Chapter 8.1

"Shimizu, Megumi-chan?"

Seishin stared long and hard at the face of Mitsuo who had just hung up the phone. He had no words to follow up with, but Tsurumi voiced them in his stead.

"That's the daughter, then. ---You don't mean the old man?"

Looking a bit blanked out, Mitsuo nodded. "The daughrer, they said. The highschooler," Mitsuo said, breathing a sigh of unclear meaning. "You know, from the mountain hunt before Bon. When they said the Shimizu's daughter didn't come home. Ever since she was found from that, it sounds like she'd been bedridden. And then this morning, it was all too sudden."

"She died?" Ikebe asked, just to confirm.

"Another one?"

Ikebe's spoke as a proxy the sentiments of those gathered in the temple office. Gotouda Shuuji's death came right after the three in Yamairi had died, and now even a young girl. With the three in Yamairi getting on in years, the only thing inconceivable about their ends were the circumstances. Shuuji was young, yes, but even if sudden death wasn't common for men Shuuji's age, it wasn't something rare either. ---But, Megumi was too young. She wasn't even yet an adult.

"Good grief...." Tsurumi breathed, sitting down into a chair. "Shimizu-san's family must be in shock. It will be hard for them to meet the grievers. They'll be highschool students, after all."

"I feel sorry for her, herself. She was just getting to the best season of her life, yeah?"

Yes, it was Ikebe who said something unusually mature.

"You said it. What is going on this summer, I wonder?"

Seishin nodded to Tsurumi's words. Turning his eye to the window, the vapor of the heat was flowing in with the sun light. Really, what was going on this summer? ---This intensely hot summer.

Megumi died, Kaori murmured. Even saying it out loud, it didn't feel any more real at all.

Megumi died. She had been told this. But, if she took Love out for a walk, couldn't she still run into her at the bottom of the slope? And when the new school semester started, every morning she'd meet with her.

(I can't see her anymore.)

She knew that logically but Kaori couldn't believe the lack of Megumi. She wouldn't ever see her again or have a conversation with her again. Why would something like that ever have to happen? Girls Kaori's age had misfortunes and died. But, those cases were somethings that happened in the news or in gossip, something that was printed in the papers, something that shouldn't have ever been there at Kaori's side. Right, such a thing would happen to manga or drama characters, but it wasn't a fate that should have ever come to visit Kaori.

Urged by her mother to get ready before going out, she went through the motions in a daze. She knew that something big had happened. And that it was something related to Megumi, she knew, too. Put in concrete terms, it was "Megumi's death" that happened to her, but still, after all, that hadn't quite hit her in the gut yet.

She had the strange rising sensation that she needed to hurry. Like she had some kind of event she had to take part in. And yet, when she looked at her mother taking out her flower print apron and putting it into her bag, something in her chest felt hazy, distraught. ---As if thinking it weird that she'd need to take out a flower print apron like that.

And all the same, what was weird was Kaori herself. Of course her mother was going to help with the service at Megumi's house. Because she was close with Megumi's mother. She had to go to work with the women of the Mourning Crew. It was all too natural that she would need an apron for that.

As her mother told her, she walked the street she had become used to walking in her house clothes. A heat haze was already rising off of the asphalt. Two days ago she was walking the street just like this. Now, what was different from two days ago was that she was bearing Juzu prayer beads.

The entryway to Megumi's house was left open. Countless people were coming and going. Kaori likewise in her everyday clothes, and her mother with her worn out handbag, stepped onto the hard packed floor of the entryway and lowered their heads to Megumi's mother.

O n t h i s s a d o c c a s s i o n, w e g r i e v e w i t h y o u. M y c o n d o l e n c e s.

In a daze listening to that mysterious incantation, prompted by her mother, Kaori lowered her head as usual. Shimizu Horoko said to please go to see Megumi. Of course, Kaori had intended to. When she turned towards the stairway to the second story, her mother called to stop her. Hiroko and Kaori's mother turned her towards the first story tatami room where, for some reason or other, Megumi was laid out. Having the family altar so close to her was bad luck, Kaori found herself thinking.

(I'm strange...)

Kaori knelt down beside Megumi's futon.

(Megumi is strange, too...)

