Sketch 8 What does it feel like to be in love? Is it fun? Does it hurt? It’s…Oh, I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer these questions. Why not? …Because I can’t remember. …… I can’t really remember. That’s why… …Why not? …… Why can’t you remember something like caring so much about a person? Caring so much…Yeah, that’s definitely true. I remember that. I think I cared…a lot. But… But what? I just can’t remember. No matter how hard I try, I can’t remember who that person was. 1 And so the next day came: August 2. Just as I had promised the previous day, I appeared at Lakeshore Manor. I was in the grand entry on the first floor, just as I had said the day before. I think I’m right on time, too…I had a visceral sense of it. I could hardly check the stopped clock in the hall, but listening carefully I heard a whoo from the second floor. It was the owl clock in the library. Half past four. I’m pretty sure, that sounds right. Mei Misaki had not yet arrived. Just as I had that afternoon of May 17 when I experienced my first awakening after death, I stood before the mirror hanging in the room. The mirror in which, on the verge of death, I had witnessed myself passing away… …And yet. As with every other time, my figure was not reflected in the mirror. Even though it faithfully showed everything other than me. Though I had gotten used to being this way, having it brought to my attention like that made the existence of that girl, Mei Misaki, who could see me in this form, seem all the stranger. How did I appear to her in that blue eye of hers that could see death—the color of it? Standing before the mirror I remained, waiting for Mei to come. But— After some time had passed, she still hadn’t come. I waited awhile longer. Through the silence I heard whoo five times in a string from the owl clock. Five P.M.— What was keeping her? Perhaps her afternoon plans had gone long and she was running late? Deciding that standing rooted to the spot accomplished nothing, I started to move away from the mirror. Just then, almost at the same moment— The scene from the night of May 3, when I died in this spot, flashed into the mirror as I watched. Like a replay video that had been queued up at someone’s request… 2 My/Teruya Sakaki’s body lying facedown on the deep black floor. A white long-sleeved shirt and black pants. An outfit that made me look somehow like a middle or high school student. Arms and legs splayed out, twisted to bizarre angles. No longer able to move even if I tried. Head twisted sharply, all the way to the side. Blood fountaining from a crack somewhere in the skull, staining the forehead and cheeks red, a pool of blood spreading slowly over the floor… …Any moment now. The bizarrely contorted, rigid face suddenly slackened, giving way to a mysterious, peaceful expression, as if freed from suffering and fear and uncertainty…And then. The lips moved. Slightly. Trembling. “Tsu,” “ki”—and then. I heard a sound from inside the mirror. The reverberations of a ponderous bell tolling half past eight. And as if superimposed on that sound… “…Ah!” A quiet cry. “Ahh!” It was Sou’s voice. Calling my name. “…Teru…ya.” Sou’s voice. The child’s figure captured in a corner of the mirror. The child’s face. Terribly shocked. “Teru…ya?” Terribly frightened. “Teruya!” The child’s eyes popping, stunned. “Teru…ya.” Reflexively, I found myself turning to look at the place where the image of Sou in the mirror showed he ought to have been. At the first steps on the staircase up to the second floor…But of course there was no sign of anyone there now. There was no reason to think there would be. When I turned my eyes back, the image in the mirror had vanished, but— All at once, a premonition not unlike fear swelled within me. I hurriedly moved away from the mirror and withdrew to the center of the hall. I then heard— An alarming noise from above. Looking up, I saw the railing in the second-floor corridor broken and a person falling headfirst from it… …Me. It was me. That was me. On the night three months ago. Slightly earlier than the scene that had just played out in the mirror. I turned my eyes away from the unendurable sight of my/Teruya Sakaki’s body crumpled in front of the mirror and looked upward again. A human figure wavered beyond the broken railing. It was— Tsukiho? With both her hands planted on the floor, she stuck her head out over the foyer and peered down. In that moment. “Eee…!” A frail sound slipped out of her. Then, she opened her mouth wide, but no scream followed. All I heard was a strangled sound. I could see her ashen face. I could see the panicked, unfocused movement of her eyes. “Tsukiho…My sister…” This…yes, this too was an illusion. Just like what I’d seen in the mirror…An illusory scene projected onto that, collecting the fragments of my own memory to reconstruct the events of that night. —Even knowing that, I couldn’t help calling out to her. I couldn’t help going up to the hall on the second floor where Tsukiho huddled. I bolted up the stairs. But I only made it partway up. I noticed that time was running further back. “…What are you doing?” I heard Tsukiho’s voice saying. From the hallway on the second floor at the top of the stairs. Those words that had been on the verge of coming back to me so many times, yet whose meaning eluded me. And there—yes—the scene I had been able to imagine or infer, but unable to recall with any sense of reality… “What are you doing…? Teruya?” I had just ascended the stairs and run down the hall a ways when I saw two figures before me. One was Tsukiho. The other was me/Teruya Sakaki. The two were moving down the hallway toward me. Tsukiho was following behind Teruya’s wobbling, unsteady gait, apparently trying desperately to reason with him… “Oh…stop it,” Tsukiho said, grabbing his arm, but Teruya shook free of her grip and shot back, “Just…don’t worry about it.” “Wh-what are you saying?” “I’d appreciate if you left me alone,” Teruya replied roughly, his words suspiciously slurred like his gait. “I want to…” I want to die—that’s what he/I wanted to say. That’s why he said not to worry about it, to leave him alone. “…You don’t mean that.” Tsukiho grabbed his arm again. Teruya shook her off. “I’m done.” “You can’t…Don’t do it!” They came into the part of the hall that opened up to the foyer and their struggle grew more heated. Teruya’s steps were more unsteady than ever, but he stubbornly shook off Tsukiho’s