Chapter 14 : August I

"Let's take a picture," Yuya Mochizuki suggested a little awkwardly. He took a compact camera out of a side pocket of his day pack and pointed it at us. "A photo to remember this by. It's our last summer of middle school, so…How about it?"

"Why don't I take the picture?" Ms. Mikami replied, turning toward Mochizuki.

"Uh, no. You should be in the picture."

Mochizuki shook his head, looking a little flustered.

"Everybody line up over there. Good. Okay, Ms. Mikami, please get into the shot, too."

We all lined up in front of the gate to the lodge as he directed. We stood centered around a bronze plaque on a blackened stone gatepost that read "Sakitani Memorial Hall."

"Okay, I'm taking the picture!" Mochizuki said, readying the camera. "Maybe we should put the bags off to the side. Sakakibara and Misaki, could you move in a little closer? You too, Ms. Mikami…Okay, good. Ready?"

We heard the shutter click.

The "everybody" in the picture consisted of five people in total. Me and Mei, Ms. Mikami, and the mismatched duo of Kazami and Teshigawara.

All of us students were dressed in our summer uniforms—white short-sleeved open-collar shirts for the boys and a white short-sleeved blouse for the girls. Since we weren't at school, no one was wearing their name tag. Like her students, Ms. Mikami wore a white blouse with a light brown jacket over it.

The buzzing of cicadas cascaded down from the forest that surrounded the clearing the building was in. Even so, the strident calls of the brown cicada and the bear cicada were absent. The soothing voice of the evening cicada was there, a sound so rare to hear inside a city. Growing up in Tokyo as I had, the first time I'd heard the call so long ago, I'd thought it was a bird singing.

"Okay, Mochizuki, now you get in," Teshigawara said. "I'll take the picture."

"Oh, but…"

"Don't be shy. Go and stand next to Ms. Mikami."

"Um, okay…"

Mochizuki handed the camera to Teshigawara, then scurried over to us and took his place. Teshigawara wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm, then raised the camera and said, "Here goes!"

He raised one hand up high. The sound of the shutter followed immediately after.

"Hm-m-m. Let's do one more. Hey, Mochizuki! You're too far away from Ms. Mikami! Snuggle right up there. Sakaki, you and Misaki too! You stay where you are, Kazami…Okay, now that looks nice."

What exactly was he trying to imply?…Not that I really cared.

"Here we go! Chee-e-ese!"

"Cheese"—people have been using that word to get people to smile for a picture forever…Not that I really cared about that, either. But right now that lack of interest felt strangely pleasant.

The evening of Saturday, August 8, was a slice in time when I managed to give myself over to that lack of interest ever so slightly, so I felt a certain degree of peace…

Together, we had taken the public bus to reach this spot at the foot of Yomiyama Mountain on the northern fringe of the city. We'd gotten off at the end of the line; then climbing the hillside on foot had taken another twenty minutes. During this progress, more than half of the students who'd come along had acted more or less like that…

With a veneer of peace.

I knew everyone else was aware of it, too.

In reality, I knew that every last one of us felt fierce anxiety and fear deep in our hearts. We all understood each other's feelings, but it was an unspoken understanding that we didn't show outwardly.

Don't speak of it frivolously. If you say it out loud, the object of your anxiety and fear will turn into an immediate reality. We had all fallen into that sort of mind-set…Probably pretty common in a situation like this, I thought. Plus…

Given that, everyone was probably completely aware that this "veneer of peace" wouldn't last all that long. There was no way it could.

2

The Sakitani Memorial Hall stood in a forest at the foot of the mountain. It was a Western-style building that had a slightly classical air, contrary to the vague expectations I'd formed before arriving.

Mr. Whoever-he-was Sakitani was an alum of North Yomi and also a local celebrity. He'd originally built this place as a facility for his company and had donated it to the school a few decades ago. They'd named the place after him, so now it was called the Sakitani Memorial Hall.

"To be honest, the school has no idea what to do with it."

I'd heard that from Mr. Chibiki, as part of a combo offer with some other basic information.

"The money and resources it takes to repair and maintain the building are outrageous, and yet the place has been used less and less in recent years. Still, they can hardly sell the place off."

At the beginning, only a handful of students agreed to go on the camping trip. Makes sense, I guess.

Sure, Ms. Mikami had told them it was "an important ritual," but without having a more concrete goal laid out for them, it was pretty natural that they'd be reluctant to go. Even if fleeing town was out of reach, shutting yourself up at home and staying put was obviously much safer than going on some camping trip. There were plenty of people who held that opinion.

But then the shut-in Atsushi Ogura went and died the way he had at the end of the previous month.

Even if you shut yourself up at home and didn't set foot outside, you were never totally safe. When they realized that, some students said, "Well, in that case…" and had a change of heart. Apparently a rumor made its way around promising that if we went on this camping trip, everyone would be saved. And so, after the permission deadline had passed, a string of people popped up, saying, "I've decided to participate after all…"

With the number spiking at the last minute, we wound up with fourteen people on the trip. Nine boys and five girls. That was a participation rate of fifty percent. Including our chaperone, Ms. Mikami, fifteen of us would be spending two nights and three days at the Sakitani Memorial Hall, starting today.

We had gathered at the front gate of the school. There, Ms. Mikami had informed us, "We'll be climbing Yomiyama tomorrow. We'll visit the shrine on the mountain and pray for the class's safety."

The students' reactions were mixed, but I hadn't detected any real conviction in her voice when she made the announcement in the first place. And it wasn't just me. I think Teshigawara and Mochizuki, at least, had the same thought. Maybe Mei did, too.

A class camping trip had followed the same schedule over summer break fifteen years ago. On August 9, everyone had gone up the mountain to pay their respects at the shrine…But I was very familiar with the outcome of that day. And I knew Ms. Mikami herself was fully aware of it, too—how two students had died in freak accidents on the walk back from the shrine.

So I'm sure she couldn't help feeling reluctant herself. Even so, literally at the end of her rope, she had made her decision: if there was even the slightest chance…Yeah. That's probably what had happened.

There was a couple living at the Sakitani Memorial Hall who kept the place up. The two looked to be around sixty years old. Their name was Numata.

Mr. Numata was a skinny man with a small frame. Deep wrinkles crisscrossed his dark, balding forehead and he had sunken, upturned eyes that looked totally cantankerous. He was just as tight-lipped and gruff as he looked. Mrs. Numata had a contrastingly beefy and generous build. She bustled around regardless and spoke cheerfully. As the line of us came toward her, her welcome was almost disturbingly grandiose.

I wondered if the two of them had been here during the camping trip fifteen years ago.

The thought struck me out of nowhere, but this didn't seem like a good time to suddenly hit them with a question like that.

The two-story building was constructed in a Western style, with mortar painted over a wood frame. To give a very rough sketch, the structure had a "U" shape with its back to the mountain in the north and the frame opening toward the south.

