Chapter 7 : June II

Ms. Mizuno was dead.

I learned the frankly debilitating truth that evening. The only information I was able to get so far was that there had been an accident at the hospital, but I think I had been prepared for the worst, even before that.

That phone call during lunch…

There was no doubting the fact that some kind of abnormal calamity had befallen her. But no matter how many times I tried to call her back, I never got through. As a result, I had no way of finding out what happened, so I was forced to spend hours tortured by anxiety and restlessness.

"Ms. Mizuno? That young nurse?"

When she heard about it, my grandmother seemed truly shocked, too. She had met Ms. Mizuno several times while I'd been hospitalized in April.

"Mizuno…Sanae, wasn't it? You two got along so well. She would talk to you about your books…"

"I saw her once at the hospital, too, I think. The day I came to visit you, she was…"

Reiko looked extremely depressed. After dinner, she'd taken the same medicine as the night before. I guess she had a headache again.

"She was still so young. I hope her little brothers will be okay."

"She had brothers?" my grandmother asked.

I replied, "One is named Takeru. He's in my class, actually."

"Oh, my." My grandmother's eyes went round. "How awful. Didn't a girl from your class just pass away in an accident?"

I knitted my brows pensively, my temples throbbing.

"They said there was an accident at the hospital…I wonder what it could have been."

Nobody could answer.

But the horrible sound I'd heard over the phone at lunchtime boomed again in my ear. And Ms. Mizuno's pained moaning, fading in and out of the intense interference.

Unable to bear it, I shut my eyes tightly.

I thought about telling them, right then, what had happened at lunch. As I thought it over, there was no reason for me to hesitate so much over it…and yet.

I didn't tell them. No—I couldn't tell them. I think because I felt something akin to guilt deep down and I couldn't shake free of it.

My grandfather had been quiet, but now he let out an "Ah-h, ah-h" in his papery voice. He pressed both hands to his wrinkled, colorless forehead.

"When someone dies, there's a funeral. I don't…I don't want to go to any more funerals."

For whatever reason, maybe because there was an inauspicious day coming up, the wake was the day after tomorrow and the memorial service would be the day after that, on Saturday. Saturday? Oh, right…June 6.

Did you ever see The Omen?

I vividly recalled the conversation Ms. Mizuno and I had had at the restaurant. It was only yesterday.

We'll both be careful. Especially for any accidents that would never usually happen.

She was dead.

The day after tomorrow was her wake, and the day after that was her memorial service. It seemed so unreal. Shock was the only thing I felt at first. Emotions like sadness couldn't get a grip on me yet.

"…I don't want to go to any more funerals."

As I listened to my grandfather sluggishly repeat himself, the word "funeral" created a dark stain somewhere in my heart. Before I could even react, a black whirlpool had begun to turn slowly around it, until finally—how can I put it?—a strange, low frequency sound rose up from everywhere at once, Vmmmmm…

I closed my eyes tightly again. At the same moment, something in my mind came to a halt.

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

The next day, June 4, an oppressive climate filled the classroom in third-year Class 3 within moments of starting the day.

Ms. Mizuno's little brother Takeru hadn't come in. By the time second period was over, the rumor that he was absent because of his older sister's sudden death had spread through the class. And in third period, before starting the language arts class, the head teacher, Mr. Kubodera, openly told everyone it was true.

"Mizuno's older sister met with a sudden and unfortunate incident yesterday…"

Instantly, an odd silence smothered the room. As if the breath of every student had crystallized in the air in an instant…

Worst of all, Mei Misaki entered the room just then.

Without so much as apologizing for her tardiness, without showing any self-consciousness whatsoever, she sat down in her usual seat, silent. I watched her as she went, uneasiness thrumming in my chest. Then I turned my attention to the reactions of everyone else in the class, too.

Not a single one of them turned to look at Mei. They all had their eyes fixed, almost unnaturally, straight ahead. Mr. Kubodera was exactly the same. He didn't look at Mei or speak to her. It was as if…

Yes, it was as if there simply was no student named Mei Misaki in this class. As if she didn't exist.

When the language arts class ended, I quickly got out of my seat and hurried over to Mei.

