Book Girl and the Corrupted Angel

by Mizuki Nomura

  The very next moment, we’d started running.

  We had to look for Mito! She might still be in the area.

  Where? Where could she have gone?

  As we pounded blindly down the hallways of the theater, I shouted, “Kotobuki, try calling Mito’s cell phone!”

  With the bouquet in her arms, Kotobuki got her cell phone out of a pocket and busily moved her fingers.

  Petals as blue as the ocean drifted to the floor.

  “It’s no good, she’s not answering!” Kotobuki wailed.

  Just then—

  I caught the sound of a familiar Christmas song.

  It was “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.”

  Kotobuki gasped.

  In a daze, we ran in the direction we heard the music coming from.

  Petals cascaded to the floor. The lighthearted melody went on playing without interruption.

  It came from the door in front of us!

  When we turned the knob and burst in, we found a supply room. There were stacks of cardboard boxes and shelves on either side.

  In the middle of it all, a masked girl wearing a brilliantly colored silk robe writhed around, both her hands trying to rip off a black scarf that was coiled around her neck.

  We saw someone behind the girl, strangling her, and we gaped.

  What was she doing here?

  The masked girl’s feet slipped, and she grabbed a corner of one of the shelves with one hand. The edge of her crown rang out and her red robe fluttered. The plain black scarf bit sharply into her slender neck and pulled taut with tension behind her. Strained gasps escaped the girl’s lips.

  “Stop!!”

  Kotobuki threw down her bouquet of roses and launched herself at the person strangling Mito. I hung on to her other arm to stop her.

  “Don’t interfere!”

  The person who spun around to face us, her breathing ragged and her face warped with insanity, was Shoko Kagami.

  “I even took you under my wing! You told me your family was in trouble, so I sent you good clients! But still you betrayed me!”

  Shoko was seriously worked up and seemed to not even register that we were there.

  Her beautiful almond eyes glinted with hatred and rage. Her face was flushed dark red as she ground her teeth and yanked on the ends of the scarf.

  Why?! Why did Shoko have so much loathing for Mito?

  What did she mean she sent clients to her?

  No—!

  My voice seemed to tear at my throat as I shouted, “Shoko! You were the one who introduced Mito to working as an escort!”

  Shoko’s hand slipped from the end of the scarf, and she fell backward.

  Kotobuki let out a shriek as our rear ends smacked into the floor simultaneously.

  Shoko hit a shelf hard with her back, and she groaned. Leaning back against it, her shoulders heaving as she breathed, she spoke in a low voice.

  “That’s right…I did. After all, that’s how I earned the money to continue my own musical education.”

  Kotobuki gasped.

  Ignoring the hair that had fallen across her face, her eyes flashing eerily, Shoko continued. “You need money to do music. Not just for class fees, but for costumes, textbooks, the tickets for concerts you need to attend…And you burn up money to pay for private lessons outside of school or to study abroad. No matter how much you have, it’s never enough.

  “So I introduced the girls whose poverty was causing them problems to a pretty good job. I created a website and brought together clients I could trust.”

  Shoko had been the one running the site!

  My body trembled at that fact. Kotobuki’s jaw was tensed, too, her eyes wide.

  “But you know, even after selling themselves to continue their studies, not a single girl succeeded as a musician. Every last one of them fell through, crumbled, got disappointed, and gave up on their dreams. Just like I did.”

  Shoko bit down on her lip ruefully and her face contorted; then her eyes grew even sharper.

  “So how did you learn to sing like that?! How?

  “When you sang the aria for the Queen of the Night in front of everybody, I couldn’t believe it. It was amazing. I was astounded. This girl is different from me, and from all those other girls. She might succeed. As soon as the thought crossed my mind, it scared me, and I hated you more than I could stand!”

  Her dark gaze, glinting harshly, held Mito in its grasp as she crouched against the wall. Shoko’s dry lips spat out her bitterness.

