“Well, we talked to a girl who looks exactly like you yesterday. Her name was Kayano Kujo.”
Amemiya flinched.
“You recognize that name, don’t you?”
Tohko leaned forward.
Amemiya’s face lost all of its color and her lips trembled. She didn’t try to speak.
The nurse came back with the pills.
“All right, now you must take these. And eat your meals, too.”
Amemiya accepted the pills with a small, bony hand and started to leave the room.
“Wait! Are you really not the girl we met?”
The girl’s thin shoulders were trembling again. Without looking up, Amemiya murmured, “I think… you must have met my ghost.”
Tohko’s breath caught. I felt as if in that moment the air had frozen solid.
I’m already dead, after all.
Kayano’s words echoed through my mind once more.
Did that mean that Amemiya and Kayano were the same person and that Kayano was a ghost who possessed her? The word ghost was on the notes she’d left for us, too. That and hate you and it hurts…
Had the ghost possessing Amemiya written those mysterious numbers, too?
Amemiya told us nothing more. She bit her lip painfully and bowed her head; then she left the nurse’s office.
He swung a pickax down on the grave where she rested.
A pale flash of lightning illuminated his wet form in the darkness, and rain pelted against his skin like shrapnel. His hair tossed about in the gusting wind, and with bloodshot eyes he cried out.
“Kayano! Kayano! Come back to me!
“I would reverse the flow of time if it meant I could see you once more! I would bring the dead back to life!”
The graveyard was an endless forest of crosses planted over the dead, but there was only one soul he sought.
Sweat and rain dripped from his hair and over his brow, and his eyes grew ravenous. As he continued to dig into her grave, he was a man possessed.
Yes. It was not over. She had betrayed him, had crushed their beautiful dollhouse underfoot, had trod it into dust. She had cruelly ridiculed his hopes. She had never paid for it. Half of his soul had been torn out and shredded. She would never understand the true depths of his despair and hatred.
I will never forgive you for leaving me behind. Until his revenge was complete, she would have no peace.
“Wake up, Kayano!
“The other half of your soul calls to you from atop your grave!
“Open your casket and crawl out of the dark, damp earth!
“You will atone for it! With your body, your voice, your hair, your lips, your entire existence!”
“Hmm. Hotaru Amemiya, eh?”
Classes were over for the day. Maki had come to the school yard to see how Tohko was feeling (or rather, to tease her about seeing ghosts), and after Tohko had told her the entire story of the night before, her lips curled into an unexpected smile of pleasure.
“My, my, this is certainly getting eerie, Tohko.”
“What does that mean?”
Tohko looked up at Maki, clearly wishing she would leave. Tohko was carrying on the stakeout undaunted, and I was with her, a physics book open in my lap. But all I could think was, The exams are next week…
“Do you know her, Maki?”
“She was a year below me in middle school. We were in the art club together. She’s very reserved, so I barely ever talked to her. There’s a rumor about Hotaru Amemiya, though.”
“More rumors?” Tohko glowered.
“You haven’t heard? Anyone who gets close to her is cursed.”
“C-cursed—?” Tohko’s voice was choked, and even I looked up without meaning to.
Maki gazed sadistically at the tense rictus of Tohko’s face and then continued. “That’s right. Hotaru Amemiya tends to find herself at the center of supernatural events. Horrible things happen to the people who get involved with her, things that put their lives in danger. You two should be careful. Although maybe you’ve already been cursed?”
Tohko shook her head firmly and stood up.
“Are you serious? Maybe you could scare an elementary school kid with ghosts and curses and all this unscientific nonsense. Obviously Amemiya knows something about Kayano Kujo. When I asked her about it in the nurse’s office, she told me it was her ghost, but if I let that scare me and gave up, I would lose the respect of the book club’s alumni. Yeah! So what if she’s cursed? I’m a book girl, and I’ve read the legendary folklorist Kunio Yanagita’s Legends of Tono cover to cover!”
“How valiant,” Maki joked, applauding.
I had reached the conclusion that I couldn’t be involved in this anymore, so I closed my book and stood up.
“Ready, Konoha? We’re going to keep watch tonight and catch Kayano Kujo and expose this conspiracy… Hey, where are you going? Konoha?”
“I’m going to the bathroom.”
“With your bag?”
“I want to make sure my eyebrows are on straight and fix my blush.”
As I walked away, Tohko shouted after me, “No way! You don’t wear makeup, do you? Hey, what are you laughing at, Maki? N-no! He’s not abandoning me. Right, Konoha? You’re coming back, right? Promise! Hey, are you listening? Konoha! Konohaaa!”
Of course, I didn’t have the slightest intention of going back.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t wonder about the link between Kayano Kujo and Hotaru Amemiya. The events of the night before had carved an unforgettable impression into my heart, and Amemiya’s words were deep with meaning. I had as much curiosity as anyone else.
But I wasn’t about to get wrapped up in this hassle more than I already had been. Most important of all, the midterms were coming up fast. Club activities should have been suspended before the exams. Tohko would probably give up and go home soon enough.
