III: Under?
The very next morning, the mail brought a curious letter from Osaka's old friend.
ayumu it's been a long time hasn't it? heaRd About the hIgh school traNsfer and had to write you! how've you Been? hOpe you didn't forget me already. We've Been doing gReat sInce we last saw you. Don't GET wOrried about Me, Old fRiend.
i wasn't aROund for grade school, but after i Was finished with the doctor in Tokyo, I went somewhere here and got caught up. My parents even said I might get to transfer to your high school! Remember me or not, we've got a lot of time to catch up, Ayuchi!
-Tamie
"It's a little off." Osaka reiterated. Chiyo reread the letter and nodded in agreement.
"Yes, it is. Looks like a secret message, but why would she need to hide something like that... was she afraid the post office would look at it?" Placing all the unusual capitals in the letters together presented the message: "RAINBOW BRIDGE TOMORROW".
Osaka had plainly noticed this before, as well. "It really has been a long time since I saw Tamie. I barely remember it, that was back in... dunno, Kindergarten, maybe. It's nice that I'll get to meet her again, though."
"Miss Osaka... the secret message." Chiyo called attention back to the strange cipher, "Do you think it's calling for a meeting of some sort?"
"Maybe something's happening there... that'd be pretty cool. And the way it's hidden like that, it's kinda like a secret spy message! Maybe I'll get to jump off the bridge like they to in the movies... hm?"
"That's kind of what I'm worried about." While Osaka had been going along her potentially dangerous fantasy, Chiyo had wrapped her arms around Osaka's wrist, hoping to bring her back to reality. "If Tamie's hiding things in her letter, there may be something you don't know. Maybe you shouldn't go."
"If you say so."
The next day was Saturday. Despite her promise to Chiyo NOT to go, Osaka had bought some hamburgers from a nearby fast food joint and was waiting there for almost the entire day. The longer she waited, the more anxious she became. Her thoughts began to fall into the same state they were in the previous day, except more details were clear to her.
She remembered the blackboard in her dream. Its characters merging, changing, yes, she could just barely make out 'Fire' and 'Water' in the vision. But what did they mean?
Likewise, why did she see so many trees? Why were trees so important? These questions clawed at her, demanding answers she couldn't produce, which tormented her further.
Finally, however, she remembered what she had seen that day at the park. The tall man in the business suit, that Chiyo hadn't noticed. Chiyo was too observant to miss something as simple as a man wearing a full suit in a park.
Still, she waited, entranced, at the middle of the bridge, without being sure what she was waiting for. It was a short while after 9 o'clock in the evening when she discovered what, as she saw a familiar man walking the bridge on her side, toward her. A man wearing a business suit. Tall and spindly.
He stopped after walking a step past her, facing away. Voices in Osaka's head, her thoughts and memories, all screamed at her, telling her to get away, but her curiosity finally outweighed her instincts.
"Do you know Tamie?" She asked.
There was no answer from the man, but his silhouette seemed to shift. Something about him was terrifying, but magnetic, for lack of a better word, and Osaka was torn between running from him or approaching him. The very sight of him drowned out her senses. The cars passing by faded to a dull ring, the lights of the bridge blurring into a green fog with him at the center.
"Ayumu! Don't look at him! Look away!" A voice yelled, only barely reaching her before the man came alive. Without warning, the green blur, and the man, she saw, erupted into flames, the ringing sound abruptly growing to an ear-piercing shriek, under which the sound of running feet just barely made itself aware.
The tall man turned, revealing a smooth, white, featureless face, without a mouth or nose, and sunken craters that seemed to have rotted their eyes away long ago. Then, as suddenly as it started, the whole vision ended, as Osaka, deafened and horrified, fell backwards over the bridge railing and into the water below.
Osaka's disappearance weighed heavily on Yukari's class, especially after a month passed without any sign of her. Chiyo was probably hit the hardest, having been close friends, but the rest of her group, Yomi, Tomo, Kagura, and Sakaki, were all either saying nothing of it or trying to laugh it off with jokes, like how Osaka will probably turn up in the Bermuda triangle. Even Miss Yukari was trying to hide her feelings under layers of terrible jokes. After that month passed, a new student arrived to take advantage of the vacancy.
She first appeared when Yukari had yet to arrive that morning. There were a few certain curious factors about her—she was only a few inches taller than Chiyo was, and her smokey grey hair was cut short and put up into a small ponytail at the back of her head. Strangely enough, it seemed to the more observant students that the hair had greyed out due to stress, not being a natural shade. She also had burn marks that were visible on her palms and one of her shins. Having quietly arrived and taken her place, she was nonetheless noticed quite shortly after she began unpacking her books.
Chiyo almost felt she had to force herself to be courteous and greet the newcomer—she wasn't sure why, but the thought came to her that Osaka couldn't be replaced. Why this barred her natural kindness, however, was beyond her entirely.
"Good morning," she said with a forged brightness that anyone who knew her could recognize, "I'm Mihama Chiyo, the class representative for this homeroom."
The girl, however, couldn't recognize that Chiyo was on edge.
"Morning to you, too, Mihama." Reaching out and shaking Chiyo's hand... Chiyo jumped a little, for the hand that met hers was clammy and stone cold. Almost unnaturally so.
"I'm Yamada Tamie." The girl continued. Again, she was oblivious to Chiyo's true emotions... which now grew from creeping dislike to anger.
"Tamie?" Chiyo repeated, as though she may have heard incorrectly. To no avail.
"Yeah, Tamie. If you want to go by first names, I guess... I don't mind that." Tamie laughed. "I usually have to know people a while before I..."
"You knew Miss Osaka, didn't you? You were the one who sent that letter!"
Letter. Tamie stopped mid-sentence, her mouth drawing into a firm line.
"You mean... Ayumu, right?" She asked weakly, her cheerful inflection vanished.
"You sent that letter about Rainbow bridge!" Chiyo incriminated, "You were there, weren't you? You did something to her! You know where she is!"
"K... kid, let's not get carried away here..." Tamie's eyes widened, and she brought her hands up to defend herself.
"You do, don't you? What did you do to my friend?" In spite of herself, Chiyo's voice rose, growing louder and louder with every word she yelled at Tamie, until she couldn't contain herself any more and began flailing her arms at her in blind fury. This only lasted a few seconds as Kagura snared Chiyo's arms and held her back.
"The hell's gotten into you?" She demanded, looking up apologetically at Tamie. "She really isn't like this all the time, trust me. She's just shaken up since our friend went missing."
"It was her, don't you see?" Chiyo relented, straining against Kagura's grip almost mindlessly. Kagura found, with surprise, that she had to work a bit to keep Chiyo from breaking free.
"Calm down, Chiyo! Don't take out your anger on the new girl just because she's the closest to your size!" Yomi added.
Tamie only looked on with an unidentifiable expression, a mixture of apology and remorse.