"Come with me," I said, pulling her into the hall. Ignoring whoever might be listening, I asked, "Did you hear about what happened to Mizuno?"

She cocked her head slightly and asked "What?" so apparently she didn't know about it yet. The eye not hidden by the eye patch blinked wonderingly.

"She died. His older sister died yesterday."

I thought I saw surprise color her face for an instant. But it disappeared almost immediately.

"…Oh." Her voice revealed no emotion. "Was she sick? Or was it an accident or something?"

"They say it was an accident."

"Ah."

Several students had clumped up near the door to the classroom. There were a couple of boys and girls whose names and faces I knew, but whom I still hadn't really talked to. Nakao, Maejima, Akazawa, Ogura, Sugiura…Teshigawara was among them, too. He hadn't spoken a word to me since lunch yesterday.

I knew they were all shooting looks over at us. As if watching how things developed from a distance.

Could it be? I had to give the idea pretty serious consideration now.

Could it really be that what they saw now was only me?

And—

When the next class started, Mei had vanished from the classroom. Naturally, no one but me paid it any attention.

As soon as lunch started, I went over to Mei's desk, farthest back in the row by the windows that faced the schoolyard, and gave her desk a fresh inspection.

It was a wooden desk, of a clearly different shape than the rest of the desks in the room. The chair that went with it was the same. Like something that had been used dozens of years ago. An incredibly old desk and chair.

Why was that? I asked myself, feeling behind the curve. Why is Mei's desk the only one like this?

By now I'd decided to ignore the watchful eyes of those around me, so I sat down in her seat. The surface of the desk was notched all over and uneven. I doubted it was possible to fill out a test, say, and write clearly at all without a backing sheet.

There was a lot of graffiti among all the cuts in the desk.

Most of the graffiti was old—extremely old—like the desk. Some was written in pencil. Some in pen. Some carved in, probably with the tip of a compass. Some had almost vanished; some was only barely legible. And there in the middle…

My eyes fixed on a row of letters that looked freshly written. They were recent.

They were written small, on the right edge of the desk, in blue pen. There was no real way to judge the penmanship or anything, but as soon as I saw it, I knew that Mei had written it.

Who is "the casualty"?

That was what she had written.

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

"…I wonder how Ms. Mikami's doing."

From his seat beside me at the worktable, Yuya Mochizuki voiced his concern rhetorically.

"I wonder if she's really feeling that bad. She looked pretty out of it the other day…"

Fifth period was art class with Ms. Mikami, but there was no sign of her in the art room on the first floor of Building Zero yet.

A different art teacher came in at the start of the period and told us, "Ms. Mikami is out today," before instructing us in a businesslike tone that we would be having an art class study hall. We were told, "Each of you draw your own hand in pencil," a completely uninteresting subject, and as soon as the teacher left the room, there were apathetic sighs here and there in the room. It was a natural reaction, really.

I opened my sketchbook, and then—why not, after all?—rested my left hand on the table and stared at its every detail. But honestly, my motivation was as close to zero as you could get. If I'd known, I would have brought a book. Though I didn't feel much like reading King or Koontz or Lovecraft.

When I looked over at Mochizuki, the Munch aficionado, I saw that he'd never had any intention of drawing a hand. But it was not a blank page in his sketchbook; he was working on a half-finished drawing in pen. A person—I could see at a glance that it was a woman modeled on Ms. Mikami.

What's with this guy? I almost wound up saying it out loud.

Did he seriously have a crush on her? This kid? On his teacher, who was at least ten years older than him? I guess that was up to him.

Still, I was already in an ambiguous mood when I heard his mumbled wondering about Ms. Mikami, so…

"…No way."

Suddenly Mochizuki looked over at me.

"Hey, Sakakibara…"

"Wh-what?"

"Ms. Mikami doesn't have some kind of life-threatening disease, does she?"

"What? Uh…" I was completely flabbergasted. All I could offer was a tepid response. "I'm sure she's fine."

"You're probably right." Mochizuki's voice was incredibly relieved. "No, you're right. It wouldn't be anything weird like that. Yeah."

"Are you that worried?"

