Chapter 2 : May I

"Morning, Ray."

I admit it was adorable, but the more I heard it, the more oddly unsettling the shrill voice became. I don't know what it was thinking about, but it's such a pain having someone come at you that cheerfully so early in the morning.

"Ray. Morning, Ray."

Ray is supposed to be your name. But of course, my grumbling had no impact. Because the object of my frustration wasn't a person, it was a bird.

It was a mynah bird my grandparents kept as a pet.

My grandmother said it was so small, it was probably a female. And they named it "Ray." It was—and this gets another "probably" attached—two years old. They'd bought it on impulse at a pet shop two years ago in the fall.

The square cage in which she (…probably) lived was set on one end of the porch facing the garden. Apparently it was a special cage for mynah birds made of thick bamboo strips.

"Morning, Ray. Morning."

May 6, Wednesday morning.

I had woken up at a ridiculously early hour—just after five A.M.

During my ten days of hospitalization, a well-regulated lifestyle of early-to-bed and early-to-rise had been inculcated in me, but five A.M. was too early for anyone. It had been well past midnight the night before when I went to bed, so for a fifteen-year-old boy who was trying to get healthy, the lack of sleep was egregious, too.

Just one more hour, I thought, closing my eyes. But I didn't think I was going to fall back asleep again. I gave up after five minutes, got out of bed, and headed to the bathroom in my pajamas.

"Well, well, Koichi! You're up early!"

When I had washed my face and brushed my teeth, my grandmother came out of her bedroom. She looked me over, then tilted her head, appearing slightly concerned.

"You feel all right, don't you?"

"I feel fine. I just woke up, is all."

"That's all right then. You shouldn't push yourself."

"Like I said, I'm fine."

I gave her an easy smile and thumped myself on the chest. Then—

It happened just as I returned to my study room/bedroom, while I was thinking about how to kill the time before breakfast. My cell phone, which I had connected to its charger, started ringing on my desk.

Who was that? At this hour…

I only wondered for a moment. There was only one person who would make this cell phone ring at such an ungodly hour.

"Hey, there, good morning. How are you doing?"

The sunny voice I heard when I picked up the phone belonged, just as I'd predicted, to my dad.

"It's two in the morning here. India sure is hot."

"What's up?"

"Nothing's up. You're starting school today, right? I'm calling to cheer you on! You should thank me."

"Oh, yeah."

"How are you doing, physically? Have you been resting since you got out of the hospital? After all…"

His voice suddenly started to crackle and almost cut out as he began to ask me a question. I checked the LCD screen, and the bars showing the signal strength were barely holding at one. Even that one flickered in and out unreliably.

"…Are you listening to me, Koichi?"

"Hold on. I'm not getting a good signal here."

I left my room as I answered, wandering around searching for a spot where the signal seemed good…and the spot I found was the porch on the first floor where Ray's mynah cage sat.

"Physically, I'm good. There's nothing for you to worry about."

I answered the question I'd put on hold as I opened the glass door to the porch. I had called and told him about my current attack and treatment the day I left the hospital.

"Still, why are you calling so early? It's only 5:30 here."

"You must be nervous heading into a new school. Plus you're getting over your illness, on top of everything. That's why you woke up so early, right?"

Oh man, he knows me so well.

"That's just how you are. You try to be so tough, but in reality, you have a pretty thin skin. You take after your dad that way."

"Don't you mean I take after my mom?"

"Well, that may be, but…" Changing his tone somewhat, my dad continued, "As far as this pneumothorax issue goes, you shouldn't brood over it more than necessary. When I was young, I did that."

"Wha…? You did? I've never heard that story before."

"I missed my chance to tell you six months ago. I didn't want to be told it was hereditary or something."

"…This is hereditary?"

"My second one happened a year later, but after that, I never had another recurrence. If there is some hereditary link, then you should be out of the woods now, too."

"That would be nice, anyway."

"It's a lung disease. Now you have to quit smoking."

"I don't smoke!"

"At any rate, just tell yourself you're not going to have a third one, and keep your chin up. Ah—although, you know, no need to stress yourself trying."

"I know, I know. I'll take it easy."

"Good. Say hello to Grandma and Grandpa for me. India is so hot!"

And so the call ended. Letting out a long breath, I went through the door I'd opened and sat down on the porch. As soon as I did, the mynah bird, Ray, started up with her bizarre voice again, as if she had been lying in wait.

"Morning, Ray. Morning."

I ignored it for a little while, staring outside idly.

The full bloom of the red azalea hedges was beautiful through the thin morning mist that was rising. There was a modest pond in the garden, and I heard that my grandfather used to keep koi in it, but I couldn't see any fish there now. It looked as though it wasn't being sufficiently cared for. The water was a murky, dark green color.

"Ray. Ray, morning."

The mynah bird kept talking so persistently that she (…probably) beat me down and I replied, "All right, I get it. Good morning, Ray. You sure are cheery first thing in the morning, Ray."

"Cheery. Cheery." She ran through her repertoire of words. "Cheery…Cheer up."

I don't think I need to say that this did not constitute anything as grandiose as human-avian communication. But still, I felt a little bit more like smiling.

"Okay. Thanks," I replied.

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

After dinner the night before, I had talked with Reiko for a while.

She was using the snug little side house behind the main building as a home office/bedroom and would often shut herself up in there after coming home from work, but of course, there were also days when she didn't do that. The night when I'd had my pneumothorax attack, she'd been watching TV in the living room. It's just that there were exactly zero times that we gathered as a family around the table for dinner.

"Do you want to hear about the 'Seven Mysteries of North Yomi'?"

My rescheduled first day at school was the following day, after the break ended, and of course, Reiko knew that. She had probably remembered the promise she'd made when she came to see me at the hospital.

"I told you that North Yomi is a little different, right?"

"Yeah, you mentioned that."

Once my grandmother had finished cleaning up after dinner, she made coffee for us. Reiko took a sip of hers, which was black.

"Well? Do you want to hear about it?"

She fixed her eyes on me from across the table and smiled faintly. As usual, I was plenty nervous under the surface, but I accepted her challenge.

"Er…yeah. But, uh, it wouldn't be much fun hearing all of it at once."

She said North Yomi was different, but it was probably just variations on the same old ghost stories. A staircase somewhere in the school building gets an extra step, or it loses one, or the plaster sculptures in the art room cry tears of blood or whatever.

"One or two, at least."

If I knew about them, maybe I could kick off conversations with my new classmates, I thought.

"All right, then I'll tell you the one I heard first, a long time ago. At least."

What Reiko told me then was a "mystery" involving the shed for raising animals that used to be behind the gymnasium.

One morning, all the rabbits and marmots they had been keeping in there disappeared. The door to the shed was broken, and there were smears from a huge amount of blood inside. The school contacted the police, which started a big uproar, but they never found a single one of the animals that had disappeared and never discovered who had committed the act. The shed was torn down soon after, but in the place the shed had once been, blood-spattered rabbits and marmots (or their ghosts?) could be seen sometimes.