It had originally been a recreation facility for a company, and had continued to be used in that vein ever since. In addition to the spacious hall and dining room, the building included a fair number of bedrooms, as well. They were basically two-person rooms, and although the place was visibly becoming more decrepit, the interior decorations and fixtures were a little bit like a hotel. The bathrooms and showers were communal, but every room was air-conditioned.

There were enough rooms for each person to have his or her own, but following Ms. Mikami's instructions, we were split up two to a room. This was probably done out of a concern for safety.

And so.

I wound up sharing a room with Yuya Mochizuki.

3

"Did you bring the tape?" I asked Mochizuki once we'd put our bags in our room and relaxed a little. His expression went instantly hard, and he nodded solemnly.

"Yeah. I brought a small tape player, too. All we had at my house was a tape deck, but Tomoka lent me this one."

"Did you tell her what it's for?"

"I didn't really explain what's on the tape. She asked me about it, but I didn't feel like I could talk about it."

"Oh."

I lay down on a bed, then crossed my arms and put them behind my head. I thought back to four days ago when, on the afternoon of August 4, Teshigawara and I had gone over to Mochizuki's house.

Mochizuki had called the night before to say, "I fixed the tape." And so the next day, we'd quickly gotten together to listen to it.

Remembering my promise to Mei, I tried calling the cell phone number she'd given me, but no matter how many times I tried the number, she never picked up. She told me later that she'd still been at the vacation house by the beach that day, which was outside the service area, and reception was pretty bad there.

And so the three of us had listened to the tape on a stereo with a tape player that Mochizuki had in his room.

There was a ton of background noise, and the recording quality was not what I would call great. We were reluctant to turn the volume up very high, too, so we put our ears right up next to the speakers and focused all our attention on the voice coming out of them…

"Um, my name…My name is Katsumi Matsunaga."

The voice on the tape began with an introduction, then told the story of going up Yomiyama on the camping trip fifteen years ago and how there had been two accidents on the trip back down the mountain. After that, there was a long pause before he continued.

"…And then. The most important part happened after that.

"Right after we all got down the mountain at last, it happened.

"It being that…that I…"

What he—Katsumi Matsunaga from fifteen years ago—told us next was most definitely the "confession of a crime" he'd committed, as well as a "warning" and "advice" for us, who were following in his footsteps fifteen years later.

"We came down the mountain and went back to the lodge to call for help…And in the middle of all that confusion—I'll be honest—there was a little flare-up."

Matsunaga's story continued thus:

"Honestly, I don't remember what set it off. I was pretty badly shaken up, like all the rest of them…So I don't remember the details of what might have caused something like that to happen.

"But anyway.

"We were outside the lodge, out in the woods. One of the other boys and I were yelling at each other, and it escalated until we were wrestling.

"Thinking back on it now, I never could stand that guy. I don't know what it was. I guess he was just so blasé about stuff, no matter what happened. I guess it just kept wearing down my nerves until finally I got angry at him…I mean, that's the kind of guy he was.

"After both of those accidents and the terrible things that had happened to those two people that day, there he was, as laid-back as ever, like it didn't matter to him at all, and I think that just enraged me…I think I was probably the one who grabbed him first, and then we got into a fight out there.

"He was…"

And then Matsunaga said the name of the "other boy" / "that guy." I think. But just at that part, the noise on the tape got a lot worse and I couldn't make out anything he said. It was the same for the rest of the recording, too: Whenever he said "that guy's" name, it would get covered up by really bad static. We never managed to find out his name.

So now that I'm writing down what Matsunaga said on the tape, I guess all I can do is put "——" for the boy's name.

"Anyway, we sort of had a fight out there…And when I came back to my senses, he wasn't moving."

His voice at this part was lower than before. It sounded as if it was shaking, though maybe I was just imagining that.

"We started wrestling, and I think maybe I shoved him as hard as I could, but…I just can't remember the details.

"He stopped moving.

"He'd fallen down next to a huge tree in the middle of the woods. I shouted at him, but he didn't answer. When I went over to him, I found a branch rammed deep into the back of his head, and blood was gushing everywhere.

"When I shoved him and he fell back against the tree, a branch must have been sticking out right in that spot and stabbed him in the head…That's what I figured. It's the only thing I could imagine, given the situation.

"——…died.

"I tried taking his pulse. I even put my head on his chest to check for a heartbeat…But he was definitely dead. I…I'd killed him.

"That was when I got really scared and I ran back to my room in the lodge.

"I'd killed ——…and I couldn't tell anyone. I'm going to be honest and admit that I was thinking that if someone found him, it might get brushed aside as an accident.

"The rain kept pounding the whole rest of that day, and we wound up staying there one more night. Although some people's parents came and took them home. The police came, too, and asked us all sorts of questions…But even then, I didn't say anything about what happened to ——. I couldn't.

"I barely slept at all that night. I was so nervous that someone might find ——'s body, and any minute the whole place would blow up…

"And yet…

"When morning came, apparently no one had yet.

"Even though someone should have realized that there was one less student…that someone was missing. And yet the teacher was oblivious, and so were the students. It was like they hadn't noticed…like they didn't care…

"And so I fought back my horror and snuck out to check on him. Out to the woods where ——'s body should have been. And when I did…"

Here again, the voice on the tape paused for a long while. We could make out a low sigh mingling with the noise in the background.

"When I did…he wasn't there. His body wasn't there. He'd disappeared, and there wasn't a trace of him left. There weren't even any signs of blood. Maybe the rain had washed it away.

"I was so shocked, and totally confused. I couldn't stop myself from going around asking people about him. I would say stuff like, I wonder what happened to ——; I wonder where he is; Do you think he went home already?

"When I said those things, every single person made a weird face at me. The teacher, the students—everybody. '——? Who's that?' they said. 'I never heard of him.'

"It seemed impossible, so I checked, and they told me that there had only been nineteen students on the trip. Not twenty. So basically, they were saying that as far as they knew, no one named —— had ever existed in the first place.

"Seriously, I thought I was going to go crazy. But then finally I realized. What I mean is…

"The guy I killed…—— must have been the 'extra person'  hiding in our class this year."

The recording on the A side of the tape cut off abruptly.

All three of us gasped, unable to say a word. Mochizuki fast-forwarded through the rest of the tape, then started playing the B side.

"…This is the confession of my crime."

From fifteen years ago, Katsumi Matsunaga delivered the same message over again.

"And also advice for you, my future underclassmen."

The three of us kept our attention focused on the sound of the recording coming from the speaker, beset constantly by interference.

"I know I caused ——'s death that day…I killed him. That fact hasn't changed. That's why I decided to make this 'confession.' I thought it might soothe my conscience a little…

"But ironically, what I did was also 'salvation' in a way. Salvation…Do you understand what I mean by that? It was 'salvation' for everyone in our class.

