Sakura laughed. “You’re in the wrong country, then. Japan is full of all sorts of ghosts.”
“I don’t mean to be cold, but Akane can’t come back and take revenge. She can’t come back at all. She’s dead, Sakura. Dead and gone,” Kara said, wondering at the emphasis in her own voice, and at the fear.
Sakura lay her head back on the pillow, staring up, and from that angle Kara could no longer see her eyes.
“Then how do you explain all of this?” Sakura asked.
“I can’t,” Kara replied.
“That’s right. You can’t.”
Kara still had questions, but the conversation clearly seemed over. The other girls lay in the dark, not speaking, waiting for sleep to arrive. While Kara felt trepidation at the thought, she realized now that, nightmares or not, Sakura looked forward to her bad dreams, for in them, however briefly, she could be reunited with her sister.
Within just a few minutes, she heard Sakura’s breathing deepen and the slow rhythm of sleep overtaking her. Perhaps ten minutes passed, and then she glanced at Miho, who lay on her side with her eyes closed and seemed also to have fallen asleep easily.
How they could simply shut off the conversation and not want to talk it over, try to figure out what was really going on, Kara did not understand. Perhaps they were simply afraid and in denial.
Kara frowned, noticing an odd, sweet smell in the room. A flower smell. It took her a moment to place it- cherry blossoms.
The scent grew quickly until it was almost overpowering, like hugging an old aunt who wore far too much perfume. She glanced around to see from where the odor might have come. In the dark, gleaming with moonlight, the Noh masks on the walls were hideous and unsettling. Kara felt like they were watching her, laughing at her. She rolled onto her side, turning toward Miho…
… who lay in bed, not asleep after all. Her eyes were open and her breath came in quick sips. She stared, face contorted with such fear that Kara gasped, chilled, heartbeat quickening. Her skin prickled with terror and she didn’t want to turn, did not want to see what had so frightened Miho.
But she forced herself to look.
The cat sat just inside the open window, on the wide sill, its copper and red fur raised in hackles.
It hissed, long and slow, and it watched them with human eyes. After that first night, by Akane’s shrine, Kara had told herself she had imagined those eyes… the dark eyes of a girl… eyes that reminded her of Sakura’s.
“Do you,” Kara managed, her voice ragged. “Do you see it?”
Miho did not reply, and when Kara looked at her and saw tears glistening on the girl’s face, she knew it had been the stupidest question she had ever asked.
The cat arched its back. It hissed again, jaws opening wide to reveal fangs like a serpent’s, long and yellow and glistening wet, as though with venom.
Miho screamed.
Kara joined her, as though she had needed that confirmation of her terror, that permission to lose control.
They scrambled from beneath sheets and blankets and clung to each other, moving toward the door.
“Sakura!” Miho screamed. “Sakura, wake up!”
Startled by their screams, Miho’s roommate nearly fell out of bed. But when Kara looked back to the open window, only the moonlight remained.
“What happened?” Sakura demanded.
“You saw it,” Kara whispered to Miho, holding the girl’s hands in her own, the two of them huddling together. “You saw it, right?”
Miho nodded. “Yes. The eyes. Oh, the eyes.”
Kara looked to the window again. The cat had really been there, and now it had gone.
But to where?
Something woke her.
Kara opened her eyes and inhaled sharply, as though surfacing from deep water or a nightmare. Yet she couldn’t remember any dreams at all. The events of that night had been terrifying enough.
Shifting slightly on the futon the girls had put out for her on the floor, she looked out the window. Morning still only hinted around the edges of the sky, just beginning to glimmer with the onset of dawn. The smell of cherry blossoms had vanished from the room, but her memory of that powerful scent lingered.
Drawing the blanket tighter around her, she closed her eyes but soon discovered that sleep would not be quick to return. Early or not, she felt entirely awake.
With a sigh, she opened her eyes again, and then remembered the impression she’d had a moment ago that something had woken her. Kara lay there and listened to her surroundings. Miho snored lightly but Sakura slept in silence, so much that Kara had to turn and watch her a moment to make sure she hadn’t stopped breathing. It took a moment before she confirmed the rise and fall of her chest.
As the sun rose, a gray-blue hue spreading across the sky, the wind picked up. She could hear it rushing by outside, but the windows did not rattle. The old dormitory building creaked a little, but she heard nothing that could have stirred her, not even footsteps padding down the hall outside on the way to the bathroom.
Listening to the gentle sounds of the morning, she felt her eyelids growing heavy again and let them close. Even if she couldn’t fall back to sleep, she wasn’t ready to get up yet, and she didn’t want to wake her friends.
Her body rocked back and forth. Kara felt herself swaying. The motion entered her subconscious and she dreamed herself in a small boat atop undulating water, the rolling waves tilting her side to side.
Kara.
The sea became rougher.
“Kara.”
She moaned, the boat and the waves vanishing. Vaguely aware of some reality intruding upon her peace, of hands shaking her, she curled in upon herself, limply batting at the offending grasp.
“Kara, wake up!”
Her body felt heavy and cramped, so tired, but she forced herself to open her eyes. Squinting against the sunlight that washed into the dorm room-and how did it get so bright?- she glanced up to see Miho bent over her, a stricken expression on her face. Without her glasses, she looked almost like a stranger.
In the back of her mind, she felt a spark of worry. What had upset Miho so much? But she still felt tired and sluggish and closed her eyes again.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“It doesn’t matter. Just wake up,” Miho said.
The urgency in her voice finally made Kara throw off the gauzy blanket that sleep had wrapped around her brain. She blinked rapidly and looked at the window again. Last time she’d awoken, it had barely been dawn. From the look of the sky, hours had passed.
It took her a moment to realize that she and Miho were alone in the room. Sakura had gone.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
Miho bit her lip, tucked a stray lock of her silky hair behind one ear, and shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. And then, in English: “Something bad. Something really bad.”
Footfalls raced past the room out in the corridor. Down the hall, someone shouted. Kara sat up and saw that the door stood open a few inches. Voices came to them from elsewhere on the floor, too many speaking for her to make out many specifics, but she heard something about a doctor and an ambulance.
And she heard weeping. Sobbing.
Two girls hurried past the door, whispering to each other.
“Miho, tell me,” Kara said, rising to her feet and reaching for her jeans. She slid them on and zipped them, then went to the door, but Miho didn’t follow.
“Chouku is dead.”
Kara caught her breath. Chouku was one of the girls on this floor-one of the soccer girls. The police could say all they wanted now about suicide or about how none of these things were related, and the school administration could try to pretend nothing really was wrong in order to save face, but nobody would believe that now.
“Is it murder?” she asked, her voice soft, cracking on the last word.
