The next thing I knew I was in a small movie theater, sitting in one of the seats. I was the only person in the audience. The projector began to move on its own, and a grainy, worn-out image started to appear on the screen.
It was the memories of what I’d touched. It didn’t matter if it was a person or a thing; it always started with the newest memories and moved backwards, going through all the most important “scenes” one after another.
Psychometry.
The power to read someone’s—or something’s—memories by touching it.
“What? You’re inviting Kizaki, too? Why?”
On the screen, I saw not the girl with the braids, but one of the three who’d been watching me from behind her. This was the girl with the braids’ memory, and I was seeing it through her eyes, so all her friends were smiling gently. It was totally different than the looks they’d given me.
“Yumi, are you friends with Kizaki? I’ve never seen her talking to anybody... Isn’t she kind of scary?”
“Scary? I don’t know... I’ve never talked to her, either.”
So the girl with the braids was named Yumi. She was right. I couldn’t remember talking to her, either.
“So why invite her?”
“The teacher said she’s going to Seimei, too. Once we change schools, we’ll have no way of getting in touch, right? So I wanted to at least get a way to contact her.”
“Why? What would you ever say to her?”
“Huh...? Is it wrong to ask?’
“Sigh... Do what you want, then. It’s going to make things less fun for me, though.”
On the screen, all of Yumi’s friends were sighing. I stood up and closed the curtains on the screen.
— Performance complete.
I opened my eyes, and I was back in the classroom. The performance had only lasted for an instant. I’d recorded a video of myself using psychometry once, and even the longest ones had only lasted three seconds.
Yume was still kneeling in front of me. She offered me my phone. “Here. The screen’s not cracked.”
“Thanks. I’m sorry.” There was a double meaning in my apology as I took the phone and stood up.
Her friends were watching me silently. They still looked upset.
“Don’t worry.” I smiled at them, and their eyes all went wide at once. They all looked away from me awkwardly. I turned back to Yumi. “I appreciate the invitation, but I have to go to the hospital.”
“Huh? The hospital... Are you sick?”
“A little, maybe. I can’t keep the doctor waiting, so I’m going to get going.”
“Yeah, sorry for inviting you so suddenly.”
“Goodbye,” I said, and then I left the room.
As I walked down the hallway, Yumi’s face began to disappear from my memory. Maybe I should have at least gotten her last name, but my memory was already over capacity, and I had gotten into the habit of quickly deleting any information I didn’t need.
I went out into the schoolyard and looked back up at the building. I’d transferred into this school last spring. I’d spent a year coming here almost every day. In the end, I’d never managed to fit in. Of course, that was only natural, considering I’d never really tried.
No matter what you were hiding behind the words you spoke, my psychometry could see through it. There was no doubting that because of this, my personality was a bit colder than the other girls in my class—for example, Yumi, the girl who’d just talked to me.
I knew I didn’t look down on the people around me, but that was probably how the others interpreted it. For one thing, my health often meant I came to school in the afternoon or left before the day was over. As a rule, I never participated in gym class. I didn’t participate in most school activities, including the school fair. If I went at all, I just sat on the side and watched. Of course there was no way I was going to fit in.
Maybe I didn’t need to force myself to go to the graduation ceremony... It would be rough for my health to come all the way back to the school.
“Goodbye,” I said to no one in particular, and left.
I was being followed. I’d started to sense it on my way towards Kichijoji Station after going to the hospital. I’d done work in the past that would justify someone tailing me, and I’d been trained to know how to deal with it. But ever since I’d come back to Japan, nothing like that had been a part of my life. It was a bigger surprise than I thought it would be.
More than anything, I was confused. Right now, I was just a student. What was the point of following me now? I couldn’t understand what they would want. Or was it the killer from the murder at the college? I had nothing to do with the murdered professor, but there was a chance that the killer had settled on a lone teenage girl walking through the streets as his victim. The thing was, the way they were following me didn’t feel like an amateur.
And then my chest started to clench up hard. I couldn’t breathe at all from the pain. A sensation of numbness ran through my whole body. I bit down hard on my lip to keep from passing out.
I couldn’t slow down. I couldn’t let my pursuer know what had happened. I put my right hand on my chest, pressed down, and took a series of short, deep breaths to quell the pain.
Calm down, I said to myself as I headed away from the path to the station and into the narrow alleyways.
From the big streets to the small ones. From the residential areas to the back alleys. Over the course of the last year, I’d pounded the details of this area’s geography into my head. It was an old habit. Kichijoji was a town with lots of tiny houses clustered together and many small paths and narrow spaces. There were telephone wires strung above my head and lots of poles along the street to support them.
I went deeper into the narrow alleyways. The pursuer was no longer trying to hide their footsteps and was following me quickly. I listened for the footsteps, walking until I found a house with a wall the height I was looking for. When I turned a corner and left my pursuer’s sight, I quickly climbed up the wall. I leapt from there to one of the telephone poles. There was no time to think about the fact that my skirt was flying up.
My pursuer seemed to panic after losing me in the narrow, complex alleys. They stopped trying to hide themselves at all and began to run. They ran right past me without realizing I was there. As soon as they were in front of me, I jumped down.
“Freeze!” I said in English, using a low, threatening voice. I pressed myself up against their back and wrapped an arm around them, pushing a ballpoint pen into their neck. It may have been just a pen, but it could easily tear through the carotid artery. They must’ve known it too, because they didn’t resist.
Once I was pressed up against them, I was able to get a better idea of who they were. They were male, and quite tall. I felt like a little kid pressed against a grown-up. His body was well-muscled enough that I could tell even over his coat. He didn’t have the frame of a Japanese person, either.