"It happened purely by chance, but the fact that I killed ——…The result was that it saved everybody. When the 'extra person' in our class died, the 'disasters' for this year ended. It's only been ten days since it happened, but I'm pretty sure it's for real. The proof is…

"The fact that no one remembers who —— is anymore.

"It started the very next day after I killed him. Not the teachers, not the students, not his parents…None of the people connected to third-year Class 3 that I know, at least, remember the fact that there was a boy named —— who was part of our class since April of this year. They've forgotten him. Or I guess you could say their memories have been repaired.

"By returning 'the casualty' who should never have existed in the first place to Death, the numbers match up…And order is restored to the world. All kinds of modifications have been corrected, starting with the memories of the people involved. I guess that's how I need to think about it.

"I was so profoundly involved in ——'s death, I'm the only one who still remembers him. But I think that's just a matter of time.

"For the record, the guy named —— was actually the little brother of someone named ——, who was in third-year Class 3 two years ago—in 1981. And this guy's little brother —— died as part of the 'disasters' for that year. And everyone except me has had their memories totally reconfigured to the truth of that already.

"I think I'm probably going to start forgetting about ——, too.

"Even if I keep my memories about the basic facts that some unidentified 'extra person'  came into our class in April and every month someone related to the class died…I'm pretty sure that all the rest of it, like the fact that —— was the 'extra person,' or that I was the one who killed him, or that the 'disasters' for this year stopped because of what I did, will eventually vanish from my memory.

"…That's why.

"That's why I got the idea to leave behind this tape. I thought of hiding it somewhere in the classroom because sooner or later even I might forget what this tape means…

"…That's why.

"I'm recording my experience while my memory is still clear…To try and pass on these facts to you future underclassmen, who might be suffering the same things we did. And the advice for how you can stop the 'disasters'…

"Okay? You understand, right? You know why I did it, right?"

And then, at the very end, Matsunaga's voice took on extra emphasis.

"Return 'the casualty' to Death. Then the order for the year will be restored.

"Got it?

"Return 'the casualty' to Death. You have to kill the 'extra person,' like I did. That's the only way to stop the 'disasters' once they've begun."

4

"You told Misaki about the tape, right?"

This time, the question came from Mochizuki.

"Most of it, yeah," I replied, still lying on the bed. "I saw her the day before yesterday and we talked about it. She said she wanted to hear it for herself. That's why I asked you to bring the tape and a tape player today."

"…You did say that."

Mochizuki sat down on the edge of the other bed and propped both hands under his cheeks. The room's air conditioner wasn't on, but the window was wide open. That was because the outside air flowing into the room had a coolness to it that was unlike that in the town. It was even less like the air in Tokyo during the summer.

"Anyone else?" Mochizuki asked next.

"What?"

"Did you tell anyone else about the tape?"

"Oh…yeah. I mentioned a little bit about it to Reiko," I replied without even thinking.

"Reiko?…Oh." Mochizuki pulled one hand away from his cheek and nodded. "Did you tell her everything?"

"I just checked the facts with her." Slowly lifting my upper body, I continued, "Since she was on that camping trip fifteen years ago, too. I wanted to verify the part about going to the shrine on the second day and two students dying in accidents on the way back."

"…And?"

"It seemed like the details were blurry, but she said the part about the two students on the way back down the mountain sounded about right, once I mentioned it to her. Thinking back to it seemed to really bring back the shock she felt at the time, too…"

What am I supposed to do? she'd murmured painfully at the time. What can I possibly do about it?

Faced with that reaction, I…

"You didn't talk about anything else?"

"I checked whether or not she'd had a classmate named Matsunaga. She said, 'I think I did.' But when I asked if there was a student who disappeared, besides the two who'd died, she said 'I don't know.'"

"Just like the tape said."

"…Yeah."

"That's all she said?"

"Yeah."

I just hadn't been able to summon the willpower to tell her the full story: that the way to stop the "disasters" once they had started was to find the "extra person" / "casualty" and return them to Death—to kill them.

"And you didn't tell anyone else?"

"No, I didn't."

"Me neither. I don't think Teshigawara did, either."

"There wasn't any point telling anyone.  It would just cause a panic."

"True."

Looking at it calmly, I believed the thing we really needed to fear was mounting, overactive paranoia.

If the "extra person" / "casualty" gets killed, then the "disasters" will stop.

If everyone else in the class found out about that, what would happen?

The answer, I knew, was that everyone would start scrambling to out the "extra person." Despite the fact that there's no way to figure it out. And if they were to just decide that someone was the "extra person" without any concrete evidence…

Just imagining it made me my skin crawl.

A terrifying premonition had the same effect.

That was why, at least for the moment, we thought it was best to keep this information locked away in our hearts. I had told them, though, that I might tell Mei as an exception.

"Hey, Sakakibara," Mochizuki said, his eyes roving around the room. "Do you think they're here on this camping trip? The 'extra person,' I mean."

"…I dunno."

"I can't stop thinking about it. When I think about how the 'extra person' might be here with us, I…"

"Everyone feels that way," I answered, then took a deep breath. "It's no good telling yourself not to think about it. Even Teshigawara's doing it. I noticed him sneaking glances at everyone today. He was probably wondering if he could tell who the 'extra person' was…"

"Is there really no way to figure it out?"

"It sounds like it was pure chance for that guy Matsunaga fifteen years ago."

"…But really, there's no way?"

"That's what I heard."

I moved to the edge of the bed to face Mochizuki. The cherubic young man with the love of Munch and older women slumped his shoulders and dropped his roving eyes to the floor.

"But suppose there was a way…and that you found out who the 'extra person' was. What would you do then?"

"You mean…"

"Would you kill that person?" I asked, half intending the question for myself. "Could you do that?"

Mochizuki didn't answer, and though he'd lifted his eyes at my question, he dropped them once again. He gave a deep, drawn-out sigh that sounded thoroughly discouraged. I followed with a sigh of my own and lay back down on the bed.

Would you kill that person?

Could you do that?

I repeated the question for myself, not speaking it aloud.

Who would kill that person?

How could they do it?

"You think we're actually going to go up the mountain tomorrow?" Mochizuki asked, looking toward the window.

"I don't think the plan's changed," I replied.

"But we know there's no point in visiting the shrine…"

"True enough."

"If the weather's bad, it'll get canceled, right? I hope it does. If it starts raining like it did fifteen years ago, I don't even…"

"Definitely…You want to hang a charm in the window to make it rain?"

Just then my cell phone started to ring. I knew it was mine from the tune it played.

I jumped up from the bed and rummaged through my bag for my phone, then checked the LCD screen.

"It's Misaki," I told Mochizuki before answering the phone. I guess the signal was pretty weak, because through some pretty unpleasant static, Kkssshkkshh, vvvmmvvmm—

"Sakakibara?"

