Another Episode S / 0 Read online

  A total of seven people, students as well as the head teacher, had been killed in the tragedy. Could that really have been the accident that had injured Teruya Sakaki’s left leg?

  “So, this summer,” Mei went on in a quiet voice. “When we went to the vacation house and I saw Mr. Sakaki, I wanted to confirm it with him. I thought it was worth it, if there was even a tiny chance he could tell me something that might be useful.”

  I can’t believe you! I thought and glared straight into Mei’s face.

  How could she do something like that and not tell anyone?

  If she had just given me a heads-up even…But I have to acknowledge, it was a very Mei Misaki kind of thing to do.

  As always, Mei was utterly indifferent to my high emotion and forged ahead.

  “That’s what I was thinking when we left, but Mr. Sakaki had already died. At the start of May of this year. So—”

  After letting out a short sigh, Mei casually swept aside her bangs and said, “But I wound up being able to talk to his ghost…So, Sakakibara? Do you want to hear more of this story? Or would you rather not stir up the memories?”

  “Um…”

  I scrunched my eyebrows together for a second and pressed a thumb against my temple. All the while conscious of a slight low-frequency sound resonating somewhere inside my head, vmm…vmmmmm…

  “I do want to hear about it.”

  That was my answer. The corners of Mei’s mouth pulled into a smirk and she nodded. Then she started to tell her story.

  “Mr. Sakaki died this spring. But they still hadn’t found his body…He’d become a ghost, and he was looking for it.”

  Sketch 1

  What happens to people when they die?

  —Hmm?

  Do they move on to the afterlife when they die?

  Well…who can say?

  Do they go to heaven or hell?

  Who knows? After all, people just made up heaven and hell.

  So then, when you die, you really just stop existing? You become nothingness?

  …No, I don’t think that’s what happens.

  Really?

  Yeah. When people die, I’m sure they…

  1

  It was around the end of July last year when I ran into that girl at the shore, where the Raimizaki lighthouse is visible. I can’t remember the exact date.

  Her name was Mei; she was a girl in middle school. I seem to recall that it was the second time I’d met her.

  We’d first met a year earlier. The year before last in the early part of August. It was at the dinner party at the Misaki family’s vacation home. My sister Tsukiho had invited me.

  She spoke barely a word at the party, limiting herself mostly to mouthing formalities. She was such a fair-skinned girl with a slight build. Quiet and seeming a little sad, she didn’t look like she was enjoying the get-together that night much at all. That’s what I remembered about her.

  The most noticeable thing about her at the time was that her left eye was blue. I had heard that her mother, the doll maker, had made a special false eye for her.

  That’s why.

  The color of her eye, the almost fairy blue, had lingered vividly in my mind…

  When we saw each other again last summer, I noticed the patch over her left eye and spoke without thinking.

  “Oh-ho. She’s wearing an eye patch now, eh?” I even went so far as to thoughtlessly add, “Why would she cover up such lovely mismatched eyes?”

  My nephew Sou, who’d come to visit, asked me, “What does ‘mismatched eyes’ mean?”

  The same tone he always used, in the pure alto of a little boy, before the voice changed.

  “It means her eyes are different colors.”

  After giving my answer, I walked over to the girl.

  “You’re Mei, if I recall? We met last year at Mr. Misaki’s house.”

  “…Hello.”

  She responded in a voice so quiet it was almost swallowed up by the sound of the waves and turned her right eye to look down at my feet.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked.

  “Oh, you mean…,” I began, then looked down at my left leg and nodded slightly. “I was in an accident a long time ago,” I replied. “Did you not notice it last year?”

  “Er…no.”

  “My injury never fully healed, so unfortunately I have a slight limp in my left leg now. Not that it hurts, though.”

  As I spoke, I tapped my left leg just above the knee to demonstrate.

  “It was a terrible accident, actually. I was in middle school. The bus my class was on got hit by a truck…”

  The girl angled her head slightly, saying nothing.

  “Several of my friends died. So did the head teacher. I was one of the survivors,” I continued.

  Again nothing.

  “I’m Teruya Sakaki. Nice to meet you again.”

  “…Likewise.”

  “This is my nephew, Sou…But you knew that. He’s my sister’s—That is, Tsukiho Hiratsuka’s son, but when he’s on vacation, he often comes to visit me…I’m glad we’re so close, but you know, Sou, you need to make some friends at school, too.”

  Sou didn’t react to this, but timidly came out from behind me and greeted the girl. “Hello.” Just like the girl, his voice was almost lost in the sound of waves.

  A short time later, I felt as if I were rambling endlessly at the girl. About my hobby of taking photos, about the mirages you could see in the ocean here from time to time…

  I had a few more opportunities to see and talk to her after that also, but I can’t remember the details. I might be able to bring it back in snatches, but maybe not. Nevertheless—

  I do remember making a comment along these lines to her at some point: “Your eye. That blue eye.”

