Another Episode S / 0 Read online

  Instinctively, both hands went to my throat.

  My fingers, only an afterimage, touched my skin, itself an afterimage— Oh. This sensation won’t tell me anything. But…

  “My throat,” I tried whispering once again.

  My voice was indeed hoarse.

  My throat must have been crushed when I’d died two weeks earlier. I’d fallen from the second-floor hallway, may have broken my neck…So, even as a ghost, my voice wouldn’t…

  I lingered there gloomily, and the hollow darkness crept back in.

  5

  Ghosts are said to “appear.”

  At graves, for example.

  At ruins and abandoned houses, for example.

  At intersections and tunnels, the frequent subject of rumors…They appear.

  From the perspective of the people to whom a ghost appears, anything these people lack the basic ability to see or feel normally must be a ghost. When they can see or feel them for some spontaneous reason, people are surprised and say the ghost “appeared,” and they’re frightened.

  People usually can’t correctly predict when a ghost will appear. Even when they try, they’re often wrong. So most times people are caught unawares. And so they’re scared. I suppose that’s how it works.

  However, now that I’d become a ghost, I believed the situation was pretty much the same for the one doing the appearing, too. Meaning that…

  A dead person’s spirit (their…soul?) lingering in this world after death is actually an extremely unnatural and unsettling state of being.

  It is not continuous.

  It is not a definitive ending, but rather a gathering together of fragments, struggling to preserve some sameness.

  So—

  “I,” as a ghost, will not “exist” perpetually at every hour of the day. I don’t “exist”; I do in fact “appear.”

  Absent even this degree of overriding law, without purpose or meaning (so it seemed), from time to time I appear and then disappear. I don’t know how it is for ghosts generally, and there’s no way I could find out, but that’s how it was for me, at least.

  I feel like it’s not a very apt metaphor, but it can also be understood using the terms sleep and waking.

  When I died and became a ghost, I was usually in the hollow darkness I mentioned before, asleep. I suppose the darkness might have been a threshold between this world and the next. And every now and again, I would wake up and wander through this world. In other words, I would “appear.”

  While I was appearing, all I ever thought about was my own death.

  Why did I die?

  What happened after I died?

  I…

  The numerous pressing questions of the amnesiac ghost. In addition to which—

  A feeling of deep sadness, as if enveloping me entirely…

  What was I so sad about?

  That was another big question.

  What did I have to be sad about anymore?

  The fact that I had died?

  The twenty-six years of life before my death?

  Or maybe…

  6

  After I woke up on May 17, I’ve occasionally appeared at Lakeshore Manor.

  In such times, I wandered alone through a house now devoid of occupants, and while doing so, I firmed my grip on the gradually fading outlines of “myself from life”…

  Teruya Sakaki.

  I was born May 3, 1972, in the town of Yomiyama.

  Male. Single. Twenty-six years old at death.

  Yes. That is me.

  My father’s name was Shotaro. Shotaro Sakaki.

  He was a talented doctor, but six years ago he suffered a severe illness and passed away. It was an unfortunate thing to happen right before I turned twenty. He was sixty when he died.

  My mother’s name was Hinako.

  She had died suddenly in her mid-forties, much earlier than my father, still young. That happened eleven years ago, during my time in middle school…

  My sister Tsukiho was eight years older than me.

  Her first husband died quite soon after they were married, and she brought her young son Sou, still one year old, back with her to the family home. That was eleven years ago, too. And then with my mother’s death coming so soon after that…As a result, our family decided to leave Yomiyama.

  The first place we moved was Lakeshore Manor.

  This mansion, built near Lake Minazuki in the small town of Hinami, was originally a vacation home belonging to my father, Shotaro. So you might say our move here eleven years ago was like an emergency evacuation. In fact, we secured a new house in another area the following year and the family moved there.

  It was a short while after my father’s death that I inherited the house and decided to live here. At the time, I was enrolled at a private university in the prefecture, but I decided to use that opportunity to take a break from school. After two years, I finally dropped out.

  After that, I continued living here by myself. I never once held a proper job. It was selfishness enabled by the significant inheritance I received from my father.

  “I’ve been fond of this place for a long time,” I remember telling someone. Who was I talking to and when was it?

  “Dad liked it here, too. It felt like he would take the slightest excuse to come here by himself and stay for a couple days.”

  I’d heard that going back decades ago, a wealthy foreigner had built the house in the architectural style of his homeland. My father had just happened to see it and like it, and so he’d decided to buy it.

  There was a spacious library in the heart of the first floor, as well, separate from the library on the second floor. Of the thousands of books cluttering the bookshelves (which maybe I should feel bad about), the majority belonged to my deceased father’s collection.

  When I was brought to this house as a child, I would always spend many long hours in these rooms of books. While they were packed full of “grown-up books” in every type of field, they also contained many comics and novels that a kid could enjoy, too.