Why, when it was this hot, was she so wrapped up and covered in her futon? In the first place, this wasn't Megumi's room. If she went back to her room, she had a bed. And furthermore, this Megumi was like nothing but a shell of her.

(Where did Megumi go to, I wonder?)

As Kaori thought this, her mother and Hiroko were talking about something while crying, and she gazed at Megumi's husk. The Juzu beads she gripped were a strange sensation in her hands.

As she thought as much, her mother urged her on again. You can go on home now, she was told, to which she nodded her head. She didn't understand what she had come here for. So, alone, she turned towards the entry way before suddenly realizing she was facing the second story stairway. There was nobody in Megumi's room.

The room was very well cleaned. The bed was made, too. Kaori looked around the room. The shelves and the top of her desk were both well organized. Her textbooks, notebooks, stationary still in the packaging. In surveying this, Kaori thought of the meaning of Megumi being in the tatami room rather than this one.

(...Megumi.)

Something rose up in her throat. Yet, no matter what, it wouldn't rise further. Nor could she swallow it back down past it; it was painful.

Kaori ended up idly looking beneath the desk mat. The transparent deskmast was atop a calendar depicting kittens. And beneath that. That was Megumi's secret place. Memos or letters and the like she didn't want her parents to see weer tucked in there.

Beneath the calendar she found a postcard. It was a postcard with a cute penguin picture.

A formal greeting in the heat of summer.

The formally written letters each had a thin blue border to them. With a glaze drawn here and there, they gave off the feeling of letters coated in ice. Below that was also a neatly written personal message. She had the feeling it had been rewritten several times.

It really is too hot out isn't it!

When school starts, it's really going to be a pain...

Anyway, please be safe in the heat!

Looking at the other side, Kaori smiled. At the same time, tears overflowed.

Yuuki Natsuno-sama

(Oh, Megumi...)

(Even though I meant for this to be a midsummer greeting,

after writing it over and over,

it's now the season for a late summer greeting card.

Am I an dummy or what?)

"Oh, Megumi... You really are a dummy....."

Once again Kaori turned the post card over. There was the cleanly written letters and the small colorful marker drawings.

"Working so hard to write this... if you don't send it, there's no meaning, you know..."

Over and over she rewrote it. To make it look as pretty as it could. Her overflowing tears fell above the postcard. Hurriedly, Kaori wiped it with the edge of her T-shirt. The marker smeared just a little.

"---Megumi."

There was no doubt she'd thought about the post card since summer break started. She went about to various stationary stores, looking for the postcard she liked most, then wasting how many of them? What to write, she fretted, as the days past. When she'd finally written it, she couldn't rouse the courage to send it and it turned to late summer, and she had to write it again. ---In the end, it still went unsent.

"Even though if you'd told me, I'd have sent it for you..."

While wavering about sending it, her health grew worse and she really couldn't send it. And then, at last----.

Kaori quietly returned her postcard to where it was hidden.She put the desk mad back in place, then collapsed into tears. At last, the hot, thick lump in her throat broke.

"This can't be..."

When Hirosawa opened the door to creole with Yuuki, Hasegawa gave a cough as if beckoning them over. It was early afternoon, the day of Bon. There were no signs of customers. Only Tashiro was seated at the counter.

"Good afternoon. Business is slow, I see."

Hearing Hirosawa's words, Hasegawa leaned forward. "Hasegawa-san, there was a death. At Shimizu-san's place."

Eh, Hirosawa blinked, as if being presented with something dubious.

"A death, who?"

"Megumi-chan. In the middle of the night. Ever since that, she'd been bedridden, it seems. That took a sudden turn, and by morning, she was already..."

"That can't be..." Hirosawa murmured. 'Since that' must have meant when Megumi went missing. To be honest, when they found her, Megumi's condition had been strange. "Just what in the world..."

"It sounds like even the Junior Doctor really doesn't know. Just that, since it was very sudden, it might have been a sickness with some relation to leukemia, he said. --Or rather, the young madame of the hospital had come by, and she had said that. She came back for Obon. She said the Junior Doctor had said that.

I see, said Hirosawa taking a seat at the counter. "That's, Shimizu-san must be heart broken. ...I'm at a loss."

