Chapter 3
Letters and Little Brown Feathers
Being a tender, kind-hearted girl living in one of the higher income territories of Saitama, Reiko Morita did not expect much, and lived a life that had been a favorably average one. She had two loving and doting parents that she asked little of and always received much from. Their home was a fine, but simple one, and Reiko was satisfied with this.
Her room was simple as well, with space that was not too broad, but enough to suit her needs, and a tall ceiling that had gray walls because she had thought black would be a little too extreme. Although, she did think the black curtains over her window went really well with the gray. For decoration, she only had two paintings. One, of a stoic lighthouse looking over an ocean horizon at sunrise, on the wall above her desk. And the other, of a forest clearing, blanketed in snow, with a full moon shining over everything, on the wall next to her bed. Her bed was nestled in a corner by her window, with a folded blanket of a crescent moon and stars at its foot.
Her black cat, Cypress, always waited patiently for her when she got home from school, curled up in his spot on the blanket.
The space was always clean, not because she absolutely needed it to be, but because she liked it that way.
Reiko maintained a satisfactory grade average in school, but the only courses she excelled in were her sciences. She loved science, and along with her paintings, she had a few framed diagrams of the periodic table, galaxy systems, and the structure of the atom. Her desk usually had school work arranged on it, but she had research documentation and a few folders of studies as well. Her computer held more files of this nature, and the small bookshelf next to her desk held several mainstream titles, written by renowned researchers and experts in specific fields of study, along with a few diagnostic manuals for referencing. She even had a book on alchemy—for light reading, of course.
When Reiko was still in elementary school, her parents had noticed her acute interests, and they had bought her a few kits and experimentation sets over the years. Reiko was ecstatic and grateful for these, and she used them in frequent procession, looking over and studying the biological structures of plants in their vast backyard, observing and manipulating changes in the cell structures in condiments from their kitchen, and analyzing her and Cypress’ hairs along with anything else she could find.
During her junior high years, Reiko had gone through a forensics phase, where she had kept up with several crime solving series on television, and even read a few mystery mangas. Her parents bought her some forensic experimentation sets, along with chemicals, which they had been wary of allowing her to make use of. However, they were trusting of her meticulous and cautious nature.
Reiko had set to work with trying everything out. One of the sets came with a black light and UV glasses, which she thoroughly enjoyed making use of.
Once, while playing around with it in her room, she had coaxed a huntsman spider out of its hiding place—which caused her a considerable amount of panic—and dispatched Cypress to exterminate it. He merely batted it around before getting bored once it submitted and curled up.
She’d even had her childhood friend Sumi over to test on a few times and show her what she could do. Sumi always joked that she would grow up to be the action hero detective, while Reiko would be her intelligent science friend, helping her solve the crimes.
But this was all for fun, and by the time she started high school, Reiko had trouble figuring out which field she wished to pursue. She placed these items, along with her other experimentation materials, under her bed for future consideration.
Reiko had gone through several phases of interests since her late childhood, from astronomy to botany, basic biology, and chemistry. But something that had always piqued her interest was human anatomy. She enjoyed the muscular structure, and its ability to heal, persevere, and grow stronger, even after intense abuse. She could list all of the 206 bones in the human frame by their full Latin titles, and had been working on the same for the other structures. She was enticed by the nervous system, and how it responded to different stimuli with the secretion of fluids and neurotransmitters. Reiko did not know exactly what career she wished to pursue after high school, but one thing was certain, she knew she wanted something in human studies.
From childhood, Reiko had possessed a significant fear of the paranormal and supernatural. This of course, stuck with her well into her adolescence. Once, when she was little, she had watched a ghost film with her parents that made her especially paranoid of sleeping with her closet door open. She even stuffed a bunch of items and clothes under her bed, to be sure that nothing could find space down there to exist. Thankfully, she had Cypress to protect her over the next couple nights, only, he was a kitten at the time. When she was in junior high, she had attempted to face this fear by viewing a movie with Sumi. Sumi had chuckled as Reiko whimpered while clinging to her arm, hiding her face behind her shoulder.