"There's a strange embellishment to this story," Reiko continued with a serious expression. "When the police tested the blood marks left in the shed, they found it wasn't rabbit blood or marmot blood. It was human. Type AB, Rh negative."

When I heard that, I couldn't help murmuring, "Wow. Was there anybody in the area who'd been badly hurt? Or any missing persons?"

"Not a single one."

"Hmm."

"Come on, isn't that mysterious?"

"Hmm. But that embellishment is more like a detective story than a ghost story. There might have been a concrete solution to it."

"I wonder."

After that, Reiko did exactly as she'd promised and told me a few of the "North Yomi fundamentals."

First: If you're on the roof and you hear the cawing of a crow, when you go back inside, you must enter with your left foot.

Second: When you become a third-year, you must not fall down on the road that goes down the hill outside the back gates.

Those two sounded like superstitions that had been passed down for a long time. If you disobeyed "The First" and didn't go inside with your left foot, you would get hurt within a month. If you disobeyed "The Second" and fell down the hill, you would fail your high school entrance exams. That was what people were warned.

Next, "The Third" broke the mold and was an unpleasantly realistic "fundamental."

"You must at all costs obey whatever the class decides."

Reiko said it with her serious expression unchanged.

"The school you went to in Tokyo, K*** Middle School, had a pretty liberal atmosphere, despite being a private escalator school, am I right? They valued the individual desires of each student. At a public school in the countryside like North Yomi, it's pretty much the opposite. How something affects the group is more important than the individual. So…"

So essentially, even if there's some issue you find kind of distasteful, you close your eyes and go along with everyone else? That wasn't such tough advice. There were times I had tried to do that at my other school, too, to one extent or another…

I lowered my eyes slightly and brought my coffee cup to my lips. Reiko went on talking, looking serious. The Fourth fundamental at North Yomi…

"Koichi!"

I heard my grandmother's cheery voice, breaking off my quiet reflections.

I was sitting on the porch hugging my knees, still in my pajamas. The tranquil morning air and the placid sunlight felt good, and somehow I had wound up rooted to the spot.

"Time for breakfast, Koichi!"

It sounded as if she was at the bottom of the stairs, calling up to the second floor.

Time for breakfast…already? I considered and looked at the clock on the wall. It was just before seven o'clock…Wait, what? That meant I'd been sitting there staring into space for a whole hour. What was wrong with me?

"It's time to eat, Koichi."

This time I heard not my grandmother, but my grandfather's croaking voice. And from somewhere nearby.

Startled, I looked behind me.

I'd heard the voice from the eight-mat room on the other side of the screens dividing the porch. I hadn't noticed at all, but my grandfather had come in at some point. When I opened the screen gingerly, he was sitting in front of the Buddhist altar set up in there, wearing a thin brown cardigan over his nightclothes.

"Oh—morning, Grandpa."

"Yes, yes, g'morning," my grandfather replied in a drawl. "Are you going to the hospital again today, Koichi?"

"Come on, Grandpa, I was released already. I'm going to school today. School."

"Oho, to school! Yes, that's right."

My grandfather was extremely small in stature, and when he sat on the floor hunched over in a ball, he looked like a wrinkly monkey decorating the altar. He was over seventy years old, I'm pretty sure. He'd aged noticeably in the last two or three years, and he'd started to show signs of senility in just about every aspect of his behavior.

"You're in middle school now, are you, Koichi?"

"Yeah, my third year. Next year is high school."

"My, my. I wonder if Yosuke's staying healthy."

"He's in India right now. He called a little while ago, and he's the same as ever."

"Good health is more important than anything. If only poor Ritsuko hadn't…"

He suddenly mentioned my mom's name, then put his fingertips to his eyes and wiped away tears. Had the memory of his daughter's death fifteen years ago come back to him so vividly? That sort of thing might happen a lot with older folks, but I didn't have the slightest idea how I should handle it since I only knew my mother's face from photographs.

"Ah, here you are."

Finally my grandmother came and saved me from my quandary.

"It's time for breakfast, Koichi. Why don't you go change and get your things together?"

"Oh, yeah. Where's Reiko?"

"She left already."

"Oh. She goes in early, huh?"

I stood up and closed the glass door to the porch.

"I'll drive you in today," my grandmother said.

"Huh? You don't have to do that…"

I had looked up how to get to school. It was far enough that it would take a little less than an hour to go on foot, but if I took a bus, I could cut it down to twenty or thirty minutes.

"Today's your first day, and besides, you're still recovering. Isn't that right, Grandpa?"

"Eh? Oh, yes, that's right."

"But…"

"No need to be polite. Come on, hurry up and get ready. You still need to eat your breakfast."

"…Okay."

Without forgetting my phone, which I had tossed aside, I left the porch. Just then, the mynah bird that had stayed quiet for so long suddenly exclaimed in a shrill voice, "Why, Ray? Why?"

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

The teacher in charge of third-year Class 3 was Mr. Kubodera. He was a middle-aged man whose subject was language arts. You could call him good-natured—he seemed to be—and you could have called him unreliable, since he certainly looked the part.

When I went to the teachers' office to say hello, Mr. Kubodera glanced over the papers in front of him.

"You did excellently at your last school, I must say, Sakakibara. To get grades like these at K*** Middle School is no small feat."

Granted it was our first meeting, but why would he speak so deferentially to a student? Plus, he hadn't looked me in the face the entire time. I felt kind of uncomfortable, but nevertheless, I would be no less polite than he was.

"Thank you very much," I replied. "That's kind of you to say."

"You're doing all right now, physically?"

"Yes, thank you."

"I'm sure they did things differently where you come from, but I hope you'll get along with everyone. We may be a public school, but we don't have problems with violence or disorderly classroom conduct the way the public imagines. So there's no need to worry on that score. If you run into any problems, please let me know. Don't be shy. You can talk to me or my assistant—"

Mr. Kubodera's eyes turned to the younger woman at his side, who had been watching our conversation.

"—Ms. Mikami, of course."

"I will," I said with a nod, feeling enormously nervous. For my school transfer, my dad had bought me a brand-new school uniform (life expectancy: one year), but it wasn't broken in yet, so naturally, it felt tight.

"I look forward to your class."

My voice was keyed up with nerves, but I bowed to Ms. Mikami—her subject was art. Ms. Mikami smiled gently. "We'll have a good year."

"Um, yes, ma'am."

The conversation broke off and surrendered to a brittle silence.

The two teachers stole glances back and forth, trying to read each other's faces, then both of them opened their mouths to say something—or so it seemed. But just then, the warning bell for classes rang. They closed their mouths, as if the opportunity had passed—or so it seemed.

"Well, then, shall we?" Mr. Kubodera picked up his attendance sheet and stood. "Morning homeroom starts at 8:30. Let's introduce you to everyone."