  After I became the master of the house, my nephew Sou came to visit often, and just as I used to, he treated this collection of books as his own private library. Even though I would have thought it was tough to come over since it took close to thirty minutes to reach here from the Hiratsuka house by bicycle.

  Tsukiho fell in love with her current husband Shuji at first sight and married him the year before my father’s death. She had just become pregnant with Mirei when I started to live here.

  Sou…I appreciated his attachment to me, like I was an older brother, but sometimes it worried me a bit, too. I knew he must have some complex feelings about Tsukiho getting remarried and having a little sister with a different father. He was well behaved and introverted but very smart. That alone was reason enough…

  “Will you always live here by yourself, Teruya?” Sou asked me once, though I actually can’t remember when. “Aren’t you ever going to get married?”

  “Well, I don’t have anyone to marry,” I remember answering, half-joking. “Plus, it’s a lot easier living by yourself. I like this house, and I…”

  I…I remember not knowing where to go from there and closing my mouth. Sou was nodding and looking up at my face the whole time.

  7

  I wonder how the world reacted to my death. Actually, I wonder if my death on the night of May 3 was made public at all.

  These were questions I had begun to ask around the latter part of May.

  Already half a month after my death, and here was this house believed to have no occupants. And yet the house itself hadn’t died, still felt alive…Perhaps that captures the feeling.

  I could hear the sound of the refrigerator running in the kitchen, and once when I appeared, I even heard the telephone ringing.

  When I heard the telephone in the grand entry ring, I was in the library on the second floor. It weighed on my mind and so I went downstairs, but of course as a ghost, I couldn’t have answere
d the phone.

  It was the dock for the cordless phone. It had an answering machine built into it, and after the automated message and the beep, the caller’s voice played on the speaker.

  “Hey, Sakaki? It’s been a while, just wondering how things are goin’. It’s me, Arai.”

  Arai…Would that be with the characters for new well? Or for rough-hewn well?

  Groping through my patchy recollections, I teased out a memory. I was sure I’d had a classmate by that name, a long time ago…

  Even though I told Sou, “You have to make other friends,” when I was alive—and especially the last few years—I’d had almost no one I would have called a friend.

  I don’t think I was a radical misanthrope or anything. I was just somehow terrible at keeping a conversation going to match the other person’s interest or ease their tension, and I never kept relationships going for long…

  “I’ll try calling you back later.”

  Arai went on. I couldn’t remember what he looked like at all.

  “I bet you’re living the easy life, like always. Still, there’s somethin’ I’d like to talk to you about…Anyway, if you feel like it, give me a call. Okay?”

  I’m sure that when I was alive, I was seen in the world as “doing whatever he wants, not even holding down a job like a responsible adult.” It sounds different when you say “educated man of leisure” instead, but even setting aside the “leisure” part, I myself wondered about the “educated” part.

  Sometimes I would take my hobbyist camera and go on aimless expeditions in the car. When I was taking a break from college, I even wandered all the way to the ocean by myself. And to India in Southeast Asia, and I think somewhere in South America, too, once…But…

  But they all felt like distant dreams now, all sense of reality diluted out of them.

  What had I been seeking on those trips? The feelings I’d had at the time were totally obscure to me now.

  Photos I’d taken decorated the mansion here and there. There were photos of the places I’d traveled to, but there were also more than a few taken nearby. There was also a photo where I managed to catch a great photo opportunity at the ocean of a strange mirage.

  8

  While sitting (or perhaps “with the conviction that I sat” would be a more accurate phrasing) in the chair at the desk in the second-floor library, I would, among other things, run through my memories of when I was alive.

  In one area of the large desk sat an old-style dedicated word processor. But in my present state, I lacked the power to start it up and use it.

  For a ghost with no corporeal body, flipping a power switch on machines like this and using them…It seemed I was fundamentally incapable of such actions. Not to say that it was totally impossible for me to touch or move things: I could open a book or notebook, for example, move a door…Those things weren’t beyond me.

  I wasn’t sure where the line was drawn, but the latter class of physical actions would probably look to the living like a spiritual manifestation like a poltergeist. That’s the explanation I dreamed up.

  “What is this a photo of?” I remembered being asked.

  Who had asked me that question? And when?

  “On the right there, is that you when you were younger, Mr. Sakaki?”

  I at least knew that the other person wasn’t Sou. Sou wouldn’t call me Mr. Sakaki.

  A simple, plain wooden picture frame that stood on the desk in the library. The question was about an old color photo inside the frame.

  The picture was still on the desk now.

  It showed five young people.

  Three boys and two girls. The boy on the right in the picture was definitely me. I was wearing a navy blue polo shirt and had my right hand propped on my hip, smiling. I was holding a brown cane in my left hand, but…

  It looked like the picture had been taken somewhere near here. There was a lake in the background. Maybe a commemorative photo taken on the shore of Lake Minazuki?