hands. Even so, Tsukiho chased after him, trying desperately to stop him. A dangerous imbalance was growing in their strength. “Don’t worry about it…” Teruya tried to shake free of Tsukiho’s grip. “It’s…too late for me.” “No!” Tsukiho shouted sharply, resisting. It was at this point that Teruya’s movements and strength, which evidenced a lack of self-control, brought disaster down on him. He flailed and managed to shake Tsukiho off, but the movement was wild and he staggered, falling with his back against the corridor railing standing open to the foyer. No doubt due to the extreme age of the railing, it was already fragile, and unfortunately, it snapped under the impact. Without so much as a moment to catch his balance, Teruya’s body tumbled head over heels and he fell toward the first floor… … …This. This was the truth behind my/Teruya Sakaki’s death, apparently. Well. The moment the thought occurred to me, the vision dissipated. I stumbled slowly down the corridor and checked the state of the railing. It had returned to its present state of repair with a new piece of wood patched onto it. When I looked down over the railing, the fallen form of Teruya was nowhere to be seen… “Teruya.” It was at this point that I heard a voice. It belonged to Tsukiho. I turned and saw her at the far end of the long corridor. She was standing in front of a door (the one—yes—the one to my bedroom)… “Teruya, are you in there?” she called out worriedly. Oh, this is…this wasn’t the continuation of the earlier scene obviously. Not a continuation, but instead something even earlier than what I had just witnessed… Time had wound backward again. Tsukiho had brought Sou with her to visit the mansion and had come up to the second floor looking for Teruya…And she had guessed that he was in his bedroom. No doubt this was the scene immediately after. “Teruya?” Tsukiho called again and opened the door. As soon as she had peeked into the room, there was an echoing cry of surprise. “Oh! What’s wrong? What happened?” I ran down the corridor, following after her figment as she ran into the room. She had left the door open, and I took a somber look around the room. Which revealed— A white rope hanging from a beam in the ceiling. A loop had been made at the end of the rope, big enough for a human head to fit through…It was obviously intended for a person to hang himself. A chair had been placed directly beneath the rope. Teruya/I stood upon the chair. He held the loop of the rope in both hands, on the verge of placing it around his own neck… “Stop it, Teruya!” Tsukiho shouted, running over to her younger brother. “Stop that right now. What are you thinking? Come on, come down from there…” A powerful smell of alcohol filled the room. Looking around, I saw a bottle and a glass on the bedside table. As well as the plastic bottle I remembered with pills spilling out of it. The alcohol was whiskey. The pills were probably the sleeping pills I had been using constantly at the time. In a blurred state after taking the two together, Teruya/I had tried to end his own life that night. Was it fortunate or not that Tsukiho came just at that moment and put a temporary stop to her younger brother’s plans, given what would follow…? “…No, stay out there!” Tsukiho said, turning back to look at the door. “Don’t come in here, Sou. I need you to stay downstairs, all right?” Hearing that, I, too, turned to look at the door. Sou was already gone. So Sou had come up here, too, following after his mother. But when she asked him to, he had gone back down to the hall on the first floor by himself. And then… When I returned my gaze to the room, everything had vanished without a trace. Tsukiho and Teruya. The rope and chair. The whiskey bottle, the glass, and the bottle of pills on the table. Even the smell of alcohol that had filled the room… The sunlight piercing through a gap in the curtains was extremely faint. Frigid shadows were spreading slowly all over the room, engulfing me as I stood rooted to the spot. 3 It was past six P.M. and Mei Misaki had not appeared. The sun was setting at last, fading from twilight into dusk… Alone, almost melting away in the prevailing shadows, I lost myself in thought. If only I were dead…I had often thought this during my life. I had even spoken the words aloud to Tsukiho and Sou. —If only I were dead, things would be all right. —If only I were dead… For example, I rarely let people ride in a car I was driving. Because…as Mei Misaki had pointed out yesterday, cars reminded me of the bus accident eleven years ago. Because that had been such a terrible accident. —Because it was a terrible accident. I could never forget that tragic scene… —I could never forget… No matter how much attention I paid to driving cautiously, the risk of getting into an accident would never go away. Nor would the risk of a person dying in the accident. So— I had disliked letting people ride in my car. If by some chance I got into an accident and the person were killed…Just thinking about it was frightening. Very frightening. Despite being so affected by my experience eleven years ago, I owned a car and drove it around like other people. Giving it some thought, that was probably because I was already constantly thinking, If only I were dead… If only I were dead, things would be all right. It wasn’t just limited to automobiles, either. It was always the same whenever I rode in something, whether a train or an airplane. I was always supremely aware of the risk of an accident or death. But in every case, I wasn’t afraid of dying myself. It doesn’t really matter as long as it’s just me. I think that’s how I felt. In other words…that’s why. I had, all that time, been imprisoned by death. Even as I bore the scars of the past and intensely feared the risk of death, on the flip side I was somehow attracted to it—I think that’s what was happening. Over many long years, those thoughts passed through several more stages and transformed into a concrete desire to kill myself… …That day, three months ago. That night before my twenty-sixth birthday, at long last I had tried to fulfill that wish. Using rope, I had tried to hang myself in my bedroom on the second floor. With my mind bludgeoned into a haze by alcohol and pills in order to tamp down the terror when I actually went through with it. But then— At just that moment, Tsukiho had… I had just witnessed…No, I had remembered the details of what came after. In