I next stood in the town of Misaki outside the "Blue Eyes Empty to All, in the Twilight of Yomi" Friday the week after, and this time it really was twilight.
Last week had been purely by chance.
I had found this place by rambling aimlessly through the town, but this time the situation was a little different. Which isn't to say that I had intended to come here from the start. I had moved with a different purpose and, as a result, had returned without meaning to.
There was still time before the sun disappeared. But the level of light in the area already merited the word "twilight." Even if someone I knew were to come up to me in the red rays of the western sun, I don't think I'd be able to figure out who it was right away.
I had already forgotten my original purpose. I should leave it and just go home. That thought had brought me to the verge of turning on my heel when I noticed something. That sign for "Twilight of Yomi" was right in front of my face.
My feet went toward it, as if it were sucking me in. Beyond the elliptical show window was the beautiful yet disturbing doll of the girl's upper body, just like last week, and her "blue eyes empty to all" reflected my image vacantly.
What was this place?
What was it like inside?
These were the things that had been constantly on my mind since that first day.
There was no way to resist my curiosity. I banished my original purpose to a corner of my mind and pushed open the door beside the sign.
A bell overhead jangled dully and I took a timid step forward.
A gloomy, indirect light more like twilight than the twilight outside served to set the mood. The space went off into obscurity, farther back than I had expected, and was quite vast. Rings of faint light were picked out here and there by wispy, colored spotlights, bringing a variety of dolls large and small out of the darkness. There were big ones over a meter tall, and even more smaller ones.
"Hello there."
A voice greeted its customer.
To the left of the entrance—the spot right behind the show window—was a long, thin table, behind which I could see a figure. It wore clothes of a dull color that seemed to melt into the gloom within the shop. From the sound of the voice, I could tell it was a woman, and an old woman at that.
"Uh…h-hello."
"What's this? We don't get many young men in here. Are you a customer? Or perhaps…"
"Um, I was just passing by outside and wondered what kind of shop this was. This…is a shop, right?"
There was an ancient cash register at one end of the table. A small chalkboard was propped up in front of it with the words "Gallery Entry—¥500" in yellow chalk. I rummaged in the pockets of my school uniform and pulled out a coin purse.
"You're in middle school?" the old woman asked, startling me.
I collected myself, then replied, "Yes, at North Yomi."
"Then you can go in for half price."
"Uh, thank you."
I went up to the table and handed over the amount she'd asked for. The hand she proffered was, indeed, ancient and wrinkly, and now I could clearly see her face surfacing from the gloom.
Her hair was perfectly white all through, and her nose was hooked like a sorcerer's. I couldn't tell what her eyes were like, since she wore glasses with dark green lenses.
"Um…is this a doll shop?" I asked softly.
"A doll shop? Well, now." The old woman tilted her head slightly to one side and made stifled mumbling sounds. "I suppose we're half-shop, half-gallery."
"…Oh."
"We do sell things, but not anything a boy in middle school could afford. But you take your time and have a look around. There aren't any other customers right now, anyway."
The old woman placed both hands on the table and slowly leaned forward, bringing her face closer to me. The mannerism suggested she couldn't see me very well otherwise.
"I'll make you some tea, if you like," the old woman said, so close that I could feel her breath. "We have a sofa in the back, so you feel free to go sit down and rest if you get tired."
"Okay. Oh, but…I don't need any tea, thank you."
"Well, take your time."
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Inside the shop—I suppose I should really say, "inside the gallery"—music was playing, string music that was just as gloomy as the lighting. It sounded as if the main part of the melody was played by a cello. I had heard the song somewhere before, but (I guess sadly) I was completely lacking in that sort of education. If someone told me it was a famous classical song by one of the masters or that it was a chart-topper released in the '90s, all I'd be able to do is say "Is it really?" and accept what they told me.
My bag was bugging me, so I set it on the sofa in the back and, trying to breathe quietly and silence my footsteps, I went around looking at the dolls that thronged at every turn.
At first I couldn't stop myself from glancing over to check on the old woman at the table, but soon I stopped worrying about her. I was utterly taken in by the dolls and had no more attention to spare.
In the murky twilight, some of the dolls were standing, some were sitting, and others were lying down. Their eyes were opened wide in surprise, or they were sunk in contemplation, their eyelids half-closed, or they dozed…
Most of the dolls were beautiful young girls, but there were young boys among them, too, and even animals. There were even some strange fabrications that mixed human and animal together. And there was more than just dolls: pictures hung on the walls, too. An oil painting of a faintly fantastical scene caught my eye.
