VI. Voice

prologue

Recently, my sister had begun waking up, washing her face, and immediately taking the dog for a walk. It was the end of November and quite chilly out, so she always left the house looking cold.

That morning, she headed for the door, shivering as usual. I was eating breakfast at the table, scanning the obituaries.

There was a kerosene heater in the corner of the room, which my mother had just lit, so the room stank of oil. It was the smell of brain cells dying. I had just that moment found an article about a child dying of carbon monoxide poisoning from a heater.

I opened the window to air the room out, and a wave of cold morning air came in, sweeping away the stench. The windows were fogged up, and there were traces of mist in the garden.

My sister was standing outside the window, wrapped in a sweater and scarf.

When I opened the window, her eyes met mine, and she waved. The dog was next to her, a leash running from its collar to her hand.

“I can’t get her to leave. Something in the yard has all her attention,” she said, pointing at the dog. The dog was next to the wall between our yard and the house next door. It was sniffing the ground, pawing at the ground as if getting ready to dig.

“Come on! We don’t have time for that,” she said, yanking the leash. She had to get ready for school after the walk. The dog seemed to understand her, and it followed her out of sight, their breath visible in the air.

My mother told me to close the window. I did as I was told, and then I went outside.

There was a large stone at the edge of the garden. I moved it to the spot where the dog had been trying to dig; that would stop it from trying again. I didn’t want it digging there—a few more minutes, and my sister would’ve found the human hands I’d buried there earlier that year. When I got home, I’d have to move them somewhere safer. I had just caught another glimpse of my sister’s strange ability to stumble upon the unusual.

I went back inside and finished reading the paper. My mother asked if there were any interesting stories, and I shook my head—once again, there was no new information about Kitazawa Hiroko.

Seven weeks earlier, Kitazawa Hiroko’s body had been found in an abandoned building not far from where I lived, within the city limits. The abandoned building had once been a hospital. It was in a deserted area, away from the city center and toward the mountains, at the end of a gravel path leading from the road. The building was surrounded by rusty chain-link fences and had been left there without being demolished. All year long, there was nothing around it but dried grass, no other buildings at all.

Three elementary school children had been exploring the building when they’d found Kitazawa Hiroko’s corpse. All three were now in counseling.

When the body had first been discovered, the case was all over the papers and the news. But now they were mentioning Kitazawa Hiroko less and less frequently.

There was no way to tell what was going on with the investigation.

The articles I had found about her contained nothing but the story of how her body was found, along with a photo of her. I had cut these out of the paper as I found them.

The photo had been taken while she was alive. She was smiling, flashing white teeth, and she had straight black hair down to her shoulders. No other photographs of her had been released.

Did the police have any idea who had killed her?

By the time classes ended that evening, it was already dark. The florescent lights were on, and the windows reflected the classroom like a mirror. When the last class ended, the other students surged out of the room. In the windows, I could see one immobile figure in the middle of this raucous flood. She had long black hair, and her skin was so pale it was like she was made of snow. Morino Yoru.

Only the two of us remained.

“You want to show me something?” I asked. She had whispered as much to me in the hall after lunch, telling me to stick around after classes.

“I have obtained a photo of a dead body.”

Everyone goes through life in his or her own way. You take a hundred people, you get one hundred ways of life, and all of them find it hard to understand any way of life but their own.

Morino and I had a unique way of life that was well beyond the ordinary. Exchanging pictures of corpses was simply part of this.

She produced a letter-sized piece of paper from her bag. There was a glossy look to the page; it was specialty paper, designed for printing photographs.

Printed on it was a bare concrete room—but the first thing I noticed was how red everything was.

In the center of the photo was an oblong table, the surface of which was red—as was the floor around it, and the ceiling, and the walls … not bright red, but dark red, the kind that wells up in the dark corner of your room after you turn out the lights.

She was placed on top of the central table. “Kitazawa Hiroko?” I asked.

Morino raised her eyebrows marginally. It was easy to overlook, but this was how she expressed surprise.

“I’m impressed you could tell.”

“You got this off the Internet?”

“Someone gave it to me. I was cutting out newspaper articles concerning her in the public library when someone passing by gave it to me. Apparently, it’s a picture of her—but I never would’ve guessed.”

Morino Yoru was a beautiful girl, so boys from other schools would occasionally try to strike up a conversation with her. No-body in our school ever went near her, though; they were all well aware that she had absolutely no interest.

Apparently, someone had seen her gathering strange articles in an unusual place like the library and had used that as an excuse.

She took the printed photo from my hand, looked at it closely, and narrowed her eyes. “How could you know it was her at first glance like that?”

“The girl in the photo … is barely recognizable as human.” Morino whispered this, and I explained that I had simply guessed. Kitazawa Hiroko’s head was on the table in the picture. I had made an educated guess based on the hairstyle and profile.

“Oh,” she said, nodding.

I asked about the person who had given her the photo, but Morino didn’t answer.

I would search for it online when I got home.

I looked away, out the window. There was nothing out there but darkness—deep, never-ending darkness. The classroom was bathed in white light, and the reflected rows of desks floated in the air outside.

“There are two kinds of humans: those who kill and those who are killed.”

“Abrupt. What do you mean?”

It was clear enough that some humans killed other people or wanted to kill people for no reason at all. I didn’t know if they became that way as they grew up or if they were simply born that way. The problem was, these people hid their true nature and lived ordinary lives. They were hidden in the world, appearing no different from ordinary humans.

But one day, they would have no choice but to kill. They would have to leave their acceptable lives and go hunting.

I was one of these people.

I had looked into the eyes of a number of killers. Those eyes would, on occasion, look something other than human. It was a subtle difference, barely noticeable, but in the depths of their eyes lurked something alien.

For example, when normal humans spoke to me, they would believe I was human and treat me accordingly.

But the killers I had met were different. When I looked into their eyes, I felt like they saw me as just another object, not a living human.

“So …”

I looked over at Morino’s reflection.

“You didn’t kill her, did you … ? The girl in the photo has her hair curled and dyed—she looks nothing like the photo in the papers, so how did you recognize her?”

As I listened to Morino, I thought to myself that she was very sharp today.

In her eyes, there was no sign of that alien tinge I had seen in those of the killers I had met. She viewed humans as humans. She would probably never kill anyone. She might have unusual interests compared with other humans, but she was still normal.

Morino and I had many things in common—but on this, we differed. This difference was a fundamental one, the difference between humanity … and otherwise.

She was human, the side that always got killed. I was not.

“There was another picture, after she’d had her hair done. It was used without the permission of her family, so it wasn’t widely circulated. I recognized her from that one.”

“I see,” she said, accepting this.

I went home and turned on the computer in my bedroom. I searched all corners of the net, looking for pictures of Kitazawa Hiroko’s corpse. The air in the room grew stale and stuffy. I found nothing.

I took out the knives I had hidden behind my bookcase. I looked at the reflection of my face in the blade. I could hear the sound of the wind outside, and it sounded like the screams of the people these knives had killed.

It was like the knives had a will of their own and were calling to me. Or perhaps something in the depths of my heart was simply reflected in the mirror of the blade. I looked out the window, at the lights of the city in the darkness mingled with the pale lights of the sky above.

I heard a sound from the knife in my hand that it couldn’t possibly have made. I felt sure it was the sound of the knife growing parched.

I had lied to Morino. There had not been any photographs circulated of Kitazawa Hiroko’s new hairstyle.

i

Every now and then, members of my family had temporarily left the house, such as when my father had gone on a business trip or my mother had gone traveling with a friend; each time, the house seemed strangely emptier than it did when all four of us were living there. When I was away on a field trip, my parents and older sister might well have felt the same way, as if there was something missing, as if I should have been there. When the missing family member returned home, everything would be back to normal, and the four of us could see one another again. The house was the size we were used to, comfortably cramped in a way that allowed me to trip over my sister’s outstretched legs when I passed in front of the TV.

There had been four of us … but now my sister was never coming back, and when we sat at the table together, there would always be an extra chair.

Nobody knew why my sister had been murdered, but my older sister, Kitazawa Hiroko, had died seven weeks ago. Someone had killed her twelve hours after we’d last seen her, and the body had been found in an abandoned hospital on the edge of the city.

I’d never actually been inside that hospital, but I had once looked at it from the outside, after my sister had been discovered. It was a cold place, nothing there but dry grass. The ground was gravel, and the wind turned my shoes white with sand. The hospital was a big, derelict concrete square, looming like a massive cast-off shell. All the glass in the windows was broken, and it was dark inside.

It hadn’t been long after my sister had been found inside that I’d seen the place, so the entrance was sealed with tape, and there were police going in and out.

My sister had been found in there by some children. The police had not released any information, but the room where she’d been found had once been an operating chamber.

The body had been badly damaged, and it had not been easy to identify, but they contacted us when they found her bag nearby. My mother had answered the phone.

It was around noon, less than a day since we’d last seen my sister, and my mother had assumed the call was a prank.

But the body was definitely my sister’s. This was not determined by having those of us who knew her—me, my parents, and my sister’s boyfriend, Akagi—identify her. Instead, they used medical charts and several complicated forensics tests.

The police didn’t release many details about her condition when she was found or how she had been killed. The world only knew that she had been strangled and cut up with a knife of some kind. That was horrible enough for the news to make a fuss about it, but the truth was far worse.

The police apparently decided that the truth about what had happened to her would have a detrimental effect on society, and so they kept everything secret. Even the kids who had found her were ordered to keep silent.

My parents had demanded that the police and doctors show them her body. The authorities were reluctant. It was impossible to make her presentable, and they had decided we were better off not seeing her.

I don’t believe my parents had ever doted on my sister excessively while she was alive. Their relationship with her had been an ordinary one: chatting about TV commercials, arguing about where the newspaper had wandered off to … We were that kind of family. They had never bragged about her, and I had never known how much they loved her until I saw their faces covered in tears when they learned of her death.

“Let us see her!” my father begged, desperate. His face was bright red, and he looked positively furious. When the doctors and police realized that he wouldn’t back down, they reluctantly allowed my parents to enter the room where the body lay.

I watched them vanishing through the double doors from the hall. I was too terrified; I couldn’t understand how anyone could be brave enough to look at her.

I could hear a doctor and a police detective talking. They didn’t know I was standing in the shadow of the stairs.

The detective said it had taken ages to pick up all the pieces.

My shoes squeaked on the floor, and he turned around and saw me. He bit his lip, wincing at his mistake.

The pieces of my sister’s body. I stood there, letting the meaning of those words sink in.

When my parents came out of the morgue, I asked about her body. But they were completely stunned. They’d been crying so hard before, but after they went in that room, neither one of them ever cried again. They stared silently at the floor, not making eye contact with anybody. It was like they had left their emotions in that room. Their faces looked oddly yellow, like unmoving masks.

The police would say nothing about the body, and everything about it remained inside a black box as far as the world was concerned. Because of that, the initial flurry of news reports soon died down. Seven weeks after she was murdered, both the police and the press stopped coming to our house.

†

My sister was two years older than me, merely twenty when she died. It was just the two of us, so I spent my whole life looking up to her.

When I was in the fifth grade, my sister started junior high, wearing her new uniform. When I was in eighth grade, she was talking about the whole new world that had opened up for her in high school. I could always see the life that lay in store for me two years later in my sister. My sister was like a ship forging ahead of me through the dark ocean.

There were two years between us, but we were almost the same height, which meant people often told us we looked alike. One year when we were kids, we’d gone to relatives’ homes for New Year’s, and everyone we met said the same thing.

“We do not!” my sister had said, looking as baffled as I was.