the end, it had been an accident. Tsukiho had been placating me, unsteady as I was with drink and drugs, trying to reason with me, and it had turned into a scuffle, which resulted in…But wait. Tsukiho might have thought it was her fault. That she had made her younger brother topple from the corridor. That it was the same as committing murder. Was that why? Was that why afterward, she had…? … … … …Afterward. After my last breath had left me, as I watched myself in the mirror. After I had been dragged into the hollow “darkness that follows death,” into that perfectly blank space in my memory. Somehow, it seemed that I could see something there…in hazy outline. It seemed I could hear something. It was… … … … (…here) “Here…,” she had said that day. (At least…here…) “At least here…” (…In this house…) “…In this house…” When it reached the point where my body had to be hidden somewhere in order to cover up my/Teruya Sakaki’s death, she—Tsukiho—had said those things during a discussion with her husband Shuji Hiratsuka. So that meant my body had to be… 4 Mei Misaki still hadn’t come. Maybe she never would. I— I suppose I really am alone. 5 The ticklish unease I had felt when Mei Misaki and I had conducted our “search of the haunted house” yesterday. It was…Yes, I had felt it in the basement room we had gone down to search last of all. What had that sense of apprehension been about? Questioning myself anew, I realized the truth, albeit dimly. Once it occurred to me, I was astounded that I had never noticed it until now—it was… That wall at the end of the corridor… That gray wall in front of which all kinds of old furniture had been stacked haphazardly. Had that always been that way? I groped through my memory, but couldn’t feel sure either way. Was that because the memories had been swallowed up by the “amnesia that follows death”? No, on further reflection, I had hardly ever gone down to that room in the basement during my life, so…perhaps my knowledge of it had always been vague. I was at a loss as to what to do, but in the end I decided to try going outside first. I had a reason for this. It was the picture Mei had shown me yesterday. The sketch she had made of the mansion last summer break… “Don’t you sense anything when you look at this picture?” she had asked me yesterday. “Compare this picture with how the building looks from here right now. It’s not a photo, so it’s not a perfect representation, but even so…” Because I remembered that conversation. Because I remembered she had gone on to ask: “Those windows on the bottom there, are they skylights for the basement?” 6 I stood alone in the shade of the same tree as yesterday, in the eastern garden of the house. I no longer had a good idea of what time it was. The sun had already sunk below the horizon and night had fallen, and Mei Misaki had never come…The wind was blowing. A strong, uncomfortably warm wind. I couldn’t see it from where I stood in the shadow of the building, but it looked like the moon was out. The sky above the roof was faintly glowing. The glittering of the stars peeked out from rents in the flowing stream of clouds. I took a look at the mansion, as I had done yesterday. I needed to focus on…Yes, the row of windows at a low spot on the first floor. The line of windows that had been provided as skylights for the basement. I think Mei Misaki had been trying to point out the number of windows yesterday. The sketch from last year and the building this year had a different number. There were plenty of spots where it was hard to tell due to the overgrown weeds, but when compared closely, had the number of windows decreased since last year? Had she had that doubt and suspicion then? Now that I was aware of it and taking another look…how did it look? The windows on the left, small and lined up at a height barely above the ground, probably belonged to that room in the basement facing the stairs, the junk storage room. I could make out that much. Then, the windows to the right belonged to that room that had once been used as a darkroom for developing photos… What about the windows farther to the right? Reliant on the faint illumination provided by the moon and stars, I squinted my eyes. Farther to the right…That would put it up against the right edge of the building. Half buried in the overgrown weeds, I could see something dull white. That ornament? The statue of the angel. Mei had said, “I don’t think this was here last year.” Because it was placed right next to the building, I couldn’t see past it. It could be a “screen” put there for exactly that purpose. My only option was to take a closer look. On the other side of the angel statue—I couldn’t find a single window on that part of building below the first floor. The only thing I saw was a blank mortared-over wall…But hold on. In Mei Misaki’s sketch from last year, this angel statue hadn’t been here and a window had been drawn on this part of the building. I was sure of it. Which meant— There had originally been a window here, too. So of course there had been a room on the other side of the window. A third room built in the basement of the house. That sense of unease I had felt when we’d gone down to the basement yesterday. If the reason for it had been the way the wall at the far end of the corridor looked…My memory was infuriatingly vague, but maybe the door to the “third room” had been in that wall. It was gone now, and all kinds of old furniture had been piled up in front of the wall, probably as camouflage… If that were true… Tsukiho’s words that day: “At least here…” “In this house…” According to those words, my corpse had been hidden in the third room in the basement of this house. After it was hidden, the door had been sealed and painted over with mortar, and the line of windows serving as skylights facing the yard had been sealed up in a similar way, leaving them as I now saw them… This angel statue had been put here to obscure the fact that there were fewer windows, when viewed from the yard. That seemed like a safe bet. The wind had been growing stronger and stronger. At the same time, the rustling of the trees and grass had grown more fervent, and the rustling of the entire surrounding forest amplified the sound so that the night began suddenly to show an eerily threatening aspect. The ceaseless noise of insects had stopped, but in its place the cry of a crow rang out, despite nightfall. The area grew abruptly dark, as if the streaming clouds had covered the moon. I shuddered intensely and pressed both my hands against the spot on the building’s wall where the windows seemed to have been painted over. There was a sealed room on the other side of this wall. And my corpse was hidden inside it. Ah, that’s why… … … … After a while… With an unexpected shock, I was swallowed up in heavy darkness. 