Finally I picked out Mei's voice.

"Where are you?"

"With Mochizuki, in our room."

"Where's your room?"

"On the second floor, toward the end. Left from the front door. The number is, uh…"

"Two-oh-two," Mochizuki informed me in a whisper.

"Room two-oh-two."

"Can I come over?" Mei asked. "There's still a little time before dinner and all."

5

Before Mei got there, Mochizuki said, "I'm going to take a look around," then went out on his own. Maybe he was trying to be considerate.

When Mei finally reached the room, she told me why she'd come the moment she opened the door: "I wanted to hear that tape." I quickly complied. The tape and the tape player were on a small table next to the window. Mochizuki had taken them out of his bag for us.

As I put the tape in the machine and pushed the play button…

I replayed in my mind the conversation Mei and I had had when we'd met two days ago.

That morning, first thing, my grandmother had made an announcement. "I found the photo of Ritsuko."

I'd asked my grandmother to look for the photo after my phone conversation with my father. That's what she'd found.

"Where was it?" I'd asked, and she'd replied, "In a closet in the side house."

The side house was the place Reiko was using as an office/bedroom. Why were things in there that had belonged to my mother fifteen years ago?

"Ritsuko used to use the side house, a long time ago," my grandmother explained. "When she married Yosuke and went off to Tokyo, we moved most of the things she'd left behind to the main house here, but…When I went in and looked around, I found this box all the way at the back on the top shelf in a closet. Here you are."

She held out a small box that was flat and old. I could make out a name written in black ink on a corner of the dusky pink lid: "Ritsuko," written in cursive English letters.

"There are a lot of photos in there. I'm sure one of them will be of her third-year class."

Just as I'd promised, I called Mei on her cell phone. She was back from her vacation home at the beach that day and my call went through without any trouble.

"Can I come over?"

Right. Mei had said the same thing then. She'd come to Koike after noon.

That was the first time I'd ever had her over to my house. When I introduced her, my grandmother looked pretty surprised at first, but then she switched into full-throttle welcoming mode and offered Mei juice and cookies and ice cream and on and on…Thank you, Grandma.

In the small box my mother had left behind, there were four photos in all. Just as my grandmother had suggested, one of them was the class photo we were looking for…

───

March 16, 1973

All my friends in third-year Class 3

───

That was the note penciled on the back.

March 16. I guess that was the day of the graduation ceremony.

It was a faded five-by-seven color photo. If everyone in the class was in the photo, that meant they'd used a timer to take the picture.

All the students were gathered in the classroom in front of the blackboard. The people in the first row had their hands on their knees and were hunched forward slightly; those in the second row were standing up straight; and in the third row, they stood on the teacher's platform. That was the overall arrangement. In the center of the second row was the head teacher. It was Mr. Chibiki, in his younger days. His arms were folded over his chest and his lips were pressed together tightly, the smile coming only from his eyes and cheeks.

I recognized my mother, Ritsuko, age fifteen, standing diagonally behind him. She was dressed in the same uniform as she had been in the yearbook photo I'd seen in the secondary library. She was smiling, but there was an almost imperceptible tension in her face.

"It's…," Mei whispered, her eyes on the photo she'd taken from my hands. "Can you tell, Sakakibara? Do you see which one is Misaki Yomiyama?"

"Yeah…about that."

I peered down at the photo from one side.

"It's got to be that guy, on the right side."

There was a boy standing apart from everyone, on the very edge of the teacher's platform. He was smiling like everyone else, but there was something sad about it. His shoulders were slumped and his hands hung limply at his sides. He didn't look like he was "standing" there so much as—and maybe I was imagining this—"floating" there or "hovering"…

"…I mean, just looking at him, he seems kind of off, right?"

"You think?" Mei's voice trembled and cracked. "He looks strange to you?"

"…Yeah."

"How so?"

"I can't really…"

Confused, I explained it exactly the way I'd felt it.

"How should I put it? Compared to the other parts of the picture, right there it's like…I don't know…like it's out of focus or the air around him is warping slightly or something. That's how."

"Oh. What about the color?"

"What color?"

"You don't see a weird color?"

"No, not really…"

The photo creeped me out more and more the longer I looked at it. If I explained what was happening to my dad, and then showed him this photo and told him, "This is a genuine paranormal photo," I wonder how he'd take it. Most likely, he'd laugh it off and tell me, "Don't be ridiculous."…But still.

Ridiculous and unscientific as it may be, this was the real thing. That's why we were both so…

"Thanks," Mei said, handing the photo back to me. I didn't see when she'd done it, but the eye patch was gone from her left eye.

I could see the "blue eye, empty to all" that belonged to a doll. With a soft sigh, it was covered back up.

"Are these other photos of your mom, too?"

"Yeah."

I looked through the other three photos in the box in order, holding them in front of me. This time, Mei was the one to look down at them from one side.

One photo was of my mother with my grandparents. It looked as if they were standing outside the front door of the house. This one was probably from her middle school days, too.

The next one was of my mother all by herself. She was in a nearby playground, flashing a peace sign on the jungle gym. This one was obviously of her when she was still a child in elementary school.

The last showed the duo of the sisters, taken somewhere in the house. On the back I found a note that said "Ritsuko, 20. With Reiko." There was eleven years' difference between the two of them, so Reiko would have been about nine in this picture.

"…Huh," Mei murmured softly. "Figures."

"What figures?"

"That they'd look alike."

"Huh?"

"Your mom and…uh, your aunt."

"Oh…you think so?"

"It doesn't really show in the picture of the two of them, but if you compare their faces when they were kids like in the second and third ones, they're almost identical."

Mei was right. It was the same thing I'd felt when I'd first seen my mother's yearbook picture. That, adjusting for age, the two girls really did look a lot alike.

I mean, they were full-blooded sisters, after all, so it wasn't such a shocking idea. That's what I told myself so very casually in my own mind, but to Mei I said, "Maybe, yeah," and tilted my head from side to side. I think she might have given me kind of a peeved look.

"Is your Aunt Reiko not here today?" Mei asked in a formal tone, her right eye narrowing smoothly.

"I think she went out somewhere," I replied.

"You said she uses the side house as an office?"

"She says it's her studio. I've never been inside, though."

"So she works on art at home, huh?"

"Yeah. She studied oil painting in art school, and I heard she's won prizes at contests and stuff since then…According to her, that's her real job."

"Huh. Interesting."

When Mei had finished listening to the "confession" of Katsumi Matsunaga, she let out a sigh even longer and deeper than Mochizuki's had been. Tugged back from my reflections, I stopped the tape player.

"Return 'the casualty' to Death…," Mei murmured in a hushed tone. It was almost as if she were intoning some kind of ghastly spell. Her expression looked incredibly tense, and her face incredibly pale.

"All the parts where he says the name of the 'extra person' were totally fuzzed out, right?" I asked just to make sure, and Mei nodded silently. "Does that mean the corruption of the records goes as far as this?"