As far as we were concerned, our faces were totally different. Where was the resemblance? It always puzzled me. Yet on that trip, when I’d been playing with some kids my age on the opposite side of the house from my sister, a passing aunt had looked surprised, saying she was sure she’d just seen me playing somewhere else.

When we were kids, my sister and I had gotten along well, and we’d always played together. She would take my hand and take me along with her to the homes of friends her age.

When had that changed? I couldn’t even remember when I’d last chatted and laughed with my sister.

A few years earlier, a tiny rift had opened between us. It wasn’t anything obvious enough for anyone around us to notice. It might not have even really been big enough to call a rift. But when my sister was talking to me, she often looked slightly annoyed.

One time, I was on the living room sofa, and I pointed at the magazine I was reading, talking about the interesting article I’d just read. That was all I did, but my sister glanced at the magazine, frowned, said something vague, and then left the room. I felt like she was irritated with me and was trying to hide it, but I couldn’t be sure.

Perhaps I had done something that rubbed her the wrong way, or she’d been in the middle of something when I’d spoken up. In this manner, I tried to convince myself that her behavior didn’t have any real reason behind it.

Her irritation that time may have been my imagination, but that wasn’t the only time this kind of behavior had occurred.

For example, another day, when I’d come home from school, she was talking to a friend on the phone, laughing into the cordless receiver. I sat on the sofa, watching TV quietly so as not to disrupt her conversation.

When she finally hung up, the room was suddenly quiet. We were each sitting on different sofas, facing each other, watching TV in silence. I wanted to say something to her, but there was something about her expression that made me hesitate. She had been having so much fun a moment before on the phone, but now that she was alone with me, she was suddenly sullen. The warmth had vanished from her, and invisible walls had gone up between us.

If I approached her and tried to talk to her, she would shut me out, looking angry. Whenever we did speak, her answers were curt, as if she was deliberately trying to end the conversations quickly, far faster than she would conversations with our mother.

I had no idea what was behind this, which scared me. My skin sensed my sister’s foul temper before she even said anything, and I could no longer bear to be around her. Eventually, just passing in front of her or being in the same room became stressful, and I was tense all the time.

“Natsumi, you shouldn’t wear that anymore,” she said abruptly one day six months ago, as I was on my way out the door to buy some study guides at the bookstore. She pointed at the white wool cardigan I often wore when I went out. I’d been wearing it for years—and looking closely at it, there were a number of balls on it. It was getting pretty ragged.

“But I like it,” I said.

She scowled at me. “Fine,” she said, like she didn’t give a damn about me anyway, and then she turned her back on me. I stood there feeling like all the light in the world was suddenly fading away.

The two of us might’ve looked a lot alike like people said, but our interests and personalities were polar opposites.

My sister was outgoing, had a boyfriend, and was always smiling. Her friends adored her, and when the phone rang, it was always for her. She was active, involved in any number of things, and barely ever just sat quietly around the house. Even in my eyes, she sparkled.

On the other hand, I was studying for exams. I spent all my time at my desk, and it felt like I had heard nothing for ages but the sound of the tip of my pencil wearing away. When I did have some free time, I just read historical novels.

Once my sister had started junior high and began leaving the house, spending her time in places I had never been to, with people I had never met, I began spending more and more time alone at home, reading. I had only ever left the house when she’d dragged me, anyway. But that change was only natural, as far as I was concerned, and I still loved my beautiful, outgoing sister.

I often compared my sister dashing around outside with myself sitting in the house like a rock. I didn’t have much of an inferiority complex, though; I was proud to have such a great sister.

However, as far as she was concerned, I may have been an embarrassment. Without my realizing it, the way I lived may have been an issue for her.

She was nice. She never expressed her disappointment in me openly, and I’m sure all her behavior was to avoid doing just that. She never once said she didn’t like me, and she seemed to be trying to disguise her irritation. That might have been why it took me so long to figure it out.

Maybe my sister didn’t love me the way I thought she had …

I had no way of telling if that thought was true, but this depressing explanation was the only one I could think of.

Why? That one word was all I had to ask, but it was too late now. Why had I not worked up the courage to ask her while she was still alive? I might have regretted the answer I’d gotten, but it would have been better than this.

But my sister had lost the chance to speak forever. I was stuck with my question, and it would be with me every time I thought of her.

With my sister gone, the house was quiet, like night waiting for a dawn that never came. It was so different that you could hardly believe it was the same place it had been two months before.

My parents talked less since they had seen my sister’s body. Their faces lacked emotion, and they spent a lot of time watching TV in stony silence. Even if the screen was displaying a comedy, they wouldn’t laugh, wouldn’t even smile happily—they’d just watch quietly. My parents might be like this for the rest of their lives; I thought that every time I looked at them.

They had the faces of people struggling under a burden so great that they would never truly be able to enjoy anything, no matter what happened to them.

My mother still made dinner. She cooked out of habit, as part of her routine, working mechanically.

But when I saw the piles of dust in the corners, it made me want to cry. I felt so sorry for them. My mother had kept the house spick-and-span while my sister was here. But now everything was covered in dust. They never even noticed. They must have been too busy remembering how my sister smiled when she was a child, remembering when they’d first held her in their arms, felt her weight.

In that house of silence, my presence went unnoticed. If I spoke to my father, he would nod absently, meaninglessly. But to anyone else, I must have looked just like my parents. My friends told me I never smiled anymore either.

At night, I sometimes went into my sister’s room, sat on her chair, and thought about things. Her room was next to mine. If I had gone in there without permission when she was alive, she would have been furious.

But now no one used the room, and it was going to seed fast. If I put my hand down on her desk, it came away covered in grime.

When she was alive and sitting here, what had she thought about? I sat on her chair, knees against my chest, looking around at the furniture, wondering. The curtains were open, and the darkness of the night lay beyond.

I could see my sister’s face in the window. For a moment, I thought it was her, but then I realized it was just my reflection. We really must have looked alike if I was mistaking myself for her.

There was a mirror on the shelf. I reached for it to study my face, but I saw a little cylinder lying next to it that looked like lipstick; I picked that up instead of the mirror.

It was red, like blood. There were any number of lipsticks lying around in different shades of pink, but the bloodred one absorbed me.

I didn’t need to look at the mirror. The very act of owning a lipstick like that defined the difference between us. I left the room, clutching the lipstick tightly.

I didn’t know how I would live the rest of my life. And it was in that frame of mind that, one evening in late November, I heard my sister’s voice again.

ii

It was November 30. On the way home from school, I’d stopped by a big bookstore in town, as I needed to buy a book of problems related to college entrance exams. I had no great desire to go to college now. There were loads of things I’d wanted to learn when my sister was alive, but not anymore. I simply kept on studying for lack of anything else to do, going on just as I had been before.

The shelf with the workbooks was at the back of the store. I stood in front of it, gazing up at the top shelf and reading the spines in order from the left. When I got to the right end of the shelf, I dropped my eyes a shelf, looking for one that seemed like what I needed.

I didn’t see any good matches, though, so I bent down, searching the bottom shelf. I checked each spine in turn, gradually moving my eyes from left to right … until they rested on a pair of shoes at the edge of my vision.

They were black shoes, pointed at me, standing with me in front of them. When I looked up, the shoes quickly moved away, vanishing into the rows of shelves.

I felt like someone had been staring at me. Feeling suddenly nervous, I looked back at the shelf.

This time, I felt someone standing behind me. The fluorescent lights were casting my fuzzy shadow on the shelves in front of me, and that shadow had just grown larger.

I hadn’t heard any footsteps, yet someone was standing right behind me, close enough to touch. I could hear him breathing.

I knew he was going to try to grope me. I had heard from someone else that it had happened in this store before. But I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t run away either. My legs wouldn’t move. I was too scared to even turn around. My body was petrified, turned to stone.

“Excuse me,” someone said suddenly, on my right. It was a young man’s voice. “You would be a groper then? I saw you in the mirror—see the one fixed near the ceiling? Most interesting. But I need to get through here, so do you mind moving to one side?”

Relief that someone else had come worked like magic, freeing my body. When I turned toward the voice, I saw a boy in a black uniform standing between the shelves.

The person behind me quickly ran away, moving away from the boy. I saw his back. He looked like an ordinary man in a suit jacket, and he looked so comically flustered as he ran that all my fear quickly melted away.

“Thank you,” I said, turning back toward the boy.

He was taller than me, and thin. There was something about him that made him look rather frail. I recognized the black uniform he wore; I knew a boy who went to that same school.

“No need. I wasn’t actually trying to help you,” he said flatly, his expression never changing.

“You mean you really just wanted to get past?”

“I wanted to speak to you, actually. You’re Kitazawa Natsumi, aren’t you? You look a lot like your sister. I recognized you immediately.”

This was so out of the blue that I couldn’t form a response. Before I could say anything, the boy was already talking again.

“I met Hiroko before she died. She told me about you.”

“Wait a second … Who are you?” That was all I could manage.

The boy didn’t answer me. Instead, he took something from his uniform pocket—a plain brown envelope, the kind you could find anywhere. There was a bulge in the corner, something inside.

“This is for you,” he said, holding it out. Confused, I took the envelope. I opened the flap and looked inside. There was a cassette tape in a clear case.

“Sorry, but could you remove the contents and give the envelope back to me?” I did as he asked, removing the tape and handing the empty envelope back to the boy. He folded it up and put it back in his pocket.

It was an ordinary cassette tape, the kind you could buy at any convenience store. There was a sticker on it that read, “Voice 1: Kitazawa Hiroko.” It wasn’t handwritten but had been printed.

“What is this? Why does it have my sister’s name on it?”

“You’ll understand when you listen to it. Kitazawa Hiroko gave that to me when she was still alive. I wanted you to hear it, so I kept it. There are two other tapes. I’m saving those for another time. If you tell anyone about me, that time will never come to pass.”

The boy turned to leave.

“Wait …” I said, and I tried to follow him. But I couldn’t do it. My legs wouldn’t move; they were frozen, like they’d been when that groper had been standing behind me. I didn’t know why I was responding this way; the boy hadn’t threatened me—in fact, he’d rescued me. But without being consciously aware of it, my whole body had tensed up. I was sweating all over.

A moment later, the boy had turned the corner and was out of sight. I was left standing alone, holding the tape.

On the train back home, I sat down in my seat, staring at the tape he’d passed to me. The sun had already set, and it was dark outside. The windows were pitch-black, as if charcoal had been rubbed all over them, and I could see almost nothing through them. It felt like the train wasn’t moving. The sun had already moved on to its winter schedule. When my sister was killed, it had still been light out in the evenings.

Who was that boy? He’d been wearing a high school uniform, so he must be my age, or a year or two younger. He’d claimed to know my sister, but she’d never mentioned him to me.

If he’d first met her only shortly before she died, then it was more than likely she hadn’t had time to mention him, though.

He said she’d given him the tape. Did he mean my sister wanted me to hear what was on the tape? What did “Voice 1: Kitazawa Hiroko” mean?

The train slowed, and my body moved out of habit. I stood up and got off the train.

There were a lot of people around the station, but once I stepped onto the residential side street, there was nothing more than the asphalt road, shrouded in darkness. Shivering in the cold wind, I walked toward home. The only light in the darkness came from the houses on either side of the street. There was a family in each of them, seated at the dinner table, going about their lives—a notion that suddenly struck me as amazing.

The windows of my house were dark. However, this didn’t mean that no one was home. I opened the front door and went into the living room, calling out to let my parents know I had returned.

They were sitting on the sofa, watching TV, not talking, not bothering to turn on the lights. The light from the screen was the only light in the room. I flipped the switch, and they looked toward me, listlessly welcoming me home.