  I said it, knowing full well that it was an artificial eye inserted in place of her natural eye.

  “With that eye of yours, you might be seeing the same things I am…looking in the same direction.”

  At that, she looked back at my face, somewhat startled. “Why?” she whispered. “Why would you…?”

  “You know, I’m not sure,” I answered, perplexed, unable to formulate anything more than that ambiguous response—that’s how it seemed. “I wonder why I said that.”

  The girl’s name is Mei. Mei Misaki.

  I had heard that Mei was written with the character for howl.

  The rumble of a mountain. The boom of a thunderclap. Mei Misaki.

  It was about nine months after this that I, Teruya Sakaki, died.

  2

  I don’t mean that I “died” metaphorically. Not “as good as dead” and not “dead at heart.”

  I died.

  I am no longer alive; I am dead. That much is not in question.

  Indisputably, I died this spring—one day at the start of May.

  I stopped breathing, my heart stopped beating, and my brain activity stopped for all eternity…and I became what I am now. An existence without the physical body of a living man, and only the consciousness (…soul?) deemed “I.” What you might call a ghost.

  I died.

  At the beginning of May, getting close to the end of Golden Week. The date was May 3, a Sunday. My twenty-sixth birthday.

  It was after eight thirty that night. I believe there was a hazy half-moon blurred into the sky.

  I died.

  I clearly remember the scene—the sight before me in the very moment that I lost my life, or perhaps just before it slipped away. It forms a vivid picture, complete with a mix of sounds and voices.

  I was inside my house. In the spacious foyer with stairs up to the second floor…

  I was in the hall of Lakeshore Manor, where I had lived for many years alone. Tsukiho and I had long called this place, doubling as a spacious stairwell, located at the center of the building near the entrance hall, the “grand entry.”

  I had collapsed on the hard black floor of the grand entry. I wore black pants and a white, long-sleeved shi
rt. An ensemble not unlike that of a middle school or high school student.

  My body lay faceup. My arms and legs were splayed out, bent at jarring angles. I tried to move but failed completely.

  My face was turned sideways. As with my arms and legs, I was totally unable to move it. Something must have happened to the bones in my neck…And then there was the blood.

  Some part of my head had split open, and red blood smeared my forehead and cheek. A pool of blood was gradually spreading over the floor. It was a terrible scene.

  On the threshold of death, my eyes open wide and glassy—one might say I saw this picture.

  Thinking reasonably, you would never expect to be able to see yourself in such a state with your own eyes. There was a simple trick to it.

  What I had looked at that day was a mirror hanging on the wall of the room.

  A large rectangular mirror taller than a person.

  The mirror showed that picture—showed me—as I looked in the moments when my life slipped away. As I lay on the brink of death, my eyes were inadvertently locked on it.

  The reflection of my bloody face suddenly transformed.

  The contorted, taut expression slackened into an oddly peaceful look, as if freed from pain, fear, and uncertainty…And then.

  A faint movement on my lips.

  Trembling ever so slightly. It was—

  Was I saying something?

  Yes. I was…But—

  I don’t now know what I might have been trying to say at that moment, or whether I did, in fact, say anything. I also don’t know what I felt or thought at that time. I can’t remember it.

  I could hear a sound.

  An antique grandfather clock stood in the hall. Its bell chimed once.

  It was eight thirty. And as if overlaying that solemn echo—

  I could hear a voice.

  Someone’s voice shouting faintly.

  Calling my name (“…Teruya…”). Ah. I know this voice.

  All at once, I noticed.

  The sight of myself in the mirror, slipping away. In one corner of the mirror, I could see the reflected form of the “someone” whose voice I heard. It was…

  …

  …

  …And this is where my living awareness cuts off. It wasn’t an out-of-body experience like people talk about so often, but I do believe this was the moment of my death.

  Even now, this memory of death lingers so vividly in my mind, but everything before and after is a sprawling blank, as if obscured by a thick fog. The answers to “Why did I die?” or “What happened after I died?” aren’t clear. The “after” part of the “before and after” is more than merely blank…it’s an unfathomable darkness.

  Bottomless, empty…the darkness that follows death.

  This is how I, Teruya Sakaki, died.

  And why afterward, I began this existence—what you might think of as a ghost.

  3

  When you think about it, it seems obvious, but being a ghost is an extremely unsettling state of being. I’ve learned this from experience.

  Ever since my death that night, I’ve had an imperfect sense of time.

  And of course, since I don’t have a flesh body, I have imperfect somatic senses.

  I can have thoughts, but the supporting memories are extremely vague…Perhaps it would be more correct to say that they’re choppy and vary greatly in intensity.

  Nonconsecutive rather than continuous.

  Fragmentary rather than complete.

  —I suppose that might describe it.

  Same with time.

  Same with knowledge.

  Same with memories. And same with my consciousness.