"I mean…Sakuragi and her mom both died recently, and now there's Mizuno's sister. So I figured…"

"Are you saying they're related?"

I cut straight to the point.

"There was the thing with Sakuragi and the thing in Mizuno's family, but let's just say as a for-instance that something happened to Ms. Mikami. Are you telling me there's some kind of relationship? That there's a connection there?"

"Uh, well…"

Mochizuki started to answer, then shut his mouth. He turned his eyes away, as if to escape my question, and gave a helpless sigh. Argh, even this kid's got something he can't tell me shut up inside him.

I thought about putting the screws to him a little more; but, thinking better of it, I changed the subject. "How's the art club? How many members do you have now?"

"Just five…" Mochizuki's eyes darted back to me. "You joining?"

"…No way."

"You really should."

"If you're recruiting, forget about me. Why not Misaki?"

I said it to put some pressure on him. Mochizuki reacted exactly as I'd expected, spluttering. He went dead quiet and didn't answer, turning his eyes away from me again. This time he didn't even breathe.

"She's pretty good at drawing," I went on, unconcerned. "I saw some of the stuff she's got in her sketchbook."

Yes—that had been in the secondary library. That day when I had passed by with Mochizuki and Teshigawara after art class…

The drawings of beautiful girls with globes at their joints, like dolls.

I'm going to give this girl huge wings, last of all. Mei had told me that then. Had she drawn the wings yet?

I gave up on Mochizuki, whose eyes were still turned away and who had not yet attempted to offer so much as a word in response. I shut my own sketchbook. Not even thirty minutes had gone by since the start of fifth period, but I had decided to abandon this independent study.

"Where are you going?" Mochizuki asked when I stood up from my seat.

"The library. The secondary one," I answered, deliberately curt. "I need to look something up."

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

When I told Mochizuki I had something to look up, it was pretty much the truth. The part that wasn't included in that "pretty much" was the faint hope that Mei might be there. But that hope was not realized.

There were no students there. The only person in the ancient library was the librarian, Chibiki.

"Here's a face I've seen before."

He spoke to me from behind the counter-style table that was set up in one corner. Today, again, he was tricked out in all black, his hair, sprinkled with white, as straw-like as ever. He fixed his eyes on me through the lenses of his homely black-rimmed glasses.

"Sakakibara, the transfer student."

He spoke my name.

"Third-year Class 3, was it? My memory's not as bad as all that. Why aren't you in class?"

"It's art, and um, the teacher is out today, so it's a study hall."

I told him what was going on, and the all-in-black librarian didn't pursue it any further.

"What can I do for you?" he asked. "It's rare that a student comes here, most days."

"Um, there's something I'm looking for." Again I told him the situation. I walked slowly up to the counter where he sat, then asked him, "Do you have old yearbooks here?"

"Oho, yearbooks, is it? We have a full set of them."

"Can people look at them?"

"They can."

"Then, uh…"

"I believe they're over there."

At long last he stood up and extended an arm in front of him. He was pointing at the bookcases covering the wall shared with the hallway, to the right of the entrance.

"They're on that shelf, second from the inside, I think. Somewhere around there. You probably won't need a step stool, with your height."

"Okay, thank you."

"What year are you looking for?"

"Well…" I faltered just a little. "From twenty-six years ago…the one from 1972."

"Seventy-two?"

The librarian's brows knit sharply and he looked straight into my face.

"Why would you want to see that?"

"Well, actually…"

I did everything I could to regain my equilibrium and struggled to give a harmless answer.

"My mom graduated from this middle school that year. And my mom, she, uh, she died young and I don't have many photos of her, so I, um…"

"Your mother?"

The look in the librarian's eyes seemed to soften very slightly.

"I see. All right. But seventy-two, of all things." The last part he murmured to himself. "You should find it pretty quickly. But it's not available for lending. When you're done looking at it, put it back where you found it. Understand?"

"I will."

It took maybe two or three minutes before I located the yearbook I wanted and pulled it down from the shelf. I set it down on the large reading desk and pulled up a chair. Then, as I got my somewhat ragged breathing under control, I turned back the cover embossed with "North Yomiyama Middle School" in silver foil.