"…Probably."

"If those kinds of changes could happen to this tape, then…"

At that point, I gave voice to a faint doubt that had been nagging at me.

"How come the name of the 'extra person' for each year doesn't disappear from that binder Mr. Chibiki writes it down in? Or how come it doesn't get smudged or something?"

"I dunno." Mei cocked her head to one side, but finally she said, "It could be that Mr. Chibiki's notes have been overlooked purely by accident."

"Overlooked?"

"Or maybe they're exempt."

"By some kind of accident?"

"I don't really get it, but maybe it's the stance Mr. Chibiki takes as an 'observer,' or maybe it's the time he writes down his notes, or it could be the location in the secondary library itself…All kinds of factors could be combining to produce that sort of anomaly. Or it could be that this tape is the abnormality."

"How so?"

"Look, it's a record from the only year ever when things stopped partway through the year. Maybe when 'the casualty' is returned to Death, even something like this gets affected, which is exceptional."

"Hm-m-m."

"Either way, since the thing we're facing is this 'supernatural natural phenomenon,' all we can do is accept it for what it is…"

An unsettled silence dragged out for a few beats after that.

Staring at the silent tape player, Mei said nothing. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but in the end she said nothing.

I wonder what's wrong. She's not usually like this…

"Could I ask you something?"

Finally, I was the one who spoke.

"It's not about this tape, but it's been on my mind since way back."

"…What?"

"About your cousin, Misaki Fujioka."

I'd meant to switch subjects pretty much impulsively. But Mei reacted with a "Yeah?" and an abstracted look on her face. I followed up, undaunted, "I forget when, but you know that picture you drew in your sketchbook? You know, the girl you said you were going to give wings to last of all…"

Mei didn't answer.

"You also said it was half your imagination, half modeled on someone, so…Was the model Misaki?"

After the slightest of pauses, Mei replied quietly, "I guess."

"Were you guys close?"

"…I guess."

"Why was she…"

I was about to load on another question when Mei interrupted, shaking her head slowly. "Later. I'll—" She pressed her palm hard against the eye patch over her left eye. "I'll tell you about it later. Let me think a little longer. Please…"

Just at that moment, Mochizuki returned. As soon as he opened the door and saw us, he gave a deliberate cough, then told us, "I think dinner's going to be soon. They want us all to come to the dining hall.

"Also, that librarian, Mr. Chibiki, came. He said he's here to support Ms. Mikami."

6

It wasn't yet seven o'clock at night…

Apparently in answer to Mochizuki's wish, rain had started to fall. It was only at the level of a drizzle, but since the wind had picked up, we constantly heard the sound of the rain beating against the windows.

The dining hall was on the first floor, off in the right-hand corner from the front door—northeast, if you prefer cardinal directions—a spacious room taking up one entire corner of the building. Enough for ten rectangular tables covered in white tablecloths. Each was accompanied by four chairs. Some food had already been laid out.

"First of all, everyone—" Ms. Mikami began, looking around at the fourteen students gathered there. "Mr. Chibiki has come today to lend us a hand. As you know, he's the librarian in the secondary library. Let's have a quick introduction. Mr. Chibiki?"

Mr. Chibiki stood up. Even though it was the middle of summer, he was dressed in his usual all-black and his hair was as shaggy as ever.

"Hello, my name is Chibiki."

He looked at each of our faces in turn, running a fingertip along the black frame of his glasses.

"I suspected Ms. Mikami might encounter quite a few difficulties undertaking this trip alone, and so I decided I would come along. Forgive the intrusion."

Compared to how he treated Mei and me in the library, his speech was obviously strained and smacked of being on his best behavior. I suppose it was because it had been such a long time since he'd quit teaching social studies and had last spoken formally to a large group of students like this. In any case, just then—

"I'm also well aware of the peculiar circumstances into which this year's third-year Class 3 has been placed."

All of a sudden, Mr. Chibiki touched on the issue at the center of it all. His voice was more detached and harsh than strictly necessary, perhaps due to his efforts not to expose his own tension or anxiety.

The atmosphere in the room froze over instantly.

"The plan is for everyone to ascend Yomiyama tomorrow, and naturally I will accompany you. I intend to help however I can to ensure everything goes well. Let's all be careful of accidents on our return. Still…" Mr. Chibiki glanced at the window, and then shifted his gaze to Ms. Mikami, who was at his table. "The weather has deteriorated somewhat.

"If there's rain tomorrow, the outing will be canceled, correct, Ms. Mikami?"

"Oh. Yes." Ms. Mikami shifted her head uneasily. "We'll see how things are tomorrow…"

"Very good." Mr. Chibiki turned back to us and continued. "I was hoping we'd be able to have a barbecue outside in the true spirit of a summer camping trip, but…"

His tone was much more casual than it had been. And his voice much gentler.

"Considering the circumstances, I suppose that's not possible. Tonight, at least, it's best to keep as low a profile as practicable. Let's take the rain as a sign that heaven is supporting that decision.

"In any event, I'm glad to be here. If you feel ill or have anything on your mind, please feel free to come see me."

For a while after that, the time passed with the atmosphere feeling intensely uncomfortable, even suffocating.

The intermittent sound of rain hitting the windows. Voices wafting sporadically from each table, too low to make out. The sounds came together to form a low, unsettling murmur.

When the caretaker Mrs. Numata began busily bringing out the food, the atmosphere in the room started to relax at last.

"Maybe we should tell Mr. Chibiki about the tape," I whispered to Mei.

"I think we should, anyway," she replied, shooting a look at Mochizuki and Teshigawara, who shared our table. Mochizuki inclined his head to one side without answering, but Teshigawara pursed his lips and shook his head.

"What, are you opposed?" I asked.

"I'm not saying I'm a hundred percent against it, but…" Teshigawara pursed his lips again, a glum look on his face. "I guess we can't keep the secret to ourselves forever. And I dunno, maybe talking to that guy and seeing what he has to say is one option. But…"

"Don't you want to hear what he thinks about it? No matter how you slice it, Mr. Chibiki has spent a long time observing this 'phenomenon.'"

"I guess that's true…"

"Then let's tell him."

"…Okay."

"Misaki and I will wait for a good opportunity and talk to him after dinner."

"…Yeah, okay."

Teshigawara's face was still glum, but he nodded reluctantly.

"All right, everybody, eat up now!" Mrs. Numata's cheerful voice urged us, and we began to eat. I didn't get the impression that anyone worked there except this husband and wife, so I guess Mr. Numata was the cook.

"Mr. Chibiki brought us very high-quality meat, you know. After he went to all that trouble, we decided to try cooking it in barbecue-style skewers. Go on, eat as much as you like. Don't be shy asking for more rice, either. You're all still growing."

