“Left town?”
Teshigawara’s face looked kind of shocked, and Mei gave a slight nod. “Yup. I hear there are plenty of people who do it every year. They get out of Yomiyama for summer break.”
“Because the danger doesn’t reach outside Yomiyama, you mean? I wonder if that’s true.”
“According to Mr. Chibiki, there’s a pretty good possibility that it is, anyway.”
“Hm-m-m. So then, what? The kids who booked it told their families what’s going on?”
“Maybe so. But there’s that taboo against talking about this stuff, even with your family, so…It’s a tough problem.”
“Hm-m-m.”
The bridge of Teshigawara’s nose filled with wrinkles, then he spat, “I don’t even know.” Then he turned to look at Mei again and said, “Anyway, you really are a weird one, Misaki. You’re wrapped up in this, too, but you act all cool about it, like it’s someone else’s problem.”
“Do I?”
“It almost makes me think you’re…” Teshigawara trailed off for a few beats there, but in the end he went on in a tone of indifference that sounded pretty deliberate. “Maybe underneath it all, you’re the ‘extra person’ for this year.”
“Me?” A shadow of a smile went through her right eye, the one unobscured by her eye patch. “I don’t think I am, anyway.”
“…Figured.”
“Yeah…But you know, they say the ‘extra person’ hiding in the class doesn’t even know that they’re ‘the casualty.’ So maybe…”
Mei was joking about it now, but when the same topic had come up at her house before, I remembered her flatly telling me something different.
I know that I’m not “the casualty.”
Why was that? How had she been able to say that with such assurance?
The question bugged me.
“But it could in fact be you, Teshigawara,” Mei said with another faint smile. “What do you think?”
“M-me?” Teshigawara reeled, his eyes wide, and he pointed at the tip of his nose. “No way…C’mon, quit joking around.”
“Are you sure there’s ‘no way’?”
“Hey, I’m alive! I’ve got an incredibly healthy appetite for food and for worldly possessions, and I don’t have a clue what I could have ever died from. I’m not trying to brag, but I’ve got super-vivid memories of my whole life, ever since I was a kid.”
Watching Teshigawara’s frantic response, I couldn’t help letting a laugh burst out of me. And yet…
That didn’t mean I was denying the possibility that he could in fact be the “extra person” for this year. Inside, I was working hard to think it over calmly.
Who is “the casualty”…?
Conscious all the time that the question written on Mei’s desk was even more crucial now.
3
Of course, Mr. Kubodera’s sudden death became a topic of conversation at my grandparents’ house in Koike.
Ever since May, my grandmother seemed to always respond to the continuing deaths of people linked to third-year Class 3 by uttering “How frightening” in an effusive loop. When I gave her a quick background on Mr. Kubodera’s suicide, she’d switched to a loop of “How terribly sad.” As usual, I didn’t know how much of the discussion my grandfather had really understood. Only that whenever he heard the words “death” or “died,” he reacted acutely every time. Then he would say, like he had before, “I don’t want to go to any more funerals.” Or he would suddenly tear up or start weeping quietly…That was how it went.
As for Reiko, she was considerate enough to say, “It must have been such a shock for all of you,” but she was consistently tight-lipped about the incident. I suppose that was to be expected, really. I had gotten the message on that, but…
“You can’t remember anything from fifteen years ago?”
I couldn’t keep myself from asking the question yet again, after all.
“That year you were a third-year in middle school, you said that the ‘disasters’ had started, and then they stopped partway through the year. Why? What stopped them? Don’t you remember?”
No matter how often I asked, however, Reiko would only hang her head morosely.
“You said something happened during summer break. So what was it?”
“…That’s a good question.” Reiko propped a hand under one cheek and sank into thought. Then, finally, her expression touched by insecurity, she murmured, as if to herself, “That summer…Ritsuko died. But that means staying shut up in the house would have been worse…Right, so I went to the camp on Yomiyama…”
“A camp?”
This was the first I’d heard of it. Unconsciously, I leaned forward.
“You guys had that? Camping over summer break? Like a school trip to the mountains?”
“It wasn’t as full-blown as that. It was just our class, I think.”
“What’s ‘the camp on Yomiyama’?”
“I…”
Reiko struggled for an answer. My grandmother had been off to one side, listening to our conversation, but just then she spoke up. “She means Mount Yomi, I’m sure.”
“…What?”
“Yomiyama was originally the name of a mountain. The mountain came first, and then the town, so the town took its name from the mountain.”
Ah…That reminded me—there was a mountain to the north of the town actually called Yomiyama. I remembered hearing about that from Reiko herself. Right—that time she’d come to visit me while I was hospitalized, back in April.
“Do the people here call it that? ‘Mount Yomi’?”
“That’s right.” My grandmother nodded triumphantly. “When we were young, your grandpa and I would hike the mountain all the time. You can see the entire town from the summit, which is quite a lovely view.”
“Wow.” I turned my eyes back to Reiko. “So you had your camp during summer break at the mountain Yomiyama. A class trip just for third-year Class 3?”