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

When they had led me to the door of the classroom for third-year Class 3, the two teachers shot each other another look and opened their mouths once more to say something—or so it seemed, but this time it was the actual bell that rang. Giving a single, deliberate-sounding cough, Mr. Kubodera opened the door to the classroom.

The buzz of all the students talking was like static on the radio. Footsteps, footsteps, the sound of chairs dragging and being sat upon, the sound of bags opening, the sound of bags being closed…

Mr. Kubodera went in ahead of me, then ushered me in with a glance, and I stepped into the classroom. Ms. Mikami came in last and stood beside me.

"Good morning, everyone."

Mr. Kubodera spread the attendance sheet open on a lectern and then slowly passed his gaze over the room to take attendance.

"I see that Akazawa and Takabayashi are out today."

Apparently they didn't do the customary "stand, greet, sit" here. Was this another difference between public and private school? Or a local thing?

"Has everyone recovered from Golden Week yet? Today, we'll begin by introducing a transfer student."

The noise gradually died down, and the classroom fell silent. Mr. Kubodera gestured at me from the lectern. "Go on," Ms. Mikami ordered in a low voice.

I could feel the eyes of the class focusing on me; it was almost painful. I took a quick look out across the room and saw there were about thirty of them…But there was no time to take in more than that as I headed over to the podium. Argh, this tension is making my chest tight. It's getting harder to breathe, too. I had been prepared for something of the kind, but a situation like this was vicious on the delicate nerves of a boy who had been suffering from a lung condition up until just the previous week.

"Um…hello."

Then I declared my name to my new classmates, who wore black standing collars or navy blazers. Mr. Kubodera wrote it out for them on the blackboard.

Koichi Sakakibara.

I steadied myself forcibly. I was trembling pathetically (and I'm saying that about myself), searching the mood in the room. But I couldn't detect any worrisome reactions.

"I came to Yomiyama from Tokyo last month. My dad's working, so I'll be living here for a while with my grandparents…"

Mentally, I was rubbing my chest to relax it as I continued my self-introduction.

"I was supposed to start school here on the twentieth last month, but I got kind of sick and was in the hospital…But I was finally able to come today. Um, nice to meet you."

Maybe I was supposed to talk about my hobbies, or something I was good at, or my favorite actor or something like that. No, that was definitely the point where I should have thanked them for the flowers while I was in the hospital. But while I was stewing these options over—

"All right then. Class—"

Mr. Kubodera picked up where I'd dropped off.

"Starting today, I want you to be nice to Sakakibara and treat him as a new member of Class 3. I'm sure there are a lot of things he's not used to yet, so I want all of you to help him learn. We'll all pitch in to help each other and make this last year of middle school a good one. All of us are going to do our parts. So that next year in March every person in this class will graduate in good health…"

Thus went Mr. Kubodera's speech, which sounded as if we were supposed to recite an "Amen" at the conclusion. As I listened, a nagging itch started up on my back, but every person in the room was listening pretty intently to what he was saying.

Just then, I saw a face I recognized in the very first row of seats. It was one of the class representatives who'd come to visit me, Tomohiko Kazami.

When our eyes met, there was something awkward about the smile Kazami gave me. The memory of the dampness I'd felt when we shook hands in the hospital room came back to me, and unconsciously I buried my right hand in my pocket.

Where was the other one, Yukari Sakuragi? Just as the question occurred to me, Mr. Kubodera said, "Okay, Sakakibara, let's have you sit over there," and he pointed at a desk.

It was on the left-hand side from the lectern—the third desk from the back in the row farthest to the edge near the hallway was empty.

"Yes, sir," I replied with a quick bow, then headed to my designated seat. I dropped my bag next to my desk. As I was sitting down, I surveyed the room again from my new vantage point.

It was then that I was finally able to isolate her. The student at the desk all the way at the back of the row to the right of the lectern—next to the windows facing the schoolyard.

Looking out from the front of the classroom, the sunlight from the windows had created a strange backlighting right in that spot. That was another reason. So that's why I didn't see her, I thought. Though I'd moved to my new desk, there was no significant change in the backlighting, but even so, I could see that there was a desk there and someone was sitting at it.

Betraying the image the words imply, the "bright light" seemed somehow menacing to me; I'm not sure why or how. It swallowed up half the student's body, so I could only make out the figure of the person sitting there as a shadow with an ill-defined outline. Darkness, lurking right in the middle of the light…that thought crossed my mind, too.

Entranced by simultaneous foreboding and hope, which were accompanied by a flash of slight pain, I blinked several times.

Each time, the shadow's outline came more into focus and deepened. The amount of sunlight was fading slightly at last, and that helped, too, until finally the figure came into stark resolution.

It was her.

The girl with the eye patch whom I'd seen in the elevator at the hospital. The girl who had walked down the dimly lit hallway on the second basement level, her footsteps making no sound at all…

"…Mei."

I whispered it so that no one could hear me.

"Mei Misaki."

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

After a short homeroom period that lasted only ten minutes, Mr. Kubodera kept his place at the lectern and his assistant, Ms. Mikami, left the room. Mr. Kubodera stayed with us because the first-period class was the subject he taught.

Language arts with Mr. Kubodera was a dull class, as I had somehow imagined it would be. He was still using his polite manner of speaking, and he lectured in a way that was easy to process, but there wasn't much punch in it, I guess, or he hardly modulated his voice at all…Whatever, it was dull.

But of course, I couldn't be honest and display my boredom. That would make a terrible impression, obviously. On the teacher and probably on the students, too.

Struggling against the drowsiness that had me in its grip, I fixed my eyes on my brand-new textbook.

A short story by a nineteenth-century literary genius, in a somehow lackluster excerpt. As my eyes ran over the text, my mind was half on the Stephen King novel I'd started reading, wondering how everything would turn out, though that was impossible to predict. Man, what was going to happen to Paul Sheldon, the popular author who'd been imprisoned by his loony Number One Fan?

That was Mr. Kubodera's class. But the classroom was oddly quiet, which wasn't like the vague image I had drawn in my mind of a "public middle school." Maybe it had been an unwarranted preconceived bias, but—how should I put it? I imagined the atmosphere would be rowdier.

But it wasn't as if everyone was being serious and concentrating, either. No one was whispering during the class, but looking around I saw people zoning out and some people whose heads were bobbing and bobbing and maybe falling. There were even people who were surreptitiously reading a magazine or intent on doodling. I didn't think Mr. Kubodera was the kind of teacher who would scold for every little thing…and yet.

I wonder what it was.

The room's air held a silence deeper than it needed to be, somehow…No, not silence. Formality, maybe? Formality, and a strange tension…yeah, it felt sort of like that.

What was this?

Could it be? I wondered.

Could the presence of an alien element mixed in today (in other words, a transfer student from Tokyo) be the cause? And that slight tension filling the room…Nah, that kind of thinking is just hyperactive self-consciousness.