7 …I can’t see anything. Inside a darkness as absolute as the word implies, I felt myself in turmoil. Frightening turmoil. I can’t see anything—but I feel. I feel all sorts of things. All kinds of somehow bizarre…Ah, is this—? In the very midst of my confusion, I barely managed the question. Where is this? What is this blackness? A bizarre density, utterly unlike the hollowness of the darkness that follows death. A bizarre oppressiveness. A bizarre prickling and the discomfort that goes with it. A bizarre… …Truly awful feelings in some indescribable way. A truly awful sound. A truly awful smell. Truly awful…to the point that when I began to notice it, it became almost impossible to bear. Truly awful, like nothing I had ever before experienced… My turmoil continued. My terrible confusion continued. But— Somehow, even in the midst of this, I held my ground at the very edge of endurance and once again asked myself: …Is this…? 8 This place…Ah, I know where I am. I think I know. Slowly, slowly, I pulled the answer in. I died and became a ghost…and I’ve been looking for my corpse, which had gone missing. I finally realized where my corpse was located. Once I knew that, there was no reason to believe I couldn’t go to be with it, as its owner. Even if it’s in a sealed room with no entrance…That’s why. That’s why I was here; it was a natural result. In the blackness of the basement’s sealed third room. 9 …A light. A light burned in the pitch-darkness. Light from a bulb dangling from the ceiling. A feeble light flickering unstably. I cautiously looked around. There wasn’t enough light to be able to see into every nook and cranny, but this place was exactly what I’d thought it to be—it seemed certain that I was in a sealed room in the basement. Dirty walls. Dirty floor and ceiling. All kinds of junk scattered about. Quite clearly the look of a room left to ruin… … … …A sound. Zzzzz…Zzzzzzt… A high-pitched sound, like something flying around. Shff…Shffshffshff…Shffshff. An indistinct sound, like something moving hastily. The thing flying around…could it be flies? The wingbeat of flies? When I looked in the direction the sound of rapid movement had come from, I saw several tiny shadows flee into the darkness. The pitch-black, nauseating shadows of insects. …The unsteady flickering of the lightbulb. As it flickered, I, too, shut my eyes, as if I might escape the things I had just seen and heard. 10 …A smell. Something smelled truly awful. I know something that smells like this. But it was the first time I’d smelled a stink—a fetid stench this intense, to the point of making me retch. When I closed my eyes, it seemed a hundred times worse. This almost unbearable stench. This must be…No. Even that wouldn’t be so… 11 Unable to stand it, I opened my eyes and…just then. I noticed the presence of some sort of large, old apparatus. It was probably a large, old…boiler or stove of some kind. Shff…Shffshffshff again. I heard the awful sound again faintly. I saw a swarm of black bugs skittering under the boiler or stove or whatever it was. Unconsciously, my throat tightened with a “hurk!” The lightbulb flickered. My eyes closed again. 12 …Pain. I hurt all over. How could a ghost get hurt? Was this phantom pain arising from a relic of the flesh? It wasn’t a sharp pain, but an unpleasantly throbbing ache pushed into my mind, and once I’d noticed it, there was no blocking it out. I opened my eyes, and my left hand opened to reveal a small rock I’d been holding for some reason. When had I grabbed that? A completely black stone…Was it a piece of coal or something? Zzzzz…Zzzzzzt… The high-pitched sound of wings again, filling my mind. Zzzzz…Zzzzzzt… There really were flies circling around inside the room. And not just one—several. Lots. Maybe dozens… I felt disgusted, irritated, and I blindly hurled the stone in my left hand at them. The sound didn’t stop, but instead— Spluch! There was a different sound. Somewhere deeper inside. Something placed deeper in the room (…what could it be?) hit square by the rock I’d thrown. 13 The lightbulb flickered. I had the feeling that each time it flickered on and off, the time it was off was growing longer… I shut my eyes hard, then opened them again. In the dim reaches of a shadowy corner of the room, I saw the outline of a bed or sofa or some similar piece of furniture. So that’s where the stone had struck. I drew closer to it warily. It had a backrest and armrests, so I suppose it was a sofa. A large cloth was draped over the entire thing…Ah, there’s a bulge. Yes—a bulge just the size of a person lying beneath it. …So that’s it. So the thing lying there was my corpse. 14 Once again I closed my eyes firmly, then opened them. When I did, I saw a small rectangular table beside the sofa. I warily drew even closer and realized there were two objects on the table. One was…Was it a camera? It was the single-lens reflex camera I/Teruya Sakaki had so cherished during life. One of the lost items that Mei Misaki had wondered about yesterday. The other was also one of the lost items. The daily planner that had vanished from my desk drawer in the library—Memories 1998. This is where it had been? I picked the planner up and flipped through the pages. I checked whether anything had been written anywhere about May 3—that day three months earlier. I found it almost at once. May 3, the very day itself. The following sentence, in a frantic, sloppy hand: This is long overdue, but now I can be connected with everyone. I wish for nothing but this. 15 I stood before the cloth-draped sofa. That same awful sound. That same awful smell. That same pain all over. Aching, throbbing. Nausea and a suffocating feeling added to by dizziness…I couldn’t stop trembling. Trembling in my body. Trembling in my heart. But… As the lightbulb flickered out I once again closed my eyes hard, then opened them. Then I told myself: …It’s here. It’s here under this cloth. The body I’d been searching for. My body. 16 I reached a trembling hand out to the cloth covering the sofa. My eyes registered the deep black stains all over the fabric, of blood or something else. No, there was no question. Under this cloth was my… With trembling fingers, I gripped the edge of the cloth. I tried to fling it back all at once boldly. But my strength failed me— Flmp. The cloth slid to the floor. Blrp. There was a disgusting noise. An overwhelming stench assaulted my nose, and unable to bear it, I pulled my hands from the cloth and pressed them over my mouth…and I saw it. A corpse. My corpse. My lifeless shell, tragically altered. 