Another, Vol. 1 (22 page)

“And that was because the number of students had gone up?”

“Yeah. But you can’t tell who the extra kid is. You can ask everyone, but no one will say it’s them, and no one else knows, either.”

“…Even so.” Unable to grasp this idea, I cut in with the most obvious of questions. “Can’t they look something like that up on the class list or in the school records?”

“It doesn’t work. No matter where they look, the class list, all kinds of records, everything seems to match up. More like,
they can’t tell that the records don’t match up
, because things are changed—like, tampered with—so they can’t prove anything. So they’re just short one desk.”

“Tampered? So someone secretly doctors the records?”

“‘Tampered’ is a metaphor. See, it’s not just the records. Everyone’s memories get altered, too.”

“Uh-h-h?”

“You don’t think that’s possible, do you?”

“Well…no.”

“But apparently it’s true.”

As she responded, Mei looked extremely confused about how to explain it. “It isn’t anything a person could have done.
That’s the kind of ‘phenomenon’
it is.
At least, that’s how
someone
explained it to me.”

“A phenomenon…”

Argh…I could barely understand what she was telling me.

Tampering with the records? Altering people’s memories? That kind of thing was totally…

When someone dies, there’s a funeral.

I don’t know why, but out of nowhere, my grandfather’s papery voice played in my ears. With it came a strange, low-frequency sound,
Vmmmmm
…as if obscuring his words.

I don’t…I don’t want to go to any more funerals.

“At first, they all thought someone had screwed up, so they dug up an extra desk and chair and forgot about it. I suppose that’s natural. It’s not something that would normally occur to anyone, the number of students going up by one without anyone noticing. No one took the possibility seriously. But then…”

Her right eye, not hidden by the eye patch, slowly closed and then opened again.

“Like I said, starting that April, people linked to the class started to die each month. This is an indisputable fact.”

“Every month…for a whole year?”

“For 1973, I think it was six students and ten family members. That’s not exactly normal.”

“…No.” I couldn’t disagree with that. “If that really did happen…”

Sixteen people in one year. I knew that number was definitely out of the ordinary.

Mei slowly closed and then opened her right eye again, then went on. “And then—the same thing happened the year after that, too. When the new semester started, they were one desk short and every month someone died…And by then the people in the middle of it knew it couldn’t be anything ordinary. Some people even said that it must be a curse…”

A curse…“The curse of third-year Class 3.”

“If it’s a ‘curse,’ then where did it come from?” I asked, and Mei replied calmly as follows:

“It was the curse of Misaki, who’d died twenty-six years ago.”

“Why would Misaki put a curse on anyone?” I pressed. “It’s not like Misaki had any really horrible experiences in class or anything, right? Everyone was sad about the sudden death of such a popular kid…weren’t they? And Misaki cursed them anyway?”

“It is strange, isn’t it? I think so, too. That’s why
someone
told me that this is different from what you’d call a curse.”

“Who’s ‘someone’?”

It was starting to bug me, so I thought I’d ask. Mei didn’t answer and instead started to press ahead with the story. “So then…”

“Wait.” I stopped her and pressed a thumb against my left temple. “Let me organize this a little. Twenty-six years ago, Misaki from third-year Class 3 died. The next year there was an ‘extra person’ in the class, but no one knew who it was. Then, every month, the kids in the class or their family members started to die. I mean, what exactly is the logic tying this stuff together? Why do people die when there’s
someone
extra? Why would…”

“I don’t know any formal logic for it.” Mei gave a slight shake of the head. “I’m not really a specialist in this issue. It’s just that after all the stuff that’s happened up till now, I dunno, I’ve got a picture that’s come together from experience. Everyone involved knows the story since it gets handed down every year.”

She lowered her voice a bit before saying, “The
someone
extra is ‘the casualty.’”

“…What?”

The tip of my thumb pressed even harder into my temple.

“Um, is that…You mean, Misaki who died twenty-six years ago?”

