Sketch 3

1

June passed and July began…The seasons turned toward summer, and all sorts of things changed in all sorts of ways as time rolled on, while I remained unchanged.

In this unnatural, unstable “state of existence” as a ghost, continuing to linger noncommittally in the world of the living in a half-formed way, every once in a while appearing without any set cycle or regularity.

At Lakeshore Manor or somewhere nearby.

In the Hiratsuka house or that neighborhood.

I also appeared in places that didn’t fall into any of those categories. On a seaside path on a rainy day or on the grounds of a dilapidated temple whose name I didn’t know…

And yet no one noticed these frequent apparations. Not a single person.

What could possibly be the reason I had become this way?

I felt as if I already knew the answer to this question. I wouldn’t say I was 100 percent positive, but it seemed plausible.

I don’t think, for example, that I held a grudge against someone or that I held on to some lingering attachment or regret about some task that I had failed to complete. Even as an amnesiac ghost, I would expect to have at least a tiny awareness of it if such strong emotions were at the root of this—and yet.

I felt no malice toward anyone in particular.

And I didn’t have any good guesses about what I might have left unfinished—I don’t think.

All I had was a feeling of sorrow overlying my entire self, profound and yet undefinable…

…That’s why.

Thinking about it, I feel sure the cause is the fact that I remain “unmourned.”

I died, but my death is unacknowledged by anyone, and no funeral or proper burial has taken place. Not only that, but not even I know where my physical body (read: corpse) is or what happened to it after I died. In such an unjust situation, I suppose I will continue on this way.

Which would mean…

2

When I appear somewhere, even if I try to touch someone, they never realize I’m there. I suppose some people might get a feeling, but it isn’t clear-cut.

Ghosts have a lot of problems—is that really what this boils down to?

Suppose I was a vengeful spirit with a violent malice at the root of my existence: I would probably haunt the person I hated and end up trying to kill them. I suppose that sort of ghost has characteristics that make it easy to detect its presence, i.e., easy to spot. These are examples of the pointless things I wound up thinking about.

In my case, I was presumably a different kind of ghost. In basic terms, no one was aware of me or saw me. To say nothing of the fact that I wasn’t trying to haunt or kill anyone specific, not that I even could. No matter where, when, or how I appeared, I was utterly “not there” to people.

All I could do anymore was accept it and think, So that’s how it is…As July started, the feeling of surrender was gaining ground inside me.

For example, I thought about possibly kicking up a fuss reminiscent of a poltergeist to draw attention. But even if I was to try that, I don’t think my message (Teruya Sakaki died and turned into a ghost, and I’m right here!) would come across very clearly. It seemed like it would just get confused for petty tricks. I felt worthless. Of course Sou and Mirei wouldn’t get it, nor would Tsukiho or Shuji, who seemed to be covering up my death…

There was only one avenue left to me now.

Something that might have some meaning if I tried it. That being—

To find my body, presumably.

My body, which had fallen to its death in the grand entry of Lakeshore Manor on the night of May 3. My body, whose death I knew had not been properly mourned and which I knew had not been properly buried.

Where was it now? What state was it in? If I could just find that out…, I thought.

If I could just find that out and see the body for myself, to be able to directly experience my own death in a form so undeniable…

If I could do that, then maybe.

Maybe then I would be freed from my current existence.

3

That being the case—

I started to conduct a search for my body each time I appeared.

I didn’t imagine it would be at the Hiratsuka house or anywhere nearby. The place it seemed most likely to be was Lakeshore Manor or the surrounding area.

With that in mind, I decided that every time I appeared, I would search every conceivable hiding spot with purpose.

First up was everywhere inside the house.

Each room on the first and second floors. In the attic and in the basement. The bathrooms and powder rooms, of course, as well as storerooms and closets and inside various wardrobes. The ability to exert physical influence seemed to depend on the time and location, and there were limits on the range and extent of that influence, but I was able to open and close doors and drawers without difficulty.

There were several rooms with locked doors on the second floor, but these posed no problems to me since I lacked a physical flesh-and-blood body. The mere desire to enter brought me inside. I also went to the attic and basement. I even peered into the depths of an old fireplace that had long gone unused. Nevertheless—

In the end, my body was nowhere to be found within the house…

The next place I looked was the garage built on the grounds, adjacent to the house.