17 The human shape of it had been preserved, but it was a hideous, nauseating thing that could no longer be called—that I didn’t wish to call—human. Rotted skin. Rotted flesh. Rotted organs… The buttons had fallen off the shirt it wore, exposing the chest. The undergarments were full of holes and even ripped in places. As if ravaged by insects…But no, that was what had really happened. They had been literally devoured by insects or something of the kind. And seeping out, overflowing from below the underclothes— Rotted skin. Rotted flesh. Rotted organs. I could also make out the tatters that remained of them, clinging to exposed bones. The strange smell filling the air had, indeed, been the stench of rot coming from the corpse. I understood that dead bodies rot, but human beings are different from things like fish and birds. I had thought it would take more time. That the corpse of a large adult could have turned into this, after being in this place a mere three months at most… The face was the same. More than half had peeled away from the skull. There was almost nothing left of the forehead, nose, or flesh of the lips. The eyeballs were already gone, leaving only the reddish-black eye sockets…And something was moving inside them. Wriggling and crawling, squirming out, intertwining with one another… I choked back a moan. “Urk—” …They were maggots. So many maggots, crawling out from the eye sockets…Ugh. They weren’t only in the eye sockets. They were coming out of the nose, and the mouth, and from inside the tiny bit of flesh remaining in the cheeks. The light flickered. Zzzzz…Zzzzzzt… The high-pitched whine of the flies’ wings filled the room. Zzzzz…Zzzzzzt… The light flickered rapidly. “Whoa!” Crying out, I shook my head nonsensically. Batting my hands around at random, I tried to shrink away from the scene. But just then— My feet skidded over the floor and I lost my balance. Right before it happened, I had a sensation of something being crushed beneath my foot, which was presumably the bugs crawling all over the floor. My foot had slipped on their crushed corpses and bodily fluids. Worse still, I wound up falling forward. Unable to catch myself, twisting around, I fell—onto the sofa. Straight at the corpse laid out there. Rotted skin. Rotted flesh. Rotted organs. All reduced to tatters, they came to the very tip of my nose, choking me with an overpowering stench. I flung my hands out in front of me, which landed near the body’s rib cage. There was a shlurp and a nauseating sensation. The force had torn through the webwork undergarments, and the maggots and other vermin that had ravaged the rotting flesh came swarming out…crawling up at me. Up my hands. My arms. My shoulders. “Aagggh!!” I shouted, desperately flailing my entire body, trying to shake them off. The rotting flesh that had stuck to my hands. The stench of decay that had wrapped itself around me. The wriggling of the disgusting insects. “…No.” After my bout of screaming, my voice slipped out of me, defeated, in a faint whisper. “…This is wrong. This…not this.” The light flickered slowly…And then. Without a sound, it ended in darkness. The bulb had burned out. “No…” Once more within the utter darkness I had first entered, I again shook my head nonsensically. I again flailed my hands around at random. “No. This is wrong. This…” My voice was wrenched, cracking, from my body. And I gave forth another prolonged cry. “…Help me!!” 18 “Help me,” “help me”…I think I kept on shouting that, over and over again, for quite some time. Who was I hoping would save me? How? What could anyone do for me? Even I didn’t know. Worn out from my shouting, at last I sank onto the floor. I hugged my knees and lay like that, on my side, curled into a ball— “…No,” I gasped out, fighting back the suffocating sensation, the nausea. “Not this…not this…” My own body that I had lost track of after dying. My own body that had been hidden away. If only I could find it, I had thought. See it with my own eyes, touch it with my own hands…If only I could confirm “my own death” that way and come to accept it. If only I could do that. I had thought, Then, for sure I’ll be released from this unnatural, unstable situation. I would take on the form that was proper to death and thereby connect with everyone else… However… Maybe that had all been my own ignorant mistake. Maybe I had been mistaken about some fundamental aspect. Would I go on lingering here, in this darkness, with this horrifying corpse? Even when the corpse had rotted away completely, its skeleton exposed, and even the bones had finally crumbled away to nothing, I would be here, like this…Never going to heaven or to hell, never to pass into nothingness, let alone melting away in a sea to become connected to everyone, I would instead be like this, for all eternity… …I thought I was losing my mind. No, maybe I already had. I… As I remained curled up in a ball in the darkness, impossible visions rose up before me and died away one after another. This place—this of all places—might actually be hell. Yes, of course. That could be it. That night three months ago, after I had written that suicide note in my daily planner, I had tried to take my own life. In the end, my death had transmuted into a fall to my death following a struggle with Tsukiho, but that didn’t change the fact that my original intent had been “suicide.” Suicide was a deadly sin—as preached in Christianity, for example. Suicides go to hell. And so I had gone. Here. To hell. (…forget) All of a sudden, someone’s voice rose somewhere in my mind, and I became so confused that I thought my brain would rupture. Not knowing what was happening, unable to take the slightest action… (Everything…that happened tonight) Who…was this? (…You need to forget) Who…were they talking to? Who… “…Enough.” My own voice slipped out faintly, without my willing it. “I don’t want to. Please…help me.” My feeble voice, barely audible from moment to moment…I was weeping. “Somebody…help me.” Boom! That was when a sudden, momentous sound shook the darkness. 