What was this?
Suddenly, I had the same thought. But then if I extrapolated from “the scream in a lemon” like Mochizuki had said, I realized, It could be…
When you hear the word “scream,” even a grade school kid knows—that greatest masterpiece by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch. The figure of a man on a bridge covering his ears, drawn with a bizarre composition and palette in fluctuating lines. This wobbly drawing of a lemon seemed to share something with that painting…
“Do you think this is acceptable, Mochizuki?”
Stealing another glance up at her, Mochizuki hesitantly replied, “Yes…I mean, this is how the lemon looks to me right now…”
“I see.”
Ms. Mikami drew her lips tight and harrumphed. “It isn’t really in the spirit of today’s class, but…I suppose it’s all right.” A rueful smile edged onto her face, as if she had thrown her hands up in defeat, and she said, “I’d prefer it if you only experiment like this in art club, however.”
“Oh. Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry.”
“There’s no need to apologize. Go ahead and finish this up the way you have it.”
With that indifferent admonition, Ms. Mikami moved away from us. Then—
“Do you like Munch?”
I peeked again at Mochizuki’s drawing and gingerly tried to engage him.
“Uh…yeah, I guess,” he replied without looking at me and then picked up his pencil again. But I didn’t sense a strong blockade being thrown up, so I pressed on.
“But why did the lemon come out like that?”
He pinched his lips together and harrumphed like Ms. Mikami had just done.
“That’s how I see it, so that’s how I drew it. That’s all.”
“You mean objects have screams, too?”
“That’s not what’s going on. People misinterpret Munch’s painting all the time. It isn’t the man that’s screaming in that painting. It’s the world around him. The scream is making him shudder, so he’s covering his ears.”
“So then it’s not the lemon screaming, either.”
“Right.”
“Is the lemon covering its ears?”
“I don’t think you’re getting it yet…”
“Hm-m-m. Well, whatever. So you’re in the art club?”
“Oh—yeah. I rejoined in third year.”
Which reminded me of what Teshigawara had told me yesterday, about the art club being suspended last year. But starting in April this year, the “lovely Ms. Mikami” had become the sponsor…
“What about you?”
Then, for the first time, Mochizuki looked at me. He cocked his head to one side like a puppy.
“Are you gonna join?”
“Wh-why would I do that?”
“Well…”
“Sure, I’m kind of interested in it…but I don’t know. I’m not that good at drawing.”
“It doesn’t really matter how good you are,” Mochizuki told me in an extremely serious tone. “You draw pictures by seeing with the eyes in your heart. That’s what makes it fun.”
“The eyes in your heart?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s what this is?”
I glanced at his “scream in lemon,” and Mochizuki nodded saying, “Sure,” without a hint of guilt, rubbing a finger under his nose.
I guess he was petrified of strangers; still, once I started talking to him, he seemed pretty interesting. That thought helped me relax a lot, but at the same time—
Something flashed through my mind at the mention of the art club.
When we’d talked on the roof of Building C during gym class yesterday, she—Mei Misaki—had carried a sketchbook. Could she be in the art club, too?
The art room in Building Zero was twice as big as a normal classroom. The construction and equipment in the room was getting old, and the amount of light it got left the place somehow dreary, but thanks to the high ceiling, the room didn’t feel too oppressive. It made it feel even bigger than it already was.
My eyes wandered around the room, as if for the first time. However—
I didn’t see Mei Misaki anywhere, after all.
But she was in morning classes…I couldn’t help feeling suspicious.
There hadn’t been time for a leisurely chat, but I’d succeeded in catching her during one of the breaks between classes and shared a few words with her. I mentioned how she’d gone home alone in the rain yesterday, and other trifling things.
“I don’t hate the rain.”
That’s what she’d told me then.
“My favorite is the cold rain in the middle of winter. The moment it changes to snow.”
I wanted to catch her at lunch and talk some more, but just like yesterday, she had disappeared from the classroom before I’d noticed. And even now that fifth period had begun, she had yet to appear.
“Hey, Sakakibara.”
Mochizuki was the one trying to start conversations now. I put my thoughts about Mei on hold. “What?”
“What do you think…about Ms. Mikami?”
“Out of the blue, I mean, I don’t know.”
“Oh, I see. Yeah, okay…” Mochizuki nodded several times, murmuring in a low voice, and his cheeks tinted slightly red again.
What’s with this guy? Secretly, he’d knocked me off balance a little.
Does he have a crush on his art teacher? This kid? How does that work? She’s more than ten years older than you, dude.
2
“Munch made four copies of The Scream in all.”
“I’d heard that.”
“I like the one at the Oslo National Museum of Art. The red color of the sky is the most intimidating. It looks like blood is going to come pouring out of it any second.”
“Huh. But doesn’t that start to scare you, the more you look at it? Or make you feel incredibly uneasy? How can you like that?”
