“At school, I’m ‘Ms. Mikami,’ got it? Try to remember that.”
The night before my first day at the new middle school, Reiko had told me the “North Yomi fundamentals”…
“The First” and “the Second” had been half-joking school superstitions; and “the Third,” which said to “obey at all costs whatever the class decides,” had been, I realized now, her hinting at a crucial rule that tied into the issue of the “extra person.” But at least at that point, the preparation that had had the greatest meaning for me was, of course, “the Fourth.”
“You must strictly respect the distinction between public and private life. Try not to call me ‘Reiko’ at school, even by mistake.”
Of course, I’d assented obediently.
My mother, Ritsuko Sakakibara (née Mikami), had died fifteen years ago. Her little sister, eleven years younger than her, was my aunt by blood, Reiko Mikami. The fact that Reiko was a teacher at the school I would be transferring to—plus that she was the assistant head teacher of my class—was, in a certain sense, an extremely reassuring coincidence. However, it would also be a relationship that could easily be a source of stupid misunderstandings and trouble if I wasn’t sufficiently careful. I freely accepted that, so…
So I had faithfully respected her instructions, which she had deliberately highlighted to me as “the Fourth of the North Yomi fundamentals.” I had called her “Ms. Mikami” at school and “Reiko” at home, treating her as if she were two entirely separate people.
Reiko had done the same. At school, she never called me “Koichi” and never forgot to treat me as “Sakakibara, the transfer student”…So there had been plenty of times when we had both behaved with more reservation to each other than strictly necessary.
Naturally Mr. Kubodera knew the truth from the very beginning, and so did most of the class. That was why, for instance, when discussing the new “tactic” for June and deciding to treat both Mei and me as if we were “not there,” Mr. Kubodera had addressed the class with these words:
We must all respect the decision of the class. Even Ms. Mikami, who is in a very difficult position, told us earlier that she would do “whatever possible.”
Ms. Mikami’s “difficult position.” Obviously, that was the position of having to ignore her nephew at school as if he were “not there,” even though he shared the same house as her after school.
And a little before that, Yuya Mochizuki had come to our house in Koike and was loitering around outside.
I was just, uh, worried.
My house is near here, in this town, so I thought I might, uh…
Mochizuki had explained himself in that halting, hesitant way when I’d unexpectedly appeared, but I wasn’t the object of his worry, even though I’d missed school that day to go to the hospital. I knew for certain that his primary goal had been to check on Ms. Mikami/Reiko, who had been out of school for several days around the same time.
After graduating from an art school in Tokyo, she’d come back home to Yomiyama and gotten a job teaching art at the middle school she’d attended. She dubbed the side house her “office/bedroom” and used it as her studio on the side, focusing intently on the creation of paintings that she called “my real job”…
I had for these last four months—not even—been groping my way toward just the right degree of distance from/involvement with her.
After Yukari Sakuragi’s death, Mei had stopped coming to school for several days in a row…And I had wanted to find out how she was doing. Even then, I’d had a simple “means of finding out” by asking Reiko to show me the class list.
Nevertheless, I didn’t pull it. I didn’t tell her that I wanted a class list for myself and I never attempted to ask her outright about the discomfort I felt at school and all the questions I had…And that, too, was due to my hesitation and nervousness that resulted from struggling to maintain a sense of distance from her, I think.
I’ll worry about me, and I can tell you I’ve got some pretty touchy emotional issues going on.
I knew I’d told Mochizuki something like that, and yet…
“Sakakibara.”
Ms. Mikami—Reiko—trapped under the lumber and unable to move, and Mei, lifting the heavy pickax in both hands. For a long moment, standing between the two of them, I could think of nothing to say. I just stood there.
Then Mei spoke to me, her voice forceful.
“Think it over, Sakakibara. Think carefully. Does any other class at our school have an assistant head teacher?”
“Huh? Well…I mean…”
“They don’t,” Mei declared flatly. “For some reason, no one ever thought about it. We just accepted it. I did the same thing at first. But don’t you think that’s odd? Third-year Class 3 is the only one in the whole school that has an assistant head teacher.”
I couldn’t say a word.
“I think Ms. Mikami must have died the year before last, the year she was the head teacher for Class 3. After the second semester started and that boy Sakuma abandoned his role and stopped being ‘not there,’ and the ‘disasters’ started. The real reason the art club was on hiatus until this spring has to be because Ms. Mikami was the sponsor for it, and then she died.”
Meaning that the reason it had been resumed in April was that Reiko, reawakened as the “extra person,” had filled the role of sponsor. That the actual events had been expunged from everybody’s memory as well as all the records, which had been corrupted into false memories and records?
I searched intently through the recesses of my own heart.
And yet, however, restoring the memories doctored/corrupted in this “phenomenon” from the inside was probably impossible as long as I was part of this world. That’s how it seemed. The only thing possible was to extrapolate from a handful of objective facts I’d managed to collect, to a truth that had to be…
Maybe…this wasn’t the first time I’d come to Yomiyama since starting middle school. Hadn’t I come here once, one and a half years ago, the autumn of my first year in middle school?
If that had been…a visit to attend the wake and memorial service when Reiko died the autumn before last…
I don’t…I don’t want to go to any more funerals.
The meaning behind my grandfather’s wail thudded home.
Poor, poor Ritsuko. It’s so sad, Ritsuko and Reiko both…
His sorrow at outliving his oldest daughter, Ritsuko, fifteen years ago. The sorrow of outliving his second daughter, Reiko, as well two years ago had, in his memories muddled by senility, mingled with the sorrow of fifteen years ago and made him say those things…
In order to relieve the shock and grief and loneliness Reiko’s sudden death had brought with it the autumn before last, my grandparents had impulsively purchased a myna bird they discovered in a pet shop. And then they had named the bird after their deceased daughter, shortening the name to “Ray.”
Before long, Ray had one human word that she could speak—“Why?”
That could have been a question my heartbroken grandfather or grandmother asked their deceased daughter when they sat in the room by the veranda each day, facing the family altar. Something like “Why? Why did you die, Reiko? Why?” Maybe Ray had learned from that and started to say “Why?” all the time.