19 Boom! The noise continued, and I reflexively covered my ears. The earlier delusion that This is hell…was still vivid in my mind. Boom! That some chimerical, terrifying thing was coming this way. A terrifying evil beast dwelling in hell, coming to inflict even more pain on me… Boom!…Kroooom! The sound was coming from behind me. Shut up in the darkness, I couldn’t see anything, but I think it was coming from behind me, from the wall to the room. Boom! I uncurled and rose to my hands and knees, turning to look in the direction the sound was coming from. I found myself backing away from it slightly, but I couldn’t keep up my energy and sat down on the floor, hugging my knees to my chest. Boom!…K-krooom! It sounded like the wall was being pounded from the other side. Was it the hell beast? Or could it be…? No— It couldn’t…Before my thoughts had taken any more shape than that— B-boooom! Almost simultaneously with an incredibly violent boom, there came a new sound, crack! What could that be? Like lumber snapping… Crack! The same sound came again. And then… …A light. A single ray of light piercing into the darkness. 20 The sound persisted, reverberating intermittently, while at the same time the light streaming into the room gradually increased. The single ray became two. Then three and four…and eventually they all joined into a single band of light. Into a swath of light. The wall was crumbling. It was being broken down from the outside through some person’s efforts. At last, the silhouette of whoever it was came into view in the spreading white light. It had the form not of a beast, but of a person—a human being. A person I recognized…in the form of a young girl of petite build. It was— It was. It was…Mei? Mei Misaki? She was holding something in both hands. Unsteadily, she swung it over her head, then swung it down. When she did— Boom! The sound of it striking the wall. Crack! The sound of lumber snapping. Mortar and fragments of wood scattered to the ground. The edges of the hole she had made in the wall crumbled completely and the shaft of light grew even wider… “…Oof.” I heard her heave a sigh. There was no mistaking it—it was her voice: Mei Misaki’s voice. Her rough, ragged breathing, “Huff, huff, huff…” She continued panting for a while, then once she’d regained composure— “I know you’re in there,” she called out. Independent of the white glow of the fluorescent lights illuminating the hallway outside, the beam of a flashlight was aimed in my direction. “You are in there, aren’t you, Mr. Ghost?” There was a clatter, followed by a hard, heavy noise. Like she had tossed aside the tool she’d used to break down the wall. A hole big enough to enable a person to pass through had been broken open in the wall, and she climbed through it. But partway through she froze and made a sickened noise. “Smells awful…Oh.” The light from the flashlight piercing through the darkness fixated on me as I sat huddled on the floor and— “I knew it,” Mei Misaki said. Her face was completely obscured by the light behind her. “I thought I could hear your voice.” “My voice…?” At my reaction, she nodded. “Mm-hm. You said, ‘Help me.’ From the other side of this wall. So…” Then Mei slowly ran the light of her flashlight over the dark corners of the room. Before long, the movement of the light jerked to a stop. “…That’s awful.” She had found the corpse lying on the sofa. “That’s…” “…It’s mine.” My voice shook as I answered. “It’s my…” “Let’s get out of here,” Mei said. When I failed to respond, she turned her flashlight on me. “If you’d rather not, I could just leave you here, too. Do you want me to close the wall back up again? You’re a ghost, so you ought to be able to leave anyway.” “Oh, I…” …Yes. She was completely right. I should have been able to and yet. Mei Misaki then aimed her flashlight at the sofa in the back once again. With its light illuminating the horrifying dead body. “That’s death—” she said, as if to push it away. I looked not at the body, but at her. I could tell she had covered her right eye with her empty right hand. “I see the color of death,” Mei went on. “Though I don’t exactly need to see it. This really is terrible…Come on, you shouldn’t stay in here. The body isn’t going anywhere. “Right?” she said and reached her right hand out to me. “Hurry up.” Unsure what to think about anything, I rose unsteadily to my feet. And Mei Misaki gripped my left hand in her right. Her right hand, slightly moist with sweat and a little clammy. 21 Mei pulled me out of the room by my hand. Through the hole she had broken in the wall at the end of the hall in the basement, just as I had thought. A dusty pickax lay on the floor outside. This was— I was sure this was the pickax that had been in the garage. She had used this just now on this wall to… “Are you okay?” Mei asked. “Can you move?” “…Yeah.” “Okay, then let’s go upstairs,” she urged me. “This…isn’t a good place.” She led me toward the stairs, turning back once to look at the hole in the wall. “It’s only natural it turned into that when it’s been sitting there for three months in this weather. Rotting and eaten by bugs. Maybe it’s even better that it got that bad. Had you pictured what your body would be like?” I couldn’t answer and simply hung my head. I had lost almost all strength to move under my own power. With Mei still pulling me along by the hand, we climbed the stairs. As we climbed, she spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. “The power is cut off to the second floor. It looks like a breaker was tripped.” The power…to the second floor? “That’s why the battery was dead on that phone handset in the library…And that computer.” The computer…in the library? “So of course it didn’t turn on when I pushed the power button. Right?” When we emerged from the stairwell into the first-floor hallway, Mei Misaki continued on toward the grand entry. Only some of the fixtures on the wall were lit, dimly illuminating the foyer. I could hear a strong wind blowing outside. When we reached the center of the hall, Mei Misaki let out another sigh. “All right,” she murmured. She let go of my hand and, brushing the dirt from her clothes, continued. “You should be good now.” She turned to face me. “…What?” “You found the body you were looking for and…Did you manage to remember? Why that body was hidden