“You forgot to lock the front door again,” I said. My mother nodded absently before returning her gaze to the TV. There was no life in her at all; it was as if she no longer cared about anything.

They were not actually watching TV. Nothing shown on that screen reached their eyes. I turned my eyes away from the wrinkled clothes on their backs and went upstairs to my room.

Without changing out of my uniform, I dropped the bag on my bed and put the tape into my stereo. It was a small stereo, and a slightly bluish silver. It was on the second shelf from the top. I stood in front of it and took a deep breath to calm myself.

I remembered my sister’s face—not how she’d looked at me around the time just before she died, annoyed, but how she’d looked when we were younger and she’d grinned at me as we’d walked hand in hand.

I pressed Play. There was a whir as the motors began to move, and the tape began to play. I stared at the speakers.

The first few seconds were silent, and then came a hiss, like wind. My heart was beating quickly, betraying my nervousness.

What I had thought was the wind was not—it was someone breathing into the microphone.

Natsumi …

Suddenly, I heard my sister’s voice. She sounded very weak, exhausted—but it was definitely her voice. It must have been her breathing. The boy had not been lying. My sister really had left the tape for me.

Natsumi, will you ever hear this? Right now I’m talking into a microphone in front me, but I have no way of knowing if this message will ever reach you.

Where and when had she recorded this? Her voice was so thin that it almost vanished. She spoke slowly, haltingly, as if she was suffering, as if in desperation, leaving long silences between her words. But that made it sound all the more genuine—this was no scripted speech but an attempt to put her thoughts into words.

Listen, I’ve been allowed to leave you a message … told to say anything I want into the microphone, anything at all … but I can only speak to one person.

I thought of you instantly—I realized I have so much I need to tell you. I know it seems strange that I need to speak to you and not Akagi . . .

He’s holding the microphone out toward me … I can’t talk about him—he won’t let me. Sorry. He said he would deliver this message to you. He wants to enjoy seeing how you react to my words. I think that’s a really nasty thing to take pleasure from, but if my voice reaches you, I don’t really care …

I couldn’t move. A horrible suspicion was welling up inside me. A voice echoed through my head, warning me not to listen to any more of this. Terror awaited, and if I listened to that, I could never go back. So certain of this was I that I could barely stand it, and my breath came out like sobs.

I was not going to stop the tape. I stood perfectly still, listening to my sister’s voice.

Natsumi, I’m in a dark room. I can’t move. Concrete all around … It’s cold … I’m on a table.

I slapped my hands over my mouth, fighting back a scream. I knew exactly where my sister had been when she’d spoken into this microphone.

My sister was speaking through her tears now, sniffling.

This is … some sort of abandoned building …

There was a mournful echo as her quiet voice bounced off the cold, dark concrete walls around her. Her pain pierced my heart.

Without realizing it, I had reached out toward the tape deck speakers, touching the mesh that covered them with trembling fingers as if trying to capture my sister’s voice.

I’m sorry, Natsumi.

Her words passed through my fingertips and vanished. My fingers sensed the slightest of vibrations, like I had snared a slight portion of her voice. The sound of my sister’s breathing vanished, and all sound faded from the speakers. The recording was finished.

I turned the tape over and listened to the other side, but there was nothing recorded on it.

I was sure this tape had been recorded just before my sister died. I remembered receiving the tape from the boy in the bookshop: the tape had been inside an envelope, and he’d made me take it out and give the envelope back.

He hadn’t touched the tape, not even once. The entire exchange had been designed to avoid his leaving fingerprints. Had he been holding the microphone? Had he killed my sister?

I should give this to the police; that was the right thing to do. But I had no intention of doing so. As the boy had left, he’d told me not to tell the police if I wanted to hear the other tapes.

There was more to the message. I wanted to hear the rest.

†

Shortly after I heard the tape, I skipped school and went to where I could see the gates of M**** High School.

M**** High School was a public high school, and only two stations from mine. The gates faced onto a busy road, but a tall, dark green hedge surrounded the school itself. The hedge was neatly trimmed, and it looked like a flat green wall. Above it, I could only make out the white roof of the school.

There was a convenience store across the street from the school entrance, and I stood at its magazine rack, watching the gates through the window. I spent about an hour pretending to stand and read, until classes had finally ended, and students began pouring out. The sun was already low in the sky.

As the students left through the gates, almost all of them crossed the street, passing in front of me. The station was on this side, and the sidewalk was much wider. I was able to check their faces, one by one.

Watching the flood of students pass in front of me, I remembered my sister’s voice.

I had listened to the tape again and again, and it had hit me just as hard each time. I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking, but my thoughts took me nowhere.

My whole body felt woozy—from lack of sleep? As I turned the pages of the magazine, I glanced at the clerk, worried that he might be angry with me for standing here this long. Perhaps he even thought I was suspicious. I was scared he would say something.

I looked out the window in front of me. A group of five boys were passing by, talking happily, laughing. One of them met my eye.

He stopped in his tracks, surprised, and then he said something to his friends. I couldn’t hear him through the glass, but he was presumably telling them to go on without him. They moved on, leaving him behind.

I straightened up a little.

He came into the store and jogged over to me. “Kitazawa? What are you doing here?”

His name was Kamiyama Itsuki, and I’d known him in junior high. He’d been a member of the basketball team, and I’d been the manager. He had a bright, cheerful smile, an expression like that of a puppy. He was taller than me, but the way he ran up to me was more puppy than dog.

“What, don’t tell me you forgot me?”

I was so relieved he’d come up to me that I’d almost started crying. I suddenly realized how scared I’d been.

“Don’t be silly, of course I didn’t. It’s been a while, Itsuki …”

I remembered my sister’s funeral. Surrounded by relatives and my sister’s college friends, Itsuki had come running over to me, the two of us in our high school uniforms. He’d stayed with me the whole time. He hadn’t tried to cheer me up; he’d simply stood next to me. And that had been enough.

I’d remembered the crest on his uniform. That’s why I had known the boy who gave me the tape went to M**** High School. I didn’t know the boy’s name, so the school was the only way I had to find him.

“I’m surprised to see you here. Waiting for someone?”

I could hardly tell him I was watching the gates, waiting for someone who probably killed my sister, so I shook my head, not that. I don’t know what I must have looked like, but he grew serious.

“Something happen?” he asked, sounding concerned. “Or is it still your sister … ?” He knew about the friction between us. I’d told him all about it at the funeral.

The picture at the funeral had been taken just before she’d died, and that had made me want to talk about it with someone. It was a beautiful head shot of her, but it had been taken after we’d stopped being close.

“Not my sister.”

“But something’s bothering you? You said you wanted to talk to her again …”

“Yes, but … forget about it. I’m sorry about dumping that on you at the funeral.”

Itsuki looked at me with pity in his eyes. “Do the police have any idea who killed her?”

I stared at him.

“You just seem different.”

He had such good instincts. I shook my head. “The police still haven’t …”

“Oh,” he said, sighing.

As he sighed, the one I’d been waiting for appeared. The sun had started to set while I’d been talking to Itsuki, and it was getting dark out. But I could still see his face clearly through the store window as he crossed the street.

I was not certain the boy had killed my sister—but when I saw him out of the corner of my eye, I was instantly terrified, as if I’d been suddenly plunged into total darkness.

He was walking next to a female student, a beautiful girl with long hair. Both of them were equally expressionless.

They passed in profile across the glass beyond the magazine rack. Itsuki followed my gaze, wondering why I had suddenly fallen silent.

“Morino,” he said.

“Is that that boy’s name?”

“No, the girl’s name—she’s pretty famous. A teacher tried to molest her, but apparently she kicked his ass.”

Like Itsuki, they were both second-year students.

“Do you know the boy’s name?” I asked, a little too urgently. Itsuki looked taken aback. “Uh, yeah, he’s—”

He said a name, and I chiseled it into my brain, making sure I never forgot.

I put the magazine down and left the store. Cold air and exhaust fumes enveloped me.

I stood in front of the store, staring after him. I could see their backs as they headed toward the station.

She must have felt me staring, because the girl, Morino, turned around and looked right at me. She looked me over, and then she turned back around.

The shop door opened, and Itsuki came over. “I was in his class last year.”

“What’s he like?”

Itsuki stared at me for a moment, and then he shrugged. “I dunno … normal?”

I hesitated. Should I chase after him? But Itsuki was with me. And Morino was with him. This didn’t seem like the time to ask questions about the tape of my sister’s voice. I abandoned the idea.

“Something wrong?”

I shook my head. The two of us began walking to the station, the same direction they had gone. They were already out of sight.

The shop signs and vending machines lined up along the road glowed, their lights shining brightly. As we walked, the sun set, and the cold winter darkness thickened, the vending machines’ light the only thing that remained distinct.

As we walked, Itsuki and I chatted about recent events in our lives. All I talked about was entrance exams, which seemed like a safe enough subject, whereas he had all kinds of funny anecdotes about school, his friends, places he’d been …

They were nothing extraordinary, just the normal stories any high school boy would tell, but they went a long way toward helping me relax. Perhaps Itsuki had noticed my tension, and he was deliberately trying to cheer me up.

Cars sped past us, their headlamps on, the lights flickering over our faces. “Want to talk in there?” Itsuki asked, pointing at the family restaurant in front of the station. Through the windows, it looked brightly lit and warm.

Inside, it was filled with the hum of people’s voices as they ate their dinners. The waitress led us to a booth at the back. The partitions and wall were covered in silver decorations, which glittered in the lights above.

“How are your parents?” Itsuki asked.

I shook my head. “Not good. They never leave the house.”

I told him what it had been like since my sister died: the dust in the corners, the TV on but the lights off, how they always forgot to lock the door.

“So they still aren’t over Hiroko’s—?”

“Yes, especially since they both saw … her body.”

He nodded. I’d mentioned at the funeral that her condition had been far worse than the news had reported.

“Will they ever be better?” I murmured, picturing their blank faces. I couldn’t imagine them recovering from that. All I could see was their slumped shoulders, the spark of life forever gone.

“What about Akagi?”

“He came by a number of times after the funeral, but recently …”

Akagi, my sister’s boyfriend … he was one of those left most devastated by her murder. He attended the same college as her; although I wasn’t completely certain, I thought he’d probably met her there. She’d brought him home with her, and I’d spoken to him a number of times. He’d stayed with my parents at the funeral, supporting them.

“Maybe I’m the one who killed Hiroko,” he’d said after the funeral. “We had a fight the day before she died, and she ran out of my room, and …”

The next day, she’d been found in the abandoned hospital. Akagi was the last person to see her alive.

If they hadn’t fought, she never would’ve met the killer, and she never would’ve died—that’s what Akagi told me as he covered his face with his hands.

“I’d better be going,” Itsuki said. It was time for his train.

“I’m going to sit and think awhile.”

“Okay, so …” He took a step away, and then he turned back. “If you have anything you need to talk about, please call me.”

As I watched him leave, I thanked him silently. I sat alone, sipping coffee, watching the family across the aisle. I didn’t want to be too obvious about it, so I watched them out of the corner of my eye.

They were here eating dinner, a young couple with their kids, infant daughters.

They reminded me of my own family. The younger sister was too young to speak, and she kept her fingers in her mouth, watching everything wide-eyed. As I glanced sideways at them, I met her eye.

I remembered my sister.

When we were children, the two of us had gone on a long walk together. It must’ve been a warm spring day. I had just started elementary school, and the guardrails and posts towered over me.

We climbed a long hill, passing house after house. At the top of the hill was a forest. We looked down at the city below from the shade—tiny little houses, as far as we could see.

There was a bird in the sky above, with long white wings. A big river ran through town, so I decided that it must’ve lived there.

