Another, Novel 02

by Yukito Ayatsuji

  We didn’t want to stand out, so all three of us wore our uniforms. We had decided that if we happened to run into a teacher who said something to us, we would get out of it by saying the art club was having a meeting.

  Then, after three o’clock…

  The three of us headed up to the second floor of Building Zero, according to plan.

  A rope hung across the entrances to the stairwells on the east and west ends of the building. A piece of cardboard hung from the center of the rope, with three words written starkly across it: “Do Not Enter.”

  We checked to make sure there was no sign of anyone nearby, and then slipped under the rope one by one. Then we stealthily ascended the normally untraveled stairs.

  “Does this old building not have any of the ‘Seven Mysteries of North Yomi’?” I asked Teshigawara partway up the stairs, half jokingly. “Like maybe the number of stairs changes sometimes? This place is just screaming for something like that, don’t you think?”

  “I dunno,” Teshigawara answered harshly. “I couldn’t really care less about the ‘Seven Mysteries.’”

  “Well, excuse me! When you and Kazami were giving me the tour of the school, you sure seemed into it.”

  “That was, I mean…Look, that was because I had no idea how to tell you about the special situation of third-year Class 3. I was trying my best.”

  “Huh. So then you really don’t believe in that stuff?”

  “In ghosts or curses, you mean?”

  “Right. That stuff.”

  “To be honest, I don’t think that stuff can possibly exist. Except for this one thing with third-year Class 3.”

  “So what about the predictions of Nostradamus? Didn’t you say you thought they were going to come true?”

  “How are they gonna do that?”

  “Man.”

  “If I really thought that stuff was going to come true, I wouldn’t be getting myself all worked up over this right now.”

  “Good point.”

  “The best-known of the ‘Seven Mysteries’ in Building Zero”—just then, Mochizuki cut in—“has to do with a secret in the secondary library.”

  “The secondary library? Is something in there?”

  “There’s a story that says you can sometimes hear a person moaning quietly in there. Did you ever hear it, Sakakibara?”

  “Never.”

  “The rumors say there’s a sealed underground room beneath the library. There’s supposed to be a bunch of old papers hidden down there with secrets about the school and the town that absolutely cannot go public. And in order to guard the documents, an old librarian was supposedly sealed up inside the room a long time ago…”

  “So that guy’s still alive underground and people can hear him? Or does the voice belong to the old guy’s ghost?” Teshigawara asked, and then snickered. “Not terrible for a ghost story, but…come on. Compared to the ‘disasters’ that are actually happening to our class? Stories like that just sound cute.”

  “…That’s true.”

  We stepped out into the hallway on the second floor.

  Light from outside shone through the bank of windows on the north side of the hall, making it much brighter than I had expected. But the fact that this place had been off-limits and unused for years and years was obvious from the grime and damage we could see here and there. The dust that had collected on the floor worked with a peculiar stagnant odor to fill the place with an overwhelming feeling of abandonment.

  The room that had once been used as the classroom for third-year Class 3…

  It was the third room from the western end.

  This was information Teshigawara had verified with Kazami. He said Kazami, who was also serving as a tactical officer, had taken on the role of going to the old classroom with Akazawa and some others at the start of May to get the desk and chair for the one who’s “not there.”

  The door to the room wasn’t locked and, at last, fearfully, the three of us stepped into the classroom.

  Inside the room, it was dimmer than out in the hallway.

  A dirty beige curtain pulled across the southern windows was the reason for that. It had been more than ten years since this room had been used. So then why had they left these curtains here, just as they had been for ages? I guess it didn’t really matter.

  A circuit must have been tripped, because even when we tried flipping the switch, the lights didn’t come on. If we opened the curtain, the room would probably get pretty bright, but we were reluctant to do that in case someone saw and took it as inspiration for a new “mystery” to add to the seven.

  And so…

  Keeping the curtain closed and the room dim, the three of us began our search.

  Each of us had brought a small flashlight with us, anticipating a situation like this. I’d brought work gloves, too. We were kicking up horrible amounts of dust, so Mochizuki put a handkerchief over his nose and mouth.

  The first thing we did was split up to search the thirty-odd desks and chairs one by one. As I searched, I couldn’t stop all kinds of terrible images from running through my mind.

  Twenty-six years ago in this classroom, none of the students had acknowledged the death of Misaki Yomiyama, “the one who had died,” and over the course of an entire year they had treated him as if he were “one who still lived.” And because of that…

  This inexplicable “phenomenon” had begun, triggered by their actions. How many people had been dragged to their deaths because of it over the last twenty-five years? Third-year Class 3 had been in this room until fourteen years ago. So how many people had died right here?

  There could very well have been people who lost their lives in this room, just like Mr. Kubodera had.

  Someone could have fallen out of the windows to their death.

  Or someone could have had some kind of attack in the middle of class that killed them.

  As these solitary thoughts continued, I was seized by the sensation that, right this second, I too was being lured ever closer to death. Cut it out.