As I was hurrying away through the school yard, a girl who had been in my class last year came running up to me with some other girls, looking pleased. “Konoha! There you are!”
Huh? What was this?
“There’s a super-hot guy looking for you. Hurry up!”
Surrounded by the giggling group of girls, I was hurried off without any explanation. We passed Kotobuki on the way, and she watched me go by, wide-eyed.
When we reached the school gates, the guy Tohko had hit and knocked to the ground the night before was standing there.
“What’s up. Remember me?”
“You’re Tohko’s—”
“Ryuto Sakurai. Pleased to meet ya, Konoha.”
He bent his giant body to greet me and then tossed a grin to the girls. “Muchas gracias for bringin’ him. See ya around.”
He gave the girls a wink; then he grabbed my arm and started walking off. “Let’s go somewhere quieter.”
I heard the girls sighing longingly behind us and hurried to speak up. “H-hold on, you’re—”
“Call me Ryuto. You’re older than me and all.”
“I am?”
Now that he mentioned it, I realized that he’d been wearing street clothes last night, but today he was wearing a school uniform. The insignia was for a boys’ school nearby. And if he was younger than me, that meant…
“You’re a first-year?!”
“Sure am. I managed to pass last year.”
He’d been in middle school until last year—with a body like that?! And now that he was a first-year in high school, he was three-timing and having lovers’ quarrels on the street at night? Who was this guy?
“Do you need something from me? How do you know my name?”
“Tohko talks about you at home. Today Konoha wrote me such and such a story; he wrote me that; it was sweet; it was spicy; it was bitter; it was salty. All of that.”
I caught my breath and not just in embarrassment that Tohko talked about me so much.
“You know that Tohko eats stories?”
Ryuto looked at me and a corner of his mouth twitched up.
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“Yeah, I do. We do live together. Every morning for breakfast she eats kids’ books like Guri and Gura or The Children of Noisy Village. She tells us everything about it, then rips through it in total glee.”
When I heard that, I felt as if some nameless indignation had pierced my heart. It didn’t really matter… So what if someone else knew Tohko’s secret? So what if he knew her better than I did? But for some reason my stomach knotted.
I carefully removed my arm from his grasp.
“Do you eat books, too?”
“What do you think?”
His sculpted, masculine lips curled into another smile. His eyes were like a carnivore’s, and when I looked into them, I felt my heart and body shrinking. It was sort of similar to how Maki made me feel.
“In any case, you want to go get something to eat? Then you’ll know if I’m like Tohko or not.”
The place he chose was a fast-food restaurant decorated to look like a Western saloon. The tables and chairs were made of dark brown wood, and a dartboard hung on the wall.
Once there, Ryuto ordered a hamburger at least six inches thick piled with bacon, lettuce, mushrooms, and cheese; a mountain of french fries sprinkled with basil; and a large soda.
“There you go, Ryu.”
“ ’Preciate it, Harumi.”
An older girl he seemed to know brought his hamburger out, and he turned on the charm. Then he dug into his food.
He opened his mouth wide, smearing red ketchup on the corners of his mouth, and swallowed ravenously before shoveling French fries as big around as his thumb into his mouth.
Leaving the French toast and herbal tea I’d ordered untouched on the table, I just stared at Ryuto as he ate.
Tohko was capable of eating the same things we ate. She could take a bite of food and swallow it, but she had told me that it had no taste whatsoever, just like if we tried to eat paper.
Tohko’s concepts of “sweetness” and “spiciness” were not strictly the same as ours, because she had no idea what shortcake or apple pie tasted like. She simply used her imagination to draw parallels between the foods we ate and what she tasted in books so that she could gush about them.
Mm. This must be what a warm apple pie with whipped cream tastes like.
So the fact that Ryuto was devouring his hamburger with such zeal didn’t mean he was an ordinary human being. It could have been just an act.
But…
“Aren’t you gonna eat? It’s a lot better when it’s still warm.”
“… You set me up.”
He was just a normal human being like the rest of us who ate bread and drank water after all. He had led me on, and I had gone along with it completely.
“That’s not very nice. All I did was ask if you wanted to get somethin’ to eat.”
He really was a lot like Maki—like how he could have a smile on his face and something totally different up his sleeve.
I couldn’t believe that in trying to escape Tohko I’d gotten snatched up by the son of the family she lived with. I had a bad feeling I was about to get wrapped up in some kind of trouble.
I stuck a fork into a piece of my French toast and asked grumpily, “So? What did you want? Is this about Tohko?”
“Nah, this has nothing to do with her. Actually, you need to keep it quiet from her.”
He wiped the ketchup off his mouth with a thumb and then licked it off.
“There’s a girl I like at your school. Do you think you could help me out?”
How had things turned out this way? He had removed all of the people in his way and was finally about to claim her—and now this. Why?
Everything had been proceeding according to plan. He had employed every possible means to restore the dollhouse she had annihilated, and he had not feared even to dip his hands in blood or to commit sacrilege against God.
