Free Another, Vol. 2 by Yukito Ayatsuji Page B

too, but you act all cool about it, like it’s someone else’s problem.”
    “Do I?”
    “It almost makes me think you’re…” Teshigawara trailed off for a few beats there, but in the end he went on in a tone of indifference that sounded pretty deliberate. “Maybe underneath it all, you’re the ‘extra person’ for this year.”
    “Me?” A shadow of a smile went through her right eye, the one unobscured by her eye patch. “I don’t think I am, anyway.”
    “…Figured.”
    “Yeah…But you know, they say the ‘extra person’ hiding in the class doesn’t even know that they’re ‘the casualty.’ So maybe…”
    Mei was joking about it now, but when the same topic had come up at her house before, I remembered her flatly telling me something different.
    I know that I’m not “the casualty.”
    Why was that? How had she been able to say that with such assurance?
    The question bugged me.
    “But it could in fact be you, Teshigawara,” Mei said with another faint smile. “What do you think?”
    “M-me?” Teshigawara reeled, his eyes wide, and he pointed at the tip of his nose. “No way…C’mon, quit joking around.”
    “Are you sure there’s ‘no way’?”
    “Hey, I’m alive! I’ve got an incredibly healthy appetite for food and for worldly possessions, and I don’t have a clue what I could have ever died from. I’m not trying to brag, but I’ve got super-vivid memories of my whole life, ever since I was a kid.”
    Watching Teshigawara’s frantic response, I couldn’t help letting a laugh burst out of me. And yet…
    That didn’t mean I was denying the possibility that he could in fact be the “extra person” for this year. Inside, I was working hard to think it over calmly.
      
    Who is “the casualty”…?
      
    Conscious all the time that the question written on Mei’s desk was even more crucial now.
      
    3
    Of course, Mr. Kubodera’s sudden death became a topic of conversation at my grandparents’ house in Koike.
    Ever since May, my grandmother seemed to always respond to the continuing deaths of people linked to third-year Class 3 by uttering “How frightening” in an effusive loop. When I gave her a quick background on Mr. Kubodera’s suicide, she’d switched to a loop of “How terribly sad.” As usual, I didn’t know how much of the discussion my grandfather had really understood. Only that whenever he heard the words “death” or “died,” he reacted acutely every time. Then he would say, like he had before, “I don’t want to go to any more funerals.” Or he would suddenly tear up or start weeping quietly…That was how it went.
    As for Reiko, she was considerate enough to say, “It must have been such a shock for all of you,” but she was consistently tight-lipped about the incident. I suppose that was to be expected, really. I had gotten the message on that, but…
    “You can’t remember anything from fifteen years ago?”
    I couldn’t keep myself from asking the question yet again, after all.
    “That year you were a third-year in middle school, you said that the ‘disasters’ had started, and then they stopped partway through the year. Why? What stopped them? Don’t you remember?”
    No matter how often I asked, however, Reiko would only hang her head morosely.
    “You said something happened during summer break. So what was it?”
    “…That’s a good question.” Reiko propped a hand under one cheek and sank into thought. Then, finally, her expression touched by insecurity, she murmured, as if to herself, “That summer…Ritsuko died. But that means staying shut up in the house would have been worse…Right, so I went to the camp on Yomiyama…”
    “A camp?”
    This was the first I’d heard of it. Unconsciously, I leaned forward.
    “You guys had that? Camping over summer break? Like a school trip to the mountains?”
    “It wasn’t as full-blown as that. It was just our class, I think.”
    “What’s ‘the camp on