You could say it’s an easy painting to understand. The visual impact is so intense, the underlying subject matter gets ignored and funny or interesting parodies are everywhere you look. So I suppose in that sense it’s a popular work. But of course, when Mochizuki said he liked it, he didn’t seem to be talking on that level.
“Uneasy…I suppose so. It’s a picture that drags those feelings out for me, that there’s anxiety in everything and that’s just the way it is. That’s why I like it.”
“You like it because it makes you uneasy?”
“It’s not like it goes away if you pretend you don’t feel it. You’re the same way, aren’t you, Sakakibara? I’m positive it’s the same for everyone.”
“Even lemons and onions?”
I said it jokingly, and Mochizuki smiled a little shyly.
“Drawings are a projection of the imagination.”
“Sure, but come on…”
After art class ended, I wound up getting up and walking out with Yuya Mochizuki. And, as we wound up continuing our conversation, we walked down a dimly lit hall of Building Zero.
“Yo, Sakaki!”
Someone behind me tapped me on the shoulder. Before I even turned around, I knew it was Teshigawara. Apparently he’d decided to start abbreviating my name to “Sakaki” today.
“You guys whispering about Ms. Mikami? I want in.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, but we’re talking about something a little bit darker than that,” I replied.
“What is it? What’re you talking about?”
“The anxiety that cloaks the world.”
“Wha-a-a?”
“Do you ever feel uneasy, Teshigawara?” I asked, despite my opinion that he seemed to lack any connection to emotions like that. It had already become natural to talk plainly to him.
The bleached goofball beat my expectations, though, when he said, “What do you think!”
He nodded grandly, I wasn’t sure exactly how seriously, and then replied, “After all, when I went up a grade, I wound up getting stuck with the ‘curse of Class 3’!”
&nb
sp; “Wha?”
The sound slipped out of me. At the same time, I saw Mochizuki’s reaction: As his gaze fell silently to his feet, his expression seemed melancholy and somehow tense. The scene had crystallized in the space of a moment. That’s what it felt like.
“So-o-o, Sakaki,” Teshigawara said. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this since yesterday…”
“Hold on, Teshigawara,” Mochizuki spoke up. “I don’t think you can do that anymore.”
Can’t do that? Do what? Why not?
“‘Anymore’ is assuming we ever…”
This was Teshigawara, who was having trouble continuing. Totally in the dark, I cried, “What are you guys talking about?” then caught myself with a gasp.
We’d been walking down a hall in Building Zero and were just coming up on the secondary library. Hardly anyone seemed to use the old library, but now the sliding door leading into it was open a few centimeters. And through the gap, I could see into the room…
…She was there.
Mei Misaki was in there.
“What’s wrong?”
Teshigawara’s question was dubious.
“Hold on a second,” I replied ambiguously and slid the library door open. Mei turned to look at us.
Mei was sitting at a large desk in the totally empty room. I raised my hand to wave, “Hey,” but she gave no response whatsoever and returned her eyes to the desk.
“H-hey, Sakaki. You’re not really…”
“S-Sakakibara? What are you…?”
More or less ignoring Teshigawara and Mochizuki’s chatter, I stepped into the secondary library.
3
The walls were obscured behind bookshelves that went all the way to the ceiling, packed full of books. Even that wasn’t enough, though, and more than half the floor space in the room was a forest of tall shelves.
The room looked to be about the same size as the art classroom, but the style was completely different. There wasn’t even a hint of openness in here. The weight of all the books being stored here imparted a heavy oppressiveness to the room. The amount of light made this place seem all the gloomier, and looking around I saw that several of the fluorescent lights were out.
There was only one large table intended for readers, where Mei sat. Not even ten chairs were placed around it. There was a small counter in a back corner to the left, in a valley between the shelves. I couldn’t see anyone there right now, but I assumed that was where the librarian usually was.
In this space suffused with the unique smell of old books, where time seemed to have come to rest…that’s where she was.
Mei Misaki was in here, all by herself.
Even as I approached, she never so much as glanced at me. Lying open before her on the desk was, not a book, but her large octavo sketchbook.
Had she…skipped art class to come here and draw by herself?
“Do you think you should have come in here?”
Mei spoke without shifting her gaze.
“Why not?” I retorted.
“Your two friends didn’t stop you?”
“Guess not.”
There was something strange in how everyone else in class acted when it came to her. Although I had started, ever so vaguely, to guess why that might be.
“What are you drawing?” I asked, dropping my eyes to her sketchbook.
It was a sketch of a beautiful young girl, done in pencil. It didn’t have the style of an anime or manga drawing. It was a more realistic, naturalistic line drawing.
The body shape was delicate, its sex barely distinguishable. The limbs were slender. The hair long. The eyes, nose, and mouth hadn’t been drawn in yet, but still it conveyed the image of a beautiful young girl.
“Is this…a doll?”
I had a reason for asking that.