There was no God in this world, anyway. The devil was already laughing at his side, and that was the most reliable ally of all.
No, he had made no mistakes. But when he had come here, everything had been headed toward ruin.
There was no time.
He had to go back.
He needed to go back in time to the day that he met her.
If it would grant his wish, he would give the devil his soul or anything else.
There was no time.
He felt light-headed, and a strangled cry escaped his throat. His stomach twisted painfully and nausea rose up in him.
Would she be taken again? Would she betray him again? Would she mock his dreams and run from him?
He would not allow it!
He would reach his hands out to her small face, wavering like a mirage, and he would crush it like a tomato.
He would not allow it! He would not allow it! He would not allow it! He would not allow it! He would not allow it!
The next day after first period ended, Tohko came to my classroom with a deep frown on her face.
“Why did you leave yesterday, Konoha? I waited soooo long for you. I’d checked The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler out of the library, so I started reading it, and I actually finished the whole thing.”
“Um, well… I’m glad you could have a nice, relaxing read outside.”
I tried to smile when I said it, but Tohko slapped her hand down on my desk and leaned in toward me.
Oh god—everyone was looking at me. Kotobuki was glaring.
“That’s not all! Do you have any idea the kind of fear I experienced after you left yesterday?”
“N-no, I don’t. Did something happen?”
As soon as I asked, Tohko looked like she was about to cry. Her lip was trembling feebly.
“S-since you never came back, I went to the club room to look for you, and there was a bouquet of black lilies on the table.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t a birthday present from one of your fans?”
“My birthday is a long ways away. And don’t black lilies make you think of anything, Konoha?”
“Not really.”
“Black lilies mean ‘cursed.’ ”
“So you’re saying you were cursed?”
Tohko covered her ears with both hands and shook her head desperately. Her long braids danced through the air together.
“No! Don’t say it! I refuse to accept it! But… you know…” She looked at me, her eyes timid once again. “I would be even more cursed if I threw them out, so I got a beaker from the chem lab to put them in, and I heard a girl crying outside. But when I opened the door, no one was there. I was sure I was just imagining things, so I closed the door. But then I heard her sobbing again. This time I walked really quietly and tried to open the door slooowly… but there was still no one there. I thought I must be so tired that I was hearing things, so I decided to go home. And on my way—”
I gulped, and Tohko looked at me forlornly. “Three black cats crossed my path!”
I nearly buried my head on my desk.
“There’s more. A flock of crows flew by overhead, too!”
“Because it was nighttime and the crows were going home, too.”
“And then this morning, this was in my locker.”
Tohko showed me a white envelope.
“A love letter?”
“No.”
She pulled a letter out and unfolded it; then she held it out to me. It was a chain letter. One of those things that said you had to send the same thing to five different people in a week or you would have bad luck.
“I’ve never seen a real chain letter before.”
“I haven’t, either, not since elementary school when they were trendy for a little while. L-look at who it’s from, Konoha.”
Tohko trembled as she pointed at the signature. It read, “Sincerely, The Ghost.”
This looked more like a prank than an actual curse…
“And then? This morning there was another note inside the mailbox. And that’s stepped way up, toooooo!”
Tohko showed me the stepped-up note.
“Hmm.”
It certainly had been stepped up: The note looked like brush writing on singed and yellowed paper and mentioned disturbing things like a “herd of possessed swine,” “I’m come home,” and “I shall make you swallow the carving knife.”
“We have to do something about this right away or else the book club is going to get attacked by a herd of possessed pigs! I’m going to get a butcher knife with a ribbon around it instead of a bouquet of black lilies. The book club is facing a threat to its very existence, Konoha.”
“We’ve been standing on that precipice for a while, in my opinion.”
We did have only two members, after all. That didn’t quite rise to the level of an actual club.
Tohko glared at me sharply.
“Try to be serious about this, Konoha. Listen, come to the club room as soon as school lets out today. We have to work out our strategy. Promise?”
The bell announcing the end of break rang, and after making doubly and triply sure, Tohko scrambled off.
Kotobuki had been glowering at me the entire time.
Geez.
I felt bad for Tohko, but I had plans after school.
During class, I gazed out the window and thought back over what Ryuto had told me the day before.
“There’s a girl I like at your school. She’s a second-year like you. Name’s Hotaru Amemiya… You know her, Konoha?”
Did I know her? Wasn’t that the girl Tohko and I had carried to the nurse’s office? I was flabbergasted.
“Actually, we’re already going out, but something seems off. It’s not going well, I guess.”
Ryuto just kept saying one astonishing thing after another.
“What?! But don’t you have other girlfriends? Three of them?”
“Oh yeah, I’m going out with them, too. There’s two or three others. Or is it four or five? They change so fast, I can’t keep track.”
I stared wide-eyed at Ryuto, but he laughed it off without the slightest sign of guilt.
“If you’ve got that many girls, who cares if it’s not going well with one of them? I mean, do you actually like Amemiya?”
“Well, to be honest, it’s more like I think I’ll like her a whole lot soon.”
Book Girl and the Famished Spirit Page 4