Like the doll of the girl in the show window, about half of the dolls were ball-jointed. All of their joints—their wrists, elbows, shoulders, ankles, knees, and hips—were formed into spheres so that they could be moved freely and posed. It imparted a certain unique, bewitching impression.
How can I express it? Though instilled with a cold, saccharine realism, they were not truly real. They resembled people without truly resembling them. They were a part of the mortal world, but did not truly belong. As if they had managed to take on these forms and preserve a shadow of their existence at this vague seam between here and there…
…How long had it been?
I had been taking deep breaths. I felt as if, without realizing it, a bizarre idea had taken hold of me: that I had to breathe for them, who had no breath.
I had a passing knowledge about these kinds of dolls.
I had found a photo collection in my father's library by a German doll maker named Hans Bellmer, I think, the spring break right before I started middle school. I'd also seen a couple of photo collections with tons of dolls of the same kind, made by lots of people in Japan, that drew some amount of influence from him.
This was my first experience seeing real ones up close, though, and so many of them at that.
I focused on continuing to breathe deeply. Partly because if I didn't, it seemed that my own breath might stop and I would never notice.
Most of the dolls were accompanied by placards with the name of the person who had made them. Same with the pictures on the walls. None of them were names I knew, but for all I knew some famous artists might have been among them.
VISITORS WELCOME
After I'd finished a quick survey of the forest of dolls and was about to go back to the sofa and grab my bag, I discovered this flyer on a wall in a corner all the way at the back.
There was an arrow drawn next to the words, pointing at an angle downward. Huh? Looking much, much closer, I saw what appeared to be stairs descending to the basement.
I turned to look back at the old woman.
She sat in the gloom behind the table, her head bowed, not moving in the slightest. Maybe she was in the middle of a nap. Or she could have been thinking about something. In either case…
Since it clearly said "visitors welcome," I didn't think I had to ask before going downstairs.
Still breathing deeply, I quietly made my way to the stairs.
❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖
There was less room to move around in the basement than on the first floor. It felt like a crypt. The temperature was low and it was pretty chilly.
Probably because they kept a dehumidifier running to control the humidity. Even with these practical thoughts in my mind, and perhaps because of the cold crawling up through my feet, I felt as if energy was being sapped from my body with each step down that I took. When I'd descended the staircase, my mind clouded for some reason and my shoulders grew heavy, as if I were carrying some invisible burden.
And then—
Just as I'd expected, though I'd had no concrete reason to think it, a scene fully separated from the world of mortals awaited me there.
In the lighting as gloomy as that on the first floor, but with a slightly stronger white glow…
A huge number of dolls were set on an antique card table, on chairs with armrests, in curio cases, on a mantel over a fireplace, or even right on the floor. It might be more accurate to say not "dolls," but "all their various parts."
Upper bodies, like the girl in the window, rested on a table, abdomens sat in the chairs, heads and hands were arranged on several display shelves. That was the state of this room. Several arms stood on end inside the fireplace and feet poked out from chairs and shelves.
When I describe it like that, it's hard to get away from thinking the place was sick/grotesque, but oddly, I didn't think so. I could feel, I don't know why, a kind of overarching aesthetic in the organization of the space, including the disorderly, cluttered arrangement of all these parts. And yet, maybe it was only my imagination.
Aside from the fireplace, there were several niche-like depressions formed in the white mortar-painted walls. Obviously, these had been turned into doll holders, too.
There was one depression with a doll missing only a right arm, its features very like the girl in the window. In the depression next to this was a young boy with the lower half of his face hidden, thin bat-like wings folded behind him. There was also a depression holding beautiful conjoined twins whose abdomens were linked.
As my feet carried me slowly to the middle of the floor, I made an even more conscious effort to breathe deeply.
With each breath, the cool air seeped into my lungs, then spread through my entire body. I felt as if I were drawing closer and closer to their world. The thought struck me out of nowhere. Or maybe…
The same gloomy string music that was playing upstairs. If the music stopped, I might be able to hear the secret whispers passing between the dolls in this cool basement room. That feeling came over me, too…
Why?
What was I doing in a place like this, surrounded on all sides by these things?