It glided on the wind, drifting elegantly, its big white wings barely moving. I watched it for ages without ever growing bored.

My sister looked at me and smiled, flashing her teeth. Her canines always jutted out, even after she got her big teeth in, and we often played vampires. But I hadn’t seen my sister smile—hadn’t seen her canines—for an awfully long time.

When she’d dyed her hair, I wondered aloud if I should do the same.

“Don’t, it would look awful on you,” she’d said. I couldn’t take this as kind advice. There was an edge to her voice; she’d snapped at me.

Every time she did something like that, I felt like she didn’t want me around. Why had she died? I couldn’t believe anyone had hated her enough to kill her. And what was it she’d wanted to talk to me about before she died?

A shadow fell on my table. I looked up, and a boy in a black uniform was looking down at me. It was the boy who had passed in front of the store, walking with the girl named Morino.

“Kitazawa, you were waiting for me to leave school.”

I was not terribly surprised. I felt it was only natural he would suddenly appear like this. I didn’t stand up; I just looked up at him and asked, “Did you kill my sister?”

For a moment, he said nothing. At last, his lips parted quietly, and words emerged: “Yes, I killed her.”

His quiet voice faded from my ears, fading into the soft hum of the restaurant.

iii

The boy sat down across from me, where Itsuki had been sitting. I couldn’t move—it was like I was paralyzed. I just stared at him. But even if I had been able to move, I wouldn’t have stopped him from sitting, I wouldn’t have stood up and screamed.

“I killed her.” The boy’s words echoed through my mind. I had known it was possible, but my mind couldn’t deal with the words as easily as my ears had. It was like too much water had been poured into a potted plant: his voice got stuck between my skull and my brain, the bulk of it sitting there unabsorbed.

He looked at me and cocked his head. Then he leaned forward slightly, his mouth moving. It seemed he was asking if I was okay. I could see his lips mouthing the words. He reached across the table and tried to touch my shoulder. My voice finally broke free just before he touched my clothes.

“Don’t!”

I pulled back against the booth, getting as far from him as I could, pressing myself against the wall. This was not a conscious movement but an instinctive one.

Abruptly, all the light and noise of the restaurant turned back on. No, they didn’t turn on—the music playing and the customers’ voices had never stopped in the first place. They simply hadn’t reached my eyes and ears. But to me, it felt like time had stopped and then started moving again.

Apparently, I had spoken loudly enough that the family across the aisle heard me. Both parents were frowning in my direction. When I met their gaze, they looked away awkwardly, returning to their conversation.

“Are you okay, Natsumi?” the boy asked, taking his arm away and sitting back on his seat. I resumed my original position and shook my head.

“No.” My chest hurt. I wasn’t crying, but there were tears in my voice. “Nothing’s okay …”

My head was overheating. I couldn’t figure out if I should be afraid of him or furious with him, but I was sure that the boy sitting across from me was more than I could handle.

As rattled and flustered as I was, he remained utterly calm, as though he were observing me scientifically, like I wasn’t a human but an insect under his magnifying glass.

“Natsumi, I don’t want you to scream,” he said without the slightest flicker of emotion in his voice, like he had no heart at all. I knew the thing across the table from me was very frightening indeed.

“Why did you kill her … ?”

This boy would never laugh like Itsuki or be surprised if someone unexpectedly dumped her problems on him. He was like a tree stripped of branches and leaves, reduced to the simple essence. A strange way of putting it, but that was how he felt to me.

“I don’t know why I killed Hiroko, not really,” he said slowly. “But it had nothing to do with her. All reasons for her death lay with me.”

“With you?”

He said nothing for a moment, apparently lost in thought—but he never took his eyes off me. Finally, without saying a word, he jerked his chin at the family across the aisle.

“You were looking at them a moment ago?” The infant girls were laughing at each other.

“You were remembering the past, thinking about how much those girls are like you and Hiroko were? It brought back fun memories of your own childhood, and you stared at them the way you would a precious treasure.”

“Stop it …”

I wanted to clap my hands over my ears to stop from hearing his voice. It was like he was climbing into my mind without even taking off his shoes.

“I have a sister myself. A dozen years ago, we must’ve gone out to dinner, much like that family. I don’t remember it, but we must have done so. Does that surprise you?”

With each word he spoke, my heartbeat grew faster. It was like I was rumbling down a slope into an abyss, going faster and faster.

“Look at that little girl—carefully, though, so she doesn’t see you looking,” the boy said softly.

I took my eyes off him, glancing sidelong at the little girl in the seat across from me. She was sitting in the booth, her innocent eyes staring into the distance, her little fingers clinging tightly to her mother’s clothes. I didn’t know the girl, didn’t know her name, but I found her lovable anyway.

“Natsumi, do you think that girl will kill someone, ten years from now?”

My heart froze. I turned back toward him to protest, but before I could say anything, he continued.

“She might kill her parents, or her sister. It isn’t impossible. She may already be planning to do so. Perhaps she’s only pretending to be childish. Perhaps she really wants to grab the knife off that hamburger plate and stab it into her mother’s throat.”

“Please … stop it. You’re insane.” I lowered my head, closing my ears tightly, fighting his words. Each word turned to pain as it reached me, like the words were slapping my cheeks.

“Natsumi, look at me … I’m kidding. That child most likely won’t ever kill anybody. Everything I just said … described me.”

I looked up and stared at him. He shimmered—there were tears in my eyes.

“That’s the way I was born. When I was as small as that girl, I didn’t understand that, but by the time I started elementary school, I knew I was different from other people.”

“What are you talking about?” I stammered.

He explained, not looking the least bit annoyed. “About how I was destined to kill. That’s the only way I can look at it. Just as a vampire has no choice but to drink human blood, I have no choice but to kill people. My fate was already decided the moment I was born. I wasn’t abused by my parents and scarred mentally. I have no ancestors that were murderers. I was raised in a very ordinary household. But whereas ordinary children play alone with imaginary friends and pets, I spent my time staring at imaginary corpses.”

“What are you?” I could no longer see him as human. He was something much more horrible, much more horrifying.

For a moment, he was quiet. Then he shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve thought about why I have to kill people, but I’ve found no answers. And I’ve had to keep it secret, pretending that I’m normal. I’ve been very careful not to let anybody see inside my heart.”

“Not even your family?”

He nodded. “My family believes I’m an ordinary, normal boy. I’ve been extremely careful to carve that position out for myself.”

“Your … whole life … is a lie?”

“Meaning that I could only believe that everything else was a lie.” I didn’t understand this.

He explained further, “I couldn’t believe that the conversations my family had or the friendly attitudes of the people I knew were genuine. I was certain there had to be a script somewhere—and once, when I was very young, I searched the house for it. I wanted to read the same words everyone else was saying. But there was no script. The only thing that ever felt real to me was death.”

“That’s why I long … for human death.” I saw him mouth those words.

“That’s why my sister … ?”

“That night, I was out walking, and I saw her sitting in front of a vending machine. She’d been crying, so I asked if she was all right, and she flashed her canines and thanked me.”

He killed her because he’d liked those canines, he said. He claimed it was a twisted kind of love.

As I listened to him, I felt like I was tied to the restaurant booth. I looked at his hands where they lay on the table: white hands protruding from his black uniform sleeves, thin fingers, neatly trimmed nails. Those hands were clearly human hands. But seven weeks ago, those same hands had killed my sister.

“Because you liked her canines?”

He nodded, and then he took something out of the bag next to him: a small rectangle, small enough to fit in the palm of his hand.

“I set them in resin. I thought you might like to see.”

He set the thing down on the table. It was a clear block. Inside were twenty little white things in a row. Two curved rows, one on top of the other, were suspended in the block.

“They were all over the room, and it took a while to find them all.”

Teeth, fixed in resin so that they looked like they were floating in the clear block—like the dentures of an invisible man, each tooth in exactly the right place.

I recognized those jutting canines.

I heard children laughing. The shiny decorations glittered in the shop lights.

Next to my sister’s teeth, the families peacefully eating dinner around us seemed like something out of a dream.

Weirdly, I wasn’t scared, only sad. Nobody had told me she was missing all her teeth.

He put the block back in his bag and took out a notebook. “But all that is beside the point. Here’s the second tape.”

He opened the envelope, turning it upside down. The cassette tape fell out onto the table.

“Voice 2: Kitazawa Hiroko,” said the printed label on the front.

“There’s one more tape.”

“Let me hear it.”

He stood up and turned his back on me.

“Think about that when you finish the second tape.”

After he left, I couldn’t stand up for a good long time. I left the tape sitting on the table, remembering my sister’s teeth in that clear block.

I took a sip of my coffee, which was cold. The girl at the table across the aisle was looking at me. There was ketchup on her mouth. She was staring at my hands with her pretty little eyes. The rattling noise the cup made in my shaking hand must have confused her.

On the train heading home from the restaurant, I sat curled up on the seat. I must’ve looked terrible; the middle-aged man across from me kept looking at me. I was afraid he was sneering at me. I was scared the other passengers or the conductor knew about the tape in my pocket, about my conversation with that terrifying boy, and that they were going to have words with me about it.

When I left the train, I ran down the dark residential streets. When I reached my house, the lights were on inside. These days, there was no telling if my parents would actually notice that the sun had set and respond by turning on the lights.

Just as I was about to open the door, it opened from the inside and someone stepped out. It was Akagi. He saw me standing outside the door and jumped.

“Oh, Natsumi,” he said, mustering a feeble smile.

“Nice to see you here.”

“I’m heading home now, but I was worried, so …”

Apparently, he’d stopped by after classes. I chatted with him awhile outside the house. He was a tall man; if I looked directly ahead from this distance, the top of his face—everything from the glasses up—was out of sight. I had to look up the whole time, which made my neck tired.

He knew a lot about books, and the floor on the second story of his home was creaking under the weight of them. We always had a lot to talk about. But today, I wasn’t in the mood, and all we did was express concern for each other’s well-being. I thanked him for thinking of my sister.

All the time we spoke, I was thinking about the tape. I knew I should let him hear her voice, and yet I said nothing.

“Well then, Natsumi … bye.”

Akagi waved his long hand and left. I watched him go in silence, surprised by my own transformation.

Before, when I’d spoken to Akagi, I couldn’t ever stay calm. My heart would bounce this way and that, never at rest. Every time he’d glanced at my sister, I’d feel dejected.

There was a lot I admired about him, but now my heart was silent, like a cold stone.

I rubbed the back of my neck, realizing that I hadn’t even said goodbye. Before, I would’ve waved enthusiastically, shouting “See you again soon!” despite my neck pain.

The link between us was fading. With my sister’s death, he was becoming a stranger again. I would’ve never known him if it wasn’t for my sister, so perhaps that was only natural.

I doubted it was Akagi who was reluctant to maintain that relationship, though; if that were the case, he never would’ve come here.

I went inside, entering the freezing living room. My parents were sitting under the kotatsu. I told them I’d run into Akagi at the door, but they barely answered. I could feel my mood dropping like a heavy stone.

I went upstairs and into my room, closing the door. I took the tape out of my pocket and put it in the stereo, removing the original tape and putting it on top of my desk.

I pushed Play. I could hear the whir as the tape started. I sat down on the chair, staring at the stereo.

I found myself remembering the past, when we were both in elementary school and we were taking turns recording our voices. We’d been baffled by how strange our voices sounded on tape. Then our parents had come in, and we’d all sung a song together, recording it. It was a very childish song but one we’d loved to sing. My father often played that tape when were out driving as a family—even after my sister had entered junior high, and she’d start shrieking every time he put it on. My mother always laughed really hard at that.

It was so much fun.

