Chapter 153

Outroduction Allow me to lay out the facts that came to light the following day. The fire that broke out in the inpatient ward of the Yumigaoka Municipal Hospital on the afternoon of September 12, 2001, was extinguished before sunset that same day. The flames burned through more than half of the sixth floor, as well as part of the roof and the fifth floor, but thanks to strenuous firefighting efforts as well as the relentless downpour, the damage was prevented from spreading any farther. Regarding the helicopter crash that caused the blaze, the sequence of events leading up to the accident is still under investigation. The aircraft in question was owned by Hoshikawa Aviation in the prefectural capital, Q** City. On the day of the crash, it had apparently been chartered by a certain newspaper company. The current theory was that they were probably flying in to cover the mass-hospitalization incident caused by an uproar over an offensive smell at North Yomi, which had been plagued by a series of student suicides and accidental deaths. Much remains to be seen. The helicopter pilot, as well as the reporter and cameraman who were riding along, all succumbed in the crash. There has been talk that one of them was actually a “related individual” to someone in Grade 3 Class 3, but so far, no details or information on the veracity of that rumor have emerged. The helicopter collided into the north side of the sixth floor of the inpatient ward. In what could be called the silver lining under a dark cloud, it struck the linen room, which was unoccupied at the time. That said, the linen room was next to the large hall where the students of Grade 3 Class 3 were being housed, and two people died when they couldn’t make it out in time. Their identities have been confirmed as follows: • Ruiko Etou……Female student. Countermeasures officer. • Seiya Nakamura……Male student. Soccer club member. The other students and a number of parents and guardians who had come to the hospital escaped unharmed or with minor injuries. Including the patients and staff members who were not “related individuals,” four people died in the hospital in addition to the three in the helicopter, and twenty-odd people sustained major or minor injuries. Personally, I was very relieved to learn that my psychiatrist, Dr. Usui, hadn’t been harmed. As I’d suspected, he’d been examining the students on the sixth floor of the main hospital building that afternoon. However, he’d apparently left just before the madness started. And his daughter, Kiha, who’d been so worried about her father, also made it out okay. Even so— I can’t help but wonder about Kiha’s strange behavior that day. Dr. Usui had always said that there was something a little off about his daughter, and I wonder if that had anything to do with what happened. I think I’ll wait for the right moment and ask him more about that. I do need to finish describing what happened in the hospital room. The knife pierced Makise’s carotid artery. Mei was instantly covered in blood, which even splattered on me. As her hospital bed became a sea of blood, Makise passed, returning to “death.” With her death, the “otherworldly presence” I had sensed in that place also disappeared. Once she was gone, the roaring wind suddenly quieted, and the rain began to taper off. I could hear the hospital-wide announcements calling for evacuation. In any case, Mei and I left the hospital room together and went down to the first-floor lobby of the annex building. Several staff members greeted us and told us that the fire in the main building seemed to be dying down. However— Not a single person mentioned the fact that our faces and clothes were caked with blood. I have to imagine that it must have been completely invisible to them. Mei didn’t speak a single word while we were there. She didn’t try to talk to me, either. She, too, seemed to have transformed into a lifeless doll. The room on the third floor of the annex had been out of use for a long time. Obviously, there had been no patient by the name of Misaki Makise staying there. That version of reality had already taken hold of everyone, with the exception of Mei and me. Nothing was found in the room—not Makise’s corpse, nor the blood-soaked knife and bedding, and any documents indicating that “Misaki Makise” had been hospitalized since April also vanished. The same thing happened to the memories of people connected to her, from the staff at the hospital to her own mother, Mitsuyo…and at school as well, of course. Just like when “Izumi” disappeared in July, not a single student or teacher remembered “Makise.” Everything was altered or falsified to be consistent with the new “reality” in which she had never existed. In the