Even with the encouragement, though…

Neither the circumstances nor the atmosphere did much to encourage anyone's appetite. It did nothing for me, either. I knew I was hungry, and the food all looked delicious, but I couldn't work up any gusto for eating.

I wondered just how much the Numatas knew about the background and purpose of this trip. Then add in the question of whether they were here for that trip fifteen years ago, and my mind started working all over again…

As my eyes lazily followed Mrs. Numata's fluttering return to the kitchen, I noticed Mr. Numata standing in the shadow of the door, peeking into the dining hall. I watched the two exchange words as Mrs. Numata passed by him, but his face was gruffness personified, as always. And in that moment, the light in his sunken, beady eyes struck me as deeply unnerving.

"That old guy is so fishy," Teshigawara stopped to comment to me, the skewered meat halfway to his mouth. "Ever since we got here, he's had this scary look in his eye when he's looking at us, y'know?"

"Yeah…I guess."

"Maybe he's got some huge grudge against teenage boys. And maybe that lady's so friendly to cover for her husband's personality."

"Why would he have a grudge?"

"You think I know?" Teshigawara answered sharply. "People are always talking about how bad juvenile delinquency is getting, but there's plenty of old dudes who are dangerous, too. I bet you there are tons of old men who just lose it one day and kill their own grandkids or whatever."

"Uh…Maybe, yeah."

"Better not take your eyes off that guy."

Teshigawara spit the words out in a whisper, who knows how seriously, then put the skewer back on his plate.

"They could have served us rotten food. Or maybe he mixed in some sleeping pills and once we're all asleep, he's going to go around and cut us up one by one."

"Are you kidding me?"

I was about to tell him he watched too many B horror flicks, but…I caught myself with an Urk. That's because I heard a critical inner voice say, You're talking about yourself there, pal.

"By the way, Sakaki."

After a few moments, Teshigawara started up again.

"This whole time, I've been thinking, what if the 'extra person' came with us today? And if they did, then who is it?"

"I could tell it's been bothering you." I sat up a little straighter and replied, "So? Any guesses?"

"Well…" Teshigawara trailed off. It wasn't by much, but his expression became even more glum than before. "Supposedly there's no way to tell who the 'extra person' is by looking at them…But maybe there's still a way. Some little sign of it or something. What do you think?"

"I couldn't say," I replied honestly. "They say 'there's no way,' but maybe that just means 'we haven't found one yet.'"

"Right?"

"But still."

I fixed my eyes on Teshigawara's profile. His brows were tightly knit.

"What if you did find one?" I asked. Again, I was partly posing the question to myself. "What would you do then?"

Teshigawara's brows scrunched together even more forbiddingly, and he muttered, "Yeah, I dunno." But he just pursed his lips again, not expanding any further.

7

Most of the students were wrapping up their meals.

"Ms. Mikami, may I please say something?"

With those words, one of them stood up. It was the second class representative for the girls, Izumi Akazawa.

"There's something I want to make clear, since we're all here."

As soon as I heard that, I got a terrible feeling.

There were three other girls at her table. In other words, all the girls who'd come on this trip other than Mei were sitting together…Which, by itself, was a worrying thing.

No question, the class had considered Mei Misaki a strange person from the beginning. From May until the beginning of June, in the name of the "strategy" to prevent the "disasters," she had been forced to take on the role of the one who's "not there" and had been totally alone. In a certain sense, I suspected, doing that had preserved the positive balance of the relationships in the class.

That period from the start of June up to July, when I had been added to the list of those "not there" as a new "strategy," had been the same. They may have been caught up in a visceral sense of danger, but because they had excised Mei and me—the foreign elements—from the equation, the balance within the group of third-year class 3 had been kept stable. However…

The moment that Mr. Kubodera's death had forced them to realize that the "strategy" of increasing the number of people "not there" had been useless, everything had changed.

Mei Misaki, no longer "not there." Mei, the strange girl whose existence could no longer be ignored. How did Akazawa and her friends feel about her? What would they inevitably feel?

I don't know if I should say luckily, but that was when summer break had started, so the breakdown in balance didn't come to a head in the classroom. You could say that the girls' emotions had been put on hiatus, too.

But today, when the camping trip was beginning…

Mei Misaki was supposed to be isolated, but now she was talking completely at her ease with me—no big deal—as well as with guys like Mochizuki and Teshigawara, too. And then she sat at our table for dinner. As if she were ignoring the other girls, and most of all Akazawa, when it was supposed to be the other way around.

How could they not be disoriented by a situation like that? How could they not be disturbed by it? Frankly, it couldn't have been fun.

During dinner, I had noticed occasional looks they had thrown in our direction from their table. At the same time, in a corner of my mind I'd pictured the conversation they were having: probably about us and probably not very nice.

In that moment when her permission was sought, Ms. Mikami's reaction was sluggish enough to make me worry whether she was feeling all right. After several beats, she replied, "Oh…sure. Okay. Go ahead, Akazawa."

Akazawa nodded mutely. Then, just as I'd expected, her eyes narrowed into a glare and turned on our table. Her voice came at us sharply. "Misaki! There's something I want you to hear tonight."

I watched Mei's face in profile. She looked…calm.

"You, Misaki…And you, too, Sakakibara."

Akazawa's words came smoothly and her diction was perfect. She was like a spirited prosecutor standing in a courtroom.

"Several unfortunate things have happened since May, and that terrible thing that happened to Mr. Kubodera last month…I don't have a clue if going on this trip will get things back under control, but at least for all those 'disasters' that have struck up until now…I think you bear some of the responsibility for them, Misaki."

Mei, responsible for…?

Before I could challenge her to explain why, she said, "I think you have the same responsibility, Sakakibara."

Throwing a glance at Ms. Mikami, Akazawa added harshly, "If Misaki had carried out her role as the one who's 'not there' like we all agreed at the start, then no one would have died. The reason she couldn't do that was because Sakakibara talked to her. That's why we—"

"Hold it."

The one who cut her off was Teshigawara.

"Don't you think that was, I dunno, kind of inevitable? Something no one could help happening?"

"Who knows." Akazawa put one hand on her hip before continuing in a totally dismissive tone. "Maybe we screwed up by not telling Sakakibara what was going on ahead of time. When I think about how I was out sick the first day he came to school, it's gut-wrenching…But even so, if Misaki had stuck to her act and completely refused to deal with him, if she had just ignored him, the 'strategy' should have worked. Tell me I'm wrong."

"I don't…"

"Even if I acknowledge that we failed when the 'strategy' of having two people ��not there' didn't work…Still, the original blame for the failure lies with Misaki, in my opinion. Am I wrong?"

For a moment, Teshigawara looked cowed, but then he came right back at her. "And? So what? What are you saying we should do about it now?"

At that, Akazawa gave a conspiratorial look to the girls at her table, then ran her gaze over the boys at the other tables.