Natsumi …

Tell Mom and Dad, and Akagi … thank you for everything. I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused …

Or are they alI listening to this tape with you? I don’t know anything, anymore …

He … he’s going to kill me after this. I thought he was joking at first …

Natsumi … I was left alone in the dark, blindfolded and gagged, until a minute ago.

Crying and screaming is pointless … and when I figured that out, I suddenly felt … regret.

I need to apologize … That’s why I’m leaving you this message. I hate that it took something like this to make me realize.

You know how I sometimes said things to hurt you or to confuse you? You always looked so anxious when I did.

I’m sorry … none of that was your fault. I was just angry all on my own. You’ll be disgusted when you hear why.

But if I die without saying anything, you’ll never know the truth … I have to say it.

The tape went silent.

And then … not my sister’s voice, but a familiar boy’s voice …

Kitazawa Natsumi. At 11 p.m. on December 3. Come alone to the abandoned hospital where Hiroko died. You know the place, right? Come to the room where they found the body. I’ll give you the last tape there.

His voice was the last thing on the tape.

†

December 3 came two days after I heard the second tape. In that time, I hadn’t gone to the police. Instead, I’d gone about my life as I always did—going to school, studying for exams.

In the hall after class, a friend stopped me in the hall. “Natsumi, we should go somewhere this Sunday.”

She seemed to be worried that I didn’t smile much since my sister had died. She often tried to cheer me up.

“Okay … but if I end up not being able to, I’m sorry.”

“You have plans?” she asked, puzzled.

I did not—but there was no guarantee I would come home alive that night. I planned to follow the instructions the boy had left on the tape. I’d made that decision the moment I first heard his message.

If I went to the abandoned hospital, I might get to hear the rest of my sister’s message. In exchange, I might not come home alive. I didn’t know why he had summoned me, but it might well be to kill me.

“No plans, but …” I said, suddenly wanting to throw my arms around her. What kind of life would she lead? Until a few days before, we’d both been utterly ordinary people. We’d gone to school yawning and then spent the day copying everything from the blackboard into our notebooks. Every day was the same. These were ordinary, happy lives.

But now I didn’t believe that life lay before me. I’d spent too much time with death to lead a peaceful life. My friend still had a future, though, and when I thought about how I might never see her again … I loved her very much indeed.

“See you tomorrow,” I said, waving.

I left the school, feeling the cold December wind against my cheeks. The sun was not yet setting, but there were gray clouds covering the sky, and it was pretty dark out. I held my coat tightly closed, watching my feet as I walked.

My phone rang near the school gates. It was Itsuki.

“Now? School just finished. I’m just going through the gates.”

I stopped next to the gates as I talked to him. There were cars rushing by, and it was hard to hear him between the traffic and the wind.

“What did you say? I can’t hear,” I said, louder. “Oh, yeah, thanks again for … No, I’m fine …”

This might well be the last time I ever spoke to him. The thought made me want to sob into my phone loud enough to be heard over the roar of the wind and traffic. I’d known Itsuki since junior high, and he was like a little brother.

“Can you talk louder?” I closed my eyes, trying to pick his voice out of the din. “I said I’m fine … I didn’t mean to make you worry. Hmm? No, I’m not crying …” Our conversation ended a moment later.

I checked my watch on the train home. It was already five. The sun had begun to set on the road to the station, and it was dark outside. I had six hours until I would meet that boy.

I didn’t know why, but I wasn’t shaking with fear. My heart was calm, and I sat with my eyes closed, feeling the movement of the train. My senses were already shut down in the face of the danger to come. My sister’s teeth in the restaurant had been the anesthetic. Everything felt numb, nothing felt real.

I had never even considered trying to fight the boy. I would go to the hospital without any weapons, without telling anybody. All I cared about was hearing my sister’s voice. I needed nothing else—even if that boy planned to harm me.

My parents had forgotten to lock the door again. I went inside and told them I was home.

My mother was in the tatami room, folding laundry. She smiled faintly when I spoke to her, but she looked like she would topple over if I nudged her.

My father was in the living room, slumped over the kotatsu. I couldn’t see his face. When we were kids, my sister and I would hang from his arms. His tiny back reminded me just how long ago that had been.

“I’m home, Dad,” I said, kneeling down next to him. He didn’t respond. Thinking he was asleep, I rose to leave.

“Natsumi,” he said. “I’m sorry … we’re making you worry.”

“What are you talking about?” I had said the same thing to my friends today.

“People always told us you looked like Hiroko, but I never realized how much you do. I never noticed while Hiroko was alive, but now that there’s only you … they’re right.”

My father raised his head and looked at me. He said he sometimes mistook me for my dead sister. His eyes were half-kind, half-sad.

“But, Natsumi … did you just come home from school?” I nodded. He looked puzzled.

“I thought I heard someone going upstairs …”

“Not Mom?”

“She was in here.”

The footsteps had come in without the doorbell ringing first, so they’d assumed it was me.

I went upstairs to my room. The tapes were gone.

That boy must have snuck in and taken them away. I could imagine him doing that easily.

If I hadn’t come home that night, the police would’ve found the tapes in my room, and they would find out about him. He’d taken them to prevent that scenario from occurring.

That meant he didn’t plan to let me come home.

I felt like all the strength was flowing out of me. I sat down heavily on the chair.

For two days now, I had guessed I would be murdered. And now I knew for certain.

If I followed the instructions on the tape and went to the hospital, I would die.

What was death? That boy had said death was the only thing that really existed.

He had to experience people’s deaths the way a vampire had to drink blood.

For a long time, I sat on my chair, not moving at all. Silence surrounded me. I tried to imagine him killing my sister. Soon, my own face replaced my sister’s. But it was not as big a shock as I had expected.

Once, I had seen a firm divide between life and death. I was alive. My sister, my parents, everyone was alive. That had been obvious. Now that divide had become very fuzzy, like white and black had mixed together and formed gray where I stood. My parents had been the same since they saw her body: one foot in the world of the dead, frozen there.

But my sister … my sister was definitely dead. To me, the recording of her voice was alive, though. She existed on those tapes; she was still breathing, still thinking, still trying to speak—and waiting for me.

I could no longer understand what separated life from death. But I knew I was standing right on top of it.

“Natsumi,” my mother called from downstairs. “Dinner!”

I stood up and tried to say, “Coming!” If I didn’t go, it would be just the two of them. They would be too exposed.

We were all a mess since my sister’s death, but we’d been careful to eat together as much as possible. Although the extra chair kept us from saying much of anything, meals were the last thing that kept us feeling like a family.

Today, however, I started to stand, and then I stopped halfway.

“Natsumi?” my mother called again, surprised that I hadn’t responded. Remembering how my father had looked at me, I felt like I wouldn’t be able to go to the hospital if I ate with them. If I didn’t come home, how would they survive? Love—or perhaps pity—would be a chain, keeping me here.

“Dinner?” she called again.

My eyes found a cylinder on my desk. I stared at it, unable to take my eyes off it.

It was the bloodred lipstick I’d taken from my sister’s room.

I closed my eyes and made up my mind. I sat back in the chair. “I’m not hungry,” I said.

The door was closed, and I couldn’t see my mother, but I could sense her presence: she stood at the bottom of the stairs staring up at my door for a long time.

Guilt pierced my heart, and I clutched my chest. When my mother knew her daughter was not coming down, her shoulders slumped, and she moved away from the stairs. I could almost see her.

I sat on the chair, apologizing to my parents again and again. But no matter what, I would not change my decision. I was a terrible child. I was going to that hospital, and I was leaving them alone.

iv

Late that night, I got up and put on my coat.

I picked up a toy rabbit from my shelf. I had loved this toy when I was little. I brushed its head, feeling how soft it was. It had been in my room since I was very young. Now I said goodbye to it. I placed it back on the shelf, and I put my sister’s lipstick in my coat pocket; I was bringing it with me so I wouldn’t lose my resolve.

I also took a flashlight, and then I left the house quietly, making sure my parents didn’t notice. If they had called out, I would never have been able to leave. But no voices came.

The abandoned hospital where my sister’s body was found was twenty minutes away by bicycle. I rode along a small road with no streetlights. It was dark all around, the light on my red bike the only break in the darkness.

My sister and I had shared this bike. One of us had crashed into something, and the basket was bent. I didn’t remember crashing, so it had probably been her fault. It was a red bike, which reminded me of Little Red Riding Hood. It was like I was that little girl—only I was going to my grandmother’s house knowing full well there was a wolf waiting for me there.

The sky was brighter than my surroundings. I could see the divide between the sky and the earth distinctly. The asphalt road was headed toward the mountains, and it soon gave way to gravel. I got off the bike there. As I walked, I found a fence with a sign that read, NO TRESPASSING.

The hospital was beyond that fence, but too far away for my flashlight to reach.

The light vanished, swallowed by the darkness. There were no houses or shops around, no little points of light in the distance—nothing but dry grass. Without wind to shake that grass, it was utterly quiet.

I parked my bike and made my way toward the fence, carrying only the flashlight. Gravel crunched underfoot. My breath produced white clouds, which faded quickly. There was a gate in the fence across the road, which opened easily when I pushed it. I stepped through.

The night my sister died, how had she arrived here? Had she walked in through the gate like I just had? Maybe the boy had held a knife to her and forced her to. Or had she been unconscious? Carried here, helplessly? The road to this hospital had been a one-way street for her, leading to her final destination.

Had this been a parking lot once? It was big enough. The long beam of my flashlight stretched across dry earth and gravel. In the distance was a massive white lump of concrete—two stories, hulking against the night sky. The building had once been a hospital, but now only the frame remained—like a dinosaur fossil, reduced to bones alone.

I stepped in through the entrance. Once there had been glass doors here, but now there was just an empty square mouth. I ran my flashlight around the lobby. I could barely recognize the benches, and there were lumps of concrete everywhere. The round beam picked walls out of the darkness, tracing the shapes scrawled there in spray paint.

My breathing had grown very shallow, and I felt out of breath. The ceiling above me went on forever, and it seemed to be pressing down on me from above. There were traces of the light fixtures here and there, with broken florescent lights underneath. I didn’t notice until I stepped on one and heard the glass shatter underfoot.

The hallway went on into the darkness. I moved forward, headed for the room where my sister had died. I had a general idea where it was: on the first floor, in the back.

It had been the operating chamber. I followed signs pointing to that location. My footsteps echoed off the walls, shaking the cold winter air.

I finally found the room at the end of the hall. The doors were gone, replaced by a square hole that opened onto darkness. I stepped through, and there was another empty doorway immediately behind it. Beyond that was empty space.

I ran the flashlight beam around the room. It was cold and lonely enough to freeze one’s very heart. It was so quiet that even the sound of a pebble rolling echoed. I felt like I could almost hear an isolated soul crying softly in the darkness.

There were long, thin sinks along the side of the room, for washing hands. And there were several doors leading to smaller rooms along the wall. Beyond those were the operating chambers—smaller rooms, three in all. I checked them each with the light.

There was no one here. The smaller rooms were only about fifteen feet wide. The first two were completely empty, but when I opened the third door, the farthest one, I froze in my tracks, sensing something sinister.

It was darker than the other room—much darker. The walls and ceiling and floor were all black, as if there’d been a fire.

I stepped into the room, making sure there was no one there. The door was constructed to swing shut on its own if you didn’t hold it, so it closed behind me as I stepped in. There was a row of cylinders along the wall, chained in place to keep them upright. In the center was a rusty metal bed: an operating table.

It was then I realized that the walls and ceiling hadn’t been burned. That black stain started from the central table, spread out to the floor under my feet, covered the floor of the room, and reached out under the door.