end, more people lost their lives to the “phenomenon” than in an average year. All our efforts to prevent the “calamity” had been in vain. It had claimed many victims before we managed to stop it. There was nothing we could do. It was the most sinister year in the history of the “Yomiyama phenomenon.” That’s how it will go down. But even in the middle of everything— A sole piece of good news reached me three days after the disaster at the hospital. Yagisawa, who had been hovering between life and death in the intensive care unit, regained consciousness the day after the blaze. He was moved out of critical condition, and his recovery afterward also apparently went remarkably well. I heard the word miraculous fall from his doctor’s mouth. “They say you’ll be able to go see him before too long. Apparently, there won’t be any lasting damage, which is also ‘miraculous.’” When Mr. Chibiki told me that over the phone, tears began to fill my eyes. After some major deliberation, I had confided in him about what had happened that day in the hospital room. I explained how even after “Izumi Akazawa” disappeared, the “calamity” hadn’t stopped because of the “second casualty.” “So from now on—really this time—we shouldn’t have to worry about any ‘accidents,’” I asserted with confidence. “This year’s ‘phenomenon’ has totally run its course. It’s undoubtedly finished; there won’t be any more…” Mr. Chibiki seemed utterly exhausted, but he silently listened to my appeal to the end. Then he answered me with a single word: “Understood.” I wasn’t sure how much of my story he believed, but at any rate—he was sure to recognize this as fact once September ended and we made it through October without incident. September 30, Sunday afternoon. The wound on my hand, as well as the bruises and scratches that covered my body, had mostly healed, and for the first time in a while, I went for a walk on the path beside the Yomiyama River. Partway down the path, I went over to the riverside and sat alone on a bench, where I found a peaceful moment for the first time in a long while. There was a refreshing breeze blowing through the perfectly clear sky. I saw a swarm of red dragonflies gracefully flitting about. I heard the chirping of crickets. On the river’s surface, there were several Eurasian teal ducks that had just arrived to pass the winter. On the opposite shore, a cluster of red spider lilies bloomed. The flowers were a vivid deep-crimson hue, almost disturbingly red, as if their petals had been stained by the blood of all those who had lost their lives in “accidents.” As I watched them swaying in the autumn breeze— My thoughts inevitably turned to the events of the past half year. Once again, I pondered over the “truth,” as I understood it then, having ruminated about it on countless occasions. At the time of the “strategy session” in late March, when I had volunteered to be this year’s “non-exister,” after which the class decided to choose a “second non-exister” at Etou’s suggestion—at that time, “Misaki Makise” did not yet exist. The memory of Makise volunteering before the lottery to choose the “second” was a “false memory” the “phenomenon” had planted in our minds after the fact… On April 9, the day of the opening ceremony for the first semester, “Izumi Akazawa” had appeared in our class as the year’s “extra person,” otherwise known as the “casualty.” At that moment, too, Makise did not yet exist. There were one too few sets of desks and chairs—that’s what we had thought at the time, and our perception was correct. We had understood that this year was an “on year,” and Hazumi and I were to play the roles of “non-existers.” Following precedent, two sets of old desks and chairs had been carried over to our classroom from Building Zero. No desks or chairs had been removed in exchange, so in doing this, the classroom came to have one extra set, and… The year’s “countermeasures” of having two “non-existers” versus one “casualty” had functioned quite well. There were no “accidents” in April. However— In the meantime, the “phenomenon” took an unexpected turn. By establishing two “non-existers,” we had caused an imbalance in the “power dynamic.” In order to correct the balance, which was tipped too far toward the side of “life,” a “second casualty” had appeared. You could even say that the appearance of this “second” was a side effect of our excessive “countermeasures.” The “extra person,” the “casualty” who joined Grade 3 Class 3 during an “on year,” was resurrected randomly from among the people who had lost their lives to previous “calamities.” But they always come back as a “member of Grade 3 Class 3,” and “reality” is altered so that everyone automatically accepts them as such. Everything changes