  “Cut it out. Just drop it,” I whispered aloud to myself, frantic. I paused for a moment and took a deep breath. I breathed in some dust and started coughing, but that actually helped me to shake the thoughts.

  What you need to focus on right now is the search…Come on.

  On the assumption that a graduate from 1983 named Katsumi Matsunaga had once hidden something away in this room…

  So where was it, then?

  I searched the desks and chairs thoroughly and then came to the realization, Probably not someplace like this. That would be way too easy to find to say it was “hidden.”

  So then it had to be somewhere else…

  He would have hidden “it” in a place it wouldn’t be found so easily, and yet somewhere that a person would eventually discover it.

  I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be somewhere that a person would never find, no matter how hard they looked. Otherwise it didn’t mesh with his desire to “tell someone about it.”

  So it probably wasn’t somewhere we’d have to pry up the floorboards or knock out the walls or ceiling. Which meant…

  I took a look around the room. Maybe there? A row of student lockers built into the back of the room struck me immediately.

  They were lockers, but not the kind with a door that shuts and locks. They were like wooden shelves, with openings about forty or fifty centimeters square, arranged in a grid.

  Abandoning my search of the desks and chairs, I stood in front of the lockers. Teshigawara and Mochizuki soon came to stand beside me, apparently guessing what I was thinking.

  “You think it’s in here?” Mochizuki asked.

  “Dunno,” I said, cocking my head to one side. “Let’s just go through all of them to be sure. There might be some dead space in the back.”

  “True. Well…”

  But in the end, our labor was in vain. We searched inside every single locker, but we couldn’t find a single thing that seemed like what we were
looking for.

  “Where else could something be hidden?”

  I took a look around the dimly lit classroom. And finally I spotted something.

  A closet in the corner of the room for the cleaning supplies.

  Like the lockers, it was an old wooden fixture about two meters high. What was inside? Maybe somewhere people wouldn’t normally look in…

  I hurried over to it and pulled open the long, narrow door with the black steel handle. There were a couple of brooms, a dustpan, a bucket, and a mop. Old, utterly unremarkable supplies standing as they had been left long ago.

  I felt no hesitation. I pushed the brooms and mop aside and squeezed myself inside the cramped box. Then I shone my flashlight overhead.

  As soon as I saw it, the words tumbled out: “…Is that it?”

  “What is it, Sakaki? Did you find something?” Teshigawara asked, running over.

  “There’s—”

  I reached my hand out for it, standing on tiptoe.

  It was on the top panel of the cleaning supply closet I had squeezed into. Something was taped up there with black packing tape.

  “There’s something up there. I can’t tell what.”

  Several layers of diligently applied tape held it in place. Holding my flashlight in my mouth, I freed up both of my hands to try and yank whatever it was off the top panel.

  Finally—

  After a long effort, I pulled it off and went back outside. It hadn’t been that much of a physical effort, and yet I was out of breath and my face was slick with sweat.

  “What is that?”

  “It was taped to the ceiling in there. I don’t think anyone would notice this hidden up there unless they got inside like I just did.”

  “Probably not.”

  “I wonder what it is.”

  The thing I’d pulled off the top panel was itself wrapped up in several layers of packing tape. This tape wasn’t black, though. It was brown cloth tape.

  How big was the thing inside it? It was probably smaller than a paperback, once you got all the tape off.

  We moved over to a nearby desk and set the thing down on top of it. The first problem was going to be getting off those layers of tape.

  “Hey, hold on a second,” Teshigawara said. “There’s something written on the tape.”

  “What?”

  Restraining my eagerness, I picked my flashlight back up and shone it on the thing. I had to look really hard, but…There it was.

  There were letters written on the surface of the brown tape in red marker. The writing hadn’t come off when I’d pulled off the tape holding the thing up in the closet—I guess because that side had been facing the ceiling.

  * * *

  To the students who come after us

  who may be afflicted

  by disasters that defy explanation…

  * * *

  That’s what we could make out. The penmanship was sloppy, almost a scrawl.

  “Bingo.” Teshigawara snapped his fingers. “You know that guy Matsunaga wrote this.”

  We decided to set to work right then and there. Getting the packing tape that was wrapped around the thing off cleanly was a real pain. After several minutes of plain old effort, we finally revealed it for what it was—

  An audiocassette tape. A totally nondescript TDK brand sixty-minute tape, at the start of the reel.

  7

  Taking the cassette tape we’d discovered with us, we fled the restricted entry zone and returned to the art club room. It was after five o’clock in the afternoon when we got there. I was struck by how much time had passed; it was later than I’d thought.

  “You guys got a tape player?” Teshigawara asked Mochizuki.

  “Not in here, no,” Mochizuki replied, which caused Teshigawara to dig his fingers into his dusty brown hair.

  “We’ve got to listen to this thing, at least. But seriously, a cassette tape?”

  “They didn’t have mini discs fifteen years ago.”

  “Well, sure, but…Hm-m-m. I don’t think I’ve got anything that can play cassettes at my house.”

