Five years ago, in seventh grade, I was almost killed.
There was a serial killer hiding in our town, and he killed himself just when the police were about to catch him.
The killer took sexual pleasure in killing, which is freaky enough, but among the notes that he left behind was one with my address and a detailed account of the route that I took to school.
Had he not killed himself, it turns out that I would've been his next victim.
The police investigated my family to see if they had any connection to the killer, just to be certain. Of course, we'd never even seen him before. My parents tried to keep it a secret from me, but I found out when the police started questioning me directly.
I would be lying if I said it wasn't a shock.
But more powerful than the shock was the unreal feeling that it gave me.
My life had been in the hands of someone with no connection to me at all. I just couldn't wrap my head around the idea, which is exactly how I got interested in that sort of thing to begin with.
I never told my friends why.
I knew they would look at me differently if I did. “The psycho liked her,” they would say, which is more than a good enough reason to put me on the bullied list. It was a bit too harsh of a truth to laugh off.
But just being interested in that sort of thing was enough to make me different, and the class tends to treat me like Doctor Murder, but it's a far cry from being bullied.
***
After lunch, we all went off to our fifth period classrooms.
Even though I was in the science program, my next class was Modern Japanese, a subject that automatically got on my nerves. Our school let you choose between science and humanities concentrations in your second year, but even so, we had to complete one course from the other program during our second year. An absurd requirement, if you ask me.
A friend from another class who was also forced to take Japanese walked across the covered walkway with me. Usually, there were three of us, but Niitoki-san was at a meeting for the discipline committee today.
As we walked, the PA came on that said, “... Miyashita Touka, second year, class C. Please, return to the infirmary at once. Miyashita Touka, second year, class C...”
“Hunh, wonder where Touka went?” the girl next to me asked. She was in the same class.
“She was in the infirmary?”
“Yeah, she got sick at the start of fourth bell...”
“Faking it?”
“Mm... she is dating a senior...”
“Skipping out for a date?”
“Maybe. But dating is against the rules, so don't tell Niitoki-san,” she said, putting her finger in front of her lips.
I grimaced back at her. “I would never.”
“They’re probably on the roof or something now... “ she said, glancing out the window. Suddenly, she let out a piercing shriek.
Startled, I asked, “Wh-what?”
“Th-th-th-there!” She pointed out the window, her finger trembling.
“What?”
“Boogiepop! On the roof!”
“Eh?” I stuck my head out the window.
But there was nothing.
“Nothing there.”
“There was! I saw it! It moved away!”
“You sure it wasn't somebody else? Miyashita-san?”
“I don't think so! It had a black hat on! Like a pipe!” she said, still in a panic.
Clearly, she was seeing things, but nobody believes that when it happens to them. Reverse psychology was more effective. If I pretended to believe her, she would start listening to me.
“Okay. Let's go see,” I said, and she spun to stare at me in horror.
“Hunh?”
“If Boogiepop is real, then I want to see him.”
“No! Don't! It's dangerous!”
“Don't worry. Go ahead, I'll meet you in class.”
I headed for the roof.
I ran up almost all of the stairs, and I was pretty out of breath by the time that I reached the door.
But the door to the roof was locked. Oh, right; they had belatedly sealed it off after someone had thrown themselves off.
I peered out the window. I could see most of the roof, but there was nobody there.
When I got down the stairs, she was waiting for me, looking worried.
“Wha-what happened?”
“Nothing there.”
“Really?”
“Yep. I looked everywhere.”
“Hunh. I guess I must have imagined it... “ she said, relieved.
“I guess,” I replied, surprised to find myself disappointed. As we headed to class, it occurred to me that there was a fire escape at the back of the roof, and if someone had gone down that, I wouldn’t have been able to see them. But it was too late to go check now.
Nothing like that happened again, and our peaceful, safe lives dragged on.
2.
“Say, Suema, what are murderers thinking?” Kyoko suddenly asked me, one day late in fall, as we were on our way home from school.
“Eh, why?”
The two of us were walking along the bank of the river. Kyoko and I were the only two members of our circle of friends that walked to school, so we always went home together. Most students take the bus to school. Hardly anyone walks, so there was no one but us on the street.
“Oh, no reason,” Kyoko dried up.
“You're always asking me stuff like that recently. What's up?”
“Oh, nothing. Never mind.”
But there had to be a reason for it.
“Tell me.”
“You see... “ Kyoko whispered very quietly.
“Yeah?”
“She's suspended now, right?”
“Hunh? Oh, you mean Kirima-san?”
Two weeks ago, she'd been suspended for smoking on school grounds. She was due back the next day, though.
“Do you think... she would really kill someone?”
“Hah?” I doubted my own ears. Sure, she was the odd girl out, but Nagi was still our classmate. She hardly deserved to be called a murderer.
“What are you talking about?”
“You said it yourself... when was it? We were eating lunch... “
That had been a long time ago. I had completely forgotten.
“Uh, did I? I might have...”