to account for their presence. However— The “casualty” has to come back at the apparent age they were when they died. They aren’t supposed to get younger or older when they are “reborn.” That means the resurrections aren’t entirely random, since it would be impossible, say, for an elderly person who had died in a past “accident” to blend in with the other students. The person brought back as the “second casualty” was “Misaki Makise,” who’d died three years ago in April, at the municipal hospital. This “phenomenon” was able to happen because her mother, Mitsuyo, had divorced and remarried, then moved into the North Yomi school district last year. But Makise hadn’t appeared in our classroom at North Yomi. Instead, she’d been “reborn” as an “inpatient” at the hospital where she had spent her final days three years earlier—in the same room where she had died. April 21. After visiting the “clinic” for my first appointment after starting Grade 3, the “fact” that there was a student hospitalized there had surfaced in my mind in the corridor while I was on my way to the first-floor lobby of the hospital building. That was probably the moment that the “false memory” of “my classmate named Makise, who has been absent from school and in the hospital since the beginning of April” lodged itself in my mind. The “second casualty” absolutely did not exist from the start. In the middle of April—probably around the 20th, she had materialized. Not in the classroom, like usual, but in the hospital. True to form, however, she was a member of Grade 3 Class 3. When Makise appeared, people’s memories had been altered, going far back in time. I’d said that Makise was there for the “strategy session” in March and that she had volunteered when we were choosing the “second non-exister”—but that recollection, too, was a “false memory” that we all began to share once she appeared. Etou had even been given “false memories” of her friendship with Makise since her transfer to our school at the end of last year. Around this time, our perception of the desks in the classroom was also altered accordingly. We had brought over two old desks from Building Zero for the “non-existers” to use, so there was an extra. In our minds, the desk that Hazumi had vacated became the desk that belonged to “hospitalized Makise”—everyone suddenly took that as the truth. When I look back on it carefully, the details were inconsistent, but no one had noticed. It’s likely that some kind of “power” was working to keep us from seeing something that we should have otherwise noticed. So a second “casualty” appeared, putting the “power dynamic” between them and the “non-existers” in equilibrium. That balance had collapsed at the beginning of May, when Hazumi quit “not existing,” kicking off the “accidents.” Come to think of it, the fact that Izumi was the one who proposed the new “countermeasure” to address the “calamity” once it started and the fact that we’d entrusted Makise with taking over the role of the “second non-exister” in place of Hazumi were exceptionally ironic turns of events. It was the end of May when Izumi and Etou had visited her in the hospital to make the request. And it was several days later when Izumi had come to the “Blue Eyes…” gallery and met Mei for the first time. Now I understand why Izumi had been so surprised and bewildered back then. I’m sure that when she saw Mei’s face, Izumi had noticed how much she looked like Makise, who she’d just seen in the hospital. I’m certain that’s why she reacted the way she did… We made it through June, and in July, we had established that Izumi was a “casualty” and we had returned her to “death.” But even after “Izumi Akazawa” had disappeared, there was still “Misaki Makise,” the “second casualty.” The balance was still tilted toward the side of “death,” resulting in the “accidents” that continued into September… By the way… “Misaki Makise” was originally “Misaki Fujioka,” Mei’s younger twin sister. Misaki had existed in this world until April, three years ago. After that, she’d been resurrected as a member of Grade 3 Class 3. In order to resolve any inconsistencies and make everything coherent, a “false memory” stating that “Mei has a sister three years younger than her, in addition to her twin sister” had been planted in people’s minds, but— There was a small problem with that. Since the changes and falsifications had not altered any facts about “Mei’s twin sister, who died three years ago,” it turned out that both her “dead twin” and her “little sister who she was three years older than” were both named “Makise.” So when I had asked Mei the name of her twin, she had answered (finally, after what I now realize was an oddly long pause, looking back on it…) that her name