…What about that girl?

Mei Misaki.

The thought nagged at me suddenly, and I looked over at her desk.

I saw her there, cheek pressed into her hand as she stared dully out the window. I took the quickest of glances, so I couldn't tell anything more than that. With the amount of backlighting from the sun, my glimpse of her was, in the end, of a shadow that hardly seemed real.

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

The impression was more or less the same in my other classes from second period on, too. There were slight differences with the subject or the teacher, but—how should I put it?—the thing flowing underneath it all was the same.

A strange silence permeating the entire classroom, a formality, a tension…Yes, it was something like that.

I couldn't tell anything concrete, couldn't point to someone acting a certain way. But I definitely felt something like that.

As if someone (or maybe everyone?) was preoccupied by something, for instance. Maybe without even realizing it? That person (those people?) could be thinking about something and not even be aware of it…But no. The possibility that I was just imagining things, imagining all of it, was undeniable. I mean, maybe I would get used to it soon and stop noticing anything.

During a break between classes, a couple of students exchanged a few words with me. Every time they called my name—"Sakakibara!"—even as I privately cringed and prepared myself, I managed to handle it either placidly, amicably, or innocuously, at a basic level. So I thought.

"Are you over whatever it is that put you in the hospital?"

Yeah. Completely over it.

"Which is better, Tokyo or here?"

I dunno. They're not that different, really.

"Tokyo sure is nice, though. A backwater town like Yomiyama just doesn't cut it lately, y'know?"

Tokyo is Tokyo. There's a lot about it that's not so great. Wherever you go, it's nothing but people, and the wards are always swarmed. It never settles down…

"I guess you feel like that when you live there."

I almost think it's better here because it's so much quieter. And there's so much nature here.

When I told them that Yomiyama is better than Tokyo, half of me really felt that way and the other half was trying to convince myself of it.

"So your dad's a college professor? And he's in some foreign country for research?"

How did you know that?

"Mr. Kubodera told us. So everyone knows."

Oh. Did he tell you about the school I used to go to, too?

"We know all about that. It was Ms. Mikami's idea to send you flowers while you were in the hospital."

Really?

"Man, I wish Ms. Mikami was in charge of this class instead. She's gorgeous, and she dresses great, and plus…c'mon, don't you think so?"

Uh-h-m, I don't really know.

"C'mon, you're not…"

You know, my dad's gonna be in India for a year. Starting this spring.

"India? I bet you it's even hotter there."

Yeah, it's really hot, he said.

In the midst of such conversations, something would nag at me and I would search for Mei Misaki. As it turned out, as soon as a class ended, she would disappear from her seat. But I never spotted her anywhere else inside the classroom, either. Did she just always go outside during the break or something?

"You feeling nervous about something? You keep going all shifty-eyed."

No…it's nothing.

"Did those notes I brought you in the hospital help?"

Oh, yeah. They were great.

"You want a quick tour around the school during lunch? You're gonna have a ton of problems if you don't know where stuff is."

The student who made this offer was a boy named Teshigawara. There was a rule that the students wear name tags during school, so I could tell people's names at a glance without needing introductions. He seemed to be good friends with Tomohiko Kazami, and Teshigawara had come over with him to talk to me.

"Yeah, definitely. Thanks," I replied, then glanced casually back over at Mei Misaki's desk. The next class was going to be starting soon, but she still wasn't there. Although…

It was at this point that I realized a bizarre fact.

Her desk, the farthest seat back in the row next to the windows facing the schoolyard, was the only one unlike all the other desks in the room. It was incredibly old.

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

I blunted my hunger in a quick blitz at lunchtime.

There were a lot of all-boy groups and all-girl groups who pushed their desks together for lunch, but I couldn't quite work myself up to shoving my way in among them, so I bolted down the lunch my grandmother had given me with the speed of an eating contest.

When I stopped to think about it, I realized this was my first time ever eating a homemade lunch at school. I'd eaten school lunches at my old school, and even when there was some event like a field trip or field day, it had been a foregone conclusion that my lunch would be bought from a convenience store. It was like that all through elementary school, too. Never once had my dad gotten the genius idea that it would be nice to cook something for his motherless son every now and then.

And so it was that my grandmother's homemade lunch truly touched me.

Thank you, Grandma. It tasted amazing. As always, I was mentally bowing my head over the emptied lunch box, infusing the gesture with my immense gratitude.

Wait a minute. I looked around the room.

Where was Mei Misaki?

How was she spending her lunch?

"Sakakibara!"

A voice called out from behind me without warning.

At the same moment, someone tapped me lightly on the shoulder and I tensed more defensively than I had all that day. For no concrete reason, I had convinced myself, So it's finally happening? and I turned around ready for it, but…

Teshigawara was standing there. Kazami was beside him. And there was no discernible malice on their faces. Late though I was to realize it, I couldn't help feeling exasperated at my oversensitivity.

"Like we promised," Teshigawara said. "The tour of the school."

"Oh, that's right."

My true feelings on the matter, kind of cynically, were that they didn't need to go to all the trouble of giving me a tour. I could just ask where something was whenever I needed to get there. But, okay, I couldn't insult the kindness of my new classmates. This is the time to keep a lid on it and not act like a martyr…

The three of us all stood up and left the room belonging to third-year Class 3.

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

Kazami and Teshigawara were, even at a glance, an odd combo.

In contrast to the dead-serious class representative-y Kazami, Teshigawara was a lighthearted character, though the last name he bore sounded very grand and historical. His hair was bleached brown and the top two or three buttons of his uniform were undone. But despite his outward appearance, surprisingly he didn't have a delinquent slouch.

When I asked, they told me they had been in the same class since their third year in elementary school. Their families also lived really close to each other.

"When we were kids, we hung out and would get into all kinds of trouble. But then this punk had to go and turn all honor-roll-esque and never just wing it with something…"

Teshigawara was grinning all through this disparagement, but Kazami didn't offer any particular protest. Teshigawara even said they'd be better off without each other, but seriously, doesn't that sentiment usually go in the opposite direction? So the conversation went until I found myself starting to enjoy it, too.

I've never been very good at dealing with people like Teshigawara, who come at you as if you've been friends your whole life. Though it's not as if I felt a driving affinity for "honor-roll-esque" guys like Kazami, either. But, well, I had decided not to reveal those preferences if I could help it.

When my dad came back to Japan next spring, I would go right back to Tokyo. Until then, I wanted to maintain good relations with everyone at this school if I could. That was my top priority for my life in Yomiyama.

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

Out of the blue, he came at me with a question like that. I tipped my head to one side and replied, "Uh…?"

"Come on, like, you know…"

"You mean…ghosts? Curses?"

"What about so-called paranormal phenomena, generally?" Kazami cut in. "I don't just mean spectral phenomena, either. It could be UFOs or superpowers or the predictions of Nostradamus, too. Do you think there are real, mysterious phenomena out there that can't be explained by modern science?"

