My Modern Kaidan

Chapter 13

"He told me it was a bird," I tell Kenji as we're walking out of school the next day. "He was burying a bird. He said he thought it hit a window."

"Do you believe him?" Kenji asks me.

I laugh. "He's my dad."

"He is a writer."

"So what should I do, dig it up?"

Kenji shakes his head. "He is your father, so you should believe what he tells you."

Our footsteps slow. We amble down the street, even though Kenji needs to get to work. "What happens in the rest of Rinchizoku?" I ask.

"After the missing girl turns up dead, the rinchizoku gets worse. They bash in Tatsue's windows, and. . ."

"What?" I say. "What is it?"

"They kill Tatsue's daughter."

I nod. "Great." Just my luck.

"Miyako," Kenji says, turning to me. "They have not found her yet."

"No."

"So," he says. "Maybe we are thinking about this all too much."

I nod, sighing. "You're probably right."

"I need to get to work," he tells me, his gaze lingering on me for a minute before he turns away. "Ja mata ne."

"Mata ne," I murmer, watching him trot down the street.

My phone buzzes in my pocket, causing me to jump.

"Where are you?" my mom's voice buzzes into my ear.

"Just walking home from school, why?"

"The police asked for your dad back at the station again," she sighs. "I'm stuck in traffic. There's a ton of traffic downtown for some reason."

"How long do you think you'll be?"

"I don't know," she says. "Look, just get home as soon as you can."

"Okay," I say.

I stare wistfully after Kenji as he rounds the corner.

When I get home, I leave the house quiet and my ears open. I end up in my dad's office, looking for Rinchizoku. If it really is some weird pre-written destiny coming to life, I should know what happens to Tatsue's daughter, how exactly she dies.

My dad's massive bookcase is crammed with books, and the more I look, the more I realize his own books are just mixed in with everything else. A lot of the titles I find bring back specifc memories, ones I remember him working on or talking about, but there's others I've never even heard of. I come to the realization that there's an entire body of my dad's work that I don't even know about.

I find Rinchizoku on the top shelf, easily six or more feet off the floor. I have to stand on my toes to reach it, stretching my arms and fingers desperately until I manage to nudge it from it's place on the shelf. It topples to the floor along with another book, landing face down. I watch in horror as papers scatter all over the floor. Terrified I've ruined my dad's books, upon closer inspection I realize the papers aren't book pages, but newspaper clippings.

I unfold one gingerly. "Kuso," I murmer. In spite of my basic grasp of Japanese swear words, my grasp of kanji is literally shit. An article this dense would take me forever to read. My eyes are drawn to the pictures instead. One is of a bridge with a broken barrier. The other two are individual pictures of girls my age, in their school uniforms. My eyes widen as I examine the face of one of them.

"Auntie?"

I go back and forth from the bridge to her picture. Could this article be about the accident no one is supposed to talk about, the one that left long scars etched into one side of her face?

Leaving Rinchizoku unopened on the desk, I begin to flip through the pages of the book that held the clippings, until I get to a drawing of a bridge identical to the one in the newspaper article.

Two girls drive down the road, heading for the bridge.

In the next panel, the driver swerves into the barrier, the car plunging into the churning dark waters below.

The girl in the passenger's seat struggles with her seatbelt in vain, her eyes filling with panic as bubbles rush from her nose and mouth.

She stretches out an empty hand as the car sinks into depths of the water.
The driver of the car breaks through the surface.

Her face is stoic as two trails of blood line one side of her face.

I become airborne as my phone bleeps on the desk beside me, jarring me from the pages of my dad's book. Mikey's name flashes across the screen.

"Hello?"

"Turn on the TV," Mikey says. "They found her."

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