Ever since becoming a ghost, I had yet to go back into the garage. On its face, it was a one-story “shed” made of wood with a timeworn appearance, which I had used in life to park my car and store my tools.

The car was still there, as I had left it.

It was a white station wagon that I won’t claim was cared for impeccably. I didn’t own a moped or bicycle. One reason being the old wound to my left leg, so I had only ever used four-wheeled vehicles.

The car wasn’t locked, and the key was hanging on a pegboard in the garage. Just as I had done in life.

The driver’s seat, the passenger seat, the backseat, the storage space…in all it was the same: My body wasn’t there.

I searched every nook and cranny of the garage, including under the car. But still I found nothing…

It wasn’t in the building.

So then outside, I suppose. In which case, the boundaries expanded endlessly.

The front and backyards on the property. The surrounding woods. The lakeside. It could even be in the ground or in the lake. Even leaving aside the forest, there was always the ocean. Thinking about it sent me into a tailspin.

I had nothing resembling a clue to follow.

In essence, this was an issue tied to “what happened there on the night of May 3 after Teruya Sakaki died?” As it happened, even after becoming a ghost, the very same Teruya Sakaki/I didn’t know. The situation was utterly absurd. The blank, like a thick fog rising over the events before and after my death, I continued to regard with bitterness—

I reviewed my questions.

Why had I died in the first place?

What had happened after I died?

Since these questions remained just that, there were limits on what I could do. At least I could try expanding the range of my search, centering on Lakeshore Manor…

On the other hand, I also had a sense that, well, there isn’t any particular rush about it, either.

Because it wasn’t going to change the fact that I was dead.

Of course, I wouldn’t call my current state a pleasant one, but nor did I have any confidence about what might happen if I were to find my body. I could handle the vague idea of it, but when I considered whether or not it was what I truly wanted, I became somehow uncertain…

…Still.

“When a person dies, I feel like they can connect in some way with everyone.”

Ah…what is this?

Oh yes, this is something I said to someone sometime in the past.

“Who is ‘everyone’?”

When they asked me that, I believe I answered, “I mean everyone who died before them.”

…And yet.

Even though I was dead, I was completely alone here. Stranded in this unnatural, unstable existence.

I don’t want to be like this forever—I know that some part of me felt this way, too.

4

As it neared the middle of July, I happened to be there again when the phone in the grand entry rang.

“Sakaki? Hellooo? You still not there?”

After the machine picked up, a man’s voice I remembered hearing before played on the speaker.

“It’s me, Arai. Have you been gone this whole time or what? I guess you didn’t get my other messages.”

I got them two months ago…but, well.

His tone implied I tried calling a couple other times, you know. Although certainly I seemed to recall that in that call two months ago, it sounded like there was something he wanted to talk about.

“I guess you’re on a long trip? That would be a major problem for me. I can’t remember if you have a cell phone or not. I hope you can try and pick up on this SOS from an old buddy.”

Wish I could, but…sorry, there’s not much I can do about it now. Not to mention that the way I am now, I still can’t really remember what this “old buddy” even looks like.

“I say it’s an SOS, but well, kind of like that other time, I was hoping you could help me out. After all, back in northyomi (?), we went through it all together…Right?”

I thought, Wha—?

We went through it all in northyomi?

I guessed “northyomi” was “North Yomi.” Yomiyama North Middle abbreviated to North Yomi. Where I had gone until partway through my third year, eleven years ago…

So Arai was a classmate from back then?

From North Yomi…in third-year Class 3 that year?

“Anyway, when you get this, could you call me? Please, Sakaki, babe.”

Once he hung up, I went straight to the library on the second floor.

An old friend named Arai…I still couldn’t remember if his name was written with the characters for new well or rough-hewn well, but I thought maybe…

The photo standing on my desk in the library…the commemorative one taken during the summer break of 1987. Maybe one of the people in that photo is him, I thought.

5

They say it started in 1972.

Twenty-six years ago looking back from today and fifteen years ago looking back from when I was a third-year in middle school eleven years ago.

At the start of that school year, a student named Misaki in third-year Class 3 of North Yomi died.

Misaki was a popular kid, beloved by everyone. None of the students wanted to accept such a sudden death, and…

“They said, ‘Misaki isn’t dead. Misaki is still alive, sitting in the classroom right over there.’ All of them started to pretend like that was true. The head teachers did it, too, and they kept the act up all the way to graduation apparently.”

I remembered telling Sou about the old legend.