It wasn't a question I had posed to myself in such concrete terms, of course.
Ugh, it's too late to be…
…My original purpose. To use a not-very-nice name for it, I'd been following someone.
When sixth period had ended, I'd left the classroom with Yuya Mochizuki, the Munch aficionado, whose house lay in the same direction as mine. Somehow Kazami and Teshigawara and a small, baby-faced boy named Maejima (apparently he's actually one of the best in the kendo club) ended up joining us. Suddenly, out a window in the hall, I saw Mei Misaki walking through the schoolyard. For some reason she hadn't shown up to any afternoon classes that day, and I didn't know where she'd gone.
From the perspective of the guys with me, the way I acted right after I saw her must have been groan-inducing. "Not again…" As soon as I could abruptly say, "Well, I'll see you guys," I left them behind and ran off.
It was Mei, who hadn't shown herself at school all Monday and Tuesday that week.
Maybe she really had been badly hurt? Her absence had inflated my worry, but then on Wednesday morning she appeared looking totally blameless and sat inconspicuously at her desk all the way at the back next to the window, just like always. I didn't see any sign that she'd been hurt or sick.
I thought that maybe, like last week, we'd be able to talk on the roof during gym class that day. But my hopes were quickly betrayed. She simply wasn't there. And that's how the day ended, too. But the Thursday and Friday that followed—in other words, yesterday and today—I'd been able to find a couple of opportunities to share a few words with her. To be honest, I would have liked to take more time and talk about a lot more, but what could I do? I never got an opening to bring anything up…
And then I had spotted her just as I was heading home.
When I think back now, it's pretty embarrassing. I basically acted purely on the impulse of the moment. I burst out of the school building and ran in the direction she'd been going. I saw her leaving the campus through the back gate, and I could have called out to stop her, but I dismissed that option and decided to follow her without announcing myself.
This was where my original purpose—"following someone"—had begun.
I followed Mei, time and again thinking I had lost sight of her on the streets outside the school, which I still didn't know very well, but then I would find her again. When I got close enough that I could call out to her, of course I intended to do that. But for some reason, the whole time the distance between the two of us never shrank and, at some point, the act of following her itself became my goal.
Twilight was beginning to creep in, and I lost sight of Mei once and for all. That was just a little while ago. Having no idea whatsoever which roads I had taken to get here, without realizing it, I had arrived here—beside the "Blue Eyes Empty to All, in the Twilight of Yomi" in the town of Misaki.
Mei Misaki.
In the few days that had passed since I came to this school, the alienness—you could call it the "enigma"—that surrounded her had grown stronger and deeper, creating a certain "shape" in my mind.
Even so, I couldn't really grasp what it was fully. There was a mountain's worth of things I didn't understand or couldn't form opinions about—actually, I suppose the things I didn't understand still far outnumbered everything else. There was also what Ms. Mizuno had told me about. I struggled trying to figure out how I should interpret the information she'd given me, but nothing came together. Honestly, I was pretty much at a loss.
Asking her would be the quickest way, I knew. I knew that, but…
"…Ack!"
Something close to a scream escaped me. I had just noticed something set all the way in the back of this bizarre space that had been created in the basement, something my eyes had so far missed.
It was…
Standing there, easily as tall as a child, painted black, was a hexagonal box. A coffin? Yeah, that's a coffin. A large, Western-style coffin had been secreted away down here, and inside it…
My head was starting to cloud and I shook it fiercely. Rubbing my chilled shoulders with both hands, I walked up to the coffin. The doll inside it—it was of a style different than the other dolls on this floor. My eyes were arrested by it.
Inside the coffin was a doll of a young girl, complete with all its parts—hands, legs, head—clothed in a thin, pallid dress.
It was a bit smaller than life-size. I could say that with certainty because I knew someone who looked exactly like this doll.
"…Mei?"
That was why my voice trembled slightly as I spoke.
"Why would…"
Why would it look like Mei?
The hair was reddish-brown, unlike Mei's, and went past the shoulders, but the features, the build…all of it was exactly the same as the Mei Misaki I knew.
The right eye, fixed on empty space, was a "blue eye empty to all." The left eye was hidden behind her hair. The skin tone was even more pale and waxen than the real Mei. Her mouth, edged with a pale tint on the lips, was slightly open and looked as if it might start speaking at any moment…
What would it say?
To whom?
What are you…?