Hasegawa nodded, indeed, as he put the siphon into the flame. "Come to think of it, doesn't the boy from Yuuki-san's house go to the same school as Megumi-chan?"

Yes, Yuuki nodded. "It seems like they're in the same class."

First year high school students. Natsuno had yet to turn sixteen but he wasn't sure about Megumi. Either way, it was far too young.

"It's terrible, isn't it," Hasegawa said again shaking his head. "The unpleasantries continue."

Really, Hirosawa and Tashiro agreed.

"What is going on this year. So little rain, and the days continue on insufferably hot..."

Hirosawa nodded and looked to Yuuki.

"Yuuki-san, what will you do about the service?"

"Ah---that's right. Even thought I haven't known Shimizu-san long, I can't say we're complete strangers."

"I don't think it is something that you need to force, though. I have a connection to Shimizu-san, having been Megumi-chan's homeroom teacher during middle school, so I will be going, myself."

"No, I'll also be going. My son is her classmate, after all. There was also the incidents from before. ---But, I don't know what to say to comfort him."

"What?" Hirosawa said, preparing the coffee as he spoke. "At times like these, people are just happy that there are people who are thinking about them."

In front of Takemura, in the languid air of the early afternoon, the usual old people gathered about.

"Dead, you say? Who is?" Oitarou and Takeko asked, Ohtsuka Yaeko answering.

"Shimizu's daughter! Tokurou-san's place's Megumi-chan."

Ah, nodded Hirosawa Takeko. "The little show-off, that one?"

"That's right," Yaeko said, her voice low. "Didn't that girl go missing before Bon?"

Oitarou nodded several times. "Right, right, on the eleventh. I saw a big bunch of lights in the western mountains, I did; wondered what happened and wouldn't you know the next day when I asked they said there was a mountain hunt."

"Yes!" Ohkawa Liquor Shop's Namie's voice added in. "Even by nightfall she hadn't come back. And that turned into a big fuss. My Tomio's a member of the fire brigade, so he was recruited for the mountain hunt. In the end she was found unconscious in the western mountains."

Yaeko gave an exaggerated not. "Since then I hear she's been in bad shape. That last night, while her parents were sleeping, she died!"

"Well dear me."

As Tatsu was half way listening, she realized it had happened again.

A girl died at night. As for the night of the mountain combings, Tatsu didn't know about it until it was all finished. On the day of the welcoming fires, the new move-ins had appeared here and there giving their greetings to the village they said but Tatsu didn't even see that.

(Everything's happening at night now, isn't it.)

It was always during a time when things wouldn't reach Tatsu's eyes.

"That's why I told you, didn't I?" From far back on the seat, Ikumi wore a meaningful smile. "That nothing good would come of this summer. As expected, people are dying. I told you so."

"Died? Who?" Yano Kanami's hand stopped with surprise, looking at the face of her mother who had come rushing into the shop.

"Like I said, Tokurou-san's place's grand daughter. At the Shimizu place."

"Shimizu...." Kanami tilted her head, then cried out. "You can't mean Megumi-chan from Hiroko-san's place?"

Letting her voice grow loud without thinking, Kanami quickly looked to Motoko washing the dishes at her side. She saw right away how Motoko's pallor had changed.

"Right, right, Megumi-chan!"

"Why did another one...?" Kanami asked the nodding Tae. Please, I'm begging you, don't let it have been a traffic accident, she prayed, ever aware of Motoko's presence at her side.

"I wonder? Before Bon she had gone missing and there was a mountain hunt for her, do you supopse she was injured? Aa... No, I have the feeling I heard somewhere she was sick, come to think of it."

"Which was it?"

"She was sick, yes. Yaeko-san said that she was bedridden."

"Oh.... the poor thing," Kanami said, though still feeling just a hint of relief. She heard Motoko give out the same small sigh.

"What'll you do?" Tae asked, leading Kanami to nod.

"I'll go to pay my respects. I'm in a bind, though, what can I say to comfort Hiroko-san, I wonder?"

[Note: Megumi refers to Natsuno with -sama in her postcard. In formal and very proper letter writing, it isn't uncommon to refer to recipient with -sama even if that would certainly never be used in interactions. This should not be mistaken for a fawning, empty-headed idol worship form of address]