Hachiro glanced at Kara, hope lighting his eyes.
“Is it?” Ren asked, glancing over at Sakura and Miho. “Is that possible?”
Miho shrugged. “I suppose, but what are the odds? This curse is real. None of you should let yourselves forget it, no matter how much you may want to.”
Wakana spoke then, her voice quiet but carrying the power of condemnation. Firm and unwavering.
“So no one will ever know how Daisuke died? Or Yasu? We all pretend to believe the lies the police are telling?” she demanded.
Fed up, Mr. Yamato stood from his own chair, arms crossed, staring at Wakana and Mai with stormy eyes.
“What you call ‘lies’ are a service to the public,” the principal said. “The truth would either cause utter panic, or it would be discarded as absurd, and no one would take the Miyazu City police seriously. No one would believe.”
Kara stared at him, trying to figure out how the story the police had created sounded any more believable than the truth. The cops had not only fabricated a story to explain the two boys’ deaths, but one that made them look competent at the same time. Yasu and Daisuke had been murdered by a man who had been part of the crew of a freighter that had been docked in Miyazu Bay for nearly a week. He had stalked Miss Aritomo and had killed two of her students, leaving Daisuke’s body in her attic as a way to torment her. Only when the smell of death began to permeate the house did she realize something was wrong, but at first she had thought some kind of animal had died up there.
Then, at a meeting Miss Aritomo had held at her home to discuss the future of the Noh club, Rob Harper had gone upstairs to seek out the source of that smell, only to find that the killer had broken in and was hiding in the attic. His ship had been scheduled to sail that night, and he had intended to rape and probably kill Miss Aritomo before departing. A fight had ensued, with the killer using a knife from the teacher’s kitchen, but the man had gotten away, at which point Miss Aritomo had called the police. While waiting for officers to arrive, Kara’s father had found Daisuke’s remains.
The killer, according to the official police report, had left port that night aboard the freighter upon which he served as a deck hand. But the ship had been bound for Osaka, and Miyazu City police were working closely with Osaka police, who were especially intrigued because the man fit the description of a suspect they were seeking in four similar cases in their own city.
The story was convoluted, which made it the worst sort of lie-one that would be difficult to keep track of. It was what her friends from home would have called “one hundred percent, grade-A bullshit.” But the police were the police. The lie belonged to them. Kara had been told, along with her father, her friends, Mr. Yamato, and Miss Aritomo, to rebuff any inquiries by explaining that the police had asked them not to talk about it for legal reasons, as it was an ongoing investigation. Miraculously, the dodge had worked so far. Kara thought that, in spite of its audacity, the police lie was somewhat ingenious. By blaming the killings on an outsider-someone who was not only not from the community but who had already left the area and become the responsibility of the police department of a major Japanese city-they had created the implication that the case was, for all intents and purposes, solved and closed.
It troubled Kara that the cops could lie so well. She also had to wonder how much of the truth about what had happened in April they really knew. Had they spun lies about Jiro and Chouku’s deaths because they didn’t want people to be afraid, or because they knew something supernatural had killed them and were purposefully covering that up? And if the latter were true, what else did the police know? What other secrets and mysteries were they hiding from people?
Something to think about, Kara realized. But not today.
A deeply awkward silence had come over the room. Mr. Yamato still looked angry, but now his expression softened a bit.
“I know this is frightening, and I know it is difficult,” he said, glancing around at each of them in turn-Kara, Hachiro and Ren, Sakura and Miho, Kara’s father and Miss Aritomo, and Mai and Wakana. “But it is necessary.”
When none of them replied, the principal stood up from his chair.
“You will not speak of this to anyone. I would prefer you not even discuss it among yourselves, though I know that would be next to impossible. The school would suffer terrible embarrassment if it became known.”
“Embarrassment?” Wakana asked. “The school would be destroyed. No one would send their children here ever again. That’s more than embarrassment.”
Mr. Yamato sighed and looked at her, shaking his head sagely. “You don’t listen. Yes, that is what would happen if people believed such things were true. But they will not. The police will lie. I will lie. It would seem nothing more than a wild story made up by a group of students…” He glanced at Miss Aritomo and Kara’s father. “Or by dishonorable faculty members wishing to draw attention to themselves. It would be considered a hoax, and that would be an embarrassment.”
The principal began to walk toward the door, but paused to look at Kara. “If anything else happens, if there is any sign of supernatural presence at all, come to me and I will do whatever I can to help. The police will help as well. But unless such a presence appears, this is over. It is ended.”
Mr. Yamato went out the door, pulling it firmly shut behind him as he left.
Kara glanced at Mai, then searched the eyes of her friends, and finally looked at her father, who was holding Miss Aritomo close to him on the love seat, whispering soft assurances in her ear.
They all knew that it wasn’t over.
Kara feared it would never be.