Prologue: Kanako Orihara Is Cursed
Kanako Orihara first met Mutsuko Sakaki on the day she tried to kill herself.
Kanako was sure this strange girl must have come from another world or time — an isekai.
When she thought about it rationally, she knew that this girl had just stepped onto the elevator when it had stopped at the fourth floor. But the girl was so beautiful, it was hard to believe she was of this world. She must have come from another.
Her appearance only encouraged Kanako’s misconception. It was difficult to describe, in a way that made it hard to believe she could possibly be from their modern-day world.
She had beautiful black hair that hung down to her hips. Kanako had never seen a girl with such long hair before.
Over her chest, she wore a mesh-patterned tunic that looked like chain mail. On her shoulders and hips were layered plate protectors that shone in silver. In Japanese-style armor they would be called “sode” and “kusazuri,” but the layering more resembled that of Western-style armor.
A long, narrow black box with an LED display and keyboard was attached to her left forearm. It appeared to be a computer.
Her appearance blended Japanese and Western styles in a futuristic way. It seemed to Kanako very much like isekai fashion.
Did it work? Kanako wondered.
She had tried, on a whim, a ritual that was supposed to take a person to an isekai. But she hadn’t really believed that it would work. Not for a second.
The next thing she knew, the elevator door was closing. She was alone in a small room with this strange girl.
The girl peered into Kanako’s face with her wide, round eyes. In the face of this violation of personal space, Kanako began opening her mouth. But then she remembered:
You’re not supposed to speak...
The girl who had gotten on at the fourth floor was a resident of an isekai. If Kanako spoke, the ritual would fail.
Kanako thought back on the steps of the ritual. When someone got on, you were to press the button for the first floor. Then, even though you had pressed the first floor button, the elevator would start heading for the top floor.
Timidly, Kanako pressed the first floor button. The elevator started to move. Kanako looked up at the floor display, her expression nervous.
Third floor.
The elevator had begun to go down... which was only natural, really. But Kanako was disappointed.
“Huh?”
As they arrived at the first floor, the girl burst out laughing.
“Hey! Were you surprised? Were you?” the girl addressed her, bubbling over with curiosity. “I’m sorry,” she continued. “I kept seeing the elevator go up and down, and I felt like I just had to tease you!”
“Um...” Kanako said hesitantly. The change of situation was too sudden for her to deal with right away.
“You were doing the Isekai Elevator, right? So I thought I’d get on at the fourth floor and shock you. I just couldn’t help myself! I’m sorry for getting in the way, but you’ve been trying it since noon with no success! ...Ah! I’m sorry! Were you taking it really seriously? Sorry!” Apparently thinking Kanako had gotten angry, the girl fervently began apologizing.
“No, it’s okay,” Kanako said. “That wasn’t what I really came here for, and I knew it wouldn’t work, anyway... though I was surprised.”
While she was quiet, the girl had seemed very mature, but her childish way of laughing made Kanako realize they were roughly the same age. She suddenly didn’t seem like an isekai denizen in the slightest.
“Oh, yeah! I’m Mutsuko Sakaki,” the girl said. “Who are you?”
“Kanako Orihara,” Kanako responded curtly, unable to think of a better response.
But Mutsuko showed no signs of being offended by her brusque manner. “So, what were you really after?” she asked.
“Um, I was thinking of going to the roof,” Kanako said.
“Oh, what a coincidence! That’s where I was going! Ah! And while we’re fooling around here, I bet Yu’s up there waiting!” Mutsuko quickly pressed the button for the 11th floor. She apparently wasn’t even considering that Kanako might want to get off. “Why do you want to go to the roof? Oh, I have a goal, personally. I’ll tell you later! So tell me yours too, Orihara!” Mutsuko babbled curiously.
Kanako couldn’t help but feel swept along by her fervor. She didn’t like that feeling. She had worked up her nerve to come here. She had felt that what she was about to do should be done quietly, and now that mood had changed in some indescribable way.
