Miho nodded, gesturing toward the door. “Sakura is out there. I don’t want to see it again.”
From somewhere in the distance, beyond the walls of the dormitory, Kara could hear the high-pitched keening of an ambulance siren. She hesitated a moment, looking at the shattered Miho, and wondered what would become of her friends. Would this, at last, force Miho and Sakura’s parents to pay attention to them? To come and see their daughters, and maybe take them home? Selfishly, she feared such an outcome. But for their sake, she hoped so. Sakura had been crumbling for days, brittle from lack of sleep and her lingering grief over Akane. And now Miho seemed frayed to the point of breaking.
Kara pushed her hands through her blond hair, snatched a rubber band from Sakura’s desk, and tied her hair back in a ponytail. She pushed the door open and stepped out into the corridor.
Most of the doors on the floor were open, girls in pajamas and nightgowns standing, framed in their horror, looking further along the hall toward a cluster of students crowding outside a door four rooms down. Girls wept, some with their hands over their mouths. Others whispered to one another. One girl-Chouku’s roommate, Kara figured-sat on the tile floor, long legs drawn up beneath her. The sobbing Kara had heard before came from her. A statuesque, athletic-looking girl, she was only vaguely familiar to Kara. They did not share class or an after-school club, so she would only have seen her in the morning or during o-soji.
Another girl sat cross-legged in the corridor in front of her, holding the weeping girl’s hand in her own. Perhaps because she wore purple pajamas with butterflies on them and sat hunched over, hair falling across her face, it took Kara a moment to realize this was Ume.
Further along the hallway, at the top of the stairs, Sakura leaned against a balustrade and watched all of the shock, horror, and sorrow unfold. She had no tears and no fear. No, for her there’s only satisfaction, Kara thought.
She shivered, horrified at herself for even considering such a thing. And then she wondered why the thought had come to her, and if it had arisen because that truly was what she saw in Sakura’s face. Not for a moment did Kara believe Sakura wanted anyone to die, but the girl wouldn’t mourn, either.
Unseen, or at the least ignored, Kara made her way down the hall past the pale, drawn residents of the dorm until she came to Chouku’s room. Ume and Chouku’s roommate didn’t even look up at her.
“They’re all over her,” a voice said from inside the room, frantic and on edge. “Yes, everywhere. And I think she’s like the other one. So pale.”
Kara entered the room.
The only person alive in that small chamber was Miss Aritomo, the art teacher. She faced the window, her back to Kara, her cell phone clapped to her ear, and at first she didn’t notice that anyone had entered.
Chouku lay on her stomach on the bed, a sheet covering her up to her shoulders. Spots and streaks of blood marred the white sheet, but Kara saw no other sign of blood anywhere in the room. The girl lay totally inert and her flesh was a bluish-gray, verging on white, almost as though she-like Jiro-had been dredged up from the water. Yet she had died here, in this room, and only last night. For her to have gotten so pale, so quickly… there had to be another explanation.
I think she’s like the other one, Miss Aritomo had said.
Which made Kara think of the conversation she’d overheard between the art teacher and her father, about Jiro’s body being drained of blood.
“I don’t know what kind of animal, but I’m telling you, they look like bites to me,” Miss Aritomo said firmly to whoever listened on the other end of her phone call.
The teacher reached over, back still to Kara, and lifted the sheet, providing a quick glimpse of Chouku’s naked corpse. All over her body, from heel to calf to back to throat, there were hundreds of tiny punctures, arranged in half circles like the bite marks of a small animal. She had to have been bitten dozens of times, and yet the only blood in the room was smears on her pale flesh and spots on the white sheet.
Kara gasped.
Miss Aritomo turned, lowering the sheet, and her face grew stormy with anger.
“What are you doing? Get out of here!” she snapped.
Kara backed up quickly, bumping into the door frame, and stepped into the hall.
“And close the door behind you!” Miss Aritomo said.
Kara pulled it closed, glancing around to see that all of the girls in the corridor were staring at her now, including Ume and Chouku’s roommate.
“Sick freak,” Ume said, in clear English, her lip turning up in disgust. “What does she want from us?”
Kara stared, confused, and then realized Ume wasn’t talking about her. Slowly, she looked up. Sakura still stood by the stairs, arms crossed in defiance now, and she met Kara’s gaze with her own.
Burdened by the weight of the other girls’ attention, Kara focused straight ahead. She walked over to Sakura and bent to whisper in her ear.
“Can we go back into your room? We have to talk.”
Sakura narrowed her eyes and gave Kara a cautious look, as if trying to decide yet again whether she could be trusted.
Kara rolled her eyes. “Just come on.”
She turned and started back along the corridor, weaving through the gaggle of grieving, horrified girls. Sakura followed, and when she passed outside Chouku’s room, Ume spit on the floor by her feet. Surprisingly, Sakura made no attempt to retaliate or even speak to her.
Miho had shut the door, forcing Kara to knock.
“Who is it?”
“It’s us.”
The door opened quickly. Kara led Sakura into the room and Miho shut the door again behind them. Miho leaned against the door, arms crossed protectively over her chest, and chewed her lower lip expectantly. Sakura went to gaze out the window for a moment, perhaps listening to the escalating volume of the siren from the approaching ambulance, and then flopped onto her bed. Her eyes were unfocused, gazing at some bit of nothing in the middle of the room.
Seconds of awkward silence ticked away with Kara standing roughly between the roommates.
“You both saw her?” she asked.
Miho nodded and glanced away. She wiped at one eye and Kara thought her lip might have quivered.
“Not much to see,” Sakura said.
“You’re wrong,” Kara told her.
She described what she had seen when Miss Aritomo lifted the sheet, and the conversation she had overheard between the art teacher and her father.
“The only blood I saw was on the sheet,” Miho said.
Kara threw up her hands. “That’s what I’m saying. Miss Aritomo was even saying something on the phone about how it reminded her of ‘the other one.’ ”
Sakura frowned, staring at her. “What ‘other one’?”
“You’re not making sense,” Miho said.
“I can’t believe I forgot to tell you about this. There never seemed to be a right time, and then last night I didn’t remember, and I’ve been so damn tired that-”
“Tell us what?” Sakura prodded. “Speak!”
Kara took a breath. “The other day I sort of accidentally eavesdropped on my father and Miss Aritomo. I kind of thought it was a romantic thing and I didn’t want to interrupt them-that would be weird-but then they started talking about Jiro and the investigation into his death, and…” She shuddered with revulsion. “All the blood had been drained from his body.”
“That’s not funny,” Miho said.
“I’m not trying to be funny. I’m completely serious. So, just now, when she said Chouku’s body reminded her of ‘the other one,’ she had to be talking about Jiro. This isn’t a nightmare. This is real. Maybe there’s a”-she tried to find the Japanese word for rational in her memory but couldn’t-“maybe there’s an explanation for this that will make me feel ridiculous later for how much this is scaring me. But I can’t imagine what it could be.”
Sakura sat up, perching on the edge of the bed, elbows on her knees, and stared at Kara. “What are you suggesting?”
“Come on! The nightmares. The bite marks all over Chouku. She and Jiro both drained of blood. Haven’t either