“…Yeah.” Her face hadn’t lost its unease. Haltingly, she replied, “At the foot of the mountain, there’s this tiny building. The original owner used to go to North Yomi, but he donated it to the school a long time ago. So they used to use it sometimes for camping trips or whatever. When we went, the head teacher recruited people to go and…”
“What happened then?” I asked, piling on. “Did something happen at the camp?”
“…I think so, maybe.” Reiko dropped her hand from her cheek and gave a slow shake of her head. “I just can’t remember. I’m pretty sure that something happened, but then to actually tell you what that was…”
“Oh.”
“What a cop-out, right? I’m sorry.”
Reiko let out a tortured sigh.
“No, it’s okay,” I murmured, unable to say aloud the words Please don’t apologize.
I had all kinds of complex feelings about it, but when I saw Reiko suffering, my heart started to hurt. Plus…
After all, it had been fifteen long years ago, not to mention being an event linked to the “disasters.” Since she was directly affected by it, maybe it was inevitable that her memory had gotten so incredibly blurry.
It seemed pointless to keep questioning her right now. Although, slight as it was, I felt as though I’d gotten my hands on a clue.
I would just try asking Mr. Chibiki about it. And maybe get his opinion on it.
With this plan in mind, I told Reiko, “It’s fine; don’t worry,” and pasted on a clumsy smile for her. “Please don’t push yourself too hard, Reiko. It’s fine.”
4
The morning of the 17th, a Friday.
The nightmares had stopped tormenting me the night before. It could have been Teshigawara’s assurances, which had come down in a wisecracking tone, or I could have been more relaxed. So I guess I owed him thanks, as things stood right now.
“Sakakibara, wasn’t it?”
Someone called to me when I was coming into school that morning, just as I came into sight of the front gat
e.
It was an unfamiliar man’s voice, from up ahead. Caught by surprise, I looked into the man’s face. A middle-aged man I’d seen before was coming toward me. A kind smile came over his face and he raised one hand in a friendly gesture.
“Um, you’re…” I searched my memory hastily and recalled his name. “Mr. Oba, right? From the Yomiyama Police Department.”
“I’m flattered that you remember me.”
After Ms. Mizuno’s accident, two detectives had questioned me in the teachers’ office. He was the older of the two, with a plump, round face.
“Um…Can I help you?”
“Oh, no, I just spotted a familiar face and thought, you know.”
“Are you here about the thing that happened to Mr. Kubodera on Monday? Are you investigating it, too?”
I asked the question flat out.
The smile disappeared from the detective’s round face and he nodded. “Well, yes. You witnessed the incident in the classroom that morning, correct?”
“…Yeah.”
“It must have been a shock. For your teacher to suddenly…”
“Yeah, it was.”
“We’re treating the incident as a suicide. The circumstances don’t allow much room for suspicion. The issue remains the motive for his suicide.”
“I’ve heard rumors. How Mr. Kubodera’s mother was bedridden and he…”
“That’s gotten out already, has it?”
The detective’s lips bent in a rueful arc, but who knows what thoughts were behind it, because he then told me the following story. In the same overly soothing voice as the last time we’d met.
“After killing his mother, it appears that your teacher spent the time before heading into school sharpening the knife he used to kill himself. Quite vigorously, at that. Signs of the activity were left in his kitchen. It paints a scene much stranger than we had even imagined.
“No matter who we ask, we’re told that Mr. Kubodera was an extremely serious, placid man. And then he pursued these acts out of the blue. It’s truly odd.”
“…Definitely.”
What was this detective trying to accomplish by latching onto me in a place like this? What did he want me to tell him? Just then—
“The accidental death of Ms. Sanae Mizuno last month.”
Out of nowhere, he spoke her name.
“The accidental death of Ms. Yukari Sakuragi the month before. And her mother’s death in a car accident the same day.”
“Um, yes?”
“I’ve looked into all of them, and there’s no possible explanation except that they were purely accidental. Since there’s no sign of foul play, we have no business sniffing around.”
“…Oh.”
“And yet—how should I put it? These cases continue to nag at me. I’ve heard that there was another boy who died last month, although that was from an illness. A student named Takabayashi. It’s a fact that quite a few people all linked to the same middle school class have lost their lives in a very short period of time. Trying to ignore it is a waste of effort. Don’t you agree?”
As the detective spoke, his eyes were fixed searchingly on my face. But all I could do was murmur “I mean…” and crane my head to one side.
“I can’t shake it from my mind, so I’ve been making the rounds asking people about it,” the detective went on. “Purely out of personal interest.”
I stayed silent, and my head stayed tilted to the side.
“In the process, here and there I picked up on a peculiar rumor. They call it ‘the curse of third-year Class 3.’”
I didn’t say a word.
“You’ve heard of it, haven’t you, Sakakibara? That third-year Class 3 at Yomiyama North Middle is cursed and there are ‘cursed years’ that roll around on an irregular schedule. In those years, someone linked to the class will die every month. This is one of the ‘cursed years,’ they say. I thought it was ridiculous, but I looked into it a little, all the same. And when I did, I found that there have been years in the past when quite a lot of students and people with connections to this school really do die.”