“No, it doesn’t work like that.” Mei gave another small shake of her head. “It’s not Misaki. It’s some other ‘casualty.’”

“Casualty…”

The words scratched into Mei’s desk in the classroom—

Who is “the casualty”?

The words flashed dubiously through my mind.

“It was everyone in the third-year Class 3 twenty-six years ago
acting that way
that started all this. They decided that their dead classmate Misaki ‘wasn’t dead anyway’ and ‘was actually still alive, right over there,’ and kept the act going the whole year. The result was that when they took a photo in the classroom the day of graduation, it showed Misaki, who couldn’t have been present in the living world. If you think about it, ‘the casualty’ had been called back to them.”

Mei went on, her expression as static as ever.

“Meaning…maybe that was the trigger and that’s why the third-year Class 3 at North Yomi is ‘closer to death.’ Maybe it became a site, like a vessel that draws ‘the casualty’ in. It’s something like that.”

“It draws the casualty in?”

“Yeah. Obviously there’s no rational explanation for it, but still
that’s what started to happen
. That’s how the story goes.”

Just like the other time she’d told me of this, surrounded by the dolls in the basement, Mei had at some point shifted to a tone that suggested the secrets of the world lay exposed before her.

“‘The casualty’ is part of the class because the entire class is closer to death. I suppose you could look at it the other way, too. Since the casualty got mixed up in the class, we came closer to death. Whichever way it is—are you listening, Sakakibara?—‘death’ is emptiness. Just like the dolls. If you get too close to it, it sucks you in. That’s why…”

“That’s why someone dies every month?”

“Try thinking about it like this,” Mei said. “I came up with this on my own, though. The closer we get to death,
the easier it is for people to die
compared to a ‘site’ that’s not like that.”

“What does that mean?”

“For example, even if you go about your daily life the same way, you’re more likely to have an accident. Even in the same accident, you’re more likely to get badly hurt. Even with the same injuries, you’re more likely to die from them. Like that.”

“Ah…”

So this stuff popped up in all different facets of life like a risk bias and kept building up until at some point it yanked you once and for all into death? Was she asking me to interpret it like that?

So was that why Yukari Sakuragi had met such a string of unfortunate accidents and lost her life? And why Ms. Mizuno had died in that elevator accident?

“…But that doesn’t—”

That doesn’t make sense, I thought.

How could anyone believe that? It was utterly unacceptable in a thought process based on common sense. I couldn’t possibly…

Hey, Sakakibara, d’you believe in ghosts or curses or whatever? Is that your thing?

In the midst of my intense confusion, several scenes came back to me.

So-called paranormal phenomena, in general?

That was the unprovoked grilling I’d received from Teshigawara and Kazami at lunch on my first day at school. Had they been feeling me out with those questions? In order to lay the groundwork for revealing
this issue
to the transfer student?

And yet they had never gone into any more profound details…

…Of course.

That was because I’d spotted Mei right then, sitting on a bench across from a flowerbed in front of Building Zero. I’d ignored their alarmed reactions and headed over to her…Was that why?

“Um, do you mind if I ask you a couple things I don’t really get?” I asked, moving my finger from my temple.

“Go ahead,” Mei replied, stroking the eye patch over her left eye. “But I’m not an expert. There’s a lot I don’t really understand, either.”

“Okay.” I nodded and straightened my back. “Um, first of all…You said that the one
extra
person is ‘the casualty,’ right? Does that mean they’re like a ghost?”

“Well.” Mei’s head tilted to one side. “It’s probably not like the usual image of a ‘ghost’ that’s out there. It’s not just an ethereal presence. It has a physical body, they say.”

“A physical body…”

“It’s kind of a strange thing to say, but ‘the casualty’ is no different from a living person. It has its own flesh-body.”

“So, like a zombie, then?”

“Well…” Mei’s head tilted to one side again as she looked back into my face. “I think it’s different. They don’t hunt people down or eat them or anything.”

“Probably not, huh?”