was “Misaki.” Immediately after that, both of us had forgotten the name. The “phenomenon” must have changed things—this is something else that I now easily grasped in hindsight. ………… ………… …I had been lost in thought for a long, long time. When I realized that it was now 4:25 in the afternoon, I hurried to my feet. We had promised to meet at 4:30, at the pedestrian bridge a little farther down the path, the Izana Bridge. If I run, I think I’ll just make it. There was no one on the bridge when I got close. I walked on with a feeling of relief and arrived exactly on time. A figure appeared on the other side. It was her—Mei Misaki. I hadn’t seen Mei, or heard her voice, since the 12th of that month, when everything crazy happened. After that day, she hadn’t answered when I called or replied to my e-mails, and I wasn’t going to go uninvited to her house in Misaki, so… But the evening prior, I’d gotten an e-mail from Mei. “Tomorrow at 4:30, at that bridge on the Yomiyama River—” it said. Mei was dressed in a black blouse and skirt, an outfit that looked like mourning clothes. As the sun was sinking in the sky and the scenery was taking on a faint red tinge, we each walked toward each other and stopped in the middle of the bridge, facing each other. “Are you well?” Mei was the first to speak. “Have your injuries healed?” “Yeah, mostly.” “Going to school?” “Starting next week, actually.” “Yagisawa survived, huh?” “Miraculously, apparently.” “That’s great.” “Yeah.” Mei’s voice and tone were no different than the girl I had always known. Her face was nearly expressionless, but that wasn’t unusual, either. Even so, I was very nervous as I asked, “Um…what about you?” “Hmm?” Mei tilted her head a bit, then nodded slightly and answered, “I’m fine now.” She slowly closed, then opened both eyes. She wasn’t wearing her eye patch. She had a prosthetic, black with brown flecks, in her left eye. “I haven’t been able to get her off my mind ever since it happened,” Mei said. “But I stopped trying to force myself not to think about it.” “Um…can I ask you something?” “What?” “Makise was in the hospital, so how did you…? What I mean is, how did you end up meeting and talking to her?” I asked. “Through my mother,” Mei replied. “I heard about her from Mitsuyo, and I would go visit her sometimes and even call occasionally. I ran into you once at the hospital, right?” “Ah, yes.” Once, I had caught sight of Kirika (who was actually Mitsuyo) in the hospital. Then Mei had found me, and the two of us had gone up to the roof… “That was one of the times I was visiting. I think that day I was with Mitsuyo. But back then, I didn’t know yet that she was a member of Grade 3 Class 3 at North Yomi. I didn’t even think to ask…but we went over this during summer break, didn’t we?” “Ah, yes we did,” I replied, and mumbled, “sorry…” Mei had insisted that she was fine now, but the memories still had to be painful for her. “You don’t need to apologize,” Mei said in response to my mumbling. “Ah…but—” “After several years, I’ll forget about it, whether I want to or not.” Then Mei looked down at the flowing river and pressed her chest against the handrail of the bridge. I stood beside her and placed both hands on the railing. I thought carefully about what we should discuss. There were so many things I wanted to ask her. For example—that day on the 12th, what had the two of them talked about when Mei went to visit her sister’s hospital room, in the time between when Mitsuyo left and when Makise fell asleep? What was Makise thinking, and how did she pass the time alone during her long hospital stay? What on earth had Makise tried to tell Mei in that last moment before her death, when she opened her eyes as the knife plunged into her chest? But I decided to keep all these questions and more to myself for now. So then, what should we talk about? Something less important. Something inconsequential. But the more I pondered, the harder it got for me to say something. Ah, that’s it—how about the e-mail I got from Mei on the night of the 11th? That was the day that Yagisawa attempted suicide, and by the time I’d gotten home, I hadn’t had it in me to even turn on my PC, so it was the 13th before I realized that I had an e-mail from her. As one would expect, I had been happy to get her message congratulating me on my birthday. I should thank her again… No, but when she wrote me that e-mail, Mei was definitely already… Looking down from the bridge, I saw the beautiful image of the setting sun reflected in the river. But—I thought—on that night not even three months ago, there was a violent, turbulent current running under this same bridge. And Izumi tossed herself into it from about where we’re standing now… Recalling that event