  “All the Camellias have to lose hope! Like I did, the very first Camellia! You can’t be the only Camellia who’s special. I won’t let you. It isn’t fair!”

  Her fingers closed around a pair of large shears that were on a shelf, and Shoko leaped at Mito.

  “Yuka! Look out!” Kotobuki screamed.

  The scissors struck the wall right next to Mito’s face and produced a shower of sparks.

  Shoko growled spitefully and swung the scissors up again.

  “You have no right to wear such beautiful clothes or to stand in the center of the stage!!!”

  “Stop!!”

  Kotobuki ran over but was sent flying by one of Shoko’s elbows.

  “Kotobuki!”

  The scissors sliced off one side of Mito’s wig.

  The jet-black hair slithered to the floor like a snake. Shoko tugged on one of Mito’s sleeves with all her might, ripping it away to reveal a white shoulder and arm.

  “You’ve betrayed all of us! All of the other Camellias!”

  Shoko’s energy was terrible; I couldn’t get near her.

  Just then, behind Shoko, I could see a man in a suit standing near the door.

  Mr. Mariya!

  From there, he might be able to pin Shoko from behind.

  Even if he couldn’t do that, maybe he could call someone—!

  But Mr. Mariya didn’t move.

  He was watching this tragic scene with a frigid, coldhearted gaze.

  Coldly expressionless, as if he were wearing a mask over his face—!

  Why?! Why wasn’t he moving?!

  Shoko shoved Mito to the floor, then sat astride her and started tearing at her clothes, deranged.

  “You don’t deserve a costume like this! No matter how you make yourself up, Camellia will never be more than a filthy whore! You and I are both corrupted beyond recognition!”

  Her thin robe tore apart with a sharp rrrip and exposed her bare skin.

  Her white throat—her chest—her hip—!

  We all stared at Mito in disbelief.

  Her clothes had been hiding not the supple body of a girl, but the firm body of a boy!

  “No…”

  Shoko’s hands dropped, senseless. Her face, which had been twisted with hatred, reflected her violent confusion.

  “What is this?! When did you change places? Where did Mito go?!”

  Just then, the voice of someone who shouldn’t have been there sounded from near the door.

  “The Phantom knows that.”

  Slipping past Mr. Mariya, who stood agape, her long thin braids swaying, her head held proud, the person who entered the room was Tohko, wearing a navy-colored coat over her school uniform.

  Chapter 7—Inside the Dark, Dark Earth

  “What are you doing here? What about your test?”

  I’d been thrown off guard. Tohko’s cheeks flushed very slightly in response, and she murmured an excuse.

  “I’m sorry. I was worried…so I ran out in the middle of it.”

  I felt dizzy for a moment. She was taking her exams soon and had gotten Fs. What was she thinking?!

  Tohko opened her right hand, and blue petals fluttered out of it.

  “When I followed these petals, I found you guys.”

  Mr. Mariya and Kotobuki were both gaping.

  Shoko stood up and glared at Tohko.

  “Who are you?”

  Tohko puffed up her thin chest and answered crisply, “I am, as you see, a book girl.”r />
  That introduction was probably beyond the reach of Shoko’s understanding. Her eyes went round, her mouth hung half open, and she stood speechless.

  An awkward silence filled the cramped room.

  Shoko finally returned to her senses, wrinkled up her face, and forced out a gasping question.

  “You said the Phantom would know. What does that mean? Who is this boy?”

  The masked boy in the ragged costume was huddled on the floor, a total mess, not even covering his naked chest.

  Yeah—who was this kid?

  To our confusion, Tohko breezily declared, “It would take some time to explain that, because this story featuring a girl named Yuka Mito involves a great many emotions and speculations, and the main plot has gotten obscured.

  “But since it seems that a replacement will be going onstage, there’s no longer any need for him to go back. We have plenty of time, so I think I’ll unravel this story like a book girl should.”

  It was as if some strange power controlled the space we all occupied.

  Shoko, Mr. Mariya, Kotobuki—all held their breath and watched Tohko as she began to tell the story in a voice as clear as water.