"I mean, when you hit me with a question like that, I…"

I looked over at Kazami, and his expression was uncomfortably serious.

"I guess, at a basic level, I try not to take stuff like that seriously."

"None of it? Ever?"

"Well, let me think. Stuff that's on a level with 'the Seven Mysteries of the school,' at least, I'd say never."

I had no idea how the conversation had made this sudden turn, but I had a strong feeling they were gearing up to tell me those stories. I thought I'd called it and beat them to the punch.

"I've already heard the story about the mass demise of rabbits and marmots."

"Have you heard about 'the hand in the lotus pond'?"

Teshigawara was the one to ask me that.

"Ha, you guys have a story like that, too, huh?"

"It's that pond right there, man."

Teshigawara extended a hand and pointed. A slight distance away I could see a small, square pond circled by concrete.

We came out of the three-story iron-ribbed school building that housed our classroom and walked down a path in the courtyard.

There was a school building of a similar size on the other side of the yard, which was Building B.

The building we'd come out of was Building C. Each of the structures was connected to Building A—the main building, with the teachers' offices and the principal's office—by a covered walkway. Past that, right next door, was a building called the Special Classes Building. This building, also abbreviated as Building S, was, as its name implies, where the special classrooms like the home ec room and the music room were.

And the pond Teshigawara was pointing at was a slight distance from the yard. We went as far as the entrance to Building A, then walked down the path away from it.

"They say that a human hand comes out of that pond, all wrapped in lotus leaves. Sometimes covered in blood."

Teshigawara told the story in a menacing voice, but all I could think was, How idiotic. Besides, he said it was a lotus pond, but when we got closer and I could see, it looked as if it was actually water lilies growing there, not lotuses.

"Well, let's leave the 'Seven Mysteries' for another time," Kazami offered. "I wonder, Sakakibara. There are so many kinds of paranormal phenomena. Do you categorically deny them all?"

"Well, that's true," I murmured, casting a sidelong glance at the surface of the pond, covered in round lily leaves. "The word UFO means an 'unidentified flying object,' so in that sense they exist. Whether or not they're flying saucers driven by aliens is a separate issue. As for superpowers, those people they show you on TV or in magazines are phonies, one hundred percent. When you see stuff like that, don't you think that actually makes it harder to believe?"

Kazami and Teshigawara looked at each other, both wearing troubled expressions.

"Nostradamus's predictions about what 'the prince of darkness' may or may not do is a story for next year. If we just wait a year and a couple more months, we should find out if he's for real or not, even if we don't want to…So? Do you guys think he'll be right?"

When I asked the question, Kazami cocked his head ambiguously. "Who knows?"

On the other hand, Teshigawara replied, "I pretty much buy it, actually," and twisted one corner of his mouth in a contrived smirk. "So since the world is gonna end in the summer of 1999, it'd be stupid to get myself all worked up over tests and whatever. Doing what I enjoy while I still can, that's the way to go."

I was having trouble telling exactly how serious he was, but what with all the fuss over the Aum Shinrikyo group, our generation had a surprisingly large number of "true believers" in this event. I'd seen data about that somewhere.

They're not giving it any deep thought; they're just using a prediction about destruction as a reason to avoid personal issues that are staring them in the face in the here and now. I don't remember when it was, but my dad had instantly pointed out this interpretation after hearing about the attack, and I pretty much agreed with him.

"Getting back on track…"

When we'd gone past the lily pond and were heading toward the back of Building B, Teshigawara spoke up.

"You don't believe in ghosts or curses or stuff like that then, do you?"

"Yeah, I guess not."

"Do you feel like something could happen that would make you believe?"

"I mean, if something like that popped up right in front of me, and it had proof that it was a ghost and shoved it in my face, I guess I'd start to believe in it."

"Heh. Proof, huh?"

"Proof, is it?"

That last was Kazami. He pushed the bridge of his silver-rimmed glasses back up his nose with a furrowed brow.

God, what now?

What were these two trying to get at? I was starting to get kind of a bad feeling about them after all and my pace quickened.

"What's that?" I turned back around to look at them, pointing at a building that had come into view just then on the other side of Building B. "Is that another school building?"

"That's Building Zero. That's what everyone calls it," Kazami answered.

"Building Zero?"

"Because it's so old. Until about ten years ago, the third-year classes were in there. There are a lot of reasons they stopped using it, but…the number of students dropped, so the number of classes dropped, too. Apparently Building A and all the others got their names later on, so that's why people call the old building Building Zero…"

That "old building" certainly did look older than any of the other buildings I'd seen on campus today.

It was a two-story structure of massive red bricks. But the bricks in its walls were incredibly faded and, after a closer look, I saw that cracks had formed in places. All the windows to the original classrooms that marched around the second floor were shut tight. In places, boards had been put up, probably to replace broken glass.

Given the turn of the conversation up till now, this struck me as a perfect spot to generate fodder for whispered rumors of the supernatural, about ghosts or spirits or the "Seven Mysteries."

"So it's not being used for anything now?" I asked, taking a careful step forward.

"Not as regular classrooms, anyway," Kazami replied as he walked beside me. "The second floor is as good as abandoned, so no one's allowed up there. The secondary library and art room are on the first floor, and the culture club."

"You guys have a secondary library?"

"Hardly anyone uses it. Usually everyone goes to the main library in Building A. I've only ever been in there once."

"What kind of books do they have there?"

"Documents about local history and antique books that alums have donated. It's got a truly remarkable number of things like that, apparently. It's more like a storage room for books than a library."

"Huh."

I wouldn't mind taking a look at least once. My interest was piqued.

"This school has an art club, right?" I asked, having a sudden thought.

After a dragging delay, Kazami answered, "Yeah. Now we do."

"'Now you do'? What does that mean?"

"Extracurricular activities were suspended last year. They started up again in April."

Teshigawara was the one who replied.

"Just FYI, the lovely Ms. Mikami is the sponsor. If I had any talent in that area, I'd be swearing how much I wanted in on the club, too. You gonna join or something, Sakakibara?"

I stopped walking and turned back to look at the bleached bobble-head, then shrugged my shoulders rather exaggeratedly. Teshigawara didn't seem to take it badly, his eyes flashing with a grin.

"Hey, Sakakibara…"

I'd started walking again when Teshigawara spoke, as if trying to pull me back.

"There's actually something we—"

But just then, I let out a surprised "Oh!" which served to interrupt whatever Teshigawara had been about to say. The sound had escaped me after an inadvertent tightening of my throat.

Magnificent flowerbeds had been set up in the yard between Building Zero and Building B, where we were headed. A few among them were resplendent with yellow roses in bloom. And just then, beyond the clusters of flowers bobbing in the placid spring breeze, I saw her—Mei Misaki.

Without a second to spare for thought, I started heading straight toward her.

"H-hey! Sakakibara!"

"What are you doing, Sakakibara?"