I grew even dizzier. I cradled my head gently in both hands and stood frozen before the coffin, spellbound, stunned. Just then—
Out of nowhere, her voice came to my ears, though I don't know how I could possibly be hearing it.
"Huh. So this stuff doesn't bother you, Sakakibara?"
❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖
Obviously the doll in the coffin hadn't spoken—that was impossible. But for just a moment the delusion had me in its grip, and I'm not even exaggerating when I say I was so surprised, I thought my lung was going to collapse again. I fell back a step, uncomprehending, my eyes locked credulously on the doll's lips.
The next moment, I thought I heard a snort. But of course the doll's lips hadn't moved at all.
"Why"—again it was her voice that spoke—"are you here?"
That was definitely the voice of Mei Misaki. So then it really was coming from the doll right in front of my eyes.
Was it a hallucination? It couldn't be…
I pulled my hands away from my head and swung my head around. When I did, I saw a new figure.
A dark red curtain that had been pulled aside, in the shadow of the coffin that stood before it. That was where she had appeared from, without a sound—the real Mei Misaki.
To me, it was as if the doll standing before me were casting a shadow that had materialized there, solid and real, though she wore the uniform of North Yomi and not a dress.
I gurgled, purely reflexively, "How did you…"
"I wasn't trying to hide in here and scare you," Mei said in her usual curt tone. "You only just got here, after all."
…So then what have you been doing in a place like this? More importantly, how did you suddenly appear in a place like that? I mean, geez…
Mei passed quietly by the coffin. She wasn't carrying her schoolbag.
She came to a stop in front of the coffin and cast a glance at the doll behind her.
"Did you think she looked like me?" she asked.
"Uh, yeah."
"She does. But she's only half of what I am. Maybe not even that."
With those words, she slowly reached her right hand out to the doll and stroked its reddish-brown hair. That exposed its hidden left eye. It had no eye patch like Mei's, but instead a "blue eye empty to all," just like the right one.
"What are you doing here?"
I finally got the question out.
Mei drew a quick finger down the doll's cheek. "I come down here sometimes. Since I don't hate it in here."
…Which didn't tell me much.
It didn't answer the question of why she'd come into this building in the first place.
"More importantly, I have something I want to ask you." Turning her back on the doll in the coffin, Mei faced me again. "Why did you come here, Sakakibara?"
"Uh…I was—"
I couldn't admit that I'd followed her all the way from school.
"I've been wondering about this shop for a while. I wandered past here last week and saw it. So today I decided to come inside."
Mei's expression didn't change particularly; she just nodded. "Oh. That's an interesting coincidence. Some people think dolls like the ones in this gallery are creepy. You're not one of them, huh?"
"Well…"
"What did you think? When you came in here?"
"I thought it was amazing. I can't really express it, but they're beautiful. It's like they're not of this world, and when I'm looking at them, this turmoil starts up in my chest…"
I tried hard to find the words, but all I could manage were these clumsy descriptions. Mei gave no response. She walked over to one of the depressions formed in the wall.
"I like these ones the best."
She peered into the depression. The dolls inside were the beautiful conjoined twins I'd seen earlier.
"They have such peaceful faces. They can be so calm, even though they're linked like this. It's strange."
"Maybe they're calm because they're linked."
Mei muttered, "I doubt it," then went on, "If they were calm because they're not linked to each other, I could see it."
"Hm-m-m."
Wasn't it usually the opposite? That's what I thought, but I said nothing and simply watched her movements. She shifted, and I thought she was going to turn back toward me, but suddenly she proclaimed, "You've been wondering why I wear an eye patch over my left eye, haven't you?"
"No, I—"
"Why don't I show you?"
"Wha—?"
"Why don't I show you what's under this eye patch?"
As she spoke, Mei rested the fingertips of her left hand on the white eye patch. The fingers of her right hand held the string that ran over her ear.
Massively shocked, massively confused, I couldn't tear my eyes from the movement of her hands. The string music playing in the background had ended at some point. In this bizarre basement room, filled with silence, surrounded only by the voiceless dolls, I was seized by the feeling that she was doing something indecent and I hurried to shake it off…
Any second now…
Mei's eye patch came off. I saw her exposed left eye and gulped.
"Th-that's…"
A blue eye, empty to all.
"Is that…a fake eye?"
Just like the doll in the coffin.