  “This incident began with a situation that reminded me of Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera.

  “Leroux was a French man born in 1868, and after being active as a lawyer and journalist, he changed careers in his thirties to become an author, and he published a succession of stories, such as The Mystery of the Yellow Room, which is a famous closed-room mystery story. Maurice Leblanc of the Arsène Lupin series was active around the same time in France, and Leroux was a popular author whom many said was on the same level.

  “In 1910, Leroux published Le Fantôme de l’Opéra—The Phantom of the Opera—describing a masked man living below the opera, and the way people got tangled up in his dark passions.

  “Mito loved this story and had talked about wanting her own Angel of Music for a long time.

  “Then like the heroine Christine, she took lessons from a certain figure in secret and he made her talent as a diva blossom.

  “And Mito also had a man for the position of Raoul, Christine’s lover.

  “Mito didn’t even reveal the man’s name or identity to her best friend Nanase, though he was at Seijoh Academy. Instead, she offered three hints about him.”

  Tohko slowly raised a finger.

  “One, there are nine people in his family.

  “Two, he likes coffee.

  “Three, whenever he’s thinking about something, he’s in the habit of walking around a desk.

  “You would think saying that there are nine people in his family would be a major clincher, wouldn’t you?

  “But this hint does not actually refer to her boyfriend.”

  Tohko had said that before, too. That she didn’t think Mito’s boyfriend had nine people in his family…

  As we all listened transfixed, Tohko gave the name of a book.

  “There’s a children’s book called The Pfaffling Family. It’s an old book and it’s out of print in Japan, so people nowadays might not know about it. It was published in 1906. The author was Agnes Sapper, a German writer. Sapper, who was the mother of five children, wrote about the heartwarming lives of the mother, the father, and the seven children of the Pfaffling family.

  “The father in this story is a little short-tempered, but he’s described as a jolly, forthright character that we can love. He loves coffee, but the family is poor so he drinks it only on holidays. Also whenever he’s thinking about something, he strides restlessly around a table, so he gets admonished by the woman who boards with them.”

  Tohko’s voice was filled with strength.

  “A family of nine, liking coffee, and walking around tables—all of these match the hints Mito gave. I heard that Mito used to read a lot of foreign children’s novels about families, so there’s no doubt in my mind that she knew about this one, too. So what was Mito trying to convey with these hints? The father of the Pfaffling family worked as a music teacher.”

  Her wise eyes stared straight at Mr. Mariya.

  “The reason Mito was keeping his name a secret was because he was a teacher, not a student. Even if he was at a different school, she thought that if the romance between a teacher and a high school student got out, it might cause trouble for him. As far as male music teachers at Seijoh Academy go—you’re the only one, Mr. Mariya, which means you are Mito’s Raoul.”

  The air was coldly tense.

  Mr. Mariya wasn’t Mito’s angel—he was her lover!

  Shoko’s eyes widened in amazement, and Kotobuki trembled, her face ghostly white.

  Mr. Mariya’s eyes flashed with apparent annoyance and he spoke. His voice lacked its usual mildness, and his tone was curt.

  “Yes—it’s exactly as you’ve surmised. I was dating Yuka Mito. But I haven’t seen her lately, and she hasn’t contacted me. Perhaps she’s found some other man that she likes? The ‘angel’ that she was taking her lessons with, for example. Yuka would talk about nothing but him, even if it had been a long time since I’d last seen her.”

  A murky anxiety steadily tightened in my chest.

  Why was Mr. Mariya talking about his lover with such frigid eyes? It was as if he was talking about something he hated, something he was contemptuous of.

  He was like a totally different person from the teacher who had smiled at us kindly in the music room!

  “Is that why you were jealous of the angel?” Tohko asked. “The way Raoul felt uneasy about the ties between Christine and her Angel of Music, so that it burned fiercely in him…

  “Nanase has testified that Mito was troubled because her boyfriend told her to quit her night work, and he was calling her a lot.