First of all, I looked for the page with third-year Class 3. I soon found the two-page spread, laid out with the left page showing a group photo in color and the right page showing black-and-white photos of the students split into several groups.

There were more students than now. More than forty students in the class.

The background of the group photo was somewhere outside the school. The bank of the Yomiyama River or somewhere like that. Everyone was wearing their winter uniforms. They were smiling, but I could tell that there was some kind of tension in it.

My mom—where was she?

It didn't seem as if I was going to be able to find her so easily just by looking at the faces. I had to consult the names written under the picture…

…There she was. That one.

"Mom…"

The word slipped out of me unintentionally.

Second row, fifth from the right.

She wore a navy blue blazer exactly like the current uniform. Her hair was put up with a white barrette or something…and she was smiling, too. With some sort of tension in her face.

This was the first time I'd seen a picture of my mom from middle school. It struck me how young she was—how childish, in fact. Adjusting for age, I could see that she really did resemble her younger sister, Reiko.

"Did you find her?" the librarian asked me.

Without turning around, I simply replied, "Yes," and returned my eyes to the list of names under the group photo. I wanted to check if the name "Misaki" was there. But…

There was no reason it would be.

Misaki had died in the spring of that year, long before they started preparing the yearbook. So there was no reason the name would be there.

"What class was your mother in?"

The librarian asked me another question. His voice was much closer than the last time. I turned around, surprised, and found that he had left the counter and come over to stand right next to me.

"Um, well, I heard that when she was a third-year, she was in Class 3."

The librarian's eyebrows dove sharply again. "Hm?" Then he rested a hand on the edge of the table and peered at the yearbook. "Which one is your mother?"

"This one."

I pointed her out in the group photo. "Let's see." The librarian pushed his glasses up and brought his face closer to the book. "Ah, Ritsuko, is it?"

"Huh? You knew her?"

"Oh…well, you know."

The librarian evaded my question and moved away from the desk. He realized that I was following his movement with my eyes and ruffled his straw-like hair. "Ritsuko's son. I didn't know…"

"My mom died fifteen years ago, right after I was born."

"I see. Which means…Ah. Yes, I see."

I fought back the urge to ask what it was that he saw, and dropped my eyes back to the yearbook on the table.

Second row, fifth from the right.

I looked at my mom's face, smiling there with an air of tension, then looked at the group of classmates pictured with her, and then…

…Huh?

I realized something and blinked. I had half stood from my chair, so I sat back down, then looked more closely at the yearbook. Which is when—

"So here you are, Sakakibara."

The door banged open and a student came in just as the bell ending fifth period began to ring. It was Tomohiko Kazami.

"Mr. Kubodera is looking for you. He wants you to go to the teachers' office right away."

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

"You're Koichi Sakakibara, correct?"

There were two men I'd never seen before, one of whom—the middle-aged man with the round face—spoke to me. His voice was more placating than it needed to be, intended to soothe the tension of its listener, but he questioned me without hesitation.

"You know about what happened to Ms. Mizuno, who used to work at the municipal hospital?"

"…Yes."

"Were you close with her?"

"She was nice to me when I was hospitalized in April, so…"

"You talked on the phone?"

"Yes, a few times."

"Yesterday afternoon—around one o'clock, you spoke with her on her cell phone?"

"…I did."

I'd been summoned by Mr. Kubodera, and waiting for me when I reached the teachers' office in Building A had been plainclothes cops from the criminal affairs bureau of the Yomiyama police force—detectives, in other words. Two of them, just like the formula goes. In contrast to the jolly-looking middle-aged man with the round face, the younger one had a narrow face with a jutting chin and large glasses with navy blue frames, which seriously made him look like a dragonfly. Their names were Oba and Takenouchi.

"We want to ask you some questions. Your teacher told us that was fine. Do you mind?"

Takenouchi had been the one to say that, cutting to the chase a few moments ago as soon as we'd met. It wasn't bad enough to come off as brusque, but his tone smacked of the idea that he was only talking to "a half-man middle schooler."

"We're having the extended homeroom next," Mr. Kubodera had added. "But that's fine if you need to come late so you can talk to them."