Before I knew it, I had my back to the wall, my free hand over my mouth, and I was trying not to scream. That black stain was the blood that had flowed out of my sister two months before.

In the darkness, I had almost seen her, the pieces of what had once been my sister, the ones the police had been forced to clean up.

Natsumi …

Will you ever hear this?

Suddenly, I heard my sister’s voice, right next to me. They were the first words from the first tape. I turned my flashlight toward the door of the room. In the round beam, I saw the door closing, as if someone had just stepped through it.

“Kitazawa Natsumi.” The boy’s voice came from the other side of the operating table, from the far wall. The entire area suddenly lit up, blinding me.

Against the light stood the boy—not in his uniform, but still dressed head to foot in black. The light in his hand was much more powerful than my flashlight. His other hand held a tape player, a tiny little thing. My sister’s voice was coming out of that.

He said he would deliver this message to you. He wants to enjoy seeing how you react to my words.

My sister’s voice played on, very loudly. Her ragged breathing echoed a little off the concrete walls, filling the bloodstained room. I looked at the operating table in the center of the room, where the bloodstains were darkest. It was a dark shadow across the otherwise empty room.

“Hiroko recorded this tape while lying on this table.”

The boy put the light and tape player down in the corner and moved over to the table. He stroked the black stain with his hand, lovingly.

“Why did you make me come here?” I asked, my voice trembling.

The operating table had been covered with black leather, but now it was splitting, and only part of it was left. Part of it had been cut away entirely, exposing the metal frame. The black stain covered everything, and the boy’s fingers ran softly across it. I could almost hear the faint sound of his fingers stroking the bloodstain. It gave me goose bumps, as if it was me he was touching.

“Like Hiroko just said, I was curious to see how you would react when you heard the tape.”

Staring at me, the boy tapped the operating table twice with one hand—quietly, wordlessly. His eyes made it clear what he wanted me to do.

My back against the wall, I slowly shook my head. If I moved toward him, I would die. I would be killed like my sister. But it was not fear that made me refuse.

Standing quietly next to the operating table, the light made him look like he was floating in the darkness. His profile was lit so brightly that he seemed almost divine. I felt less fear than awe, like of some higher being dealing out death that was meaningless, indiscriminate, and absurd.

You know how I sometimes said things to hurt you or to confuse you?

“Natsumi, come here,” the boy said.

He was telling me to climb onto the operating table. He was only three steps away.

If he moved quickly, he could easily grab me, could easily overpower me. But he didn’t move. He simply waited for me to come over to him.

My legs almost did as he wanted. Deep down inside me, I felt a strange certainty that I had to do as he asked. When I realized that, it startled me.

Why would I go to him of my own accord? I kept my back against the wall, staring at him, confused.

Logically, he explained, “Narsumi, you already know.”

“What?” I asked, puzzled.

“That I’m going to kill you. And you’ve already decided to let me.”

My sister’s trembling voice, her breath ragged, washed over us. The boy stared at me, barely even blinking, his gaze so penetrative it was like he was looking right into my head.

“You are attracted to death … and you came here all on your own.”

“That’s not true,” I insisted.

The boy narrowed his eyes. “I believe that death means ‘loss,’ ” he said quietly. “At the moment of death, all connections dying people have with the world around them are severed. Everything that bound them to those they loved, those they cared about, vanishes. They will never again see the sun, feel the wind, sense darkness or silence. Joy, grief, happiness, despair—they lose all connection to those things. Natsumi, I know exactly what you went through when you decided to come here.”

I had my head in my hands. The flashlight I’d been holding was rolling across the floor. I remembered my parents, Itsuki, my classmates, Akagi.

“It must have been hard to come here—but you made up your mind. You know how much your parents will grieve if you don’t come back home, yet you came anyway. You severed all connections, said your silent goodbyes, and came to hear a dead person’s voice.”

The boy’s words stabbed right into the place that shook me the most. A voiceless something escaped my lips, something between a scream and a groan. My hands on my head, I forced it back.

Natsumi, the reason I made things hard for you really was of no significance. It was about Akagi.

What I had done was abandon my parents, even though they were already damaged by the loss of their eldest daughter. Guilt raged through me like a wildfire.

“You had two days after I gave you the second tape. During that time, you said goodbye to everyone you met—and as you bid farewell to everyone and everything connected to your life, you moved steadily toward your death.”

Finally, I realized it: Everything I had done since I met the boy was a slow-motion suicide. When I’d left the house without telling my parents, I’d left behind my last chance to turn back. I had chosen to sever the heaviest chains binding me to this world … and to come here.

I never told you how I met Akagi, did I?

“I …”

I lowered my hands and looked around me. The cold concrete room was filled with empty darkness. There was nothing in it but the bloodstained operating table and the boy—a very lonely place.

My feet moved. My back left the wall, and I stepped toward the operating table.

I had abandoned everything in my life of my own free will. Nothing mattered but my sister’s voice. Could I even be considered alive, right at this moment? My flesh was still functioning, but I was halfway into the land of the dead already.

He came up to me on the street. I only found out we went to the same college later.

I was standing across the table from the boy now. He never once moved a muscle, merely prying all hesitation out of me with words alone.

The boy stared at me, so close to me now, looking down at me slightly, as he was taller.

“I first found out that you existed when Hiroko made this tape. Ever since, I’ve been wanting to meet you,” he whispered. “You really do look like her.”

My sister’s voice echoed through the room, vanishing into the silent building. “I know why you gave me the tape, why you had to bring me here,” I said.

He looked intrigued.

“You aren’t doing this for fun, are you? Not for cheap thrills. You said so yourself, in the restaurant. Everything other people say seems like it’s scripted—everything seems fake … and only death seems real.”

After we started going out, Akagi said that he’d often seen me in the bookstore, and that’s when he first got interested. I was always in a white wool jacket, standing in front of the historical fiction shelf, he said …

This boy had killed people. And he felt absolutely no guilt about it. I knew I shouldn’t feel any sympathy for him, but even so … I did feel a little sorry for him.

“You wanted to see if I would try to recover my relationship with her, even if that meant accepting death. Trying to understand that which you cannot.”

For a long moment, he stared at me without expression. There were no words, only my sister’s voice echoing through the room. There was no way for me to tell what he was feeling.

You see? Akagi saw you first.

At long last, he placed his hands on the operating table. “Sit here, Natsumi.”

Feeling no fear, I sat down on the table stained with my sister’s blood, my back to the boy. I could feel him standing behind me.

The table was cold, and the chill passed right through the fabric of my jeans. I was about to die, but I felt peaceful, like a calm sea.

My hands gripped the edges of the table, feeling my sister’s dried blood. I couldn’t move. Or I felt no desire to move, so it felt like I couldn’t move. Everything felt cold and stiff, down to my fingers.

The light was behind me. I could see our shadows on the wall in front of me. The boy’s shadow half covered my own, standing slightly to one side.

We always dressed the same, and people always told us we looked alike … Akagi had called out to me by accident, thinking I was you.

The boy’s shadow moved. He raised his arm, his shadow rising over mine.

His arm came across my field of vision, and I could no longer see anything. I was trapped in darkness, embraced from behind, with one arm around my neck, the other covering my face. If he squeezed, my neck would break with a snap. My breath brushed against his arm. I could feel the heat of my own breath. The boy’s chest was against my back. I could feel his warmth through my clothes.

“Please … let me hear the rest of her message.”

I could hear her voice, even with the boy’s arms over my ears. I had never heard this about Akagi. It was like a thread unraveling, explaining everything about my sister’s strange behavior.

The joints of the arm around my throat contracted and expanded, as if testing the bones inside. The arm over my face was ready to break my neck, moving my head back and forth, like an athlete warming up for a short-distance run.

My neck felt like the stem of a delicate flower. It would snap so easily if someone went to pick that flower.

Even after I knew the truth, there were no problems between us. That had merely marked the start, and real love had bloomed between the two of us. It was me he loved, what lay inside of me …

But I was nervous.

My chest hurt, listening to her quiet voice.

“You might be right,” the boy whispered softly. His voice came from right next to me, his arms around my head. I could feel his chest vibrate as it pressed against my back. My heart beat faster.

“I had two candidates for my second victim … one was Kitazawa Natsumi, and the other was a girl at my school.”

“Morino? I saw you walking with her …”

My voice sounded muffled, blocked by his arm. My heart was beating faster and faster, and blood was racing through my veins. Gentle pressure on my throat, my veins pulsing—my head grew hot.

“Kamiyama Itsuki told you her name, right? In the end, I chose you as my next victim, and that might have been for the reason you mentioned.”

The voice at my ear seemed less like he was telling me and more like he was asking himself. Perhaps he didn’t clearly understand the workings of his own mind. The thought, strangely enough, made me feel like we were friends.

I never told Akagi, either … that he had seen you, not me. I couldn’t tell him.

I had been so blind. I had known nothing about my sister. Wrapped in the boy’s arms, listening to her monologue, I was overcome with shame.

I had been so sure she was filled with confidence I didn’t have. I thought she’d been bright, outgoing—a strong girl whom everyone loved. But the truth had been so very different …

I couldn’t even look at you … We’re so very much alike. I directed all my irritation at you, changing my hair and clothes so I would be less like you … because I knew how you felt about Akagi.

My sister had actually been locked in a constant struggle with her own fears and anxieties. Unable to tell me about Akagi, she’d clutched that secret to her heart. The lipstick in my pocket … she had used that to hide her own fears from the world around her.

I wished I’d noticed while she was alive. If I’d only known, I could’ve put my arms around her and assured her there was nothing to be nervous about.

His arms tightened. He was done warming up. He began to embrace my head tightly. My head was squeezed inside his arms. In the darkness, I felt less like I was about to die and more like I was wrapped in a loving embrace.

When my sister’s voice ended, my neck would be forcibly twisted. The arm tightening around my throat and twisting my head would put too much pressure on the bones in my neck, and they would snap. Somehow, I was sure he would time my death to that moment.

Even as I record my last words like this, I wish … I wish I’d told you all of this, months ago.

With his arm as my blindfold, I could heart my heartbeat getting louder. I could hear it pumping blood through my body as clearly as I could hear my sister’s voice.

I could feel his heartbeat too—feel it where his chest pressed against my back.

I felt a tightness in my chest, like I wanted to cry. I felt no hatred or anger toward him; he felt like something as inevitable as death itself.

My sister’s confession was almost over. I could tell from the tension in his arms and the strain in her voice.

I was glad I’d heard the tape.

“You knew you were going to kill me … that’s why you came to my house to get the tapes, so the police wouldn’t find them when I didn’t come home,” I said, careful not to talk over my sister. She had left me these words as the last thing before dying. It was my duty to hear every last word of it.

But I can’t turn back time. Natsumi … I did love you.

“Natsumi,” the boy said, the arm around my neck loosening. The tension in his muscles slackened, weakened. I hadn’t expected this, and I was confused. “I’ve never been in your house.”

I couldn’t understand him at first. He hadn’t taken the tapes? Before I could ask, there was a sound at the entrance of the operating chamber.

Someone had stepped into the room.

His arms might have loosened, but they were still wrapped around my face, and I could see nothing. I couldn’t see the third person in the room. His arms were tight enough that I couldn’t move, either—all I could do was listen to this new set of footfalls.

“Who … ?” I gasped.

The footsteps came through the door, past the operating table where the boy and I were. I could hear them on the dusty linoleum floor.

The boy slowly unwrapped his arms from my head. I was free. I could see again—there were now three shadows on the wall in front of me.

I said a lot of things that made you sad … but none of it was your fault.

Not me, not the boy, but the third shadow bent over. I heard him press Stop. My sister’s voice vanished. The room was quiet again.

