The Morpheus Cla.s.sroom by Mikami En
Prologue (volume 1, pages 10-18)
Kishimori Mizuho’s phone chimed just as she opened the door to her family’s apartment.
She put down the shopping bag she had with her on the mat in the entranceway and rummaged in the pocket of her school uniform. The caller was displayed as her father, Takaomi. Except at this time he still was supposed to be at work. Tilting her head a little in puzzlement, she answered, and the voice that she heard on the other end was that of a man she didn’t know.
“Your father has been in a traffic accident,” informed her dispa.s.sionately the man who introduced himself as a policeman.
It took her a while to finally grasp what the man was saying. Her father, working in sales, was on his was back to his company when he apparently took a dive from a bridge. At the moment, he was undergoing a surgery, and the policeman said he wanted her to come to the hospital as soon as possible.
Mizuho left the apartment and took a taxi. She tried calling her older brother, Naoto, but his cell seemed to be turned off. Now that she thought about it, he did say something about going to see a movie with his friends after school.
She sent him a text asking him to come to the hospital as soon as he read it instead.
It surprised her how calm she remained under the circ.u.mstances. Today, just like always, she saw her brother off together with her father, then went to her own school, took cla.s.ses like a middle school student such as herself was supposed to, then shopped at a supermarket and came home. Nothing was out of ordinary.
And she couldn’t have possibly imagined that something like this was waiting to happen. The reality of this had yet to sink in for her. She had this feeling that someone would pop up any minute now and announce it was all just a joke.
When she arrived at the hospital, her father was sleeping in a hospital room, his surgery safely over. It seemed he didn’t suffer any life-threatening injuries, but a few of his bones were fractured and he hit his head a little.
“It’s going to be okay. He’s stable at the moment,” the doctor said to her, taking the trouble to lower his line of sight in order to talk to a child like her. He probably intended to tell the particulars to her big brother instead of her. Seeing as the Kishimori household didn’t have a mother.
The police detective who was the one to call her and inform of what had happened subjected her to a brief questioning. Apparently, the car her father was driving abruptly changed lanes when on the bridge, then, without decelerating, broke through the railings and took a fall. There were no other cars on the bridge at that moment, and the driver had an un.o.bstructed view.
Didn’t she notice anything out of ordinary about her father lately, the detective asked her several times. It seemed he thought what had caused the accident was either some mechanical failure in the car or Takaomi cutting the steering wheel to the side sharply.
“…My dad’s been staying up late into the night recently,” Mizuho recalled. She had a feeling that lately, whenever she woke up at night, she heard sounds coming from her father’s room more often than not.
The detective who was taking notes raised his face. “What was your father doing?”
That she didn’t know, she said as she shook her head. There was nothing more worthy of telling him, and having asked her to contact him if she remembered anything else, the detective took his leave.
Mizuho was left to wait for her brother in a dim sickroom with tightly shut curtains. Takaomi was breathing evenly as he slept on his bed. If you disregarded the cast and the bandages, he was the same composed father as always, with nothing out of ordinary about him.
She didn’t remember how much time had pa.s.sed.
Before she knew it, the hospital room was stained with the orange of the evening. Mizuho gave a little yawn, shielding her mouth with her hand. It appeared she’d spent quite a while sitting by the bed.
Her father still lay on the bed, not even stirring. It was so quiet in the room that it made her feel uneasy.
Just then, the phone in the pocket of her uniform chimed.
’…Oh, no.’
A reflex made her to hurriedly turn it off. The sound didn’t seem to have disturbed her father’s sleep, and Mizuho gave a sigh of relief.
This hospital ward only allowed using phones in the lobby in front of the elevator. Mizuho stood up, trying not to make a sound, opened the door and exited the room.
“Eh…?”
In the dimly lit corridor, there was not a soul.
She pa.s.sed closed doors one after another as she headed for the lobby. But even in the lobby she found no one, only empty benches illuminated by the light of the setting sun streaming from the windows. The wall at the far end had two elevator doors, the numerical displays over both indicating that the elevator cages stopped at the lowest floor.
Somewhere what was probably the air conditioning system had started working, as the girl’s ears picked up distant mechanical whirring. With the exception of it, there was no other sound whatsoever.
When she stood there all alone, it felt as though this place became wholly unfamiliar to her.
Suddenly, a certain thought crossed Mizuho’s mind. Was she really in the hospital? To begin with, her father getting in an accident was already something out of ordinary that broke up the familiar routine of her everyday life. Sure, she knew that trusting your eyes is everything, but…
“…It’s like I’m in a dream.” The words spilled out of her mouth unchecked.
A shiver ran down her spine.
It’s not like she was scared. It’s just that somehow all of this lacked the sense of reality.
Abruptly, she’d come to her senses. She remembered what she came here to do. Turning her phone on, she pulled up the call history log and called back the last number. The person on the other end answered almost immediately.
‘Is it true our old man got into an accident?’ her brother Naoto asked without preamble. She could hear voices and footsteps around him. He probably was at some station.
“Yeah… He broke a few bones… but it seems he’s going to be okay.”
She accurately repeated what the doctor told her. But when she spoke the work "okay’, for some reason she suddenly felt a chill on the nape of her neck.
“Brother, where are you right now?”
“The Iimi station… That aside, sorry I took so long to notice your text. I’ll be there in 15 minutes, okay?”