“Do you really think so?” Kyoko was creepily serious.
“Even if I did say that, it was just an example,” I hastily explained.
Kyoko’s expression didn't change. “The girl is scary.”
“Well, I'll grant that she's not easy to get to know...”
“She did something to this girl I know. She hasn't been the same since,” her voice trembled. She meant it. She wasn't kidding.
“Something? What?”
“Threatened her, I think.”
“For money?”
Kyoko shook her head. “No, not money. She's rich, you know.”
“Yeah. She has her own apartment. Then what?”
Kyoko didn't answer.
Like anyone on earth would, I told her that I could keep a secret, but she still didn't say anything, so I asked, “Does it have anything to do with why Kirima got suspended?”
“I don't know...”
“You don't know?”
“I feel like she got herself suspended because of it... “ Kyoko said, but I didn't follow.
Come to think of it, Nagi had not been suspended for smoking, but for having a cigarette in her lips.
And the place where she'd been caught -- the teacher's restroom. It would have been extremely strange if she had not been caught. A female teacher had found her, and Nagi had glared at her so fiercely that the she fled and got a male teacher, making quite a fuss.
She made no excuses. Or apologies.
She never did.
I had never once heard her say ’sorry’ during all the times that the teachers had yelled at her.
One time, a teacher sc
olded her for staring out the window, and Nagi had curtly quipped, “You're boring.” However, her grades were too good for the teachers to take any drastic measures.
Still, she skipped a lot.
We're not just talking leaving a bell early, either. No, she would drop the whole day; never even come to school... for three days running! Yet when she came back, she knew everything that we had covered while she was gone, and she could answer any question that the teachers threw at her.
Nobody knew what she did when she wasn't in school and no one ever had the guts to ask.
She was enigmatic and more than a little scary, so somewhere along the line her nickname became “The Fire Witch.” Word had it that this was because she knew some form of black magic, like the “Karma Dance,” which sounded plausible enough.
Even so, it was hard to imagine that she had intentionally gotten herself suspended. Suspensions went on your permanent transcript.
“That's going a bit overboard,” I told Kyoko, but she didn't answer.
She stared up into the air, muttering, “She's gonna kill me...”
This I could not ignore. “Why? What for?”
Suddenly, Kyoko's entire body shuddered once, then froze. “Eeeeee!”
I followed her line of sight.
There was a girl standing on the road a short distance from us. She had been sitting on the bank, and stood up when we approached.
She wore an old, worn leather jacket and thick leather pants. There were metallic guards on her knees and elbows, like what bikers wear. Her slightly wavy hair was bound in a bandanna, and beneath her eyebrows, her eyes were less glittering than gleaming. She glared at us... at Kyoko.
“I've been waiting for you, Kinoshita Kyoko,” she said, in her distinctive manly voice.
It was the suspended Kirima Nagi, in the flesh.
“No! Ahhh!” Kyoko screamed.
She fled behind me, shoving me towards Nagi.
Reeling, I almost smacked right into Nagi as she ran towards us.
But Nagi slid by me without so much as a glance in my direction and took off after Kyoko.
“W-wait!” I yelled as I hurriedly gave chase, but Nagi was fast. Looking closely, she was wearing big black boots. I thought they were rubber at first, but I was wrong. These were steel-toed work boots, the kind that construction workers wear. The kind that can't be crushed, even if several tons fall on them. Kick someone with these, and they might as well die.
This was clearly not a fashion statement. It was a level beyond biker wear or air sneakers.
The bag on her back was strapped to her body, and didn't budge as she ran. It was like...
(... like she was dressed for combat?!)
No normal high school girl would ever dress like that. Not even a gang member.
She looked more like a hitman.
“H-help me!” Kyoko yelled.
Nagi snarled back, “You call for help, and you'll have to talk to the cops!”
That shut Kyoko up. She stopped in her tracks.
That was enough for Nagi; she closed the distance between them, and tackled her mercilessly from behind. Both girls hit the ground, sliding down the river bank.
Wheezing, I caught up to them to find Nagi twisting Kyoko’s arm behind her. It looked just like a hold from something I'd seen on TV, like judo or kung fu. Kyoko couldn't move a muscle. We clearly hadn't learned this sort of wrestling at school.
“Ow! Ow! Ow! Let go!”
“Want me to go ahead and break it? Even you'll take some time to heal then, eh, Manticore?!”
I have no idea what she meant by that.
“No, don't! I'll never do it again, I swear!” Kyoko shrieked.
“Stop that, Kirima-san!” I cried, jumping on her, but she kicked me away.
She spoke to Kyoko again, “It's not just me. Echoes is looking for you too! Keep pretending and you'll lose an arm! And then, you won't have any hope of winning!”
What on earth was she talking about?
“I swear! I swear to God I'll never do drugs again! Please don’t! Please! “ Kyoko sobbed. Drugs?
“I know you killed Kusatsu Akiko! Don't lie to me!” Nagi roared.