Still seated on the table, I turned my head. The boy was behind me, his back to me, looking at the back of the room. Beyond him, next to the wall, stood Itsuki.

Itsuki was just taking his finger off the tape deck’s button. “I took the tapes, Natsumi.”

I had assumed I would never hear his voice again. Why was he here? Was I imagining this? No, he was definitely real: The light was casting his shadow on the wall. He was no illusion.

“The hospital is so large that I had trouble finding you. If I hadn’t heard Hiroko’s voice, I might never have known where you two were.”

I remembered him calling that evening. I’d told him I was outside my school because he’d asked where I was. He’d been making sure I wouldn’t come home while he was in my room.

In the restaurant, I’d told him how my parents always forgot to lock the door.

That was how he’d gotten in so easily. And he’d found the cassette tapes with the sinister names. That explained what he was doing here. The end of the second tape had given the time and place.

“Kamiyama. Haven’t seen you in a while,” the boy behind me said, putting his hand on my left shoulder. His palm was very hot. Then he stepped away from the operating cable, facing Itsuki. The hand on my shoulder went with him. I couldn’t move the whole time. I just sat frozen, staring at Itsuki.

“Hello,” Itsuki said, addressing the boy by name, never once taking his eyes off him. From his profile, you would think he had forgotten I was even there.

They faced each other silently, standing on opposite sides of the room. The operating chamber filled with soundless tension. It was so quiet that my ears hurt.

I longed for my sister’s voice. Sitting on the table, I looked down at Itsuki’s feet.

The tape was still in the player.

I sent a signal to the fingers gripping the cold edge of the table, telling them to move. They seemed to be paralyzed, and they wouldn’t budge.

“You came here to save her?” the boy asked. His voice broke the silence, but it only seemed to add to the pressure, the overbearing tension in the air.

I told my muscles to move again, but my fingers, my legs—nothing responded to my will. My heart was beating quickly, but it was like the rest of me had been drugged.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and prayed.

Please move. Let me walk to that tape player … My fingers shuddered, shaking.

“Was I interrupting something?” Itsuki’s voice.

Now that my fingers were moving, they set off a chain reaction, and my arms and legs woke up as well. But my muscles were very tense. They were moving, but I couldn’t put any strength into them. Even so, I managed to fall over the bloodstained edge of the operating table onto the floor below. As I moved away from the table where my sister had died, I felt vaguely like I was alive.

My legs were shaking too much to stand. I crawled across the linoleum, all my weight on my arms, my legs dragging after me. All the dust on the floor ended up on me. Around the operating table, toward the tape deck next to Itsuki’s feet … Itsuki and the boy were still talking, but I could no longer hear any of it. Scrabbling like an insect across the floor, I thought of nothing but the tape.

A jagged fragment of concrete stabbed my arm as I put my weight on it, but I didn’t care.

The boy had described death as loss. He said I’d abandoned everything, choosing to die.

But I wasn’t dead yet. I hadn’t yet abandoned life. I had come to this abandoned building to get something back, to overcome that loss.

As I drew near the tape deck, I thought hard about my sister.

The light next to the tape deck blinded me. Itsuki’s feet moved, crossing in front of the light. His shadow passed over me, moving out of sight. I didn’t turn my head to follow him.

At last, I was close enough that I could reach out and touch the tape deck. I stretched myself out, my fingers brushing against it. I dragged it quickly to my breast and pressed Play, fingers trembling.

There was a whirr as it came to life again. My sister’s voice emerged from the wire mesh over the speaker. Not shaking the air—the vibrations of her voice went directly into my arms as they clutched the tape deck.

Natsumi, I was always worried about you. Every time I said something mean, I regretted it … I’m sorry I ever upset you.

These last few years, we had never been friendly. We had lived like strangers in the same house. I had thought she hated me.

Perhaps leaving a message like this just makes things worse … I’m sure it does. I would be a mess listening to it. But I’m glad I could apologize, before … I mean, I would hate it if you could never smile when you thought about me.

I curled up on the floor, clutching the tape deck to me, listening to the voice of my beloved sister. In my arms was the same sister I had been so close to.

I’m lying here remembering everything we did together when we were kids.

I closed my eyes, listening.

There was a big forest at the top of the hill …

I remembered what we had seen when we were little.

The darkness, the cold concrete walls … it all faded away, and I was standing on the asphalt road, bathed in sunlight.

The guardrail, the posts—they were all so big. I was wearing tiny children’s shoes, and the hill looked so steep. Houses on one side and nothing but the guardrail on the other, a great view of the town beyond it …

You remember walking up it, hand in hand?

I turned around, hearing a familiar child’s voice. My sister was standing there.

She wasn’t much taller than me, and everyone we met said we looked alike.

My sister took my hand in hers. She pointed to the top of the hill, suggesting we climb up there.

I was excited. I ran after her, pulled along by her hand. Warm sunlight left little shadows racing after us, our sneakers squeaking on the concrete as we headed for the tall trees at the top of the hill.

At the top of the hill we stepped into the forest, our sweat drying in the cool air. We walked between trees until we found a cliff with a beautiful view of the town below. We stood looking down, holding hands.

I felt her tiny, warm hand in mine. Standing next to me, she looked at me and smiled, her canines flashing from the corners of her mouth.

There was a bird flying high above the town …

A white bird, its wings stretched all the way open. I had decided that bird must be living in the big river that flowed through town. Its wings never seemed to move at all, just drifting on the wind through the endless blue sky.

Natsumi, I’m going to die here, but you’re still alive. You’ll live on. Promise me you’ll smile—I won’t forgive you if you don’t. Goodbye, Natsumi …

Her voice faded away, to be heard no more. The sound of her breathing and the hiss of the tape vanished, as well. The speakers went silent—her confession was done. Through the clear plastic door, I could see the tape spinning in silence. A clear drop fell on it, a tear dripping off my cheek.

Silently, I whispered, “I’m so sorry … but thank you.”

It was so dark and quiet. I was in the empty hospital. But a moment ago, I had been with her, on that hill.

How long had I been lying there crying?

I was alone now, nothing around but the table and the light. No sign of either boy.

The light shone across the floor, illuminating only that area. I blinked, and I realized part of the floor was wet. There was a big puddle of blood on the floor—fresh blood, not dried. I prayed it didn’t belong to Itsuki.

I tried to stand, still clutching the tape deck. At first, my legs were too weak. I took my time and managed to stagger to my feet.

I left the room, walking unsteadily. I called Itsuki’s name. My voice echoed off the walls, vanishing into the depths of the darkness.

I waited for him at the hospital entrance. The quiet, cold air went right through my clothes, and I shivered, hunching my shoulders, crouching low in the darkness. When the sun finally rose, I was half-asleep. There was no sign of either Itsuki or the boy.

epilogue

“Oh, it’s not a big deal. I was playing with the dog and fell over,” I explained as Morino and I walked down the stairs, my bag in one hand.

It was December 4, after school, and we’d left the classroom together talking. As we passed the landing, Morino had pointed to the red line on my neck, asking about it.

“Oh? It was obviously trying to kill you.”

“The dog?”

“I’m sure of it,” she nodded with conviction.

It was, in fact, an injury I’d obtained the night before at the abandoned hospital.

I’d also acquired a number of bruises, but these were hidden beneath my uniform.

“By the way, I was gathering information for a scrapbook about Kitazawa Hiroko’s murder yesterday …”

Morino had received a fair amount of information from the person she’d met in the library. I’d asked who this person was, but she didn’t want to tell me. I’d considered following her and discovering who it was myself, but it no longer seemed to matter.

“You finish it?”

“Almost. All I’d need now is an interview with the killer to make it perfect.”

As we left the building and headed toward the school gates, Morino told me about how the case was a lot more grotesque than the police had announced. The sun was already setting, and a cold wind was blowing. Between the school and the gates was a wide road lined with trees. There were only a few students walking here. A white plastic bag drifted past us on the wind.

We left the gates, stepping out onto the street. Kitazawa Natsumi was standing in the convenience store across the street. She was standing at the magazine rack, and her eyes met mine.

I stopped in front of the store. Morino stopped with me.

In the shop, Kitazawa Natsumi put down the book she was holding, never once taking her eyes off me. She headed for the entrance and came outside.

There was a parking lot in front of the store, just large enough to hold a few cars.

She faced me across the parking lot, the pale florescent light from the store shining down on both of us.

I had killed someone the night before, while she lay clutching a tape recorder.

There had been a dull sound as the knife slid home, and then he’d been dead.

But I’d gone home without Kitazawa Natsumi, not feeling up to dealing with her. She hadn’t noticed the struggling going on around her, and it didn’t appear that she’d known which of us the blood belonged to until she'd seen me come out of the school gates.

Before I could say anything to her, Morino spoke up. She had been staring fixedly at Kitazawa Natsumi’s face.

“Are you … Kitazawa Natsumi?”

“Yes, I am.”

“I thought so. You look just like the pictures of your sister in the newspapers.”

“The picture from before she changed her hair, right?”

“Yes. My hobby is investigating cases. I was looking into your sister’s. I couldn’t find any pictures of you, though. When I saw you standing here a few days ago, I’d thought you looked like her, but I hadn’t been sure then.”

“You were investigating her?” Kitazawa Natsumi asked, surprised. She looked at me for help.

“She seems to have found a source. She won’t tell me who …” I explained. Kitazawa Natsumi didn’t appear to know what to make of this.

Morino looked at me. She was as expressionless as ever, but it was clear from her voice that she was greatly interested. “So how do you know Kitazawa?”

Without answering, I took some change out of my pocket and put it in Morino’s hand. She stared at the coins for a moment, and then she asked what they were for. I explained that there was a vending machine a half mile down the road, and I asked politely if she would go buy us something to drink.

“I know there’s a convenience store right in front of us, but I would very much like to drink something from that vending machine in the distance. Of course, this is not an underhanded method of driving you away so you can’t hear us talk.”

Morino looked at me and then at Kitazawa Natsumi, hesitating. But eventually she turned her back on us and began walking toward the vending machine.

“She doesn’t know, does she? That the killer was targeting her?” Kitazawa murmured.

I nodded.

For a moment, we both watched her walking slowly away from us. Her black clothes almost vanished into the darkness around her; her small shadow whipped around her each time a car zipped past, headlines glaring.

“She showed me a picture of Hiroko’s body the other day.”

“Of her body?”

“Yes. Someone had given her a photo that never would have circulated publicly. It was definitely Hiroko’s face. The same hairstyle as the picture at her funeral …”

“Then, when you saw that … ?”

“I knew there was a chance the killer had taken it. I didn’t quite believe it … but if it was true, then that meant the person who’d killed Hiroko was also getting close to her, and she might’ve been his next target.”

“You were half-right, but he ultimately chose me instead of her.”

“When I saw you standing here, I knew he hadn’t yet made his move. You were acting strange, so I wondered if he’d approached you.”

“Yes … yes, he had. So that’s why you snuck into my room … looking for proof of that.”

“You never would’ve told me the truth.”

The light from the shop sent our shadows across the dry asphalt of the parking lot, like shadow puppets. She stared down at them, nodding.

“But, Itsuki, I never thought you had so little sense.”

“About as little as you.”

“I was worried last night … you just vanished. I called in the morning, but the call didn’t go through.”

“He broke my phone.”

I had once been in the same class as the boy who killed Kitazawa Hiroko. I hadn’t known him well, but if I’d spent a little more time with him, would I have noticed how unusual he was?

“What … what did you do, after?”

I had buried his body deep in the grass behind the hospital. All his cruelty had been sucked out of him by the silver flash of my blade—or at least, that’s how I chose to see it. When the knife had sunk deep into him and he’d groaned, blood spilling out of his mouth, the hand gripping the knife had felt like its thirst was sated.