It was obviously no match for the jet-black eye on her right side, which was fixed on me. She had a blue eye exactly like the one nestled in the doll's eye socket, harboring a lifeless light…
"My left eye is a doll's eye," Mei told me in a whisper. "It can see things better not seen, so I usually keep it hidden."
…Which didn't really explain much.
I didn't understand what she meant. Or her reasoning.
My head had started swimming again. My breathing was getting pretty ragged, and it felt as if my heart was pounding right inside my ears. Underneath it all, my body felt even colder than before.
"Are you feeling all right?"
I shook my head feebly in response. Mei narrowed the eye that was not a doll's eye to a slit.
"Maybe this place isn't so great if you're not used to it."
"What do you mean?"
"The dolls…" Mei started to say something, then trailed off. She put her eye patch back in place, then started over. "The dolls are empty."
Empty, in the twilight of Yomi…
"Dolls are emptiness. Their bodies and hearts are total emptiness…a void. That emptiness is like death."
Mei continued speaking, as if covertly exposing a secret of the mortal world.
"Things that are empty want to fill themselves with something. When they get put into an enclosed space like this, with the balance this place has…it gets bad. That's why. Don't you feel it being sucked out of you? Everything you have inside you?"
"Yeah…"
"You don't really mind, once you're used to it. Let's go." With that, Mei slipped past me and started up the stairs. "Upstairs it's not so bad."
❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖
The old woman was no longer at the table beside the entrance. I wondered where she'd disappeared to. The bathroom? The string music was still gone, and the gloomy shop—gallery—was eerily quiet. So quiet, in fact, it seemed "death" might even be nearby…
Mei showed no sign of fear and sat down on the sofa where I'd left my bag. She said nothing, and I followed her example, sitting to face her at an angle
"Do you come here often?"
I started off the questions gingerly.
"I guess," Mei replied dryly, mumbling.
"Do you live near here?"
"Well, yeah."
"This place…on that sign outside, it says 'Blue Eyes Empty to All…' Is that the name of this shop—this gallery?"
Mei nodded in silence, so I pressed on.
"What about 'Studio M'? There was a placard for that underneath the sign."
"The second floor is a doll workshop."
"So they make these dolls there?"
"They make Kirika's dolls there," Mei corrected.
"Kirika?"
"It's written with the characters for 'mist' and 'fruit.' That's the person who makes the dolls in the studio upstairs."
Now that she mentioned it, I remembered seeing that artist's name on several of the placards that accompanied each of the dolls in the gallery's horde. And maybe even next to some of the pictures on the wall.
"The dolls in the basement, too?" I glanced over at the stairs in the back. "None of those had placards on them."
"She probably made them all."
"The one in the coffin, too?"
"…Yeah."
"That doll…why does it—" I just had to ask the question then. "Why does it look so much like you?"
"Who knows," Mei cocked her head slightly, but let the question slide right past. Was she just feigning ignorance? That's what it looked like.
I'm sure there was a reason for it. I'm sure she knew exactly what it was. And yet…
I sighed quietly and looked down at my knees.
I had a bunch of other questions. But what should I ask, and how to phrase it? How should I lead into it? Bleh. It was no use philosophizing over it. These were problems that didn't really seem to have an answer I could point to and say, "That's it! That's the best option."
Steeling my nerves, I spoke again. "I asked you about this that time we talked on the roof. When I met you that first time in the hospital elevator, you had something with you. Was that a doll, too?"
The last time I'd asked her that, she'd refused to answer. But today, Mei's reaction was different.
"Yeah, it was."
"You said you were 'dropping it off' somewhere?"
"…Yeah."
"You got off at the second basement level, right? Were you going to the memorial chapel?"
At that, Mei's eyes darted away from me, as if fleeing something, and silence plunked back into place. If the answer had been no, at least, she wouldn't have done that. That's how I saw it.
"That day—it was April twenty-seventh. I heard there was a girl who passed away at that hospital. Did you…"
Maybe the lights were playing a role. Mei's face seemed even more pale and waxen than usual. Her colorless lips seemed to be trembling slightly.
Uh-oh…She's about to turn into a doll, just like that one in the coffin downstairs. That idiotic thought flitted through my mind, and my heart seized tightly.
"…Um…"
I fumbled for something to say, searching for a way to keep the conversation moving.