I thought my heart was gonna stop.
Kusatsu Akiko-?
That was the name of a first year girl who had gone missing.
“I didn’t! I didn’t! It wasn’t me, I swear! She just gave me the drugs!”
There was an unpleasant popping sound from Kyoko's arm.
Kyoko’s eyes rolled up in her head.
“... Damn, you're normal!” Nagi snarled and let go.
Kyoko rolled down the bank.
“Kyoko!” I shouted, racing over to her and putting my arms around her.
“Don’t worry. I stopped before the joint was destroyed. It'll hurt for a few days and then be fine,” Nagi said.
Kyoko was trembling.
“What’s going on? !” I screamed.
“You should ask Kinoshita herself, Suema-san,” Nagi replied, her voice completely serene.
Kyoko's teeth were chattering. She'd been scared half to death. Understandably; so had I.
“This is going too far!”
“But it’s better than getting arrested, right, Kinoshita?” Nagi said. Kyoko stiffened. “I hope you learn from this. Next time, you’ll know better than to do stupid shit just because your friend s do it.”
She turned to leave.
“Wait!” I yelled.
Nagi looked at me, and said, “Suema-san, maybe it's time to let go of what happened five years ago. Get too hung up on something like that and it'll come back to haunt you.”
Her gruff voice matched her boyish face perfectly. But that wasn’t the problem.
“H-how did-?”
How did she know I'd nearly been murdered five years ago? !
“H-hold on a minute... “ I tried to stop her, but the Fire Witch stalked away without another word.
3.
I had to swear to keep it a secret before Kyoko would tell me anything.
“We... we were at the same Junior High. We were all on the table tennis team. Even in Junior High, we hung out together. Kusatsu was one of us, but a year younger. She was team captain when we were third years, so we sort of stopped thinking of her that way.
“So, three months ago, Kusatsu called to say she had something good, and that everyone should hook up with her.
“It was a weird sort of drug.
“No, not uppers; I think it was something else. It was a sort of bluish, see-through liquid. You took a sniff of it, and it was like your head opened up, like you became transparent, like every comer of your body was washed clean.
“Glue? No...I don't know, but it didn't have that strong of a smell.
“Kusatsu didn’t tell us much, but she said some pharmaceutical company had created it as a test product. Yeah, it was probably bullshit. But, hey, it was free, so we all tried it out...
“Right. She never charged us anything.
“She was never exactly a generous person, so I'm not sure why...
“And a little while later, people from our group started running away.
“No, I don't know where they went! They didn't tell anyone. They just, you know, vanished. Yeah, girls from other schools too.
“And then, Kusatsu vanished. By this point, the rest of us were starting to wonder if it had something to do with the drugs. We didn't know where she got it, but maybe it was something nobody was supposed to know about it and they were taking us out. Then suddenly one of us announced that she wasn't gonna have anything to do with us any more.
“This made us nervous. We had to know why.
“She said Kirima Nagi had threatened her. Somehow, she had found out about the drugs, and she had told her to never touch them again...
“Not just the one, though. She hit every girl...in order. I was the last one.
“Started two weeks ago, right after she was suspended. That's why I said she had intentionally gotte
n herself suspended -- so she would have a good reason for not corning to school, and so that she could move freely.
“No! I'm never touching drugs again!
“Hunh? No way! Why would I know Kirima Nagi?! I've always avoided her up to now.
“Please, don't tell anyone, Suema! Keep it a secret! I probably should never have told you either. But I had to. I just had to!
Keeping quiet was just too frightening... it was crushing me...”
I held Kyoko, comforting her until she stopped crying. Then we killed some time in a booth at First Kitchen, so that her face could return to normal before I took her back home.
It was night by then, and as I walked through the darkened streets, I thought things over.
Her fragmented story suggested that she had only seen a small part of what was really going on. I couldn't guess much from what she'd told me, but it sounded like she hadn't been one of the ringleaders of this group of ex-table tennis team players. More like she did whatever the much less stable girls told her to; just a third wheel, hanging on to the cool kids.
She wasn't even a victim. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Nagi had said Kusatsu Akiko had been killed...
And she knew about my past.
But... how?
Who was she?
Should I tell the school... or the police?
(But I promised Kyoko... )
If word got out that Kyoko had done drugs, that would be it for her -- she'd be finished. It wouldn't end at suspension, either; she'd be expelled as an example to the other students. I didn't want to do that to her.
It was very dark outside.
The streetlight above me had clearly not been changed in years, and it was flickering madly.
“............”
I stopped walking.
I opened my bag under the unsteady light, and thanks to my bad habit of carrying far too much stuff around with me all of the time, I was able to get out the class directory. It listed not only phone numbers, but also addresses.
I looked up the address of the person three names before my own.
Somewhat surprisingly, Kirima Nagi, like me, lived close to school. I could walk there.
(Okay, let’s do it!)
I snapped my bag closed and walked as fast as I could in that direction.
Boogiepop and Others Page 5