“He ran away. I chased him, but I couldn’t catch up …”

He had looked down at the pool of his blood as if it made sense to him, as if this was simply another possible outcome. He had fallen to his knees, accepting his own death as easily as he had taken Kitazawa Hiroko’s. He had looked up at me, praised the quality of the knife, and stopped moving.

“Oh. Do you suppose we should call the police?”

“If you want. But I don’t want any trouble, so if you could avoid mentioning me? I did break into your house, after all.”

I looked back up the road. There was a tiny speck in the distance, visible as it passed under a streetlight but fading into the darkness beyond. A moment later, it appeared again under the next light. It was Morino, coming back.

“My dad was furious when I got home this morning,” Kitazawa Natsumi said, kicking the parking bumper. She was smiling. She had ridden her bicycle home. When she’d arrived home, her parents had already realized she wasn’t in her room, and they were in a panic. When she’d come in the door, looking exhausted, they’d yelled at her and hugged her tight.

“My mother burst into tears the moment she saw me—only natural, after what happened to my sister. It really drove home that I was still alive, and so were my parents. We’ve decided to move early next year, somewhere far away.”

She looked up, down the road, her profile gleaming white in the light of the convenience store.

“I won’t see you again.”

Drinks in hand, Morino stopped a fair distance away, leaning against a telephone pole, watching us, her hair dancing in the wind of a passing car. She looked like a little match girl somehow.

“You done?” she called. Just a little longer, I said, and she muttered something listlessly, turning her back on us. We were too far away for me to hear; all I could do was stare at her narrow shoulders.

“Is Morino …” Kitazawa Natsumi said, looking at me and trailing off.

“What?”

“No, never mind … but she might have the wrong idea about us. You don’t plan to tell her what happened?”

“Not unless I have to. I never have.”

“Then she doesn’t know that you protected her. Itsuki, did you come there to save me? Or just to stomp out the flames before they could reach her?” She looked me right in the eye. “I’m right, aren’t I? Are you in love with her?”

This was not love … merely obsession. I chose not to say this out loud.

Kitazawa Natsumi looked away, staring into the distance. She placed her right hand on her left shoulder.

“Did you hurt your shoulder?”

She smiled faintly, shaking her head.

“He put his hand here, as he turned away.”

“He?”

“Never mind. How long are you going to make Morino wait?”

She was still leaning against the telephone pole. I called out, letting her know we were done.

Morino came silently over to us. She was only holding one can of citrus soda. I pointed out that there were three of us and she should have bought three drinks; she, in turn, pointed out that I had kept her waiting so long that she’d drunk two of them. Furthermore, she no longer had any intention of handing the final drink off to anyone else. You could never have guessed how foul a mood she was in by looking at her, though.

The three of us walked to the station. Kitazawa Natsumi and I walked together, chatting. We talked about moving, studying for college exams, nothing particularly interesting—but I was used to playing my part. She seemed to be happy, and she smiled often.

Morino followed a few steps behind us. I glanced back at her every now and then. She had her bag in one hand; in the other, she held the soda can, like she wasn’t sure what to do with it. She was staring at her toes. Her long hair fell forward, hiding her face.

She said nothing, making no attempt to participate in our conversation. Even as I glanced back at her, I pretended not to notice anything, carrying on like normal.

When we finally reached the clearing in front of the station, it was already dark out—but there were so many stores there, with brightly lit signs and windows, that it wasn’t actually very dark.

Schools were out, and most offices had closed as well. The station was packed with people heading home. The first floor of the massive station was carved into a square sort of tunnel—the station entrance. People flowed in and out like the building was breathing them.

I said goodbye to Kitazawa Natsumi at the station entrance. She waved and walked away, heading for the ticket machines. She slid through the crowd like a spaceship moving through the enemy fleet in a sci-fi film. There was a long line at the ticket machines, and she took up a place at the back of it.

Morino and I stood against the wall so as not to obstruct traffic. Neither of us really cared for loud, crowded places. Staying here long would give us each a headache.

The wall was a smooth white stone, probably marble. At regular intervals were large posters, advertisements for makeup with female models. Morino leaned against one of them.

“Surprised at how much Kitazawa Natsumi looks like her sister?” I asked.

“More important, doesn’t it wear you out, changing the way you speak depending on whom you’re talking to?” Morino folded her arms. I could see the end of the soda can in her right hand sticking out from under her left arm. I was sure her body heat had warmed it by now.

Morino looked across to where Kitazawa Natsumi stood in line. “I can’t understand how either of you can smile so naturally.”

“I’m not smiling because I’m amused.”

No matter what the conversation, I took no pleasure from it. I always felt like I was standing at the bottom of a dark hole. But I carried on an unconscious performance, making sure no one ever noticed anything wrong.

“And she hasn’t smiled much. She smiled a bit talking to me, but she hasn’t always been like that recently.”

Morino frowned. “She doesn’t usually smile? She seemed pretty cheery to me.”

I explained a simplified version of the friction between Kitazawa Natsumi and her sister: two sisters that looked alike, in an awkward sort of relationship for a long time. She’d been convinced she was hated and had been unable to smile.

Morino listened in silence, interjecting nothing.

“I went to Kitazawa Hiroko’s funeral, for the usual reasons. She told me about it there. But the other day, she found a tape recording of Hiroko’s voice …”

A chance encounter with her sister, whom she had thought she would never meet again.

I didn’t mention the killer or the events of the night before; it would just complicate things. But I briefly outlined the contents of the tape and the transformation it had presumably brought about within Kitazawa Natsumi.

I remembered how she had curled up on the floor, clutching the tape recorder.

I had stood there, knife in hand, wiping the blood off on his clothes. From the description on the tape, I could easily imagine how they had played together as children.

When I’d finished describing those memories, Morino remained leaning against the wall, arms folded. Her eyes turned downward in thoughtful silence. Her eyelids were half-closed, her eyes hidden beneath the shadows her eyelashes cast in the harsh overhead light.

“None of that was in my scrapbook,” she said, so softly that I almost didn’t hear her. She slowly lifted her head, looking toward Kitazawa Natsumi in line at the ticket machine.

The line had moved forward, and Kitazawa Natsumi was putting coins into the machine. She pressed a button and bought a ticket for a nearby station. Then she headed into the crowd, occasionally visible among the flood of people.

Morino unfolded her arms and looked down at the can of soda in her hand. Her back pulled away from the wall. A moment later, her long hair followed. She began walking like still river water that had begun to silently flow again.

It was such a quiet motion that it took me a moment to realize she was moving at all. Not sure what she was up to, I just watched her go. I didn’t begin to follow until she’d vanished into the crowd.

Her gaze was fixed on Kitazawa Natsumi, who had purchased her ticket and was headed for the platform gates. Morino Yoru headed after her, drifting as absently as a sleepwalker. She didn’t appear to be any good at walking in crowds, and she bumped into one person after another. She seemed to be trying to avoid this, but crashed into suit-clad businessmen and young women with unerring regularity. Each time, she bounced backward, clutching her nose, and then forged forward again. I had never seen anyone have this much trouble with crowds before. It was very easy to keep up with her.

Meanwhile, Kitazawa Natsumi passed through the congested gates. There were only a few gates serving a vast number of people, and a crowd had formed, waiting their turn. Their heads and backs blocked our view, and we could no longer see Kitazawa Natsumi. She had moved into the station without noticing Morino’s approach.

Morino slammed into someone again, a large middle-aged man; it was like seeing a tricycle crashing into a dump truck. She bounced away, staggered, and almost fell backward into me. As it was, her head slammed into my jaw. This was the single greatest damage I had taken over the last few months, despite everything that had happened. She didn’t appear to notice, all her attention focused on the direction in which Kitazawa Natsumi had vanished. She straightened up, gulped hesitantly, squared her shoulders, and called out, “Natsumi!”

I had never heard her voice that loud. It was like there was an amplifier hidden somewhere in her slender frame. All the noise and bustle of the crowd was instantly silenced. A lot of people stopped walking and talking, all turning to stare at her.

Morino began walking again, directly toward the gates through which Kitazawa Natsumi had vanished. Everyone who had heard her shout stepped out of the way, letting her pass. I followed.

Noise returned to the station, and everyone started moving again. Morino was already at the gates. She didn’t ride the train to school every day and so had neither ticket nor train pass, which prevented her from passing through the automated gates. They closed in front of her, and she stopped.

“Morino?”

It was Kitazawa Natsumi’s voice. She stepped out of the flood of humanity, appearing on the other side of the gates. She must’ve heard Morino’s shout and come back. She jogged over to us, looking surprised, and stopped with the closed gate between her and Morino. With Morino blocking one of the gates, the congestion around us had increased dramatically. Morino didn’t seem to care.

“Natsumi, this is for you,” she said, holding out the can of soda.

“Th-thanks,” Kitazawa Natsumi said, hesitantly taking it.

“I apologize for my bad temper earlier. I should’ve talked with you longer. I hear you were able to make things right with your sister.”

A lot of people were glaring at us, unable to get through the gate. Station attendants had noticed the commotion and were pushing toward us. I tugged Morino’s arm, trying to drag her away, but she resisted, refusing to move.

“I was also fighting with my sister, when … well, the circumstances weren’t exactly … I wanted to congratulate you, that’s all.”

And with that, she allowed me to pull her away from the gate. She was really light, like she was weightless. A flood of people passed around us. Kitazawa Natsumi was instantly swallowed by the crowd; but just before she vanished, I saw her smile, thanking Morino.

Morino followed my lead listlessly, as if exhausted. She’d lost her bag somewhere.

I looked around and found it sitting against the wall where we’d been standing earlier.

I pulled her hand until we were standing in front of the picture of a foreign lady again. It was hard work pulling her through the crowd. I had to keep a firm grip on her to keep us from being separated. She stared at the ground, never looking where she was going. Her lips were moving, muttering something, but I couldn’t make it out over the noise of the crowd—not until we left the crowd and had reached the spot where she’d left her bag.

“I think you’re my opposite, Kamiyama,” she was whispering, over and over. She was going to have to get home alone from here. I had to take the train, so she would have to walk by herself. But it seemed highly dubious that she could manage that in her current condition.

“At first, I thought you were like me. You reminded me of my sister. But you aren’t. We’re nothing alike.”

Morino’s bag was a simple black one. I picked it up and put it in her hand. It fell to the ground a second later.

I picked it up again, putting her fingers around the handle, but it was useless: She was too out of it to hold on. Her fingers couldn’t stand up to the weight of the bag, and it slid right out of her hand.

“Sometimes I think you’re smiling with nothing inside you at all, Kamiyama. I’m sorry if you take that personally, but that’s what I always think when I see you acting happy around everyone else. And sometimes, I feel really sorry for you.”

She said all this without looking up at me. Her voice was trembling, like a child about to burst into tears.

“But I’m the reverse.”

She looked up now, looked me right in the eye. I was taller than her, and from this distance, she had to look up at me. Her expression was as blank as ever, but her eyes were a little red, and they seemed damp.

“I know,” I said.

For a long moment, she stood in unmoving silence. Finally, she lowered her head and nodded. “Okay then. I’m sorry I babbled on like that.”

I held out her bag, and she took it like nothing had happened. This time, she held it firmly and didn’t drop it.

She looked at the crowd passing by, people heading to our left and to our right. I didn’t know exactly what she was looking at, but there was nothing in front of us but the crowd.

She opened her mouth and said quietly, “I’m genuinely glad for Natsumi. And I envy her.”

Morino was herself again, no longer needing my guidance. We moved in opposite directions, without even saying goodbye.

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