  The date the photo was taken was printed in the lower right corner: “8/3/1987.” On the border of the picture frame, someone had handwritten, “Last summer vacation of middle school.”

  It was true—1987 had been eleven years earlier. The year my mother suddenly passed away and my family left Yomiyama, and this had been the summer vacation of that year…

  Third year in middle school. A fifteen-year-old me/Teruya Sakaki.

  The other four people…Yes, they were friends from my class and—

  “It’s a photo that brings back a lot of memories,” I think I replied to the question. “Of that memorable summer vacation.”

  “Oh yeah?” the other person responded offhandedly. “You look like you’re having a lot of fun, the way you’re smiling in this picture. You look like a totally different person…”

  …After playing the memory back to this point, I finally remembered.

  That’s right. It was that girl.

  The girl with mismatched eyes I’d run into again on the seashore at the end of July last year. When she had come over to this house…

  The girl’s name was Mei. Mei Misaki.

  She said Mei was written with the character for howling. Mei Misaki—

  Sketch 2

  What does it mean to “become an adult”?

  —Hm?

  When you were little, did you ever think, I want to be a grown-up already!

  Hmm…I don’t really remember.

  What age do you have to be to be a grown-up?

  Well, you become a legal adult at age twenty. They used to call that “coming of age,” and the adulthood ceremony for boys was held when they were younger than that. Like at age twelve.

  Does the beginning of adulthood change in different parts of history?

  Different parts of history, different countries, and different communities, yeah.

  Huh…

  To me, I figure once you’re in high school, you’re probably an adult. Up to middle school, you’re a child. That’s how long the compulsory education is, anyway, and you can’t get married at that point.

  You can get married once you’re in high school?

  Girls can get married at sixteen and boys at eighteen. That’s how it’s set up.

  Huh…

  1

  Ghosts are said to “haunt” things.

  The object of their haunting can be a specific place, or a person, or sometimes an object.

  For example, when a ghost haunts a house, that house becomes a haunted house. When haunting a person, in the worst-case scenario, the afflicted person might be possessed and killed. Like in the Yotsuya Kaidan, that famous old ghost story. Perhaps the “cursed treasure” that brings its owner bad luck is another example of haunting an object.

  There’s plenty of fiction written about ghosts, but none of that is anything more than a product of a living person’s imagination. No one knows, or could possibly know, what an actual ghost is like.

  And although I’ve actually become a ghost myself now, that still doesn’t mean I can talk knowledgeably about ghosts in general. The only thing I know about is my own situation…

  …Still.

  Why did I turn into this?

  This continues to bother me.

  I don’t think this happens to all the people who die.

  What happens to a person after they die? Do they go to an afterlife, like heaven or hell? Or is nothingness the only thing that was ever waiting for us after death?…I decided to set aside such huge questions.

  It’s hard to believe that my current in-between state, as unnatural and unstable as it is, could be the norm after death. If the world were so full of ghosts, it would be a big deal…Even as a ghost myself, that’s how it seemed to me.

  This in-between unnatural and unstable condition must be a rather unique one to assume after death.

  And given that—

  Why did I turn into this?

  I really couldn’t shake this thought. Which is only natural.

/>   Wouldn’t you expect there to be some fitting reason or cause behind it? It’s impossible to resist the urge to think so.

  If I assumed that my/Teruya Sakaki’s ghost was haunting something—

  I had the feeling it was definitely a place I was haunting. It was Lakeshore Manor, where I had lived in life and where that life had ended. But—

  You might then suppose the only place I could appear was this mansion, but that seemed not to be the case. That, too—

  It was the night of May 27.

  The first time I appeared anywhere other than Lakeshore Manor.

  2

  …In a large room facing a veranda.

  What had originally been a Japanese-style tatami room had been largely renovated into an imitation of a Western-style combo living and dining room. A high-quality carpet was spread over the floor, on which were arranged a black-painted dining room table and chairs. Several plates and bowls piled with food were set on the table. A table set for dinner.

  Three of the living were in this place at the time.

  Tsukiho Hiratsuka—i.e., my sister.

  Her two children—i.e., the older brother Sou and the little sister Mirei.

  The image of the three of them sitting around the dinner table was reflected in the glass of the door to the veranda. Suddenly, I realized I was looking at it.

  After a brief moment of bewilderment, I realized Aha. For some reason, without warning, this time I had appeared here, somewhere other than Lakeshore Manor.

  “Here” being the Hiratsuka house, where Tsukiho lived.

  Although also in Hinami, the house was in the long-standing town center, rather far from the Lakeshore Manor built in the vacation home/resort area. But I had visited it several times during my life. I also remembered this combo living and dining room.

  Why had my/Teruya Sakaki’s ghost suddenly manifested here—in the Hiratsuka house—tonight?

  The glass door acted as a mirror, reflecting the three figures of the mother and her children. There was no other human figure visible in it. Regardless—