the bed. It felt hard and light, as though made of nothing but skin and bone. Mio’s heart sank. She recognized the voice, it belonged to a friend from high school, and she embraced Hanaka.
However, Hanaka’s body was searing hot, and Mio instantly regretted the contact.
The same had been true of Itta Kanbara. His body had scorched like a heated iron. Mio recalled how Kaname had instructed her not to touch him.
And now he shouted, “Get away!” Mio didn’t need to be told twice.
But her body and Hanaka’s were stuck together like opposing magnetic poles, and she couldn’t break free.
Oh no, Mio lamented. I’m sorry, Kaname. I always do this…
He warned me, and I was so intent on not being a problem, but I always do this. I’m supposed to keep up, yet I made a mistake instead.
You’re too nice. You’re a model student. Why do you go to those lengths to be nice? You’re only going to give him the wrong idea. If you can’t even turn him down… I’m saying this for your own good.
“That’s just one of those things you do, Mio.”
She saw Itta Kanbara’s face; she heard his voice. “I’m sorry, Senpai,” she said. She couldn’t help but apologize.
She’d suffered under him for only a few days, yet even so long after, she couldn’t help but remember him and what he had done.