It was after graduation that strange things started to happen. They say that the figure of Misaki, who couldn’t possibly have been there in reality, showed up in the class’s group photo taken in the classroom after the graduation ceremony.

“A photo of a ghost?” I remembered Sou asking, his head cocked.

“Something like that, anyway. Although I never saw the photo myself,” I replied before continuing with the story.

“They say that became the trigger. And the year after that, strange…or I should say, terrifying things started happening in third-year Class 3.”

It didn’t happen every year. There seemed to be “on years” and “off years,” and in an “on year,” the number of people in the class would go up by one without anyone ever noticing. No one could tell who the “extra person” was. There wouldn’t be enough desks and chairs at the start of the semester, so they could tell the number of people had increased. And then—

“In years where an extra person was in the class, calamities would befall the class.”

“Calamities?”

“It means misfortunes, or accidents. In other words…people would die. Every month, someone related to that year’s third-year Class 3…”

Whether it was an accident, or an illness, or suicide…There were many ways to die, but every month at least one person with ties to the class would die. People with ties to the class included the students and head teacher and also included their close relatives. This would continue until the day of the graduation ceremony.

“Was that—?”

Even when I explained, at first Sou cocked his head in confusion again.

“Was it a curse?”

“A curse…Well, some people say it is. But it doesn’t mean that the extra person who infiltrates the class is the vengeful spirit of the student named Misaki. According to the legend, the extra person is supposed to be a casualty…someone who died in a previous year’s disaster. But that person doesn’t do anything bad themselves. So I think it’s a little different from a normal curse.”

“Did that—?” Sou looked more and more troubled. “Did that happen for real?”

“Have I ever lied to you, Sou?”

“But…”

“It really happened.” I replied with a serious face. “I experienced it myself eleven years ago. In third-year Class 3 at North Yomi…”

The number of desks and chairs in the classroom was wrong, and there was a group of people who started panicking about it being an on year…In April, first one student’s grandmother died. But since that was the death of an elderly person caused by illness, there were a significant number of skeptics who treated it as an unfortunate coincidence. But then—

“At the start of May, we had our school trip, and as the bus was heading to the airport, just before we left the city limits of Yomiyama, the bus got in a huge accident.”

At that, I pointed to my left leg, which still bore the scars of the injury I’d sustained in that accident. A short gasp escaped Sou. His expression transformed from confusion to terror.

“Several of my classmates died in that accident. So did the head teacher, who was riding with us. We were all…everyone in the bus was covered in blood…It was a terrible accident.”

I sighed and slowly shook my head. Sou was looking at me wide-eyed, as if he might start crying at any moment.

“I was hurt badly enough to be hospitalized, and it took a whole month before I could leave. But when I was finally able to go to school, the disaster next struck my own family. You were only a year old, so you wouldn’t remember what happened in the middle of June that year…”

My mother Hinako’s death.

She had gone shopping by herself and suddenly collapsed, and by the time she was transported to the emergency room, it was already too late. The cause of death was listed as heart failure, but according to my father Shotaro, she had been in perfect health. He couldn’t believe she would die so suddenly and became skeptical. Of course, he grieved and was filled with sorrow, too.

I had been unable to say anything before, but faced with that, I revealed the secret of third-year Class 3 to my father. Breaking the commandment passed on to the class—that indiscriminately telling other people about it would bring worse calamity down on us.

I suppose the bus accident in May and my mother’s sudden death in June were both disasters visited on third-year Class 3. I’m sure of it.

If the legend of the class were true, then the disasters weren’t over yet. Someone with ties to the class would die the next month, and the month after that, and the month after that…all the way until graduation. It could be me or my family—maybe my father or my older sister Tsukiho.

“My father—your grandfather—was a doctor, and doctors are scientists, so he didn’t believe me right away. But I begged him so desperately…and I’m sure with the bus accident and my mother’s sudden death, even my father couldn’t help but feel something abnormal was going on…”

“Is that why you moved away from Yomiyama?” Sou asked, his eyes wide.

“That’s right,” I replied, lowering my gaze.

“We were scared. My father and I both were. So we ran. We fled Yomiyama and moved here.”

When I transferred schools and the family left Yomiyama, then of course we would be able to escape the disasters. That’s what we thought. So…

We cleared out of our house in Yomiyama and moved here to Lakeshore Manor, like an emergency evacuation. That was right after the start of July.

