Free Another, Vol. 2 by Yukito Ayatsuji

closed my eyes tightly, reflexively.
    The “disasters” hadn’t stopped.
    People were going to keep dying.

July II
    1
    I started to have a lot of bad dreams.
    I don’t remember the details very clearly, so I don’t know if it was exactly the same dream every time. But they all had a lot of the same people in them, either Mr. Kubodera, who had just died, or Yukari Sakuragi, who’d died in May after falling down the stairs, or Ms. Mizuno, who’d died in an elevator accident at the hospital in June. A couple of my classmates who were still alive would show up, too, like Izumi Akazawa or Tomohiko Kazami…
    Mr. Kubodera would glare at me, his face spattered with blood and both eyes flashing with an intense hatred. Then he would start to speak.
    He would proclaim, It’s your fault.
    Sakuragi would rise unsteadily to her feet and yank out the umbrella stabbed so deeply into her throat. Then she would turn to me and declare, This is your fault.
    Ms. Mizuno did the same thing. The doors to the elevator in the inpatient ward slid open, allowing her to drag herself out.
    You did this, you know.
    It’s your fault. Both of you. This was the merciless condemnation launched from Akazawa’s lips. Following close on its heels, the same words came from the mouths of Kazami, Teshigawara, and Mochizuki.
    Stop.
    Please, stop —I tried to shout, but no sound came out of me. I couldn’t speak.
    You’re wrong. This isn’t my fault —I wanted to deny it, but I…
    …I just…
    They’re right —Somewhere inside myself, I agreed with them. That’s why. That must be why I can’t say anything.
    Because of me.
    Because I came to this school.
    Because I had interacted with Mei, the girl who was “not there.” I had violated the “decision” that was meant as a talisman to prevent the “disasters.” It didn’t matter how inevitable my actions had been.
    That’s why… Because of me, “the ‘disasters’ for this year” had acted on them. Because of me, they had met such senseless ends…
    I would groan in my sleep until it got so hard to breathe that I woke up in the middle of the night. It happened several times a night.
    I would kick off the blankets that had grown sticky with sweat, then take several deep breaths, alone in the pitch blackness…
    If my lung collapsed again, this time there would be no going back, for sure. The thought struck deep.
      
    2
    “Well, whatcha gonna do? Nothing you could have done about it. Don’t get so down, Sakaki. You can blame yourself and drag yourself down in the dumps all you want, but it’s not gonna change anything.”
    After Mr. Kubodera’s suicide, the first person to start talking to me was—who else?—Teshigawara. He’d gone gung ho back to being the “bleached airhead,” in line with the image I’d had of him since the very beginning when I transferred in. He was casually striking up conversations with me about everything under the sun. Despite how completely he’d been ignoring me until just a few days ago…
    When I expressed some understandable sarcasm on that point, he replied, “That hurt me, too, dude. All of a sudden we had to start snubbing you, and I couldn’t tell you what was going on. How terrible is that?”
    Teshigawara gave a bubbling laugh, but his face turned instantly serious.
    “You know the situation now, right?” he checked, just to be sure, apparently. “You said that Chibiki guy in the secondary library told you most of the details, right? Then you get it, don’t you, Sakaki?”
    “Yeah, I totally get it.” I turned my eyes from his face and repeated in a low voice, “I get it,” then said, “I don’t think you had a choice…I mean, what else could you guys have done? I get it.”
    Since the attempt at increasing the number of kids “not there” to two hadn’t had any effect, there was no need for everyone to keep it going. There was nothing to be gained by continuing to ignore Mei and me. So…
    It wasn’t just me: there was a