Almost immediately, the bell rang to start sixth period, and Mr. Kubodera handed the matter off to another male teacher and hurried out of the room.

There were sofas set in one corner of the room, where I sat facing the detectives. The teacher who'd been asked to handle things introduced himself as "Yashiro, a guidance counselor," then sat down beside me. I suppose there was no way the school was going to leave a student on his own in a situation like this.

"You're aware that Sanae Mizuno passed away yesterday," Oba continued in his more-soothing-than-necessary voice.

"…Yes."

"And the manner of her death?"

"No, I didn't get any details. Just that there was an accident at the hospital."

"I see."

"You didn't read the paper this morning?" Takenouchi cut in to ask. I shook my head silently. In fact, I realized, my grandparents didn't have a newspaper delivered to their house. And no one turned the TV on at night, either…

"There was a problem with the elevator," Takenouchi informed me.

I had pretty much guessed that. There had been a few whispers along those lines sprinkled through the voices filling the classroom. But the instant I heard it said officially, from the mouth of a detective, I felt a dull shock that numbed my entire body.

"An elevator in the inpatient ward fell. She was the only one in it. She hit the floor with the full force of the fall, and then the shock of the impact also caused an iron beam to come free in the ceiling and fall on her," the young detective explained with a slight air of triumph. "And, unfortunately for her, it smashed into her head."

There was no answer to that.

"The cause of death was a cerebral contusion. When they recovered her from the scene of the accident, she was completely unconscious. They did everything they could at the hospital, but in the end they weren't able to save her."

"U-um…" I began timidly. "Was there, um, anything suspicious about the accident?"

Maybe that's why there are detectives investigating it, I thought.

"Oh, no, it was just an accident," the middle-aged detective replied. "An extremely sad, unfortunate accident. But when an elevator falls at a hospital, certain issues arise such as determining the cause and investigating any administrative responsibility. That's what we're working on."

"…Ah."

"Ms. Mizuno's cell phone fell to the floor of the elevator in question. Its call history showed your name and number, Sakakibara. Moreover, we saw that the call was placed around one o'clock, exactly when the accident occurred. So we believe that you may be the last person she spoke with."

Ah. Once they said it aloud, it was completely obvious.

The one person in the world most likely to know what had gone on right before and after the accident yesterday. They'd realized that person was the middle schooler she'd been on the phone with, Koichi Sakakibara. And it was true, I had indeed heard it happen yesterday.

But wasn't it a little late for them to come see me? That thought occurred to me, too. I could pretty much imagine the chaos at the scene after the accident yesterday, but still…

At their urging, I recounted what I had experienced.

How I had received a call from Ms. Mizuno yesterday at lunchtime. How we had talked normally at first, then how things had changed suddenly when she left the roof and went into the elevator. How I'd heard some kind of horrible sound almost immediately, then a sound like the phone had been tossed away, and then an instant later the sound of her pained moaning before the call was cut off. Each of them seemed to match up with an aspect of the accident.

"Did you tell anyone about it?"

"Right after it happened, I had no idea what was going on. I tried calling her back, but I couldn't get through."

Struggling to calm myself, I described my actions of the day before.

"But I still thought something bad might have happened, so I went to find Mizuno."

"Who?"

"Takeru Mizuno. Ms. Mizuno's little brother. He's in my class. I told him about what I heard on the phone, but I guess he couldn't figure out what I was saying, so he didn't take me very seriously…"

What are you talking about? You're not making sense.

That had been Mizuno/Little Brother's reaction. Angry, but also incredibly confused.

You need to quit feeding my sister crazy stories. You're causing a lot of problems for me.

The only thing I could think to do after that was contact the hospital.

The nurses' station in the inpatient ward had answered and I'd asked for Ms. Mizuno. But that hadn't reached her, either, like I pretty much thought, and soon things had gotten incredibly frantic on the other end of the phone…Then, no matter how many times I'd tried to call, all I'd gotten was a busy signal, and there was nothing left for me to do.

"She was on the roof, correct?" Oba confirmed. "Then she got on the elevator, and immediately…I see."

The middle-aged detective nodded, taking notes.

"What do you think caused the accident?" I asked him.

