Another, Vol. 1 (26 page)

I had at some point sunk into sleep, but I was jerked out of it.

The cell phone I had tossed to one side of my bed was vibrating, flashing a tiny green light. Who could that be? It was pretty late at night. Could Teshigawara want something? Or maybe…

I sprawled on my stomach and stretched a hand out for the phone.

“Heya.”

At the very first word, I knew who my caller was. I absently muttered “What do you want?” which he heard.

“Now, now, I shouldn’t need a reason!”

My father, Yosuke, was calling from his scorching foreign land. It had been a long time since he’d last called, I thought, but what timing…

“I bet India is hot. Is it night there?”

“I just had curry for dinner. How are you doing?”

“Physically, I’m fine.”

My father probably didn’t know yet about the string of deaths among my classmates and their families. I probably ought to tell him. But then I’d have to mention the things I’d heard from Mei today, too, and…

After some thought, I decided not to.

Even if I told him a simplified version, it probably wouldn’t come across very well, and if I wanted to give him the full explanation, that would take too much time. And besides, supposedly there was that rule that “you can’t even tell your family.”

Then maybe you’re not actually supposed to know.

The last time I’d run into Mei in the basement display room of “Twilight of Yomi,” she’d told me something similar.

If you found out, then maybe…

What had she meant by that?

That if “I never found out about it,” the “risk of death” was ever so slightly lower or something? That was something to consider, too.

I decided to avoid any very complex topics on this international phone call and tried approaching my father from a different angle.

“Hey, this might sound strange.”

“What’s that? You in love?”

“Cut it out. It’s nothing that stupid.”

“Oho. So sorry.”

“Did Mom ever tell you any memories she had from middle school?”

“Say what?”

I got the impression that my dad was pretty gobsmacked on the other end of the call.

“Why’re you asking that again, out of the blue?”

“Mom went to the same middle school I’m going to here. North Yomi Middle School. Do the words ‘third-year Class 3’ mean anything to you?”

“Uh-h-h…” My dad mumbled frowningly, then was silent for several seconds. However, the answer he gave me after all that came down to one word: “Nope.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Well, I mean, she probably did tell me stories about middle school, but then if you’re asking me to retell them now…Was Ritsuko in third-year Class 3, then?”

Hm-m-m…I guess this was the memory power of a man over fifty.

“By the way, Koichi.”

This time my dad asked me the question.

“It’s two months you’ve been there now, so how does Yomiyama seem, a year and a half later? Not much different?”

“Mrrm…” I cocked my head, the phone still pressed to my ear. “A year and a half later? But this is the first time I’ve been here since starting middle school.”

“Eh? That doesn’t seem right…”

There was a
kksh
of interference and my father’s voice crackled.

I held the phone away from my ear for a second.
Oh right
, I recalled,
this room’s got terrible reception.
I checked the bars on the edge of the screen. There was just barely one bar, but the interference was getting worse and worse.
Ksshkksh, kkkshkshkkssh…

“…Hm-m?”

I made out my father’s voice through the snapping interference.

“Oh, right. You’re right. I must be remembering wrong about…”

His tone sounded as if he had just then remembered something. But the rest was obscured by interference and grew increasingly unclear. In the end, the call dropped completely.

I gazed down at the zero bars on the LCD screen for a little bit, then lazily set the phone down beside my pillow.

All at once,
brrr
, a shudder ran through me like a powerful chill. My whole body…no, not just my physical body. The same shudder went through my mind, too.

…I’m scared.

One beat later, the words came.

I’m scared. Terrified. It was these feelings that had made me shudder.

The saga concerning third-year Class 3 that I had heard from Mei Misaki today—it was because of that. It hadn’t been so bad as I was listening or for a little while after, but now, all of a sudden…There was a time lag, like the sore muscles that came after exercise.

I felt as if the translucent gauze that had been obscuring the reality of events behind a kind of tenuousness had abruptly disappeared. Laid bare, touched by shades of the utmost reality, terror assaulted me…

Third-year Class 3 is the closest to death.

We’ve drawn nearer to “death.”

If they let it go on, the ‘disasters’ might keep on coming.

They say that once it starts, it won’t stop…

If everything Mei said was true and, on top of that, if the “additional countermeasures” that had begun today weren’t effective…

That meant someone else would get dragged to their death.

It could be me—there was that chance, of course. (God, it’s a little late for that…)

There were thirty students in third-year Class 3. Twenty-eight, minus Sakuragi and Takabayashi. For convenience’s sake, say the targets were limited only to the students in the class. Then there was, simplistically speaking, a one-in-twenty-eight chance that this very night, I could…

The tragedy of Yukari Sakuragi that I had witnessed and Ms. Mizuno’s elevator accident that I had heard over the phone as it was happening…They tangled and melted into one another and became a somber, crookedly shaped net spreading over my heart like a spiderweb.

There in the middle of it…

The scratches on Mei’s desk in the classroom flitted suddenly, in tight close-up, through my brain.

Who is “the casualty”—?

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Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Part 1: What?…………Why?
Introduction
Chapter 1: April
Chapter 2: May I
Chapter 3: May II
Chapter 4: May III
Chapter 5: May IV
Interlude I
Chapter 6: June I
Chapter 7: June II
Chapter 8: June III
Interlude II
Chapter 9: June IV
Newsletters
Copyright