in a place like that? Or what led to Mr. Sakaki’s death that night three months ago?” “Oh…maybe.” I gave a slight nod, my head still drooping. “For the most part.” “—Well?” Mei Misaki pressed. “You found the body…and then what happened? Do you feel like you can connect, like you were saying yesterday? With ‘everyone’ who died before you?” “Oh…well.” I dissembled and, keeping my head bowed, looked up to read the girl’s face. Mei’s lips were tightly pursed, and she was staring at me with a calm expression. “Nobody knows what’s going to happen after death until they die. So that’s why I think what Mr. Sakaki believed while he was alive was a fantasy.” “A fantasy…” “See, death is—” Mei explained it matter-of-factly. “Death is more endlessly empty and endlessly isolated than that…And well, maybe it’s just my own fantasy, but…Come here.” She waved me over, and I moved unthinkingly toward her. It was several steps away from the center of the hall, toward the mirror hanging on the wall. Mei stood beside me and pointed deliberately at the mirror. “What do you see over there?” “Over there…You mean inside the mirror?” “Yes.” “That’s…” Mei Misaki was reflected in the mirror. My/Teruya Sakaki’s image was…not beside her. Of course, there was no reason to think I would appear in the mirror. “Only you,” I answered quietly. “The mirror only shows you.” “I see,” Mei replied with a sigh, then went back to brushing dust off her clothes. “But…it’s strange. Because I can see you.” “What?!” “Even in that mirror, I can see you standing beside me.” “Wh-what does that mean?” My eyes shot to her face in profile to me. Her gaze was still turned straight at the mirror. “You must be doing that with the power of your doll’s eye…” “Nope.” Mei shook her head fractionally. “I don’t think it’s that.” She slowly lifted her left hand and covered her left eye with her palm. “Even when I do this—there—I can see you.” “…Meaning what?” “It has nothing to do with the doll’s eye. I can see you reflected in the mirror with this eye alone.” That was…How could it be? What did that mean? What was she trying to tell me? I was rendered speechless by my overwhelming confusion. Mei Misaki looked straight at me. “You still don’t understand?” she asked. “You still can’t see it?” “I…” “You’re the ghost of Mr. Sakaki. Who lost his life here three months ago and whose body was hidden in that room in the basement. Tonight you finally realized where the body was and you went into that room to make sure…But you were calling out for help, right? ‘Help me,’ ‘No,’ ‘This is wrong’…stuff like that.” “Th-that was…” I pressed my arms against my head. I was sure I would sink to the ground right there if I relaxed for even a moment. “You’re right, that this is wrong,” Mei stated crisply. “You were wrong. From the very beginning.” “…But…” “Look this way.” I obediently turned toward her. This time, Mei had raised her right hand to cover her right eye with her palm and fixed her gaze on me. “I don’t see the color of death on you,” she said again crisply. “I haven’t been able to see it ever since I first met you. So…” “…That can’t be.” I groaned weakly. Mei lowered the hand covering her right eye and turned both her eyes straight on me…and finally said again in a clear tone, “So you aren’t actually dead. You’re alive. You have to realize that for yourself, first of all.” 22 That’s ridiculous…I couldn’t help thinking this, even so. I/Teruya Sakaki had died. On May 3, three months earlier, things had happened the way I had finally remembered this evening…and I had died. I died. I died and became a ghost, and this whole time I had been like this… “That can’t…You’re lying.” “I don’t lie.” “You’re lying. Teruya Sakaki died. We even found the body. You saw it just now!” I argued, uncomprehending. “I am Teruya Sakaki’s ghost, and…I don’t show up in mirrors, and no one besides you can see me, and I appear and disappear all over the place…” “But you are alive.” Her eyes still fixed unwaveringly on me, Mei repeated, “You are alive. “You are not a ghost. I don’t think ghosts exist, actually. Because I at least have never seen one.” What in the world was she saying? It was crazy. I couldn’t understand what it meant. Was it possible…could it be that this conversation itself was some fantasy or hallucination I was having? And in reality, I was still in the darkness of that room in the basement? And Mei Misaki had never appeared? And I was having this fantasy… “…That can’t be.” My voice shook even more. “That can’t…What am I? What are you…?” “You need to wake up for real soon,” Mei said, reaching out both hands and resting them on my shoulders. “Poor thing.” …Poor thing? “Wh-what do you…?” “You’re still just a kid, but look how tall you’ve grown. You work so hard to act like a grown-up.” …Still…a kid? “What are you saying…?” “You aren’t Teruya Sakaki.” …Not Teruya Sakaki? “Look, cut it out and…” “You aren’t Teruya Sakaki or Teruya Sakaki’s ghost. You’re…” I’m… “Cut it out…” “You’re Sou.” …Sou? “I’m…Sou?” “You’re Sou Hiratsuka. A little boy who just started his sixth year this spring. Still only eleven or twelve years old…But when you saw Mr. Sakaki’s death here three months ago, you turned into this…You convinced yourself that you’re Mr. Sakaki’s ghost.” …Convinced myself? “That doesn’t…” “All I can do is guess about why something like this might have happened…” …I’m Sou Hiratsuka? “That’s…” That’s ridiculous—the same thought. The many times I had appeared at the Hiratsuka house and the time I had appeared at the Misaki family vacation house…hadn’t Sou been there as himself? Hadn’t Tsukiho and Mei and the others talked to him? Hadn’t I seen and heard it happen? And yet she was saying this…? “That story you originally told about watching yourself dying in that mirror here in the hall? That was Sou, watching from over there—” Mei Misaki pointed at the base of the stairs. “It’s what Sou saw in the mirror from over there. After he started to think of himself as Mr. Sakaki’s ghost, Sou redefined the image as ‘what Mr. Sakaki himself saw right before he died.’ From which we can extrapolate the rest, I think.” “…” “Even your problems with your memories as Teruya Sakaki.” “…” “Because you aren’t actually Mr. Sakaki. So even if you allow for ‘temporary amnesia due to shock,’ it’s only natural that you wouldn’t be able to accurately remember all kinds of things. Meanwhile, the things you’ve been remembering as Mr. Sakaki’s ghost are things you once heard Mr. Sakaki tell you or things you observed when the two of you were together.” —Because it was a terrible accident. I hadn’t said that? —If only I were dead, things would be all right. I had heard that? —Trapped…Yes. Maybe that’s it. “For example, last year when I met up with Mr. Sakaki a couple times and we talked…you were always there with him. And you’ve been remembering the conversations you heard me and Mr. Sakaki have not as yourself, but as Mr. Sakaki’s memories. I’m sure there are also a lot of things you learned—and remembered—by reading the diaries in the library…” … … … …Even so. I couldn’t believe it. There was no way to believe a story like that. I was Teruya Sakaki’s ghost, appearing and disappearing now and then in places he had been connected to in life…And since I was a ghost, I could go freely in and out of even locked rooms in this house, and this very night I had been able to get into that sealed room in the basement… “Like I told you before, the power’s been cut to the second floor, so nobody would be able to make the computer work. It’s not that you couldn’t get it to work because you’re a ghost.” Mei Misaki continued matter-of-factly. “And I think you just convinced yourself that you were able to go in and out of the locked rooms. After all, you knew where the keys were kept. You didn’t slide through the doors or walls because you’re a ghost, you actually used the keys to get in and out. You just decided not to acknowledge that fact to fit your story as a ghost…That’s what I think.” …To fit my story as a ghost? I was at a complete loss for words, but Mei Misaki fixed me with her point-blank stare and went still further. “And then there’s the day I first ran into you here—” It had been July 29, a Thursday afternoon. “I’d come here to see Mr. Sakaki that day…But someone had left a bike outside. Under a magnolia tree in the yard.” Oh…that. “I accidentally ran into it and knocked the bike over. It was hard to pick it back up…and my eye patch got all dirty.” “—I saw that.” “Oh?” “I saw from the window in the library…” I got the feeling that for some reason I had interpreted it as the bike she had ridden over on. But when I thought about it… “That bike belonged to Sou, didn’t it?” At the very least, it wasn’t likely to have been her bike. After all, two days later, I’d heard them talking at the Misaki family vacation house. Saying that Mei Misaki can’t ride a bike. So… “You rode it over here, but that didn’t fit your story while you were a ghost—it was an implausible fact, so you glossed over what it meant and acted like you never saw it.” …Glossed over it, like I never saw it? “Tonight that bike saved your life.” Mei Misaki spoke with a touch of heat in her voice. “I came a lot later than I promised I would…and I’m sorry. There were all kinds of annoying things I had to take care of…I wasn’t sure what I should do, but I thought I would hurry over here anyway. It was already dark out, so I thought maybe Mr. Ghost had disappeared and gone back home, but…I don’t know how to put it. I felt like something was off. “When I got here, I saw a bike. The lights in the house were off, but since I saw the bike, I figured you had to be here. So I was looking around inside the house…and when I went to take a look in the basement, I heard your voice on the other side of that wall…” “…” “I tried shouting back at you, but I guess you didn’t notice? You weren’t exactly in the right frame of mind, huh? Being in that place with that corpse…” “…” Since you were in there, I thought there must have been some way in, maybe from outside the house. But I didn’t have time to go looking for it and thought breaking down the wall would be faster. After all, there used to be a door there, and it looked like it had been plastered over…It took a lot of work, though. I felt like I needed to help you, not go looking for someone to help…” “…” I was still utterly incapable of responding—incapable of believing it all—and a long time passed. In the intervals between the strong gusts of wind outside, I could very faintly hear the hoot of the owl clock in the library. Ah…what time would it be by now? “So you…” At last I timidly began to speak. “…You can really see me with your eye?” A faint smile touched Mei Misaki’s lips. “This one, yes,” she replied. With her left hand gently covering the doll’s eye that held such mysterious power. 23 And fearful, I turned my eyes to the mirror once more. It showed something I hadn’t been able to see when I last looked at it. Standing beside Mei Misaki—in exactly the spot I was now standing—looking back at me, head cocked to one side…was the figure of a boy, smaller even than Mei. Sou Hiratsuka. Wearing clothes different from the ones I’d been aware of until now. Not the white, long-sleeved shirt and black pants reminiscent of a middle school student…but rather a yellow, short-sleeved polo shirt and jeans. The clothes, the face, the hair, the arms…all were filthy, caked with dust, soil, and mud. The eyes were bloodshot, and several tracks of dried tears ran down the cheeks. That was— That was me? Was it me? That was… Still looking at the mirror, I tried moving. The boy in the mirror moved the same way. I tried walking. The boy in the mirror walked the same way. Without his left leg limping unnaturally. (…forget) All at once, I heard a voice. (everything…that happened tonight) To the side of the boy in the mirror, I saw the indistinct form of Tsukiho. A phantom of Tsukiho with an ashen face, expression hardened and stern. (…you need to forget) Oh…I see. That night, the shock of witnessing Teruya Sakaki’s death had put Sou Hiratsuka into such a stupor and had sent him reeling half in a trance. Tsukiho had issued her order to Sou in that state. To forget everything you saw and heard here tonight. Nothing happened here tonight, you didn’t see anything—she had been planting those suggestions definitely. That’s why Sou had… “…Oh.” I—myself—let out a long, deep sigh as if to expel everything from within my body, then shyly looked into Mei Misaki’s face. She merely nodded to me in silence and made no further attempt at speaking. I let out another even longer, deeper sigh. I/Teruya Sakaki departed, leaving only “me” behind. “…Good-bye,” a voice said. My voice, which had until early this spring been a child’s alto but had then suddenly become strangely hoarse with the change in my voice (Good-bye…Te-ru-ya).
Chapter 129
48 min read