Miho could not focus that day. The teachers paraded in and out of the room for each class, and it seemed almost as if they were speaking another language. She followed hardly any of it. She took few notes, and many of those were inaccurate.
All she could think about was Kyuketsuki’s curse.
Her life had been far from perfect, but it had been in perfect balance, mapped out for her. She had friends, and hopes, and a boy-Ren-who made her smile and got her thoughts spinning in embarrassing directions, despite her thing for American guys. But in April, all of her carefully constructed plans had come crashing down, and life had been thrown out of balance, not just for her, but for Kara and Sakura and Hachiro as well.
The impossible had happened. Things that she had never imagined could exist had torn down her expectations about the world, and what was real and true. Sakura had already had to deal with her sister’s murder, and Miho had helped her through that as best she could. Growing up, it had never occurred to her that someone she knew might be murdered. Such things happened in movies and books. Adjusting to the truth had matured her. But the supernatural? That was the province of folk tales and Noh plays.
And now her life.
“Earth to Miho.”
She glanced up to find Kara standing by her desk, and everyone else already returning their books to the lockers at the back of the classroom. The words had been spoken in English, so there was a lag time as her mind switched over from Japanese.
“I’m still on Earth, don’t worry,” she said, replying in English as well.
Kara did look concerned, though. “Your body’s in that chair, but your brain’s definitely been elsewhere all day.”
Miho sighed and slid back in her seat. She rubbed her eyes and switched back to Japanese. “I’m too tired to think in two languages right now. Sorry.”
The worry on Kara’s face deepened. “Let’s go try to talk to Sakura and Hachiro before o-soji starts,” she said.
Miho nodded and stood up. The girls stashed their books in the lockers-they would worry later about what they needed to bring home for homework-and hurried out into the corridor. They did not have far to look. Hachiro stood waiting outside their homeroom, and Miho spotted Sakura just down the hall, headed their way.
“Hi,” Kara said, reaching out to touch Hachiro’s hand.
Hachiro’s smile was sad and fleeting. “Hi.”
“Are you all right?” Miho asked him. She knew Daisuke from Noh club, but he loved baseball, too.
Hachiro shrugged. “As all right as anyone. I didn’t know him that well. We talked about baseball sometimes, but he didn’t live in the dorm and he wasn’t in my class. What really bothers me is that nobody mentioned he’s missing. Not at morning assembly or during any of my classes. It’s like it didn’t happen.”
Sakura walked up while he was talking.
“Maybe he came back,” she suggested hopefully. “Maybe no one said anything because he’s home now.”
Neither Kara nor Hachiro said a word. Miho glanced at Sakura, who looked disheveled, and who wore several of her favorite pins-a couple of them rude-on the outside of her uniform today, as if angry at someone but unsure how to unleash that anger, or upon whom.
“You don’t really believe that,” Miho said.
She blinked, surprised that the words had come from her. Her friends all looked at her oddly. Her role was so often the voice of hope and reason, but she didn’t feel up to it today. After months of worry, she had allowed herself to believe the curse had been only words, that it was over, and her life could go back to normal. Now she had to confront her fear that it never would.
“Daisuke might really have run away, you know,” Kara said.
“Unless something happens to convince me otherwise, I’m going to assume that’s exactly what happened,” Hachiro added.
“That’s not what Mai thinks,” Sakura said quietly, glancing around as if saying Mai’s name might make her appear.
“I don’t care what she thinks,” Kara said. Then she lowered her gaze, unwilling to look at any of them, and reached out for Hachiro’s hand. “But I’m not as convinced as Hachiro. If this is really the… if it’s what we think it is, I want to know, so we can at least try to protect ourselves.”
“We should tell someone,” Sakura said, in a tone that reminded them that she had made the suggestion before.
Hachiro shook his head. “No. Who would believe it? We would look like fools or liars. At best, they would punish us. At worst, they would contact our parents, embarrassing everyone.”
Sakura stared at Kara. “Your father-”
“Not unless we know we’re in danger that we can’t protect ourselves from. Talking to my dad is a final option, for all of the reasons Hachiro just explained. I’ve caused him enough stress since we moved here, and it’s difficult enough for him as a gaijin, without me causing him humiliation. Besides, he’ll think I’m going crazy.”
“Aritomo-sensei would help, if we could get her to believe us,” Sakura said.
“Same problem,” Kara said, lowering her voice. “Look, right now we don’t know anything. We can’t panic every time someone breaks curfew or runs away from home or stumbles on the stairs. There’s no reason to think this has anything to do with us.”
“Except we’re cursed,” Miho said softly.
For a moment, none of them spoke. Other students were already at work on their tasks for o-soji, sweeping and taking out the trash. Chairs were being picked up in the classroom they had just left. They’d kept their voices low, but they were getting dirty looks because they weren’t helping.
“We should look into it, just to be sure,” Miho said.
“How?” Kara asked.
“I’ll talk to some of his friends in Noh club and find out if anyone has ever gone home with Daisuke. If they have, they would know how to get to his house. We can only guess at his actual route last night, but we could walk it. Try our best to walk the same route and see if we encounter anything… strange.”
Hachiro cocked his head, staring at her. “You know the odds of finding anything? The police have probably already-”
“Not to mention,” Sakura interrupted, “that if something’s come here because of Kyuketsuki’s curse, I don’t want to go anywhere near it.”
Miho took a deep breath and shifted her gaze back to Kara. “Don’t you want to know?”
After a moment, Kara nodded. “Yes. Yes, I do.”
Then Mr. Sato appeared, practically in their midst, clearing his throat and glaring at them all with stern disapproval. They scattered, all four of them moving off to complete their o-soji tasks, but Miho knew an agreement had been reached. If Kara agreed, then Hachiro and Sakura would go along with the plan. A tight knot of ice formed in Miho’s stomach, and she recognized it as dread.
As far as she was concerned, they had only two choices-do something, or do nothing-and she couldn’t simply sit around holding her breath, waiting to find out if evil had returned to Miyazu City.
5
K ara stood just outside a small noodle shop, holding her breath to avoid inhaling the fumes from a battered taxi. Otherwise, she thought this street was one of the lovelier spots in Miyazu City. Despite its parks and gardens and temples, much of the city had an urban feel, and many neighborhoods were old and gray, almost the Japanese equivalent of some of the uglier areas in and around Boston, and in Medford, where she’d grown up, just minutes north of the city.
But although they called it Miyazu City, much of its heart remained the same town it had been during Japan’s Edo period. Downtown there were still homes of wealthy merchants from that era, and she had even been inside one of them, Mikami-ke House, which was open to tourists.