That month, one of the students in third-year Class 3 at North Yomi jumped off the roof of the school building and died.

6

These words were written on the old color photo in the standing frame. I stood in front of the desk on which it rested, gazing down at it once again—

“What is this a photo of?”

I remembered being asked this question last summer, in this same spot, by that girl—Mei Misaki.

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

Five people standing with the lake in the background.

Facing the picture, the boy on the far right with his hand on his hip was definitely me. On the date printed in the photo—“8/3/1987”—a fifteen-year-old Teruya Sakaki.

“It’s a photo that brings back a lot of memories,” I said in answer to her question. “Of that memorable summer vacation.”

“Oh yeah?” she 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…”

I’m sure I do, I now remember thinking at the time. Because I don’t think I smile this way very much now that I’m an adult.

“It’s because I was with really good friends,” I think I answered at the time. “We were all classmates in middle school.”

…Yes.

That’s right: Everyone in this photo, we were all friends in third-year Class 3 that year at North Yomi…

“My dad took the picture for us,” I remembered adding, though she hadn’t asked.

“Grandpa was there?”

A voice came from one side. It was Sou.

I recalled that, unusually, Tsukiho had brought both Sou and Mirei over to visit that day. I could hear the sounds of Mirei frolicking with her mother downstairs.

“Yup,” I replied, turning to look at Sou. “Back then, Grandpa lived in this house, too, and so did you. Although you were just a baby.”

“Did Mom live here, too?”

“Of course she did. It must have been hard for her looking after you back then.”

I seem to remember that the girl listened to us talk in silence, her right eye, without its eye patch, crinkling with a smile.

7

I looked anew at the commemorative photo taken during the summer break eleven years ago. Then I ran through the faces and outfits of the four people in the photo other than myself.

Two boys and two girls.

The two boys were on the left side, and the two girls were on the right side. I/Teruya Sakaki was standing on the right edge of the group with a noticeable gap between the two girls and me. I was holding a cane in my left hand, probably because the injuries to my leg still hadn’t healed three months after the accident.

The boy on the left was tall and lanky and was wearing a gaudy Hawaiian shirt, exuding an unmistakable air of “off to summer holiday!” He had his right hand thrust forward with a thumbs-up and was grinning broadly.

Beside him, a boy wearing a blue T-shirt was comparatively short and chubby, his face ridiculously serious behind his silver-rimmed glasses. His arms were crossed in front of his chest, and his lips were twisted a little grouchily.

One of these two was the Arai who’d called me. But which one was it?

I stared at their faces.

Then I reached out for the picture frame with both hands and tried to gently pick it up. It lifted. Exerting this level of influence over an object this size wasn’t difficult.

I felt like the impression I’d gotten from his voice and way of talking matched the Hawaiian shirt kid on the left more. But…argh, I don’t know. I couldn’t remember which of them was Arai, nor the name of the one who wasn’t Arai.

I shifted my gaze to the two girls.

The one on the left wore a light blue blouse with a tight, white skirt. She, too, was short and wore silver-rimmed glasses, but her short haircut and delicate features seemed to suit her. She was flashing a peace sign and smiling slightly, but her expression betrayed a trace of nervousness.

The girl on the right was slender and about the same height as I’d been at the time, dressed in denim pants and a beige shirt. She was holding down her long hair, which was being teased by the wind, while also flashing a peace sign with a relaxed smile…

…No, I still had no idea.

I returned the frame to its spot and lowered myself into the chair at the desk. I slumped against the back of the chair.

These people had been good friends of mine, and yet…And yet I could remember nothing about them. Not their names, or personalities, or their voices, or how they talked.

“It’s a photo that brings back a lot of memories.”

The words I had spoken in response to a question from Mei Misaki that day last summer echoed very distantly, somehow hollow, in my ears that were themselves nothing more than a “relic of life.”

8

I casually opened a drawer of the desk without any particular purpose.

My eye happened to fall on something while I slumped in the chair, and truly unintentionally, I reached out a hand toward it. It was the lowest, deepest drawer.

Several partitions divided the interior, in one section of which rested a row of several thick notebooks. The notebooks…No, they were store-bought diaries. Seven-by-ten daily planners sold at bookstores and stationery stores toward the end of every year.

They were arranged in the drawer with their spines upward. The spines were printed to read, for example, “Memories 1992”…

…That’s right. I remembered now.