  “You were frantic with worry that Mito was being drawn in by the angel, weren’t you, Mr. Mariya? You couldn’t forgive her for talking about another man in front of you, could you?”

  “I think you’ve said enough! What you’re saying is pure conjecture!”

  His sharp yell rent the air and I flinched.

  Mr. Mariya was glaring at Tohko murderously. Tohko took his look head-on, and in a strong voice that refused to bend to him, she responded, “That’s right, I’m simply a book girl! I’m not a police officer or a detective, and everything I say is nothing more than my imagination. But I think that the way you acted after Mito disappeared was unnatural. This lover you were so obsessed with suddenly disappeared, so why didn’t you search for her openly? Why did you ask Nanase to organize those files? Why did you deliberately show her your ticket to the recital?

  “And you also went to a hotel with a first-year girl, and you walked around the room as if you were looking for something, and you wouldn’t stop staring at the table, and then you left her there and went home alone—”

  As soon as Tohko mentioned Sugino, I saw shock run across Mr. Mariya’s face.

  Tohko interrogated him tenaciously.

  “Why were you looking at the table so intently, Mr. Mariya? What were you remembering while you stared at it?”

  Something at the core of my body trembled at the very thought of this.

  A bleak shadow was steadily closing in behind me.

  “There was something you absolutely had to get back to the room to check on, wasn’t there? Nanase said that the day Mito disappeared, she sent a message that she’d gotten a last-minute job and she had to go. That job was to go out with men for money—an underage escort.

  “You’d been keeping an eye on her because you suspected her of cheating on you, and you discovered her secret, didn’t you? And that day you met Mito at the hotel as a customer, and you, Mito’s Raoul, your jealousy and rage transformed you into the Phantom, and you knocked Mito’s head into the table.”

  “No!!”

  Mr. Mariya’s voice cut into Tohko’s words. His face twisted, his hands and legs trembled weakly, and confusion intermingled dizzyingly with violent emotion in his bloodshot eyes.

  The
shadow—the shadow was changing the color of the air.

  “Yuka fell down all on her own! I told her to stop singing, but she wouldn’t listen. Why did she have to continue with music if it meant doing something so shameful?!

  “But Yuka cried and told me that singing was all she had left. She said the angel was waiting and she had to go to her lesson, and she turned her back on me, and she tried to leave the room!”

  I was astounded.

  It seemed that Mr. Mariya wasn’t aware of what he was shouting. He kept on yelling as if his judgment had slipped loose.

  “I lost my temper and strangled Yuka. Then we started struggling after that, and Yuka’s foot slipped, and she hit her head on the edge of the table. She was bleeding and lying on the floor, and she stopped moving. I was so startled that I ran out of the hotel without her.”

  There was the sound of a heavy clatter as the scissors fell from Shoko’s hand. She put both her hands to her mouth to hold back a scream.

  Kotobuki was clinging to the edge of a shelf, her face pale as well.

  I couldn’t believe it, either—didn’t want to believe it. How could Mr. Mariya have done something like that to Mito?!

  Despite our confusion, Mr. Mariya continued his transformation before our eyes. His true face, twisted by jealousy and madness, appeared beneath his mask, and his voice, which had been sweetly cheerful, now cracked jarringly like a toad’s.

  “The next day there was no story on the news about a body being found in a hotel. And when I called Yuka’s cell phone, I couldn’t get ahold of her. So I pretended to be a family member and asked about her at school, which is when I found out that she’d been missing classes without permission and hadn’t been back to the dorms. I thought I was going to lose my mind. Where had Yuka gone? Was she alive? Was she dead?”

  That was when the tickets to the recital had come under the name Camellia.

  The surprise Mr. Mariya had felt then came through painfully in his broken voice.

  The reason he had kept Kotobuki nearby under the pretext of organizing files was so that he could keep an eye on her because he knew she was Mito’s best friend and he suspected that Mito might contact her. And he’d shown her the recital tickets in order to see how Kotobuki would react.