"Um, what I meant was…"
Going by what Ms. Mizuno had told me over the phone last Saturday…
The girl who had died at the hospital on the day in question was named "Misaki" or "Masaki." What did that mean? Did it imply anything? It wasn't too hard to come up with some conjectures that would make everything add up, but even so…
"Misaki, do you…have an older sister, or a younger sister maybe?" I asked boldly. There was a slight pause and then, her eyes still turned away, still silent, Mei shook her head.
She was an only child, and apparently her parents were incoherent with grief.
Ms. Mizuno had also told me that when she'd called.
The girl who'd died was an only child. And Mei didn't have any sisters. And yet there was nothing inconsistent in their stories. If she wasn't her sister, she could be her cousin, or maybe…All kinds of possibilities occurred to me. It was the same with the question of whether the girl was named "Misaki" or "Masaki." It could just be a coincidence, or it could be totally inevitable. Or there could have been some mistake in the story I got…
"Then why were you…?"
When I tried to ask her more, I met with flashing resistance.
"I wonder why!" Mei said, turning her eyes back onto me. I could feel a coldness from her jet-black eye—the eye that had never belonged to a doll—that seemed, somehow, to see right through everything. This time, without meaning to, I was the one who looked away.
Small goose bumps were prickling on both my arms. I felt as if tiny bugs were scurrying around inside my head.
What was this? What was going on?
I was a little bit disconcerted.
I started forcing myself to take deep breaths again, my eyes roving over the armies of dolls. It felt as though every last one of them was staring at me. The old woman still wasn't back at her table…I suddenly recalled, at this moment, the conversation I'd had with the old woman a few minutes earlier. It was only now that a certain phrase caught my attention…What had she meant by that?
…God, I really was messed up. Just a little…no, totally messed up.
After taking an extraordinarily deep breath, I turned my eyes back to Mei.
For an instant, as she sat on the sofa, the level of light made her entire figure seem to transform into the deepest of shadows. The sensation I'd felt when I first saw her in the classroom rose again in my mind. A "shadow," whose outlines were ill-defined, with only the faintest sense of reality…
"I'm sure you have a lot of other things you want to ask me," Mei said.
"Uh, well…"
"You aren't going to?"
Her bald question left me scrambling for a quick response. Her name tag, glinting on the front of her school uniform, now rested in the corner of my eye. The two characters—Misaki—written in black ink on the wrinkled and dirty light purple card stock…
I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, then opened them, trying to somehow calm my emotions.
"Ever since I transferred here, there have been things that seem odd to me. And…well, that's why…"
"I told you to be careful, didn't I?" Mei let out a soft sigh as she ran her fingertips over the edge of her eye patch. "I told you not to come near me. But maybe now it's too late."
"Too late? For what?"
"You still don't know anything, do you, Sakakibara?" She sighed softly again, then lifted her back from the support of the sofa. "We have an old story."
Mei began to recount the story, her tone of voice dropping somewhat.
"A story of long ago…of twenty-six years ago at Yomiyama North Middle, in third-year Class 3. No one's told you this story yet, have they?"
❖ ❖ ❖ ❖ ❖
"Twenty-six years ago, there was a third-year student at North Yomi. A student who had been popular with everyone since first year. Good at schoolwork and at sports, talented in art and music…and yet, not such an amazing student that it would make you gag. Kind to absolutely everyone, with just the right amount of friendliness. So this student was beloved by everyone, students and teachers alike."
Mei told the story quietly, her gaze fixed on a single point in space. I listened in silence.
"As it happened, this kid changed classes when starting third year and joined Class 3. When first semester started, right after turning fifteen, this student suddenly died. There's a story that this student and their family were in a plane crash, but there are all kinds of other versions, too. That it was a car accident instead of a plane crash, or that it was a house fire…all kinds.
"Anyway, everyone in class was completely shocked. It can't be true, I don't believe it, and so on. Everyone was completely grief-stricken. But then out of the throng, suddenly someone spoke up."
Mei shot a glance over at me, but I stayed quiet. I was at a complete a loss for how to respond.
"Misaki didn't die, they said."
Mei went on quietly.
"Look, Misaki's with us right now. This person pointed at the desk the student had used and said, Look, Misaki's right there, alive, right over there…
"And then, one student after another popped up in support. It's true, Misaki's not dead, Misaki's alive, Right over there… It spread through the room like a chain reaction.