"That's still under investigation," the young detective answered. "What we do know is that the elevator fell because a wire snapped. There are safety measures in place, so typically something like this shouldn't happen. That hospital building is decades old, though, and apparently they've made a lot of unnecessary improvements in that time. The elevator in question was in the back of the building and they even called it 'the back elevator.' Patients never use it, of course, and even employees normally didn't bother with it."

"Did you know about this elevator, Sakakibara?"

"No, I never heard of it."

"In any case, on top of the elevator being antiquated, there are some questions about whether proper maintenance had been conducted."

"I see."

"It really was an accident that happened here. And given that this is a public building, this raises major concerns, naturally. Still, a fatality in an elevator crash is unusual nowadays. All we can say is that she had terrible luck."

We'll both be careful.

The words Ms. Mizuno had spoken the last time I'd seen her echoed in my ears again.

Especially for any accidents that would never usually happen.

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

Sixth period had begun and was more than thirty minutes gone when I was released from the "voluntary questioning" by the detectives.

I left the office and dutifully hurried to my classroom, but when I arrived I got a surprise. Not a single student of third-year Class 3 was in the room.

Looking around, I saw their bags and stuff were still there. So they hadn't finished early and gone home—which meant…

They'd all gone to some other place together? That was all I could think of…

Izumi Akazawa

Her name was written in large letters in the center of the blackboard.

Izumi Akazawa.

She had a slightly grown-up, forceful, glamorous persona. She had a feminine figure, was always surrounded by friends, at the center of a group.

…Pretty much the opposite of Mei, huh?

Despite the thought, I recalled a few things about this student named Akazawa that nagged at me.

The day I'd first come to this school in May, I was pretty sure Izumi Akazawa had been absent. And then in gym class that other day…The time Yukari Sakuragi, who was sitting out gym class with a twisted leg, came over to talk to me…

I have to do this right, or Akazawa's going to get mad at me…

I thought I could hear the words, spoken to herself, in my ears. What had that been about?

And that phone call I'd gotten from Teshigawara after that, out of the blue.

I'm calling 'cause I thought you might be in trouble.

He'd said that, then continued:

Akazawa's pretty wound up. She might start having some kind of hysterical episode.

"Oh, Sakakibara."

I turned around at the sound, and there was Mr. Kubodera. He came into the classroom through the door at the back of the room, as if tailing me.

"Have you finished talking with the police?"

"Yes."

"I see. Then you can go home now, if you'd like."

"Oh. Um…where is everyone?"

"They picked a new class representative for the girls in homeroom. Akazawa."

"Oh?"

So that's why her name was on the blackboard.

"Um, so then where is everyone?"

But Mr. Kubodera basically ignored my question.

"You can go home for the day," he repeated. "I'm sure the incident with Mizuno's sister has been quite a shock for you, too. But you can't let yourself get too downhearted. Things will be all right. If everyone pulls together, I'm sure we'll get through this."

"…Yeah."

"For that, do you agree?"

Although he was talking to me, Mr. Kubodera's eyes were turned not on me, but on the empty lectern.

"We need to obey whatever the class decides, without fail. All right?"

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

The next day, Saturday, June 6, I stayed home from school so I could go to the municipal hospital in Yumigaoka. If things were still normal, I might have seen Ms. Mizuno again today, but…

Her memorial service was being held right now at a funeral home somewhere in this town…I was conscious of that fact as I went to my outpatient exam in the respiratory unit. The lead physician, just entering old age, certified me in an unusually compelling voice, saying "In this state, you should be fine." Afterward, I headed to the inpatient ward alone.

I wanted to see the site of the accident that had taken Ms. Mizuno's life with my own eyes, if only once.

Just as the detectives had told me, the location of the "back elevator" I was searching for was hard to find, pretty far back in an old part of the inpatient ward, which had a complex floor plan. I managed to make my way there somehow or other, but of course the elevator was off-limits and several strips of yellow police tape had been put up to cover the entrance.

Why had Ms. Mizuno, the novice nurse, gotten on this elevator that day, when even the employees hardly ever used it? Had she actually been in the habit of using it? Or had she just happened to get on it that day? Even now, those details weren't clear.