So, Kanako decided to surprise her. “I’m going to kill myself,” she said.
The girl wouldn’t know how to respond to that, would she? Just a tiny bit of revenge. She wanted to see this strange girl acting flustered.
“That’s boring!”
“Huh?”
But it was Kanako who was once again flustered by Mutsuko’s immediate response.
“You’re going to the roof to commit suicide?” Mutsuko complained. “What a cliché! Can’t you be a sniper rehearsing a shot or something?”
“W-Well, sorry!” Kanako apologized in the face of what felt like outrage directed at her.
“Or how about this?” Mutsuko asked. “You’re raising bizarre plants in secret up on the roof! You go to see them at regular intervals, but it’s been so long that now the roof is covered in greenery, and it’s going to lead to the end of the world! That’d be way better!”
Why was this girl she had only just met a few minutes before deciding this all on her own? Before Kanako could figure out a reasonable answer, the elevator arrived on the 11th floor.
Mutsuko stepped out immediately, and Kanako hurried after her.
The minute Mutsuko was out, Kanako looked right up at the ceiling. The entrance to the roof was there. There were steps mounted on the wall that started halfway up, and a hatch in the ceiling. But the hatch was shut and padlocked.
Kanako could have laughed. She hadn’t been expecting that.
She had done a lot of research on suicide, and in the end, she had decided that she would jump off a building. She had chosen an apartment complex tall enough for the fall to kill her immediately, and had practiced slipping through the auto-locking doors. Yet in the end, would she be stopped by something so simple?
“Orihara! Can you pick locks?” Mutsuko’s words snapped her out of her self-recrimination.
“Ah? What’s that?” Kanako asked.
“I mean undoing the lock,” Mutsuko said. “Look, there’s a padlock on the hatch, right? But if you can’t do it, I’ll just have to go up myself. Could you just crouch there?”
Kanako squatted by the wall just as she was told.
Mutsuko kicked off her shoes and stepped onto Kanako’s shoulders. Kanako felt her weight on her for a second, but Mutsuko immediately moved on to the steps.
She looked up and saw Mutsuko fiddling with the padlock. A second later, it fell.
“Um, but I can’t climb up like this...” Kanako protested.
“Just hold on!” Mutsuko opened the hatch and peeked out onto the roof. “Yu!”
“Hey, Sis, took you long enough,” a male voice responded. “What were you doing?”
Kanako was surprised. This should have been the only way onto the roof. How could someone else be up there?
“Hey, Orihara, can you climb a rope?” Mutsuko asked.
“I don’t think so...” Kanako’s arms were so slender, she couldn’t even hold on to a rope for long periods of time.
“Then we’ll have Yu do it,” Mutsuko said. “Yu! C’mere a
minute! There’s someone else I want to bring up!” While calling to him, Mutsuko disappeared onto the roof.
“Someone else? Who are you talking about?” The boy who had been speaking jumped down out of the hatch.
“That girl. Bring her up, okay?” Mutsuko said, poking her head out from the hatch, as well.
“Um, hello,” the boy said shyly as he looked at Kanako.
“Hello,” Kanako smiled.
The boy was dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, and he looked like an elementary school student. He had a pretty face that resembled Mutsuko’s. Since he called her “Sis,” he must have been her little brother.
“Is it okay if I carry you?” he asked.
Kanako nodded.
He wrapped his arm around her waist. Kanako was surprised by how strong the arm felt.
The boy held Kanako in one arm as he jumped back up and grabbed the step.
Just as she wondered how he was going to do anything with one hand, the boy let go for one instant then grabbed the next step up. He did it again and again until they were on the roof in no time.
It felt noticeably hotter up on the roof. She couldn’t help but think it was because they were closer to the sun.
“Yu! Why didn’t you bring my shoes? You’re so thoughtless!” Mutsuko complained.
“How was I supposed to get your shoes? I was carrying a person! Fine, fine, I’ll go get them...”
