Among the people who had fled beyond the gate, I located Teshigawara’s face first. He was leaning against one of the stone gateposts, staring vacantly as the Sakitani Memorial Hall went up in flames. Kazami was beside the opposite gatepost. He was sitting on the ground with one knee up, both arms wrapped around his leg. He had his forehead pressed against his kneecap, his body rigid.
“Hey…Sakaki.”
Teshigawara noticed me and raised a hand limply.
“Where’s Maejima?”
I couldn’t answer his question.
“…Too late for him, huh?”
Still impossible to answer.
“Mr. Chibiki got back. He ran in to see what’s going on.”
“…I saw him.”
As I replied, my eyes searched for Mei.
“…He saved me.”
“He told us to cool it right here. To wait for the ambulance and firefighters to come.”
This was such a raging fire. Even from far, far away, people would be able to tell at a glance that something wasn’t right. Even if direct communication from the site of the fire wasn’t possible, the fire department was probably already moving on it.
“Are these the only people who got away?” Surveying the area, I saw five people around the gate besides me. Mei, at least, was not among them. “Where’s Misaki?”
“Huh? Oh yeah, she’s not here.”
Teshigawara clawed at his dirty brown hair.
“Neither is Mochizuki, huh? It’s fine. I’m sure they both ran off somewhere else.”
I was totally unable to convince myself to be that optimistic—to surrender all thought like that. Unable to sit still, I turned my back on Teshigawara. I took a few quick steps away from the gate, and stared hard at the flames that continued to burn the night sky…And then—
“Mei Misaki.”
Speaking her name in a low, yet forceful voice, directed in some unseen direction, I searched the pockets of my pants. I found my cell phone. It hadn’t broken from the impact when I fell over. I pulled up Mei’s number from my call history, then pushed the call button.
Please.
Literally praying, I pressed the phone to my ear.
One time tonight, I knew, this phone had connected with hers. So do it one more time. Just one more time, right now…
…Please connect.
Please. Even if it’s just for one second.
The short electronic buzz of “attempting connection.” It repeated enough times that I should have given up, and then—
The sound changed to a ring. After the fourth ring, someone picked up.
“…Sakakibara?”
There was a lot of interference that made it hard to hear, but I knew: that was Mei’s voice.
“Thank goodness…I can’t believe I got through.”
With my free hand, I covered my mouth and the end of the phone in order to focus my voice and said, “This is Misaki, right? So you’re safe.”
“What about you? And everyone else?”
“We ran to the gate. But not everybody’s here. Maejima’s gone, but Mr. Chibiki came back and he saved me, and the murderer was Mrs. Numata and…”
I realized I was blathering on with no real point, and I cut myself off abruptly.
“Where are you?”
I asked the question foremost on my mind.
“The backyard,” Mei answered. “Near something that looks like a storage shed.”
She was there? Then…
“Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” she said, her tone listless. Then, after an ambiguous pause, she continued. “But I can’t move yet.”
“What?”
She was fine, but she couldn’t move? I didn’t understand what she meant. But before I even tried thinking about it, I said, “I’m coming. I’ll be right there, so stay where you are.”
But when I said that—
“You shouldn’t come here.”
That was Mei’s response. Kksshhhksshhk…Unpleasant static overlaid itself on her voice.
“Why not?”
“You shouldn’t come, Sakakibara.”
“Come on, why not?”
“I…”
The noise started to get much worse, and her words were getting cut off. I tightened my hand, pressing the phone against my ear so that I wouldn’t miss a thing.
“I…have to stop it.”
“Do what?”
Stop it?…She couldn’t mean…
A fuzzy image buried deep in my mind swelled up larger just then and took on concrete form. She couldn’t mean…
“Misaki, you aren’t saying…”
I spoke louder, but through the Kkshhhkkkshhhk, vmmmvvvmmvmvm noises growing worse and worse, I don’t know how much of what I said got through to her.
“Is anyone with you over there?”
“I’m…”
“Who is it? Misaki?”
“…might regret it, so I…”
…And that was it.
Her voice disappeared, almost like a fade-out. In that brief instant on this midsummer night of such cruel “disasters,” the tenuous thread that had almost miraculously connected us snapped. The clock was approaching midnight and we were closing in on August 9.