Volume 4 - CH 2.2

Silver droplets splashed. Water shook the dark green leaves, creating a small rainbow in the sunlight. The soil turned black and wet, before immediately turning dry.

I sat down on the porch and watched the vast garden.

Sunflowers were in full bloom, their yellow petals swaying heavily.

Pinching the end of the hose, Haruhiro sprinkled water all over the garden. Water droplets rode the wind toward me.

I closed my eyes halfway as I felt the slight coolness.

“Excuse me, Odagiri-san. Could you turn off the faucet?”

“Uh, yes. Of course.”

I did what he asked and switched the faucet off. Smiling brightly, Haruhiro lowered the wet hose to the ground. The remaining water inside spilled out, forming a puddle that reflected the blue sky above.

“I’m sorry for asking your help when you’re supposed to be a guest,” he said. “I tend to overdo it.”

Haruhiro started winding the hose. Sunlight shone on the wet ground, increasing the humidity. The smell of the earth was intoxicating. I picked up a cup of barley tea that lay beside me. Ice cubes clinked. The concentrated tea was fragrant and delicious. I set down the moist glass and looked up at the sky.

Everything felt like a dream.

But this was reality.

“I apologize for just showing up without notice,” I said.

The boy laughed. “It’s okay. You don’t have to be so polite to a kid like me. Mayuzumi-san, was it? Are you sure you don’t need to take her to the hospital?”

“She says she’s fine. I’m sure she will be all right.”

Mayuzumi was lying down in a futon in the altar room, with her hands clasped together and her eyes closed. There was a towel on her forehead and an ice pillow under her neck.

She was completely still, but she seemed to be alive.

Apparently the altar room was the coolest place here, but I couldn’t really stay there with her. So I volunteered to help Haruhiro water the garden.

While I was wondering what to do earlier, Haruhiro suggested letting Mayuzumi rest in their home. The electricity was turned off inside, and the light of summer provided illumination instead.

The smell of rush felt nice. I shifted my gaze to Haruhiro. He was considerably tanned. The composed smile on his childish face indicated maturity that belied his age. He was wearing a cheerful expression while putting away the hose; he seemed to be enjoying his summer vacation.

As I observed him, I felt a touch of unease.

His appearance was so different from the information that Mayuzumi shared beforehand.

He would have been sitting at the bloody breakfast table.

He got over the death of his family. Or forgotten the gruesome memories.

There was that possibility.

But…

“Odagiri-san, would you like some rice crackers? It doesn’t look like Mayuzumi-san is waking up soon.”

He was too carefree. He removed his sandals and entered the porch.

“No, but thank you.” I stood up.

Haruhiro gave me a curious look.

“May I use your washroom?” I asked.

“Of course. Go left from here. It’s at the end of the corridor.”

I thanked him and left the room, closing the sliding door behind me. The wood creaked under my feet as I walked down the long hallway. Suddenly, a person came to mind.

“Isn’t my sister beautiful? Isn’t she lovely?”

They were similar.

They behaved differently, and I couldn’t feel that same apparent madness from him.

But that innocent smile.

“Nothing wrong with that, Odagiri-kun. The more beautiful something is on the outside, the more likely it is to be putrid on the inside. An apple with a smooth, red skin can be utterly rotten.”

Hearing a familiar voice, I stopped in the hallway.

Slowly the sliding door opened behind me, and the floor creaked.

“You’ll never know unless you look inside. And as luck would have it, we are inside.”

Indeed. We were inside the house. A shadowy hallway stretched on before me.

Her sudden collapse did strike me as odd. She planned everything, it seemed.

“Mayu-san…?”

I turned around, and fell silent. Mayuzumi was using her parasol as a walking stick. Her legs were trembling.

“I think it would be better if you just lie down and rest,” I said.

“What are you saying? If I had to choose between boredom and getting sick, I would choose the latter.”

She coughed a few times, then staggered towards me. She pointed her laced black glove through the gap in the sliding door.

“There’s nothing in this altar room,” she said calmly.

Mayuzumi cast me a sidelong glance, her red lips curving gently.

“What do you mean?”

“No portraits of the departed, no urns.” She smiled thinly. Hers was the expression of a cunning cat. “Despite the recent tragedy, there’s not even incense being burned.”

A glaring dissonance in an otherwise ordinary scene.

A chorus of cicadas rang loud in my ears. Mayuzumi limped away, the floor creaking with her each step. Suddenly, she put her hand on a frosted sliding door.