I heard the dismayed tone in Teshigawara's and Kazami's voices, but I ignored it. I hurried over, and even broke into a slight jog.

Mei Misaki—she was by herself, sitting on a bench in the shade of a tree on the far side of a flowerbed. There was no one else in sight.

"H-hey there," I called out to her.

She was staring into space, as if sunk in contemplation, but she reacted to my voice. Her eyes—though the white eye patch hid her left one—turned to me and halted.

"Hey."

I tried to act nonchalant and raised a hand casually.

"The name's Misaki, right?"

I walked up to the bench where she sat. My heart was beating faster than it had this morning when I spoke in front of the entire class. I felt as if my breathing was getting more strained, too.

"We're in the same class, huh? Third years, Class 3. I, uh, I transferred here today…"

"…Why?"

Her lips moved only slightly. The same tone of voice I'd heard in the elevator at the hospital, the same cool, detached way of talking.

"Why?" she repeated. "Are you sure about this?"

"Wha?"

I didn't understand her questions. "Why?" "Are you sure about this?" I didn't have the faintest idea what she was asking me in either case and could only stand there, shaken.

"Um-m-m, what I meant was…"

I scrambled for some way to keep the conversation going, but she turned her eyes from me and stood up from the bench in silence. That was when I got a clear look at the name tag hanging from her blazer.

It was a light purple card, indicating that she was a third-year. While I may have been imagining how very dirty and beat-up the paper looked, her name was written there quite clearly: "Misaki," viewing the cliffs…Mei "Misaki."

My mouth flopped, fishlike. I tried to tell her, "I saw you at the hospital the other day," but the words wouldn't come together. I was still trying when she said simply, "You should be careful."

Then she quietly turned her back to me.

"W-wait," I called out in a rush to try and stop her, but she kept her back to me.

"You…should be careful. It might have started already."

Then Mei Misaki left me, as I stood rooted half in shock, and departed the shadow of the tree where the bench stood.

I watched her go.

She moved toward the entrance to Building Zero, then disappeared inside the aging building. As if melting away in the lingering gloom…

The bell announcing the end of lunch began to peal, releasing the frozen moment. I looked around me, feeling as if I had been jerked back to my senses.

"Hey! What're you doing, Sakakibara?"

Teshigawara's shout reached me.

"We've got gym next. The locker room is next to the gymnasium. We better hurry if we're gonna be on time."

When I turned around, Teshigawara's lips were pursed so far out he might have been whistling. Beside him, Kazami was shaking his head incessantly over something, his face pale and bowed.

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

Gym class was divided into boys and girls.

I was sitting on a bench in the shade of a tree on the north side of the field, still in my uniform. I still wasn't allowed to do vigorous exercise, according to the doctor's instructions. So, as I'd told Teshigawara, there wasn't any particular need for me to hurry over.

I was the only boy sitting out of the class.

Everyone wore matching white exercise clothes and ran around the 400-meter track. Despite the balminess of the afternoon sunlight, only ten or so figures moved about on the broad field. A slightly cold sensation went through me, for some reason, as I watched the scene.

When I ran, I liked to do long distances and short distances. I liked using exercise machines and swimming, too. What I didn't like was soccer, or basketball…basically, I'm terrible at team sports.

I wish I could run, I thought. I tried taking a few deep breaths, and I didn't feel anything strange in my chest. Which just made me want to join in even more.

And yet, there was a part of me that cringed in terror. That felt as though, if I were to run and jump around recklessly, a hole would immediately open up again somewhere in my lungs.

"You're not going to have a third one." That's what my dad had told me, but that wasn't nearly convincing enough for me to take seriously. If I was stupid and pushed myself too far, I would have to go through all those horrible feelings again, and I was done with that. What I had to do now was take it easy for a while. That was my only option.

The girls were doing long jumps in a sandlot on the western side of the field.

I thought I would see her among them—Mei Misaki. I squinted my eyes to look, but they were pretty far away and I couldn't really make anyone out.

Considering she had an eye patch over her left eye, maybe she was sitting out. In which case, she'd be on one of the benches nearby…

I spotted a person who might have been her.

Standing all alone a short distance from the sandlot in the shade of a tree, wearing a uniform—was that her?

Because of the distance, I couldn't tell if it was Mei or not.

And I couldn't exactly stare at the girls all class long. A sigh escaped me as I laced my fingers behind my head and reclined into them. I squeezed my eyes shut and, all at once, I heard the shrill voice of Ray the mynah bird asking "Why?" ringing in my ears.

I guess it was about five or six minutes after that.

"Um, Sakakibara?"

Someone was talking to me.

Surprised, my eyes opened. Just three feet away, I saw a girl in a navy blazer.

It wasn't Mei Misaki, though.

She wore not an eye patch, but silver-rimmed glasses. Her hair was cut not in a short bob, but grew to her shoulders. It was Yukari Sakuragi, the class representative.

"Are you sitting out of gym for now?"

Taking care that she wouldn't notice the slight disappointment I was feeling inside, I replied, "Yeah. It's only been a week since I got out of the hospital and all. The doctor told me to hold off on exercising and see how I feel. Are you sitting out, too? Do you feel sick today?"

"I fell yesterday and twisted my leg."

Yukari Sakuragi dropped her eyes to her leg. That was when I noticed the painful-looking bandage wrapped around her right leg from the top of her knee down to her shin.

"Um…you didn't happen to fall on the hill outside the back gate, did you?"

I asked it half as a joke. When I said it, Sakuragi smiled, as if letting go of some kind of tension.

"Luckily it happened somewhere else. You already know about that jinx, huh?"

"Kind of, yeah."

"So then—" she began, but I ignored it and seized the chance to cut in.

"I wanted to thank you for coming to the hospital the other day."

"Oh…we were happy to do it."

"Do you want to sit down?"

I stood up, offering the bench to the injured girl. Then I changed the subject.

"Can you tell me why there aren't two class groups in this gym period?"

I'd been wondering about that for a little while.

"I thought it was normal for a class split up into boys and girls like this to join up with the class next door? Especially in public school? Plus, there are two teachers for the boys and the girls, so with just the one class, there's half as many students as there should be…"

At least with this few people, we wouldn't be able to have a soccer game in class. Not that I could care less about that missed opportunity.

"The other classes are different," Sakuragi answered. "Class 1 and Class 2 have gym together, and Class 4 and Class 5 have gym together. Class 3 is the only one by itself."

"Why Class 3?"

I could understand since there were an odd number of classes in third year, but then why was Class 3 the one by itself? Wouldn't Class 5 usually be the odd one out?

"You were with Kazami and Teshigawara during lunch, right?"

This time, she was the one to change the subject.

"Yeah, I was. What about it?"

Still sitting on the bench, she cocked her head and looked up at me. "Well, did they…tell you anything?"

"Kazami and Teshigawara?"

"Yeah."