"An apology," she proclaimed. "We still haven't heard a word of apology from Misaki. And yet, Misaki, the second you stopped being 'not there,' you were acting like nothing had ever happened, as if…"

Her ferocious gaze pounced on us. I felt rage and hatred and resentment in it, but more than that, I detected a fierce irritation…However.

How irrational can you get…I couldn't hold back irritation of my own. Mei's gotta be…I looked over at her again. But she was as calm as before—no, she looked icy.

"For Sakuragi dying."

It wasn't Akazawa who spoke those words out of nowhere. It was Sugiura, the girl sitting next to her. She had a "loyalty first" look to her, and was constantly glued to Akazawa's side.

"My seat was by the hall window, so I saw what happened that day. How she…"

��Ah.

I couldn't help remembering it myself. That day, the last day of midterm exams, when Mei and I, and Yukari Sakuragi…

"When she found out about her mom's accident, Sakuragi ran out of the classroom in a huge hurry. At first, she started going toward the East Stair like usual, but then you and Sakakibara were standing in front of the staircase. So Sakuragi panicked and changed direction, and she headed for the West Stair…"

…Yes. Sugiura was right about that.

"When she saw Misaki and Sakakibara together even though Misaki was supposed to be 'not there,' she must have gotten scared. That because they were together, the talisman hadn't worked and that's why her mom was in that accident…So in order to avoid you two, she ran the opposite direction down the hall."

"If you two hadn't been there right then—"

Akazawa picked up Sugiura's argument.

"If Sakuragi had gone down the East Stair like usual, that accident might never have happened. That's what I'm talking about."

"You can't be…"

The words came out of my mouth unconsciously.

"The same kind of thing happened to Mizuno's older sister, too." Akazawa pressed on. "After it happened, Mizuno told me that his sister was friends with you, Sakakibara. And that you'd been spilling all kinds of details to her about this problem in third-year Class 3."

"Uh, that's…"

"Maybe because you talked to her about that stuff, she wound up as one of the 'deaths of June.' You could interpret it that way, right?"

"Uh…"

…My fault.

It was my fault that Ms. Mizuno had died in that accident.

Having someone point it out officially made the sadness, regret, and self-reproach—though faded—rear their heads as fresh as ever. Yeah. Maybe Akazawa was right. I hadn't understood anything about what was happening then, but still, blazing in and getting Ms. Mizuno involved was absolutely my fault…

"This is irrelevant."

Just then, Mei spoke. In the cold, detached voice she always used, that I knew so well.

"However much you want to talk about these things, it's not going to solve anything."

"'Solutions' aren't what we're looking for right now."

Akazawa's words were pretty harsh.

"What we're trying to tell you, Misaki, is that you need to recognize your own responsibility and apologize to everyone."

"And if I do, it's going to mean something?"

Mei quietly rose from her seat and returned her accuser's gaze straight on.

"If so, I'll do it."

"Misaki—" I tried to stop her. "No…You can't apologize for this kind of—"

If anyone needed to apologize, it was me. If I had never transferred to North Yomi this spring, then none of this…

Mei ignored me, though. Without waiting for Akazawa's response to her question…

"I'm sorry."

She said it matter-of-factly, then slowly dipped her head.

"I'm sorry. This is my fault…"

"No!"

I shouted the word without thinking.

At almost the same moment, a loud voice cried out, "Stop it!" It was Mochizuki.

"This is stupid."

That from Teshigawara. He banged both hands down on the table angrily.

"It doesn't mean anything having her do that. The only thing that matters is finding out who the 'extra person' is!"

Hold on.

No, Teshigawara—wait. I know how you feel, but if you tell them about it at a time like this…

…Just then.

A fresh commotion started, clearing the foul air of the place.

8

"Hey, Wakui—are you okay? What's—"

Someone cried out suddenly, drawing our attention.

It was the table next to us. Tomohiko Kazami was one of the four sitting there. The voice belonged to the kendo club member Maejima, who was sitting across from Kazami. Wakui, the person he was talking to, was sitting to his left, and something was visibly wrong with him. His chair was pushed back and he was doubled over, facedown, pressing his forehead against the edge of the table. His shoulders were heaving in obvious pain.

"Hey—Wakui!"

As he called Wakui's name, Maejima chafed the boy's back.

"You okay? Can you breathe? Come on."

A second later, Mr. Chibiki had run over to them. As soon as he'd gotten a look at Wakui, he murmured, "Asthma?" then turned back toward Ms. Mikami, who'd run up behind him. "Does this student have asthma?"

But all Ms. Mikami did was dither; she couldn't answer right away.

"Yes," Kazami answered for her. "Wakui's got asthma. His medicine is always…"

Kazami pointed at Wakui's right hand, which was thrown across the table. He was clinging to a portable inhaler.

"Your medicine…Can you take it?" Mr. Chibiki asked Wakui, but his shoulders were heaving more and more painfully. He was in no condition to answer the question. Heeee, heeee…The bizarre sound of his breathing was audible. He was wheezing—no, this was closer to whistling.

Wakui sat in the seat in front of me in class, but this was the first time I'd seen him have an attack like this. Since I'd suffered a collapsed lung twice this year, his difficulty breathing wasn't hard for me to sympathize with. Pneumothorax and asthma were different, but seeing him, I felt my own breathing start to get more strained…

Mr. Chibiki picked up the inhaler and operated it to pump out the medicine. It made a soft hssh noise.

"Ah…It's empty." He brought his face close to Wakui's ear and asked, "Did you bring any spare medicine with you?"

Through his labored gasping, Wakui barely shifted his head from left to right in response. It conveyed his meaning: No.

"Call an ambulance!" Mr. Chibiki ordered in a loud voice, straightening from his crouch. I had a flicker of memory of the time he'd come running into the classroom immediately after Mr. Kubodera's suicide. "Ms. Mikami, can you please go and call an ambulance right away?"

9

It was several seconds later that we learned the phone installed in the building was unusable. Mrs. Numata ran in from the kitchen when she heard the alarm to tell us that. She said the circuit had been malfunctioning since the night before and had stopped working entirely that afternoon.

"We can't place any calls, so we haven't been able to arrange to have it fixed yet. But now, of all times…"

Before she had finished, Mr. Chibiki rummaged in a pocket of his coat and pulled out a cell phone.

"It's no good."

His voice was a dispirited—a deadened—mutter.

"The signal…"

"You can't get through?" I asked, taking a step toward him.

"We're out of range."

"My cell phone worked before."

"Then we'll use that. Hurry," Mr. Chibiki ordered. "Every company is different."

"It's in my room."

"Go and get it, quickly!"

Then—

"I've got a phone."

"Me, too."

Two people offered theirs. They were Teshigawara and Mochizuki. Mei was silent. I guess she'd left hers in her room, like me.

"I see. Then please," Mr. Chibiki said to them. "Try calling one-one-nine for an ambulance. It's an emergency."