Mizuho was surprised as how relieved that made her feel. It looked like she was more stressed out that she’d thought.
“Uhmmm… Should I buy something on my way there? Maybe something old man wants…?” Naoto then asked.
“Not now… Dad’s sleeping anyway.”
“Oh, I see. Then, maybe you need something, Mizuho?”
“No… I don’t need anything.”
Mizuho almost burst out laughing. Really, what was he doing asking about her wishes in this situation? Of course, she knew he wasn’t trying to mess with her or anything. Naoto was something of a scatterbrain, and he always said weird things when he was fl.u.s.tered. But still, even at a time like that, he did his best to pay attention to the needs of others, and she liked that about him.
“Gotcha. Anyway, I’m on my way.” He hung up.
Feeling more relieved than before, Mizuho put away her phone. She had a hunch that if her older brother got here, abnormalities in her everyday life would be done and over with, limited to just this one out-of-ordinary day. And some time in the future, when she turned back to examine this day in hindsight, the odd sensation she was experiencing at the moment, wouldn’t matter any, she was sure.
For a while, Mizuho simply stood in the hall. Her inaction was because she hesitated about what she should do - wait her brother here or go back to the hospital room. She wanted to be back by her father’s side, but at the same time, she wanted to see her brother’s face as soon as was humanly possible. Gazing at the elevator’s floor indicator, Mizuho was deep in thought.
At first, she couldn’t place her finger on what exactly it was that felt out of place to her. As previously, there was no one in the lobby. No matter how much she strained her ears, the only sound she could hear was the whirring of the air conditioner that she’d been hearing since the beginning. That strange low noise seemed to a little louder now…
“Ah!”
It wasn’t a mechanical sound. It was a human voice. Somewhere in this ward someone was letting out m.u.f.fled screams. In a hurry, she ran back along the corridor. When she halted in front of Takaomi’s hospital room, she knew her worst premonition had come true. The voice was coming from behind the door. It was her father who was screaming.
"Dad!’
The moment she threw the door open, she got bathed in an intense red radiance which made her freeze regardless of her will.
“…Red.”
Hearing that hoa.r.s.e voice coming from the direction of the window, she cracked her eyes open.
A man with a cast and wrapped in bandages stood there with both his hands set on the window pane. The gauze affixed on the back of his head had slipped, revealing the wound with its rims st.i.tched together with a black thread.
“Dad…?”
Mizuho was suddenly aware that the curtain covering the window was now gone. The red light that filled the room was being emitted by a red sun floating outside. At Takaomi’s feet, there lay a discarded white cloth, not unlike shed skin. It appeared he had torn off the curtain that hang over the window when he got out of the bed.
“What’s… wrong?” Mizuho’s voice was trembling. Unknown terror was welling up from the depths of her being. “Y-you need to lie down…”
For some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to set foot into the sickroom. She needed to call a doctor or a nurse. If she went in the opposite direction from the lobby she’d been at earlier, she should find the nurse station, she was positive.
Just as her focus shifted to the lobby, she heard her father’s voice, “Red… eye.”
“Eh?”
“Red eye.”
That delirious-sounding voice carved itself sharply into Mizuho’s eardrums. Without realizing it, she took a step back.
“Red eye, red eye, red eye, red eye, red eye, red eye, red eye, red eye, red eye, red eye, red eye, red eye, red eye, red eye, red eye, red eye, red eye, red eye, red eye, red eye, red eye, red eye, red eye, red eye, red eye, red eye, red eye, red eye, red eye...”
Suddenly, she understood what Takaomi was seeing. Beyond the window there sprawled a dusk-tinted residential district. Her father’s eyes were trained on the sun sinking behind the roofs of the numerous houses there.
Dragging the cast along, Takaomi slowly changed the way he was facing. His empty and tired gaze pierced right through Mizuho to fix on something far away. Having witnessed her father turn into a different person so unlike himself, the girl couldn’t quite bring herself to call out to him.
After a short silence, her father’s quivering lips opened.
“Ayano…”
Mizuho’s heart almost froze. It was the name of a girl living in their neighborhood since way back. Mizuho had no slightest idea why her father had felt the need to call that name now though. Why did it have to be not the name of a relative but that of a complete stranger? Maybe Mizuho’d just heard it wrong?
Just when she thought that, her father spoke again, “They… please… her…”
He started coughing, and the words stopped. Then, as if losing the support that propped him up, Takaomi collapsed, falling face first. The dull thud echoed through the sickroom, and after that, utter silence descended.
Mizuho’s legs started shaking with minute tremors. She couldn’t feel the floor beneath her feet. With a stiff gait, she approached her father and went down to her knees by his side as if collapsing. Takaomi’s eyes were left wide-open, and she couldn’t hear his breathing.
’…It can’t be.’
Her big brother would be here soon. And when he would get here, what she had said about their father being "okay’, would have turned into a lie. She made a grab for the switch with the nurse call b.u.t.ton on it dangling from the bed, pulling it closer and pushing the b.u.t.ton with both hands.
Sensing some sort of presence, she looked over at the dead body of her father.
The red light of the setting sun shining into the hospital room had become unbelievably bright - as if daubed in fresh blood.
Without thinking, the girl shifted her eyes towards the view outside the window.
“Red… eye…?”
The sun casting the sinister light looked like a crimson eyeball.