Reiko had never claimed to believe in paranormal happenings. They were simply something beyond her own comprehension. She could not fathom the idea of things that could not be explained by reason and science. Through this, she attempted a short series of research on the matter, but gave up because all she discovered were tales of lore and rumors of deformed monsters roaming Japan, things that could neither be proven nor disproven. The only thing the research proved to be was another fright for her, and she hoped her computer had not become cursed, even if she didn’t believe in such things.
Though she was shy, Reiko had a number of friends in school. Sumi had been her first friend, and through her, she had met several others in junior high and when she started high school. Sumi had always been the energetic, outgoing type, with some odd interests of her own, like action films and first person shooters.
Reiko cherished her friends and they seemed to adore her, even if they could not understand her unusual interests. Most had trouble seeing why she could be so interested in what they thought was a bland and straightforward field of study that required way too much schooling.
When she wasn’t home spending time with family, researching, or studying, she was out with everyone else. They would meet after classes ended and explore new places to eat and have fun. She enjoyed this time with them, even if it could be a little discomforting for her on occasion when they went somewhere unfamiliar.
At the beginning of her first year at Aki Guro, she had been excessively nervous at first, as all kinds of fears troubled her when she started a new year at a new school. However, Sumi and her friends were her support, and eventually, everything seemed just like it was in junior high, except the uniforms had changed. She enjoyed how nicely the tan went with the black on hers. Her friends took turns marveling at how each other looked in their new wardrobe, and said Reiko’s uniform made her look mysterious with her short black hair and glasses. She liked wearing a black velvet choker with almost everything, and her friends said it was cute and alluring, though she wasn’t so sure about this.
She was now among older peers, the school was much bigger and easier to get lost in, and some of the customs had changed. Really, she was just glad that the school work was no different.
High school life was calm and simple, exactly what she hoped for, and her remaining friends from junior high had picked up where they left off, with some additional names added to their numbers.
It wasn’t until late autumn that Reiko began noticing a change. It had occurred to her when she and her friends had stopped at a café after doing karaoke. They had been seated outside and their talk had been lively as usual, when the strangest feeling crept up on her. She dismissed it at first, thinking it was just one of the sensations of discomfort she felt from time to time when in an unfamiliar place, but they had stopped at this café a few times before, which made it more inexplicable.
Reiko felt like she was being watched.
Momentarily, she looked around, while her friends conversed beyond her attention.
Maybe it
was some form of intuition telling her another friend was approaching, but she didn’t see anyone she recognized. Maybe she had seen someone that she recognized earlier and her mind had been sending her a subconscious message to expect a surprise visit.
She wasn't one to believe in psychology, actually, she wasn't sure what her opinions of it were, based on the fact that some of the articles she had read had claimed it to be a pseudo-science.
Reiko was not typically the talker of her group, but when her friends noticed that she had become quieter than usual, the questions as to what was bothering her started. She waved them off and said it was nothing, which was followed up with replies as to how she was such a deep thinker.
The feeling did not return for the remainder of that day and she later returned home to spend some time with Cypress, casting it off as something strange that most people experienced from time to time.
It wasn’t until a few days later, while at school, that it happened again. She met with a few of her friends that morning before classes started, and was talking about the upcoming tests. The weather was definitely getting colder, but the trees around the school still had a healthy showing of foliage, one of the many prides of the campus.
Reiko suddenly began feeling very self-conscious, like when she was being recorded with a camera, and she turned immediately, peering around the open space of the entrance path.
None of the students stood out. There were a few groups standing around the blankets of foliage, but no one seemed to be doing anything out of the ordinary.
Again, she waved it off and tried to think nothing more of it.
The feeling persisted to return on occasion. Sometimes it was during lunch, sometimes while walking home. It even occurred once when she was in the library, and after frantically checking her area, she left immediately.
It continued, and the intervals of time from one instance to the next became shorter and shorter. Eventually, Reiko became tense all the time. Constantly, she felt as though eyes were on her. She began keeping the curtains to her window closed, which made it difficult sometimes for her to wake up in the morning. She stopped going on her late evening walks, and missed being able to watch the stars appear as the sun was setting, while the street lamps in her neighborhood flitted to lumination. She requested that she and her friends eat inside the school’s cafeteria a few times. When this didn’t work, she either relied on their company to comfort herself, or said she had something to take care of, and ate alone in her classroom. She rarely went out with them after school, and usually stated she had errands to run and then went straight home. This concerned them, and a few times she received many questions at once that she painfully could not answer with full honesty.