I had started keeping a diary every year in this room. I did it when the mood struck me or when it seemed necessary, and the majority of it was dashed-off notes, so writing by hand had been much more convenient than starting up the computer.

The first volume was from six years ago. The year my father passed away and I inherited this mansion and took up residence here.

That was Memories 1992, followed by Memories 1993, Memories 1994, and so on in order.

I thought, If I could pick these up and read them…

All the different memories that I had lost or that had faded since I became a ghost might come back a little bit…But no.

Before that, I need to— I thought, peering into the drawer.

First would be the new diary.

May 3 of this year, the day I died. If I had written something down before that night, then I might find a clue to why I died.

As it happened—

I couldn’t find that crucial volume, Memories 1998, in the drawer.

…Why not?

I was stymied for a moment and looked around the room.

Maybe on the desk? No.

The bookshelves on the walls, which were full of books and notebooks. Maybe there? No.

I opened all the other drawers in the desk, too. But I couldn’t find the planner for 1998 in any of them…

Maybe I hadn’t been keeping a diary for this year? But why wouldn’t I be? I couldn’t remember what I’d written, but…I remembered writing in it. In this library. At this desk.

“Your eye. That blue eye.”

I don’t know why the words I’d spoken to that girl on the shore of Lake Minazuki suddenly came to mind.

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

The same things as me?

In the same direction?

What did that mean…?

Several images flashed suddenly before my eyes when I stood up from the chair.

It was something I’d glimpsed the first day I’d appeared in this mansion, when I’d come up to the second floor and gone into the bedroom…

First of all—yes—it was on the bedside table.

Now I could see it clearly. It was more than an image; I should probably call it a “vision.”

A bottle and a glass.

The bottle probably contained whiskey or some kind of alcohol. And—

Beside that was a plastic pill case with an open lid. Several pale capsules had spilled out from inside…And then—

There had been one other thing in the center of the room.

Something white had been dangling from the ceiling, swaying. Oh—it’s…

It’s a rope.

A white loop had been made at the end of the rope, just big enough for a human head to slip through…

This is…

This looks exactly like…

……

…A voice (…What are you doing?).

Someone’s voice (What are you doing…? Teruya?).

I could hear (…Stop it) (…Don’t worry about it) several voices.

One was Tsukiho’s (You can’t…Don’t do it!).

One was mine (Don’t worry about it…) (It’s…too late for me)…

……

……

…My face just before death.

The face reflected in the mirror in the grand entry, stained with blood.

The contorted, stiff features suddenly slackening into an oddly peaceful look, as if freed from pain, fear, and uncertainty…And then.

A faint movement on my lips.

Trembling.

Words were coming out of my mouth. Wringing out my strength on the precipice of death, some words were…What? What could those words have been…?

What was I trying to say?

They were just barely inaudible. Just barely impossible to read. Just on the edge of communicating…Argh—what could I have been trying to say?

Something clattered, and the vision fell away.

I looked over and saw the picture frame had fallen onto the floor. Had I knocked it over without noticing?

I tried to pick it up and return it to the desk. Just then—

I saw the back cover of the frame had come off. The fastener holding it seemed to have loosened with the impact of the fall, which knocked it free.

That was when I noticed something. There was a scrap of paper between the photo and the back cover of the frame.

What is this? I wondered, taking the paper in my fingertips.

On the scrap of note paper, much smaller than the photo, was handwriting. Written vertically in black ink, it was a list of names—five last names.

The one farthest to the right said “Sakaki,” and I understood immediately.

This was a note listing the last names of the five people in the photo, written in the order they appeared in the photo. I had made a note of it.

I saw the name “Arai,” with the characters for new residence, farthest to the left.

Ah, this was it.

So it hadn’t been new well or rough-hewn well, but rather new residence. Just as I had imagined before, the boy in the Hawaiian shirt all the way to the left was Arai.

My eyes ran over the other three names, too.

I saw that the two girls were, from right to left, “Yagisawa” and “Higuchi,” and the other boy was “Mitarai”…However.

In the next moment—really, almost instantaneously, I couldn’t help but notice it, compelled to it. I noticed and couldn’t help but goggle.

A slight distance below the names, in slightly faint ink, I saw an “X.”

There were two of them.

One was below “Yagisawa.” The other was below “Arai.” And—

Below each of the Xs, small words explained the meaning of the symbol.

“Dead.”