“And when people die every month, it isn’t as if ‘the casualty’ reached out with its own hands to kill them. The casualty has feelings and it has enough memories to integrate into the situation, and it has no idea at all that it’s ‘the casualty.’ That’s why you can’t tell who they are.”

“Hm-m-m. So then—” My question drew together slowly. “At some point or other it becomes clear who the ‘extra person’ mixed into the class that year was, right?”

“That—yeah. They say you find out after graduation is over.”

“How do you find out?”

“Because the extra person disappears. They say the records and memories of the person go back to the way they were, too.”

“What kind of person gets mixed up in the class as the casualty, exactly? Has it ever been someone without any link or association to the class?”

“I dunno…Oh, but there is kind of a rule for it.”

“A rule?”

“It’s a person who’s died as part of this phenomenon before. Whether it’s an actual student from third-year Class 3 or their little brother or sister or…”

“Then who could it have been that first time, twenty-five years ago? Was it Misaki, since they’d died the year before? But then wouldn’t someone have…”

Someone would have realized “Misaki’s here,” wouldn’t they? Maybe that thought was proof that I just couldn’t let go of “rational thinking.”

“A lot of the changes and tampering happen all on their own, so I don’t think it would have seemed strange even if it were Misaki,” Mei responded. “But I heard that’s not what happened that year.”

“Then who was it?”

“Misaki’s little brother or sister. They’d died at the same time Misaki did…and they were one year younger than Misaki, so they would have been a third-year that year.”

“Misaki’s little brother or sister…I see.” I spoke the words myself then and couldn’t help acknowledging it. “You’re saying that for a whole year, no one—not the teachers and not the students—noticed that this kid who had died the year before was in the class and they just accepted it as reality?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

Mei nodded, then let out a long sigh and shut her eyes, the very picture of exhaustion. Two seconds, then three, went by before she murmured, “Ah, but—” and opened her right eye a slit. “No matter how much I try to explain it, it’s a hard story to pin down when you start thinking about it.”

“How come?”

“Well…” Mei mulled over her words, but when she spoke they came with hardly any hesitation at all: “After a year where
that
happens, obviously the fact remains that a lot of people died, but they say that people’s memories about
the event itself
fade. Especially about who was ‘the extra person’ in the class. There’s some difference between people, and some people forget right away, but in most cases the memory becomes hazier over time until eventually…”

“They forget?”

“I heard this example from
someone
.

“Suppose a levee breaks and water from the river floods the town. It’s like the water is finally receding. The fact that there was a flood remains, unquestionably, but after the water recedes, the memory of what got flooded and how badly starts to get fuzzy. It’s like that. It’s more that they can’t help forgetting, not that they’re forced to forget, I guess.

“Twenty-five years ago is like a fairy tale since it’s before we were born, but in a global sense it wasn’t that long ago. But when the memories of the people involved fade like that, it’s like you said before, Sakakibara. It’s become a total legend now.”

At that, a corner of Mei’s mouth softened, but her expression froze again right away.

“Until the end of my second year, I’d only caught snatches of rumors. After they decided the classes for third-years, they called a meeting right away, and a couple of the kids from Class 3 the year before who were graduating were there, too. There was kind of a ‘torch-passing’ about this issue. That was the first time I heard the reality of the ‘legend’…”

Her tone of smothered emotion never faltered, but for her, it sounded as if there was all sorts of chaos in her heart.

“They explained it to us and I realized that this wasn’t a lie or a joke: that maybe we had to take this seriously. Even so, deep down I only half-believed it. As for everyone else, there were some kids who believed it completely and some who didn’t really buy it…”

A lighthearted tune cut through the room, playing in the oval clock that hung over the TV to tell the time. Six o’clock. It was that late already?

I wouldn’t be surprised to start getting worried phone calls from my grandmother asking “Where are you? Are you all right?”

What an awful machine.

I remembered Mei’s comment, whenever it had been.

No matter where you are, you’re connected. They can catch you.

I turned off the cell phone, still in the pocket of my pants.