Mid-November became late December. She celebrated Christmas and New Years with her relatives, and felt reasonably safe. When it came time for school to start again in January, she could not go. She feigned fatigue or illness and managed to skip a day or two, though the thought of having to deal with this while at school did not make her feel well to begin with. A few times, she forced herself to go, but it eventually boiled down to the realization that she would have to tell her parents everything.
When she did, they had trouble understanding what she was conveying, but were supportive nonetheless, and decided she should speak with a therapist.
Reiko did not want this, but she did not argue against it. She thought maybe it would help. She was not willing to blatantly declare that people did not suffer from mental disorders. The thought that this might be her case sent horrible shivers through her body. Maybe psychology and therapists could help her out in this part of her life, where she didn’t have the answers. Maybe there was some form of solid evidence that this was simply her imagination latching on to a thought and running wild with it.
After Reiko explained what her life had been like and how it had changed, the therapist could not give her a solid answer. After a few more sessions, the therapist came to a diagnosis that she was suffering with some simple anxiety, due to stress and her age, and that the paranoia was a result of her mind wanting to subconsciously create a more active lifestyle that was contrary to her quiet one. Reiko was prescribed a mild dose of an anti-depressant that would calm her and allow her to feel more like herself.
Her parents drove her to pick up the prescription, and after they returned home, Reiko went quietly to her room and closed the door.
She sat on her bed and stared at the pill capsule in her hands. Cypress was curled up in his spot and purring, just happy to have her home.
“Why is this happening to me, Cypress?”
She looked at her furry best friend. His lush, green eyes shut and opened slowly in response.
“How can something like this just happen to someone?”
The pills worked, and in a short time, Reiko found herself joyfully spending time with her friends again. She never told them, not even when they asked what had been bothering her, and made up a lie that she had not been feeling well. Her hope was that in time, she could be weaned off of the anti-depressants, and that things could go completely back to normal.
And then, Reiko received a phone call.
She had been in her room with Cypress, lying in the dark and watching a favorite show on her phone, when the show was interrupted and the screen lit up with an incoming call prompt. It was some random number she didn’t know.
It could have been a wrong number, or one of her friends calling from a new phone.
She flipped the answer button.
“Hello?”
There was no voice on the other end. The line was silent.
“Who is this?”
Still no answer…
Click...
Her phone played the short call ended jingle.
She figured it must have been a wrong number. Wrong number calls happened all the time where the other line hung up without a word. It had happened to her a few times when she got her first phone. It was a good thing she was on the medication, or her mind might start spinning this in all sorts of ways.
Her days continued in their calm lull, until late January, when the letters came.
The first one was found on her doorstep.
She had been leaving to meet up with her friends when she stepped out and her eyes glided over an envelope lying on the doormat. It was just a plain, white envelope. However, it was addressed to her, with only her name written on the front in such detail and elegance that it might as well have been stamped.
She picked it up and looked it over. There was a pleasant smell coming from it, but she didn’t know what the fragrance was.
Her medication had been holding up well in maintaining her delicate mood, but upon gazing at the fine penmanship of the only characters in the center of the page, spelling out her first name, she could feel slight pricks of curious fear moving up her spine.
She didn’t leave and instead brought it inside to find her dad’s letter opener.
She brought them to the dining room table and opened the envelope.
The parchment the letter was written on had been folded with very fine creases, and the handwriting was just as elegant. There were no lines on the parchment, but the characters seemed to remain in file, as if there had been.
‘I have admired you from afar for so long...’
She wasn’t sure what she was reading. It didn’t seem real. For a few moments, the letter in her hands, the sofa she sat on, the coffee table, the room she was in, and the house, did not seem real at all. She had noticed how cold her fingers felt as her eyes darted across the page from behind her glasses. The writing was only long enough to take up the one page. Her name was only mentioned the one time. When she finished, she realized the writer had not left a signature, only the promise that he would ‘see her soon.’
Eiichi P.I., Vol. 1 Page 16