I took a different elevator up to the roof, alone.

It had been relatively humid all day, slightly cloudy and windless.

I was walking from one end of the empty roof to the other, feeling that someone would call out "What's wrong, Horror Boy?" to me any moment, when I came to a sudden stop. I wiped the sweat from my face with a handkerchief. There may have been some tears mixed in there.

"Why…Ms. Mizuno…" I mumbled without realizing it. I was suddenly oppressed by the visceral weight of the emptiness of "death," to the point I thought my chest might crumple in on itself.

As I slowly brought my breathing under control, I leaned against the fence and looked out across the town of Yomiyama. When Reiko had come to visit me in the hospital, she'd shown me a distant view of the town from the window of my room; that image hung hazily over what I saw now.

The mountain range in the distance. Where was the one called Asamidai? The river that ran through town was called Yomiyama River. Beyond it I could see the field at North Yomi…

…When I'd gone back to school yesterday, the first thing I'd done was catch Yuya Mochizuki and talk to him.

"Where did everyone go for sixth-period homeroom?"

I asked him the question that had been on my mind, but Mochizuki's answer wasn't very articulate.

"We were talking and so we just headed over to Building S…"

"Building S? You mean the special classrooms?"

"There's a conference room that students can use there, too. We went there and, you know, just talked about stuff."

Talked? About what? I wondered.

"I heard you guys made Izumi Akazawa class representative for the girls."

"Oh, yeah."

"Was there a vote or something?"

"Akazawa was nominated. She was the tactical officer before, anyway."

"Tactical officer?" I hadn't heard that title before. "What's that?"

"Oh…uh, well, it just means—"

Mochizuki struggled with his answer a long time.

"We have stuff like that. When the class has some kind of problem, the tactical officer's in charge of thinking up how to deal with it. Kazami does that stuff, too, but…"

This, too, was pretty inarticulate. Trying to tease him a little, I said, "Looks like Ms. Mikami's out again today," and I deliberately added a little sigh. Instantly, Mochizuki's face clouded with worry.

This guy was way too easy to read, or maybe he was too innocent, or I don't know what. It really made me want to ask "That doesn't bother you, kid?"

It wasn't just Ms. Mikami, though. Mei hadn't shown herself at school the entire day yesterday. And today, there was one other person absent from third-year Class 3: Ikuo Takabayashi. I recalled that Takabayashi had been out back on my first day at school, too, along with Izumi Akazawa. Apparently he had some sort of health problems, so even when he came to school, he always sat out of gym class. Anyway, he seemed dull and hard to talk to, and even though he was my sit-out buddy, I had barely ever spoken to him…

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

I couldn't work up any enthusiasm to explore on my way back from the hospital, so I went straight home.

I had just realized that with everything going on, it had been two weeks since I'd talked to my father in India. I ought to call him tonight or maybe tomorrow. Then I could tell him about what had been going on and use that to ask him a little bit about how my mother died fifteen years ago…I was thinking these things over when—

I reached my grandparents' home in Koike around two in the afternoon. When the front gate to the house came into view a little way ahead, I sighed internally.

A middle school–aged boy wearing a summer uniform was loitering in front of the gate, alone. He had a somewhat unsettled air about him…He kept looking up at the house, then looking down or up at the sky. I didn't have to take a closer look. It was…

"What are you doing here?" I asked him, and he practically jumped in the air, he was so surprised. He turned to look at me, then turned his eyes away in embarrassment. He started to leave without ever saying anything, but I stopped him with a harsh order. "Hold on. What's going on? You had some reason for coming here, didn't you?"

It was Yuya Mochizuki.

He didn't run away after all, but even as I came up to him, he kept his eyes turned away, fidgeting and squirming, and didn't offer any response. When I came even closer, I peered into his face and loaded on another question. "What might that reason be, Mochizuki?"

Then, finally, he spoke: "I was just, uh, worried. My house is near here, in this town, so I thought I might, uh…"

"Worried?" I cocked my head slightly, sarcastically. "What made you worry about me?"

"Uh, well…" Knitting his thin, girlish eyebrows and looking perturbed, Mochizuki dropped his voice. "You weren't at school again today, Sakakibara."