"They gave me a quick tour of the school. Basically, hey, that's Building A, behind that is Building S where the special classes are—like that. They told me the ghost story about the lotus pond, too."

"That's all?"

"We went to Building Zero last, so they told me a little about what the old school building's for."

"And that's all?"

"Pretty much, I think, yeah."

"…Oh." Yukari Sakuragi bowed her head with a quiet whisper, then lowered her voice even more. "…I have to do this right, or Akazawa's going to get mad at me…"

I caught only snatches of what she was murmuring to herself. Akazawa? Wasn't "Akazawa" one of the students who didn't come to school today?

Sakuragi slowly got up from the bench, wearing a pensive expression. I could clearly see how her movements accommodated the injury to her right leg.

"So, Sakuragi—"

I decided to just try asking her.

"I mean, where's Misaki?"

"…What?"

She tilted her head to one side.

"The girl in our class, Mei Misaki. You know, with the patch over her left eye. Is she sitting out of gym class, too?"

Sakuragi kept cocking her head and repeating "What? What?" She looked completely baffled, for some reason. Why? What was making her react so bizarrely?

"I ran into her outside Building Zero during lunch."

Just then, far off in the distance, we heard a deep, reverberating rrrmmmble. Was a plane taking off? No, it didn't sound like that. Could it be thunder?

I craned my head back to look at the sky.

From what I could see here in the shade of the tree, it was the same, clear May day it had been before. So I thought, but when I scanned around, I saw that ominous clouds were gathering slightly to the north. So it really was thunder from over there that we'd heard?

As the thought occurred to me, the same rmrmbmrmmmble sound came again from far off.

So it is that. Distant spring thunder.

Must be in for a little rain after sunset.

I ventured this prediction to myself, casting my eyes over the northern sky.

"Huh?"

I spotted something in a place I hadn't expected, and the question slipped out of me.

"What's someone doing up there?"

Building C, the three-story school building that stood on the north side of the field. There, on the roof—

Someone was standing just inside the railing that circled the roof. Was that—?

It was her. Mei Misaki.

The realization came suddenly. Even though there was no way I could have clearly seen her face, or even her clothes.

And in the next moment I had left Yukari Sakuragi behind, still wearing her perplexed expression, and started running toward Building C.

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

While I was running up the stairs, the shortness of breath finally hit me. The X-ray image of my collapsed lung flickered through my mind, but I was more focused on the figure I'd seen from the field.

I found the door to the roof easily.

It was a cream-colored steel door. A cardboard sign was taped to the door, which read NO UNNECESSARY ACCESS in red ink.

I decided in less than a second to ignore such an inexplicably ambiguous prohibition. The door wasn't locked. I pushed it open and burst outside.

My instinct had been right. The identity of the figure was, indeed, Mei Misaki.

On the roof of the iron-ribbed school building, a grimy concrete wasteland. Alone in the center of it all—

She stood right against the railing that faced the field. She was facing this way, so she must have noticed me right away. But without a word, she spun her back on me.

Bringing my ragged breathing under control, I walked over to stand beside her.

"Hey…Misaki…" I called weakly to her. "Uh…so you're sitting out of gym class, too, huh?"

…No response.

I closed the distance one step, then two. "Is this okay? I mean, are you allowed to be up here?"

Her back was still turned when a voice came back to me, "So? Watching up close hardly has more meaning."

"The teachers aren't going to yell at you?"

"…Doubt it."

Her reply was a whisper as she finally turned around to face me. I saw then that she was holding an octavo-sized sketchbook tightly against her chest.

"You're up here, too."

She turned the question back on me.

"So?" I said, copying her earlier response. "It's true there's not much point in just watching gym classes. Do you draw?"

Without answering, she hid the sketchbook behind her.

"I mentioned this when I ran into you at lunch but, um…I transferred today, into Class 3…"

"You're Sakakibara."

"Uh, yeah. And you're Misaki, right? Mei Misaki?" I glanced down at the name tag pinned to her chest. "How do you write Mei?"

"Same way you write 'howl.'"

"Howl?"

"Or 'sound.' Like in 'resonance.' Or 'scream.'"

Howl, huh? Howling on a cliff…

"Um, do you remember? We met at the municipal hospital recently."

I was finally able to ask her the question, but my heart was still utterly unable to find an even beat—basically, it was halfway to overdrive. Thmp…thmp…I could hear the beats strong in my ears.

"It was Monday last week. I happened to get on the same elevator as you in the inpatient ward, then you got off at the second basement level. You told me your name when I asked you. You don't remember?"

"Last week, Monday…" Mei Misaki murmured, her right eye, not hidden by the patch, slowly closing. "That…might have happened."

"That's what I thought. It's been on my mind…ever since. Then when you were in class today, I was shocked."

"Oh."

It was a curt reply, but her small, thin lips looked as though they held the phantom of a smile.

"Why were you going to the second basement level that day?" I pressed. "You said you were dropping something off or something like that, right? For who? You were carrying a white doll, it looked like. Was that what you were dropping off?"

"I hate the way you're interrogating me."

She spoke in the same curt voice and turned her eyes away.

"Oh, I'm sorry," I apologized quickly. "I wasn't trying to force you to answer or anything. It's just…"

"Something sad happened that day."

Half my body is waiting there, the poor thing.

Hadn't she said something like that in the elevator that day?

Half my body…the poor thing.

It had been weighing on my mind, but obviously I wouldn't be able to ask her anything else. And she wasn't sharing anything more.

The distant thunder rolled again. The wind blowing over the roof felt a touch colder than before.

"You…"

I heard Mei Misaki's voice.

"Your name is Koichi Sakakibara. Is that right?"

"Uh, yeah."

"That must bother you."

"Th—…What?"

Hold on a second. Was she about to bring that up? Now?

"Wh-why do you say that?"

I hurried to regain my composure. Mei fixed me with a silent look.

"I mean, wasn't it around this time last year? The whole country was panicking. It hasn't even been a year since it happened."

I didn't answer.

"Sakakibara. It's a good thing you're not named Seito."

When she said that, another whisper of a smile crossed her lips.

I was really in for it.

It had been so long since anyone had alluded to that—and it hadn't happened yet at school today. And now, of all things, to hear it from her—from the lips of Mei Misaki.

"What's wrong?" Mei tilted her head curiously. "Did you not want me to mention that?"

I tried to reply "Who cares?" and look as if it didn't bother me, but I really didn't pull it off. Before I could even begin to think over what to do now—"It brings up bad memories."

I had started confessing, straight-faced.

"At my old school, last year—when the attack in Kobe happened, and everyone started talking about Sakakibara Seito, another fourteen-year-old middle schooler got sucked in, too…"

"Did they bully you?"