  “I do,” Mochizuki said. “What about you, Sakakibara?”

  “No idea…”

  The only audio device that belonged to me was a portable mini disc player that I’d brought with me from Tokyo, and it only had playback capability. I’d never seen my grandparents listen to music on anything other than the TV. I wouldn’t be surprised if Reiko had a cassette player in her office, but…

  “Mochizuki’s house it is,” Teshigawara declared.

  “Okay.” Mochizuki nodded, then immediately changed the motion. “Wait, no…Look at this.”

  Gently lifting the tape in both hands, he showed it to us.

  “Look there. It’s hard to tell, but see? The tape inside is broken.”

  “Man…”

  “You’re right.”

  “It probably got stuck to the packing tape and snapped when we were pulling it off.”

  “Urgh.”

  “So now what?”

  “It won’t play like that.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Why didn’t the guy put it in a case before he hid it? Blows my mind.”

  Teshigawara’s face pulled into a fierce scowl, and he dug his fingers into his hair yet again. The buzzing of cicadas on the trees in the courtyard right outside the window had filled the background this whole time, but it seemed almost menacingly loud now.

  “What should we do?”

  Teshigawara hurled the question out restlessly, but Mochizuki’s reply was distracted.

  “I think we can listen to it if we fix the tape.”

  “Huh? You can do that?”

  “It shouldn’t be that hard if I try.”

  “Oh. Great, so the tape is in your hands now, I guess.”

  “Is that okay with you?” I asked, wanting to give Mochizuki a chance to refuse.

  He nodded solemnly. “I’ll give it a try anyway. It might take me a little while, though.”

  And so we left the art club room and the three of us passed through the school gates together.

  Evening was approaching quickly and the western sky had begun to take on a crimson hue. It was incredibly vivid and more beautiful than it seemed possible for anything in this world to be. As I looked at it, I grew a little somber and my eyes almost started to tear up. During last year’s summer break, I never would have thought that a year later I’d be embroiled in an “adventure” like this.

  Then, interrupting my thoughts…

  When we reached the bus stop, all of a sudden we heard a shrill, distant sound. The sirens of an ambulance and police cars wailing over one another.

  “Must have been an accident.”

  “…I guess, yeah.”

  “We’d better be careful, too.”

  “Definitely.”

  That was all we said to each other.

  8

  I learned the news before lunch the next day, on the 31st.

  About the death of Atsushi Ogura (age nineteen, unemployed).

  They said that after graduating from a local high school, he had forgone regular employment and had instead spent every day locked away in his house. I suppose it wouldn’t be wrong to call him a shut-in, one of the young people who’d become controversial of late.

  July 30 at 5:26 P.M.

  At that moment, a large construction vehicle that had finished up work nearby had lost control and plowed into Atsushi Ogura’s house. The building had collapsed, dragging down the room on the second floor where Atsushi had retreated. His room faced the road, so it suffered an almost direct hit from the vehicle. Atsushi had suffered serious wounds over his entire body, worst of all being a fractured skull. Before dawn on the 31st, he drew his last breath at the hospital they’d brought him to.

  The problem was his name, “Ogura.”

  There was a girl by that name in third-year Class 3 at Yomiyama North Middle. In fact, Atsushi Ogura, who had met such an unfort
unate death in this accident, was her older brother by blood. The third “death of July,” after Mr. Kubodera and his mother.

  Interlude IV

  Um, my name…My name is Katsumi Matsunaga.

  I’m in the third-year Class 3 for 1983 at Yomiyama North Middle. And I plan to graduate next March.

  I’m recording this tape on the night of August 20. It’s after eleven o’clock. There’s maybe ten days left until summer break is over. I’m alone in my room, talking to the tape recorder.

  Once I finish recording, I’m planning to hide this tape somewhere in the classroom.

  Someday…I don’t know how long it’ll take, but if someone finds this tape someday and listens to it, then…I wonder what the chances are that you, listening to this tape right now—maybe there’s more than one of you—what are the chances that you’re students of a future third-year Class 3, following in my footsteps? And what are the chances that the same things that I…that we’ve experienced this year are happening to you, and you’re afraid of the senseless disasters befalling your class?

  …It doesn’t matter.

  It doesn’t do me any good to think about how likely that stuff is right now. It really doesn’t.

  Um…Right, broadly speaking, there are two explanations for why I decided to create this tape.

  The first is to…“confess a crime” I’ve committed, I guess…That sounds right. That’s what this is.

  I want to tell someone about what I’ve done. I want someone to hear my story, and so I’ve…Yeah. That’s what this is. No matter how much I talk to the people around me right now, they won’t understand. They won’t talk to me about it. Everybody’s already completely forgotten about it. That’s the situation I’m in now, so I…I have to at least…

  The other reason is to warn you, my future underclassmen… or actually, to give you some advice. This…

  …This is a major issue.

  In the end, it’s up to you whether or not you believe what I’m about to tell you…But I hope you’ll believe me. Because I’m not going to lie about anything on this tape.