Who is “the casualty”…?
“That you looked with your ‘doll’s eye’ and now you know who the ‘extra person’ in our class is?”
Mei shifted her head in an ambiguous way that neither confirmed nor denied what I’d said. Then she replied, “I’ve tried not to take my eye patch off when I’m at school.
“Ever since I started third year and found out the facts behind the ‘curse’ from all the rumors, even after the start of the new semester, I’ve never taken it off. Not even after what happened to Misaki, or after you transferred to our school…Not even after Sakuragi died and I finally started to believe that the ‘disasters’ were something real, I never…”
“Even though you wrote that message on your desk?”
✦ ✦ ✦
Who is “the casualty”…?
“Even though you might have been able to tell who it was just by taking your eye patch off?”
“Even if I found out—even if I knew who it was, I didn’t think there was anything I could do about it. I didn’t think it would help anything to know. I wondered about it, but…You see?”
To be honest, I wasn’t much inclined to accept Mei’s response just then.
It was true, I’d never seen her without her eye patch on at school. But could she honestly say she had never once let it slip off? Had she never tried to discover the answer to her riddle—Who is “the casualty”? How could she ever stop thinking about it, otherwise?
But then…
Even if she had, that was in the past. Quibbling about it now accomplished nothing. The problem was in the present moment.
“In that case…”
I rested a hand on my chest and took a deep breath. Maybe it was the incredible stress, or maybe just my imagination, but I felt a slight pain that summoned back the memories of that obnoxious collapsed lung.
“What about after that? What about now?”
Now that she’d heard what was on that fifteen-year-old tape that Katsumi Matsunaga had hidden. Now that she could no longer claim there was nothing she could do if she knew who it was.
“Do you know? Can you see them? Is the person here on this trip?”
Mei’s eyebrows trembled, as if my barrage of questions had thrown her slightly off balance. She was reluctant to answer. I thought she might even put a hand to her chest and take a deep breath like I had done, when her perplexed gaze fled to one side and she bit down softly on her lower lip again.
Finally, she gave a terse bob of her head.
“The ‘extra person’ is here.”
“…So they did come.”
Sweat rolled down my skin under my shirt. I fixed my eyes on Mei’s lips.
“Who is it?”
“I don’t…”
Just then, a loud noise came from the door to the room and put a stop to the discussion. Someone outside was pounding on the door. Not like a knock—more like someone’s body had crashed into it.
“Who’s there?”
Simultaneous with Mei’s question, the door was knocked open violently. The second I saw who came tumbling inside, I forgot what I’d been doing only seconds before and shouted loudly, “Teshigawara?! What happened?”