"Nobody ever did anything serious enough to call it bullying, but…"

No…it hadn't been anything that bad. There hadn't been any intentional or underhanded malice in it at all. Everyone just kind of thought it was funny…

They would write my name with the same characters he used, or call me Seito. Childish joking around that was harmless enough. But…

I let it roll off of me with an easy laugh in the heat of the moment, but sometimes I hated it more than I could stand, more than I even realized. In other words, the building blocks of stress. And then…

Last year in the fall, when I had been carrying the burden of this stress every day. That was when I had my first spontaneous pneumothorax. Maybe one of the reasons it happened goes back to all that stuff about Sakakibara. Remembering everything that happened, it doesn't seem like such a forced theory anymore.

And the reason I've been packed off to be taken in by my grandparents in Yomiyama while my dad is out of Japan for a year is because he found out about what was going on and had a rare moment of parental concern for me. He probably decided that it would be best if I could change up my daily environment and push the reset button on my interactions with the people at school, where things kept getting more and more strained.

Even after I'd told her the broad outlines of what had happened, Mei Misaki didn't backpedal and sympathize with me, or act embarrassed about what she'd done.

She asked, "Has anyone done it to you here yet?"

"You're the first," I answered with a bitter smile. Oddly, I had relaxed slightly.

All this morning, every time someone had spoken my name, I had tensed up, expecting this. And all for such a small thing. Ugh. When I put it all into words to tell her about it, it seemed stupid somehow.

"They're probably just being polite," Mei said.

"…Maybe."

"I find it hard to believe they'd be worried about your feelings."

"What do you mean?"

"Because Sakakibara is a name inextricably associated with death. And not just any death, at that: a cruel, senseless death that plays itself out at school."

"Associated with death…"

"Yeah."

Mei nodded quietly and held her hair down as the wind tossed it.

"That bothers everyone. So…maybe they're not aware of it. Like a wound they're protecting."

"…What does that mean?"

What was she talking about?

I understood that the word "death" and the concepts it implied were ominous and had always upset people. That was obvious. But…

"You know, at this school…" Mei's tone was as cool and detached as ever. "Here, third-year Class 3 is the closest to death of all the classes. More than any other class at any other school. Much more."

"Close to death? What does that…?"

I couldn't process what she meant by that at all, and I pressed a hand to my forehead. Mei's right eye, fixed on me, narrowed until it was only a slit.

"You don't know anything, do you, Sakakibara?"

Then she spun back around to look at the field. She rested her chest against the brown railing and angled forward over it, then bent her head back. Standing behind her, I looked up at the sky, too. The cloud cover had increased substantially from earlier.

I could hear the distant thunder again. Frightened by the sound, crows were cawing, and I saw several pairs of coal-black wings beat their way into the sky from trees in the schoolyard.

"You don't know, do you, Sakakibara?"

Still staring up the sky, Mei Misaki repeated herself.

"No one's told you yet."

"…Told me what?"

"You'll find out soon."

There was nothing I could say to that.

"Also, you're better off not coming near me."

When she said that, I understood even less.

"You should stop talking to me like this, too."

"Why? Why can't I?"

"I said you'll find out soon."

"Come on…"

That didn't really help. In fact, it didn't help at all.

While I was searching for something to say, not sure how to respond to that, Mei Misaki turned her body in silence. Hugging the sketchbook to her chest, she passed by me and headed for the door.

"I'll see you, Sa-ka-ki-ba-ra."

My body froze instantly, as if she'd cast some repugnant spell on me. But I shook it off quickly and went after her. As I did, another crow cawed in the schoolyard.

One of the "fundamentals" Reiko had told me the night before came to mind all on its own.

If you hear the cawing of a crow when you leave the roof, you go back inside by…

Was it the right leg? Or the left leg?

Which one was it? Pretty sure it's the left leg…As I worked through all this, Mei briskly opened the door and disappeared beyond it.

She'd gone in with her right foot.

❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖

The rain finally started to fall after the end of sixth period. It was a hard rain, like a sudden evening shower out of season.

As I was getting my things together to go home, worrying about not having an umbrella, my cell phone started to vibrate inside my bag. I had set it on silent. It was a call from my grandmother.

"I'm leaving right now to come get you. I want you to wait for me at the front gate."

It was a welcome message, but my reply was instantly "It's okay, Grandma. It'll probably just be sprinkling by the time you get here."

"That's no way for a recovering boy to talk. And what if you got soaked and caught a cold?"

"But…"

"No buts, Koichi. All right? You wait until I get there."

She hung up then, and I looked around me blankly and sighed.

"Hey, Sakakibara! You've got a cell phone, huh?"

Right then, someone spoke to me. It was Teshigawara. He rummaged in the inside pocket of his uniform and then pulled out a white phone with a flashy strap tied to it.

"We'll be phone buddies. What's your number?"

It was still a small selection of middle school students who had their own cell phones. Even at schools in Tokyo, they were about as common as PHS phones. Maybe one in three kids at the most.

As we traded numbers, I glanced over at the bank of windows. There, all the way at the back, Mei Misaki had already gone.

I waited till Teshigawara put his phone back in his pocket, then said, "You mind if I ask you something?"

"Hm?"

"About that girl Misaki who sits at that desk."

"Hm-m-m?"

"She's pretty weird. What's her deal?"

"You feeling all right, Sakakibara?"

Teshigawara angled his head with an expression that looked completely serious.

"Get it together, man."

He slapped me on the back heavily and then quickly departed the scene.

I left the classroom and, as I was heading toward Building A and the front gate, I ran into Ms. Mikami, the assistant teacher, in the hall.

"How did it go today, Sakakibara? What do you think of your new school?"

Her questions came with a natural smile. Utterly discombobulated, I replied, "Uh, I think I'll manage."

Ms. Mikami nodded mechanically. "Do you have an umbrella? It's raining."

"Um, Grandma's—I mean, my grandmother said she's coming to get me with the car. She called me on my cell phone a minute ago."

"You'll be all right, then. Take care."

It was only fifteen minutes later that my grandmother's black Cedric pulled up to the driveway by the entrance, coming through the rain, the ferocity of which had slackened somewhat.

There were a couple of students near the entrance who hadn't been able to leave yet because of the unexpected rain. I quickly climbed into the passenger seat of the car, as if fleeing from their looks.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, Koichi," my grandmother greeted me, adjusting her hands on the wheel. "You don't feel any worse, do you?"

"Oh, no, I'm fine."

"Do you think you'll get along with your classmates?"

"I guess…"

We drove away from the school building and headed slowly over the slick road to the front gate. And on our way out—

I was leaning against the door, gazing outside, when my eyes fell on her. The rain had slacked off a lot, but it was still more than a drizzle, and she was walking through it without an umbrella, alone.

Mei Misaki.

"What's wrong?" my grandmother asked, just before pulling the car onto the road outside. Something in my reaction must have tipped her off. I hadn't even made a noise or opened the window or anything.

"…Nothing. Don't worry about it," I answered, then twisted my body around to look back. And yet…

Mei was already gone. As if she had melted away into the falling rain. That's how it seemed to me that day.