  As if I’m preserving “myself,” barely keeping my balance, while I do my best to string together the nonconsecutive, the fragmentary. As if it could scatter in all directions at any moment, all of it truly eradicated…

  I feel this threat keenly, but agonizing over it serves no purpose. All I can do is accept things the way they are now.

  Because in any event, I’m still dead.

  4

  I woke up two weeks after my death.

  Which of course is not to say that I came back to life. I noticed that I had suddenly been freed from the darkness that had sucked me in immediately after I died and that there was a “me” here. That’s what I mean by “woke up.”

  At first I didn’t know what was going on.

  When I woke up, the first thing I became aware of was a certain large, familiar-looking mirror.

  The big rectangular mirror hanging in the grand entry. The mirror that had dispassionately shown me drawing my last breath.

  All of a sudden, I could see it. Only one or two meters away. Meaning—

  I was in front of the mirror. I felt myself “standing” there. And yet—

  The mirror in front of my eyes showed not the slightest reflection of me standing there. Even though it showed everything else around me exactly as it was.

  I could sense my body.

  I felt that I had arms and legs, my chest, my neck, my head, my face—all there like usual. I could even see and touch them with my own eyes and hands. I was wearing clothes, too. Black pants with a white, long-sleeved shirt. The same clothes I’d worn the night I’d died in this spot…

  …That’s how I am present in this place.

  I could be self-aware.

  Regardless, the mirror reflected none of this.

  What was going on?

  Through intense bewilderment and confusion, I finally achieved a proper understanding of the situation.

  That I am present in this place.

  But not as one of the living with a physical body. I am one of the dead and have lost my body of flesh.

  The body I now felt as “being here” did not actually exist. Neither did the clothes. Surely they were all afterimages of life that only I could sense…And that was why. In other words—for some reason, it seemed that I had woken up here as what people would call a ghost.

  I turned my eyes away from the mirror.

  There were no longer any traces of the blood from my death on the floor before me. I suppose someone had wiped it up afterward.

  I looked slowly around at my surroundings.

  The large antique grandfather clock standing to one side of the door leading to the entranceway, the clock that had sounded its bell right before my death—its hands were now stopped at 6:06. They didn’t move. Perhaps there was no one to wind it now that I was dead.

  I went up to the second floor.

  When I made this movement, I intended to walk up the stairs, but this was presumably also an afterimage of life. As, I’m sure, was the fact that I had a slight limp in my left leg when “walking,” just as I had in life.

  When I reached the second floor, a gallery-like path ran almost halfway around the open hall of the foyer.

  My library, bedroom, and other rooms were on the second floor. There were also several empty rooms I had almost never used in the many years I’d lived here…so it seemed that the general information about this manor had stayed with me despite my shift to being a ghost.

  Suddenly, partway down the second-floor hallway—

  My eyes stopped on the wooden banister running along the side facing the open space of the foyer.

  It had been repaired, new wood fitted into it, as if it had broken or cracked. It looked very much as if it had been an emergency repair.

  I looked over the banister and down to the first floor.

  So it had happened right down there. The place I had crumpled to on the verge of death that night. Meaning—

  Had I fallen from this spot just moments earlier? And I had hit my head hard, maybe snapped my vertebrae, too…

  I groped fearfully through the blank space in my memory where the thick fog gathered. And then…

  …A voice (What are you doing…? Teruya?).

  Someone’s voice (…Stop it).

  Several voices (…Don’t worry about it) (You
can’t…Don’t do it!).

  It seemed on the verge of coming back to me (…Don’t worry about it), and then slipped away.

  I moved down the second-floor hallway. I went into one of the rooms.

  It was a bedroom.

  Moss-colored curtains were drawn over the window, but the light outside shone through a gap between them, dimly lighting the room.

  There was a small double bed. The covers were pulled neatly over it. It looked as if no one had used it in a long time.

  There was a small clock on the bedside table.

  It was a battery-powered digital clock, and unlike the clock in the grand entry, this one was working normally…2:25 P.M. It showed the date, too. Sunday, May 17.

  It was while looking at this display that I finally understood that two weeks of time had passed since my death on the night of May 3.

  What had happened in this house that night two weeks ago?

  Why and what series of events had led me to a death like that?

  The thick fog showed no signs of receding.

  I remembered that I had died. But I couldn’t really remember what had happened before or after that. Even I had to admit that an “amnesiac ghost” was pretty funny, but—

  Why had I died?

  That was when I decided I would answer this critical question.

  My vision crackled apart, like a TV screen with a bad signal. Several images floated before me in that moment.

  On the bedside table.

  A bottle of something and a glass, and also…

  Near the center of the room.

  Something white hanging there, swaying…

  …What?!

  What is this?—by the time the question entered my mind, the images had already vanished.

  Confused, I murmured, “What on earth…?”

  My ears, nothing more than relics themselves, picked up the “voice” issuing from my throat, nothing more than an afterimage of life. In life, my voice had been a rich baritone; hearing the cracking, papery sound that echoed now without any similarity startled me.