While the siblings sparred, Kanako looked around the roof. It was a wide open space with no distinguishing features. There was no fence of any kind around it. It would be very easy to jump off.
“Were you expecting a water tank or something?” Mutsuko asked, as if reading her mind. “Lots of complexes don’t have them nowadays! This one uses intermediate tanks and pressure pumps to bring water to each apartment!”
“You know a lot about it...” Kanako said. She had no interest in that particular subject, but she was still pleased by this expansion of her knowledge.
“That’s nothing! There are a lot of apartment complexes in the city, so knowing what goes into them is an important survival technique! Oh, this is my little brother, Yu!” Mutsuko pointed out her brother, who was returning with the shoes, as if having forgotten him completely until she was already in the middle of her spiel.
“That’s not an introduction,” he grumbled. “Um, I’m Yuichi Sakaki.” He gave her a formal bow.
“Kanako Orihara. What are you two doing here?”
“I’m training Yu!” Mutsuko said as she replaced her shoes.
Kanako tilted her head in confusion.
“He’s climbing up and down the walls of the apartment building!” Mutsuko proclaimed. “Oh, climbing mountains is fine, but man’s modern frontier is the big city. Scaling skyscrapers is an important skill! That reminds me, Orihara, did you say you were gonna kill yourself? Is it because you’re bullied? I can see it! You’re pretty! I bet lots of people get jealous and want to bully you!” Mutsuko broached what most people would have considered to be an awkward subject without hesitation.
Kanako didn’t respond. This girl couldn’t possibly understand.
“Well, I guess that’s reason enough to want to kill yourself, but if the bullying’s gotten to ‘kill yourself’ levels, you should kill the bullies instead,” Mutsuko said. “It’s better than killing yourself, right? You look like you’re in middle school like me, so even if they caught you, you wouldn’t get the death penalty!”
“Sis... that’s not helping,” the boy said.
“Really? Okay, then, why not tell the police?” Mutsuko asked, undaunted. “You can also hire a lawyer, go to the PTA, confer with the Ministry of Education, or file a human rights complaint with the Ministry of Justice. I know that when you’re in middle school, you’re convinced that that’s all there is, but the world is really big! There are lots of things you can try! If you want to figure it out, I’ll help you!” Mutsuko clapped a hand to her chest, eyes shining as she walked right into Kanako’s personal space.
“Don’t ask my sister for help unless you want to see blood raining down from the sky,” the boy said. “Anyway, she didn’t say anything about bullying, and she could be joking about killing herself, so slow down a little, okay?”
Yuichi’s wincing admonishment suggested he found his sister’s behavior a bit rude. Compared to her, his thought processes seemed to be rather normal.
“Are you calling my judgment into question?!” Mutsuko exclaimed.
“It’s been mistaken plenty of times before!” he shot back.
Yuichi’s response was fraught with complicated emotions. He must have suffered frequently at his sister’s hands.
“Well, whatever!” Mutsuko seemed to recognize that, because she turned quickly away from him to look back at Kanako. “Anyway, life is important! Once you’re dead, there’s nothing else. Game over. It’s one thing to risk your life for what you believe, but suicide is out of bounds! It’s a loser’s way of thinking! Utterly unforgivable!”
Why did Mutsuko, this girl she had just met, feel so strongly about this? Kanako couldn’t understand.
“What? You’re basically saying ‘wanting to die makers you a useless loser, so go ahead and die already!’ That’s not helping...” Yuichi muttered, clearly finding it ridiculous.
“But setting that aside... Orihara, may I show you something?” Mutsuko ignored Yuichi’s complaint, and without waiting for a response from Kanako, began striding to the edge of the roof. Kanako and Yuichi came along with her.
There was a lip around the roof a mere 30 cm tall. Mutsuko jumped up onto it easily. Although Kanako had come here to jump off, she couldn’t do the same.
Kanako timidly leaned over and gazed down at the scenery below. The people and the cars all looked so small. It sent a chill up her spine.