But in the end—

"That's weird. I've got one bar, but it's not getting through."

"Me, too…They're not working, sir."

Teshigawara's cell phone and Mochizuki's PHS had been rendered useless in this place.

In fact, when Mei had called me earlier, there had been so much noise that it was hard to make out her voice. I guess the signal was just fundamentally bad in the mountains. So then…

There was one other cell phone and a PHS among the other students. But they weren't able to get through, either.

Wakui's asthma attack continued the whole time. He wasn't able to sit in the chair any longer and finally sank to his knees on the floor. Maejima was frantically rubbing Wakui's back, which was heaving with the boy's respiratory distress.

"This is bad. I don't see any cyanosis developing, but we can't just stand around."

Mr. Chibiki pulled his lips into a stern line.

"I'll take him to the hospital in my car."

He looked over at Ms. Mikami, who stood unmoving and pale.

"All right, Ms. Mikami?"

"Er…Yes. I'll go with you."

"You can't do that. You stay here, with the other students."

"Oh…Yes. You're right."

"I'll contact his parents from the hospital. I'll come back once his condition has stabilized. Oh, Mrs. Numata? Could you please bring a few blankets? We have to make sure he doesn't get cold."

"Right away."

Mrs. Numata pattered off down the hall.

The students who had gathered around the table and the students who were watching from a distance…All wore expressions betraying the anxiety and fear that gripped them. One of the girls was even sniffling quietly.

"It's fine," Mr. Chibiki addressed everyone. "There's no need to worry. If we go to the hospital now, he'll be fine and nothing serious will come of this. I promise you, everything is fine, so try not to upset yourselves. All right? This is an attack he's used to suffering with his condition, not some extraordinary event. Nor is it a freak accident. So there's no need to let your anxiety and fear take control. Calm down, and do what Ms. Mikami tells you. I'd like you all to go to bed early tonight. Understood?"

There was no change in the firmness of his expression, but his tone was impossibly calm. More than half the students nodded obediently, myself among them, but…

He's lying.

The words whispered through my heart.

Obviously what Mr. Chibiki had just said was a lie. And if the word "lie" is too harsh, well—it was a desperate maneuver to assuage everyone's distress ever so slightly.

None of the "disasters" befalling the class were simply "freak accidents." Hadn't Ikuo Takabayashi, one of the "deaths of June," always had a weak heart? And yet he had lost his life to an attack involving his heart.

It wasn't out of the question that Wakui would just happen to forget to check the amount of medicine he had left right when he was going on this trip, even though he used it every day for his asthma, but it was hard to see the situation as normal. In addition to the tension and anxiety we'd all felt, his stress just happened to be heightened by the eruption of that shouting match…And the result had been an attack. When we'd tried to call an ambulance, the phones at the lodge just happened to have been out of service all day. And then on top of everything, the signal strength made it hard for mobile phones to get through.

The fact that so many coincidences and instances of bad luck had collided was, in fact, an example of the risk bias peculiar to third-year Class 3 in an "on year." How could we not think so? To use Mei's words, this class was "close to 'death'"…

Finally, Mrs. Numata brought blankets and bundled Wakui up in them, then Teshigawara and I helped take him to the building's entrance. The car Mr. Chibiki had come in was parked in the driveway, close to the front door. It was a mud-spattered silver sedan. I couldn't tell what model it was, but I was pretty sure it was something pretty old.

It was almost nine o'clock at night.

The rain was still falling in a drizzle, but the wind gusting through the night was getting stronger and stronger. I even convinced myself that I could hear, now and again, the high-pitched scream of some creature or other rising up from the woods around us on the wind that stirred through the branches…

When Wakui was settled in the backseat of the car, I ran over to Mr. Chibiki, who was getting into the driver's seat, and called out to him. "Um, Mr. Chibiki, there's actually something I…"

The cassette tape Katsumi Matsunaga had made: I wanted to tell him about it, even if only to give him the barest description, but there was simply no time for that anymore.

"It's all right. I promise you, I'll help Wakui," Mr. Chibiki said, almost as if to convince himself.

"Um…Be careful."

"I will. But you look after yourself, too. You have a time bomb in your lungs."

"…I will."

"All right, we're off. I'll be back as soon as I can."

Mr. Chibiki raised a hand in a casual wave, then closed the door.

I realized Ms. Mikami was standing alongside me, though I hadn't noticed her approach, so I decided to ask, "Are you all right?"

She turned her ashen face to look at me, and nodded. "Yeah. No need to worry about me…Okay?"

Running a hand down her rain-slicked hair, she put on a smile whose frailty was unmistakable.

"Um…Maybe we really should cancel going up the mountain tomorrow."

In a hoarse voice, she replied, "Maybe." And then even the smile she'd worn a moment earlier vanished from her face.

10

We watched Mr. Chibiki's car drive off and were just retreating back inside when—

"Sakakibara—hold on."

Mei stopped me.

"Thank you for what you did."

"Wha—?" The question slipped out of me.

"When they were saying all that stuff about me in the dining hall."

"Oh, you don't need to…"

We were standing on the porch outside the front door. A little rain was blowing in. The only illumination was a dim porch light. It backlit Mei perfectly, so I couldn't really tell what expression she wore as she looked at me.

"It wasn't just me. Mochizuki and Teshigawara were…"

"Thanks," she repeated, almost in a whisper, then she took a step closer to me. "Will you come over later?"

Once again a "Wha—?" escaped me.

"No one's sharing my room with me."

There were five girls on the trip. When they split up two to a room, there was one left over. And of course, Mei was that one.

"I'm in room two-twenty-three. On the opposite end from your room."

"…Do you think I should?"

"I told you there was something I'd tell you later, remember? I want to keep that promise."

"…Okay."

"And also…"

Just then, over Mei's shoulder, I saw Teshigawara. He was standing in front of the door, ogling us with a "well, well!" look on his face.

I got flustered and before Mei could finish, I said, "Okay, okay. I get it."

"How about ten o'clock or so?"

"Okay. I'll be there."

"All right."

Mei turned smoothly on her heel and went back into the building by herself. I waited a few seconds, then followed her inside. Just as I'd expected, as soon as I was inside the front door, Teshigawara pounced.

"Hey, there."

He thumped me on the back.

"Major score, Sakaki. I heard you guys planning your little rendezvous."

"Hold it, what do you mean 'rendezvous'? It's not like that."

"Don't get so embarrassed! I'll never tell a soul."

"Cut it out. You're just making stuff up. Me and her have something serious to talk about, okay?"

"A serious talk about your future together?"

Teshigawara's unrelenting needling got me kind of irritated, so I told him, "Seriously, I'm getting angry."

He just put his hands in the air with a jovial "Woah, woah." But…

At some point I had detected that, despite the way he was acting and talking, there wasn't the slightest hint of a smile in his eyes.