“I…don’t know anything about that.”
I shook my head firmly, filling the gesture with a note of denial. I wonder how very unnatural a reaction it seemed, however, in the detective’s eyes.
“Ah, no…Obviously that’s not enough for me to be able to do anything about this issue. If I tried to tell the other detectives or my boss about this, they’d just laugh me out of the department.”
At that, the gentle smile returned to the detective’s round face.
“Even if we assume that this talk about a ‘curse’ is true, there’s nothing we can do about it. That’s the reality. I just have an individual interest. I’d like to determine what’s true and what’s not, if I can.”
I couldn’t say why, but I felt as if I had understood what was in the man’s heart. And, being me, I couldn’t help giving him my candid opinion.
“Still, Detective, I really don’t think you should get involved in this. It probably won’t help anything to have the police around. And if you’re not careful, you could be putting yourself in danger, too.”
“Someone else gave me the same warning.” The smile on the detective’s round face shifted into a rueful smirk. “I suppose you’re right. It hardly seems likely, but then again…”
Trailing off, the detective rummaged in his pockets. He pulled out a battered business card and handed it to me.
“I may be a useless police officer, but if you ever think I might be able to help, don’t hesitate to get in touch. I’d appreciate if you could call my cell phone. The number’s on the back of the card.”
“…Okay.”
“The fact is, I have a daughter in her fourth year of elementary school.”
The detective added this, last of all.
“If she goes into a public middle school like she’s supposed to, then she might wind up at North Yomi. And given that, well, this issue has been nagging at me. I ask myself, what if my daughter is in third-year Class 3 someday?”
“Yeah…” Even as I nodded, I added, “She’ll be okay,” a completely irresponsible thing to say. “I’m sure the curse will be broken by then. I’m sure…”
5
That day after classes, Mei and I went to the secondary library together. Naturally, we were going to see Mr. Chibiki. Teshigawara and Kazami—back in school starting that day—seemed to want to come with us, but thankfully they decided to hold off. I wanted to avoid too many people coming and having the conversation go all over the place.
“Why, hello. How have you two been?”
The tone and smile Mr. Chibiki greeted us with seemed totally artificial. My mind locked up over how to respond, thinking, I haven’t exactly been great…But at my side, Mei replied with a demure look on her face, “We’re doing fine, thank you. Avoiding bizarre accidents and sudden illnesses.”
“Now that there’s been a ‘death for July,’ it seems the ‘not there’ game has come to an end, as well.”
“Yes. Although I kind of feel like that’s actually thrown everything off balance somehow.”
“Hm-m-m. I would call it the overall cohesiveness, rather than ‘balance.’ But I suppose you’re right. Everyone is going to be at a complete loss for how to behave going forward, after all.”
At this point, Mr. Chibiki’s face became serious and, returning to his usual tone, stripped of all excess emotion, he said, “Actually, Ms. Mikami came in here today.”
“She did?”
I reacted instantly.
“Is that surprising?”
“Oh, uh, no…”
“She knows my history here, too, so she wanted to have a serious discussion with me.”
“A discussion? Like what she should do now that she’s the substitute head teacher for Class 3?”
“Something like that,” Mr. Chibiki replied ambiguously. Then, without pausing, he turned the question back on us. “What about you two? Did yo
u have something you wanted to discuss with me?”
“Um, yeah.”
I nodded soberly.
“There’s something I wanted to check, and something I wanted to ask.”
“Oho.”
“The truth is…”
Then I told Mr. Chibiki the story.
About “the year when the ‘disasters’ began, but then stopped partway through.” How it had happened in 1983, fifteen years ago when Reiko was in third-year Class 3, and how apparently something had happened during a class camping trip over summer break that year. I had already told Mei about it.
“Eighty-three…Yes, I believe that was indeed the year.”
Pushing the bridge of his glasses up his nose, Mr. Chibiki slowly closed his eyes and then opened them again.
“The single year in these last twenty-five when it stopped partway through.”
Then he pulled the binder with the black cover out of a drawer on his side of the counter. It was the binder with the class lists for the past third-year Class 3s.
“First of all, let’s take a look at this.”
He held it out to us. It was already open to the page for 1983.
Like in all the others, Xs had been written in red pen next to several of the names that ran down the page. These were the students who’d died. Notes on the date and how they had died were in the space to the right. I saw a couple of cases where the students themselves had been fine, but a member of their family had died. But there was no mention of the death of Reiko’s older sister, Ritsuko.
“There were seven victims that year, not including Ritsuko, whom I never found out about.” Mr. Chibiki added this explanation as he peered across the counter at the file. “Two in April, one in May, one in June, one in July, and two in August. You said Ritsuko died in July, I believe? So then there were two in July, and eight total. As you can see, there were no more deaths after that, starting in September. Meaning…”
“It stopped in August.”
“Correct. Take a look at the date of death for the ‘deaths of August.’”
I did as I was told. And what I discovered was…
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