“We’re on the roof of an 11-story building,” Mutsuko explained. “Each floor is about three meters, for a total of around 33 meters. Ignoring wind resistance, we can calculate that you’d hit the ground at about 91 kilometers per hour. Impact would come in about 2.5 seconds. It’s not a direct comparison, but imagine a car crashing into the wall at 91 kilometers per hour. Right? You’ve read that, right, Orihara?”
Kanako immediately knew what “that” referred to. It was a bestselling book about suicide that had been published before Kanako was born. It was true that it had been what inspired Kanako to jump. According to that book, to commit suicide by falling, you needed a height of 20 meters. About seven or eight stories. That was why she had chosen this 11-story building.
“Anyone who fell from here would definitely die,” Mutsuko said. “Is that what you think?”
“Yes. It is concrete below. That’s enough to kill anyone.” Kanako had investigated that much. Below them was the concrete entrance. No matter how she fell, she would die without question.
“I see,” Mutsuko said. “Now, excuse me, Orihara, but I need you to reconsider your suicide! Even if I have to take drastic measures!”
“Drastic measures?” Did she intend to hold her down? But Kanako no longer had any intention of killing herself here. She would do it somewhere else, another time.
“Yu! Come here!” Mutsuko called to Yuichi without answering Kanako’s question.
Yuichi came and stood obediently at Mutsuko’s side.
What happened next, Kanako would never forget.
“Hiyah!” Mutsuko let out an offhanded cry, and gave Yuichi a hard kick.
Yuichi began to fall. His face was contorted in shock. He reached out his hand to try to grab something, but Mutsuko just brushed it away.
It all happened in an instant, but to Kanako it felt like forever.
It was a sight that immediately drained the blood from her face.
Yuichi’s body tilted. He was falling off the side of the roof. Once he was completely out of sight, Kanako felt her legs grow limp.
Yuichi had fallen off the roof. In other words, he was dead. The clear realization of that caused Kanako’s mind to
go blank.
“Orihara! Orihara!” Mutsuko’s fervent yelling snapped her back to reality.
For a minute, Kanako had no idea what was going on. Then she remembered the sight of someone falling off a building.
She turned pale and sat up quickly.
“You surprised me, fainting like that!” Mutsuko exclaimed.
“Thank goodness. I was really worried...”
Mutsuko and Yuichi were looking down at her in concern.
“What?” Kanako asked. She was certain that Yuichi had fallen. Or had that been simply a waking dream?
“It’s okay,” Yuichi said. “I righted my posture and grabbed on to the wall. I used friction to slow my descent and ran down at a diagonal.” Yuichi’s explanation answered Kanako’s question.
“I was hoping it would serve as shock treatment, but I didn’t think you’d really faint!” Mutsuko cried.
“Shock treatment?! That was so sudden, I could have died!” Yuichi exclaimed.
“Oh, come on,” Mutsuko said. “You should have been ready the minute I told you to come over! It wouldn’t be very good training if I said, ‘Hey, I’m gonna push you off now!’ would it?”
Yuichi protested violently, and Mutsuko deflected it casually, and Kanako watched it all with eyes glazed over.
It certainly had been shocking.
Kanako had thought that Yuichi had died.
Could a person’s death really cause that much heartache? The realization overwhelmed her.
Even knowing that Yuichi was still alive, she couldn’t stop her heart from pounding. It hurt to breathe.
This was a curse. An image of death had been carved deeply onto her soul, and put a spell upon her heart.
Ever since then, Kanako had been unable to even think about suicide.
Chapter 1: An Eventful Road to the 2nd Term
A girl of roughly elementary school age was hard at work on a plate of strawberry waffles.
They were sitting in a cafe with a modern atmosphere. It was evening, but the restaurant’s lighting kept things as bright as day. Yuichi was at a table by the window, gazing at the girl sitting across from him with a skeptical expression.
“You said you were in trouble, right?” Aiko Noro, a petite girl his age sitting in the seat beside him, looked confused.
The Melancholy of the High School Girl Light Novel Author?! Page 1