But it wouldn’t open.

“It’s locked,” she said. “I see.”

Mayuzumi smiled and resumed walking. She would definitely be regarded with suspicion if she was spotted, but she didn’t seem to care at all. Following the same path we took on the way here, we arrived at the front door. Summer blazed outside. There was a fish tank in the dark entryway.

Small goldfish were swimming around, probably caught at a summer festival.

One of them was floating upside down.

“Odagiri-kun, do you remember when you carried me on your back to this house? My eyes were closed, but I could hear just fine.”

I thought back to that moment. I quickly took off my shoes and followed Haruhiro as he led the way immediately.

“He didn’t call out to anyone else besides you, did he?”

He was supposed to be living with his grandmother.

Sweat trickled down my spine. The cicada’s cries reverberated in the room.

“Any chance she’s just out?” I asked.

“Stop saying things you yourself don’t even believe.”

Mayuzumi headed straight down the hallway and started opening doors. A western-style room with a piano. A storage room. Eventually, she found it.

A small room with a table. There was a futon, and someone was lying on it. The smell of mosquito coils hung in the air. A white cloth was carefully placed over their face.

Their hair was gray.

‘What’s going on here?”

“…”

Mayuzumi silently approached the corpse and removed the white cloth. I didn’t even have time to stop her.

Their face was marked with keen anguish, their lips frozen open. It was as if the hardship they had endured while alive was etched on their visage.

But that in itself wasn’t all that strange.

“I don’t think an oddity had anything to do with this. They died of natural causes. A heart attack or cerebral hemorrhage. Forensic pathology is not exactly my field of expertise, though. How disappointing. I was expecting to see knife marks on the neck,” Mayuzumi said boredly.

A chill ran down my spine.

Right before I could yell at her, she suddenly said, “Step outside the room.”

My breath caught. I couldn’t immediately process what she just said.

Mayuzumi gave me a sharp gaze. “Leave. Now.”

I did as I was told and turned to leave the room. I watched Mayuzumi standing in front of the corpse as I closed the door.

“Ah, there you are. I’ve been looking for you, Odagiri-san.”

Several steps away from the room, a spine-chilling, gentle voice stroke my spine. I turned around to see Haruhiro standing there with the same smile on his face.

He was carrying the goldfish tank for some reason.

“Did you get lost? The restroom is this way. I get it. When I first came here, I didn’t know where everything was,” he said, keeping his smile.

He said the washroom was straight ahead from the room with the porch. I couldn’t possibly get lost.

Haruhiro walked ahead of me, leading the way. Staring at his back, I swallowed down the uneasiness rising up my throat.

His grandmother was dead.

Why did he just leave the body in there?

“Heave-ho. It’s so heavy. Ah, sorry. Can you wait there for a bit?”

Haruhiro deftly opened the door. The first thing I saw was the washstand. The mirror, its cracks mended with tape, gleamed softly. Small insects were flying around near the ceiling.

As he passed by me, the cloudy water shook.

A goldfish was floating inside, its jellybean-like red body rocking in the waves. A number of goldfish were swimming underneath it. It was the same fish tank from the entranceway.

Why was he carrying it?

As soon as the question popped in my mind, the tank tilted, and the floating, upside-down corpse was swept away along with the water, its red body sliding off the edge of the tank.

The living goldfish, too, joined down the drain.

Splash, splash.

Writing wildly, the goldfish were dumped from the tank, swirling down the whirlpool that formed in the white washstand. There was a plop as he plugged the stopper.

Nothing was left.

“All done.”

Haruhiro set down the empty tank at his feet. I looked at his face and shuddered.

He was smiling. For no reason at all.

“Why’d you flush down the goldfish?” I asked.

Then I realized I forgot to speak formally. He looked down at the empty tank. Head inclined, he thought about it for a while.

“I felt sorry for them,” he said. “One died, while the rest survived.” Shrugging, he lifted his head. The smile faded from his face. “I felt bad.”

His wide-open eyes were silently threatening me to agree with him. That he would not allow any objection.

I swallowed and nodded. He smiled again, and his innocent expression returned. He slipped past me and went out into the hallway.

Then he stopped.

“Oh.” There was a deliberate pause. “By the way, Odagiri-san.”

He turned around and slowly smiled.

“It’s a little early, but would you like to join me for dinner?”

His smile looked familiar.

A terribly twisted expression.