"No one wanted to believe it. They couldn't accept the fact that the most popular person in the class had suddenly died like that. It's not like we can't understand how they felt. But…the problem was, they kept this thing going after that, too."
"What do you mean?" I opened my mouth for the first time since she'd begun her tale. "What thing?"
"Everyone in the class, from then on, started pretending that the kid was still alive. The head teacher helped, too. The teacher told them, Absolutely, Misaki isn't dead. Misaki's alive even now in this room, as a member of the class. So everyone needs to come together and do their best to make it to graduation day. Stuff like that."
We'll all pitch in to help each other and make this last year of middle school a good one.
I don't know why, but the words of the teacher from twenty-six years ago, as recounted by Mei, crossed now with the speech Mr. Kubodera had made to introduce me to the class the morning I started school.
All of us are going to do our part. So that next year in March…
"In the end, everyone in third-year Class 3 played out the rest of their middle school lives that way. They left the desk of the dead student exactly how it had been and would talk to the kid, or horse around with them, or go home from school with them…Of course, it was all just pretend. And when it was time for graduation, the principal arranged for there to be a special seat for that student."
"Is this a true story?" I asked, unable to hold back any longer. "It's not some kind of rumor or legend?"
Mei did not reply. She simply continued telling the story coolly.
"After the graduation, they took the class photo in their classroom. With everyone in the class and the head teacher. But as it happened, when they looked at the developed photo later, everyone noticed something."
Mei paused for the slightest of moments, and then said: "In one corner of the group photo they saw that student, who couldn't possibly have been there. With a face pale as a corpse and smiling like everyone else."
So it was more like a legend after all. Maybe it was one of the "Seven Mysteries" of North Yomi. Though it was a pretty elaborate story, if so.
Even as I thought these things, for whatever reason, I couldn't just laugh it off. I tried to force myself to smile, but my cheeks just wound up twitching.
Mei had been expressionless throughout.
Her gaze still fixed, she pressed her lips together and her shoulders slowly lifted and fell a few times…before she finally added, in a voice like a whisper, "That kid—the one who died—was named Misaki."
Now that was a sucker punch.
"Misaki?" My voice was unintentionally shrill. "Was that…their last name? Their first name? Was it a boy or a girl?"
"Hm-m-m."
Did she not know? Or she knew, but wasn't going to tell me? Her lack of expression as she inclined her head slightly told me nothing.
"Apparently there are some versions where the name is 'Masaki,' but they're the minority. I think it really was 'Misaki.'"
…Twenty-six years ago.
Deep inside, I mulled over what Mei had just told me.
Twenty-six years ago, there had been a popular kid named Misaki in third-year Class 3…
…Hold on.
Hold it right there.
That was when the idea hit me.
If it was twenty-six years ago, then maybe my mom—my mother, who had died fifteen years ago—wouldn't Ritsuko have been in middle school then? In which case she might have…
I don't know if Mei noticed the slight change in my reaction. She leaned back against the sofa again and, her tone unchanged, she told me, "There's more to this story, actually."
"There is?"
"You could say the part I just told you is like the prologue."
And then—
A vibrant, electronic noise started up inside my bag, which was resting on the sofa. I was getting a call on my cell phone. I guess I'd forgotten to set it to vibrate.
"Oh, sorry."
I quickly reached out for my bag and pulled my phone out. The screen displayed a notice reading: "Yomiyama—Grandma & Grandpa."
"Ah, Koichi?"
Just as I had expected, I heard my grandmother's voice.
"Where are you? It's so late…"
"Uh, I'm sorry, Grandma. I got sidetracked on my way home from school…Yeah, I'm coming home now…How do I feel? I'm fine. Don't worry."
I hung up hastily, and then noticed that the vanished string music had started playing again. Hey now, I thought and turned around. I don't know when she'd come back, but the old woman was at the table by the entrance. She was facing this way, but her eyes were hidden by the dark lenses of her glasses, so I still couldn't see them.
"What an awful machine."
Mei was looking down at my hand, her eyebrows knit in disgust.
"No matter where you are, you're connected. They can catch you."
Then she stood up from the sofa and walked away toward the back stairs without another word…What? Was she going back to that room in the basement?
Should I go after her? But if I went after her and found she was gone…hey, what's wrong with you? What a stupid thing to think. That couldn't happen. Obviously it couldn't. So…but no…
As I hesitated, the old woman spoke in a thick voice.
"I'm closing up soon. You go on home for today."