was still painful, even now. As Mei had said, a time would surely come when both the memory and the pain would fade and disappear, whether I wanted them to or not. “There’s just one thing stumping me…or rather, something that’s been weighing on my mind.” Finally, at last, I opened my mouth. “What?” Mei responded as I glanced at her profile. “Why did we make it through August without anything happening? The ‘second casualty’ was still around, so why did the ‘accidents’ stop for August?” Still looking at the river, Mei mumbled, “I wonder…why did they?” Musing aloud, I asked, “Was it taking a breather for a month after one of the ‘casualties’ disappeared or something?” “I guess that’s possible, but…I don’t know.” Mei tilted her head uneasily. “It is an ‘unnatural natural phenomenon’ to begin with, after all. Honestly, it might just be really fickle, like the weather.” “Fickle? You’re kidding…” I started to say something, then held my tongue. Mei also made no further attempts to discuss the issue. “That reminds me…” After a silence that went on for a short while, this time it was Mei who opened her mouth to speak. “I got a call from Sakakibara the other day, and he said he’s coming here during the holidays in November.” “He’s coming?” “So when he does, he wants to get together, the three of us.” We had enlisted Koichi Sakakibara’s help at every important point along the way. Honestly, I was extremely grateful for his assistance. If I saw him, not only would I want to offer him my thanks but also pick his brain about a bunch of things. “Sakakibara came to Yomiyama last year and the year before during Obon. Apparently, he wants to come in November because he wasn’t able to make it for Obon this year.” “…Huh.” “He wants to visit the grave of someone important to him.” “Someone important?” I didn’t know who that could be. But the idea made me feel sad, almost jealous. An important person. I wonder whether I have any of those, living or dead? I glanced at Mei again, then up at the darkening sky. Listening carefully to the sound of the gently flowing river, I casually wished that we could stay there like this forever. “I think I’d better be getting home for today,” Mei announced at last. “Kirika’s been a little high-strung again, you know.” “Does it have something to do with Mitsuyo?” I asked, but she didn’t reply. “Did you hear anything from Tsukiho, after all that?” Mei inquired abruptly. I answered with a sigh. “She’s called so many times.” “Have you talked to her?” I shook my head silently. “You haven’t answered the phone?” I nodded silently. “Not even once?” When I nodded wordlessly again, Mei said, “I see,” and smiled for the first time since we’d met up today. “I think you should do whatever you want, Sou.” After that, as we were parting, she brought something else up. “Oh, that’s right…,” she started. “I feel like I mentioned something about this before, but do you want to visit Lakeshore Manor someday soon?” “Huh?” Surprised, I averted my gaze. But Mei stared straight at me. “When I went to Hinami over summer break, I checked out the house. It’s still there, the same as always, but… Sooner or later, it’s probably going to be demolished or sold off.” From the tone of her voice, I could tell that she was informing me of this in earnest. I slowly turned back to her. She was still staring straight at me. “Sometime soon…say, next spring or something,” Mei said. “Of course, we would keep it a secret from everyone. Let’s go just the two of us and explore the house. How about it? Want to?” I didn’t know what expression to make in response to her enthusiastic questions… “Everything’s okay now, right, Sou?” I nodded silently at her next statement. Let’s go have a look. Let’s go, yes, and make a report to Uncle Teruya, I thought. I’ll tell him that Grade 3 Class 3 at North Yomi had a really difficult time, that the “calamity” struck hard again this year. And that I didn’t run away. That’s what I’ll tell him. I brought together my fingers and made a pretend camera viewfinder for the first time in a long while. I centered it on a puff of cloud floating in the evening sky, then clicked the pretend shutter closed. When I did— A low, faint reverberation echoed from somewhere. And then, for just a second, the red of the sunset glow that painted the scenery seemed to be obscured by darkness… Panicking, I searched for Mei. But there was no need, since she was right where she had always been—beside me. “See you later,” Mei said and turned to leave. As I watched her black figure walk slowly away across the bridge, fighting my desire to chase after her, a gust of wind suddenly blew around me. I felt a chill that didn’t belong in an autumn breeze, and it made me shiver—just a little. —The End