The shoulders, elbows, wrists, hip joints, knees, and ankles…at each of these joints, I could see in the drawing the characteristic form that certain types of dolls have: the signature structure in what’s called a “ball-jointed doll,” shaped exactly as the name implies.
Without answering, Mei disinterestedly dropped the pencil she’d been holding on top of the drawing.
“Do you have a model? Or is it all from your imagination?”
I piled up the questions even as I prepared to hear I hate the way you’re interrogating me. Finally, Mei turned her face toward me.
“I can’t say which it is. Maybe both.”
“Both?”
“I’m going to give this girl huge wings, last of all.”
“Wings…So she’s an angel?”
“I dunno. Could be.”
It could be a devil—a comment like that seemed ready to follow, and my breath caught for a second. But Mei didn’t elaborate. A faint smile was all that touched her lips.
“What happened to your eye?”
I tried changing the subject, to something I had been wondering this whole time.
“You’ve had that on since I saw you at the hospital. Did you get hurt?”
“You want to know?”
Mei tilted her head slightly, her right eye narrowing. Flustered, I told her, “Uh, if you don’t want, that’s okay…”
“Then I won’t tell you.”
Just then the crackling sound of a bell started up somewhere in the room. Apparently the battered old speaker was still being used, despite never being repaired.
It was the bell to start sixth period, but Mei made no move to stand up. Maybe she was going to cut again.
Should I leave her, or drag her with me? I was having trouble deciding.
“You should get to class.”
A voice came out of nowhere.
It was a male voice I had never heard before. There was a slight rasp to it, but it was deep and rich.
Startled, I looked around the room and discovered where it had come from.
Behind that counter in the corner of the room, where I had seen no one before, was a man dressed all in black.
“I haven’t seen you before,” the man said. He had frumpy black-rimmed glasses and a lot of white mixed into his strawlike hair.
“Um, I’m Sakakibara, in third-year Class 3. I just transferred to this school yesterday, and uh…”
“I’m Chibiki, the librarian.” He fixed his eyes on me, unwavering, as he spoke. “You can come here anytime you like, but for now: go on, get along.”
4
Sixth period was an extended homeroom, which we had once a week. If this were elementary school, it would be our class meeting time, but I doubted such lively and unrestricted discussions would be taking place while the head teacher was watching over us. Nowadays, public and private schools are probably both the same way.
There weren’t any problems that called for discussion right then, so we wound up being dismissed from class before school was over.
Mei Misaki never appeared in the classroom during this time, either. But it seemed to me that no one showed any sign of worrying particularly about it, including Mr. Kubodera and Ms. Mikami.
My grandmother had brought me to school in the car again today. I’d tried to stop her, telling her she didn’t have to do this, but she wouldn’t let it go. “This week, I have to,” she told me. And considering my position, I couldn’t really put up a whole lot of resistance, either…
To be honest, I wanted to stay at school a little longer and look for Mei, but I had to give it up. I declined an invitation from Teshigawara and the others to go home with them, too, and climbed into the car that had come to get me.
5
After dinner that night, before Reiko retreated to her office/bedroom in the side house, I had a chance to talk with her alone for a little while.
I’d saved up a bunch of stuff to ask her, but now that we were actually talking, I tensed up for some reason—as usual. We wound up talking about a bunch of fluff subjects, which wasn’t what I’d meant to do at all.
After much hesitation and waffling, I tried just jumping in headlong by l
eading with a question about the secondary library in Building Zero.
“Has that library always been there?”
“Yup. Obviously it was there when I was in middle school, and I’m pretty sure it was there when Ritsuko went there, too.”
“Was it the ‘secondary’ library back then?”
“No, that’s changed. It must have become the ‘secondary’ library after the new buildings were finished and the new library was ready.”
“Probably.”
Reiko had been propping her chin up on one hand, resting her elbow on the table. She switched arms and took a swig of beer from her glass. Then she gave a soft sigh. She didn’t show it openly, but she probably found her day-to-day adult life exhausting.
“Do you know the librarian in the secondary library? I caught this quick glimpse of him today, but there was something about him that made him seem like the ruler of that room…So I was thinking, he must have been there forever.”
“You mean Mr. Chibiki?”
“Yeah, that was his name.”
“You’re right, Koichi. He does give that sort of impression. The ‘ruler’ of the library. He’s been there since my time. He’s real crusty and always dresses all in black, and there’s something kind of mysterious about him. Most of the girls thought he was creepy.”
“I bet.”
“Did he say anything weird when you saw him today?”
“No, nothing special.”
Shaking my head slowly, I thought back on the scene.
I was the only one he’d ordered out of the library. What had become of Mei after that? Had she stayed there and kept working on her drawing? Or had she…
“By the way, Koichi,” Reiko said, holding the glass of beer in one hand. “Are you planning to join a club or do anything after school?”
“Oh…good point. I wonder what I should do.”
“Did you do anything at your last school?”
Another, Volume 1 Page 7