"I had an appointment at the hospital all morning."

"Oh…But still, um…"

"You plan to keep standing around out here talking? Come inside for a second."

I invited him in with a casual tone.

"Wha—? Uh, okay. Just for a second," Mochizuki agreed, his face a mix of smiling and tears.

It looked as though my grandmother had gone out somewhere. The black Cedric wasn't in the garage next to the front door. My grandfather was probably with her. I thought Reiko was probably in the side house, but I decided not to announce myself.

I brought Mochizuki around to the backyard, where the porch was. I knew that the glass door to the porch wasn't locked during the day. It was a level of carelessness unthinkable in Tokyo…But no, I should probably chalk it up to peacefulness.

We sat down next to each other on the edge of the porch, and Mochizuki almost immediately started talking, with a speed that suggested he'd decided to just go for it.

"Sakakibara, ever since you transferred to North Yomi, you must have thought a bunch of stuff here seemed weird."

"Does that mean you're going to explain it to me?" I shot back, and Mochizuki's response died off.

"Er…I…"

"That's what I thought."

I glared at him out of the corner of my eyes.

"What horrible secret is everyone getting together to hide from me?"

"That's…"

Again Mochizuki got stuck, and he was silent for a short while.

"I'm sorry. I guess I can't say it, after all. It's just…"

"Just what?"

"Something might happen soon that you'll think is really unpleasant. It's actually bad that I'm talking about it like this, but…I couldn't stay quiet."

"What does that mean?"

"We talked about it at the meeting two days ago…So—"

"You mean the homeroom in sixth period two days ago? When everyone left to go to the conference room?"

"…Yeah." Mochizuki nodded apologetically. "We knew you were going to be late since you were talking to the police, so that's how the idea came up. Akazawa and some of the others said we needed to talk without you around. That we should go somewhere else so there wouldn't be any problems if you came back in the middle of it."

"Hmph."

Which meant that Mr. Kubodera had been on board with their suggestion, too.

"…And?"

"I can't say any more."

Mochizuki bowed his head and let out a feeble sigh.

"But even if something bad happens to you after this…we need you to put up with it."

"How can you even say that?"

"Just tell yourself that it's for everyone's benefit. Please."

"For everyone's…?" I offered him the phrase that came to mind just then. "So that's a decision by the class that I have to obey no matter what?"

"…Yeah."

"Hm-m-m. What to do."

I stood up from my seat on the edge of the porch and stretched, reaching toward the slightly cloudy sky. This was the time when I could have actually used Ray's encouragement to "Cheer up!" but this was the one time that she (…probably) was utterly silent in her cage.

"Well, I guess I won't ask you anything more about it, then." I turned to look back at Mochizuki. "But can I ask you a favor, too?"

"What kind?"

"I want a copy of the class list."

Mochizuki looked thrown by that, but he nodded, once, immediately. "You never got one, did you?"

"Nope."

"Then you shouldn't really be asking me for…"

"Listen up, kid," I interrupted him. "I'll worry about me, and I can tell you I've got some pretty touchy emotional issues going on. So…"

Mochizuki was opening his mouth to reply when a gentle electronic sound played inside the bag resting on his lap. "Oh—" he made a noise, then opened his bag. The next moment, he was holding a silver cell phone.

"I didn't know you had a cell phone."

"Kind of. It's a PHS," he answered, then accepted the call. After a moment, Mochizuki cried "He what?!" sounding very surprised.

I wondered what had happened. I was preparing myself for whatever was coming when I saw the color in Mochizuki's face drain visibly, the phone still pressed to his ear. Then, at last—

"That was Kazami," Mochizuki told me, his voice smothered and low—as if he were being crushed flat. "He told me that Takabayashi died. He had a heart attack at his house…"

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

Ikuo Takabayashi.

He'd had a weak heart ever since he was little and had often been out of school. Last year, his condition had gotten much better, but the last two or three days it had taken a sudden downturn until he had an attack that had led to his death.

The sudden death of this classmate, whom I had hardly ever talked to, followed on the death of Ms. Mizuno in the elevator accident at the hospital. Thus, there were two "deaths of June" for third-year Class 3 this year.