Chapter 5 (January 17, 2010) (4,432 words)

Everyone got out of bed the next morning without a modicum of hesitation, which was surprising, considering how recalcitrant they were being the previous morning. The weather was slightly better this morning, but only slightly. It was still cold enough to force everyone to suffer the indignity of putting on warm clothes once again. (Sendoh wasn’t so keen on wearing his disgraceful sweatshirt, but he ultimately gave in, because it was the only piece of warm clothing that he had brought along.)

“Don’t say anything,” said Koshino warningly when Sendoh came out of the room, looking extremely self-conscious.

Sendoh opened his mouth, but decided against saying anything. There was no use in making himself redundant. He had already expressed how disagreeable the odious piece of clothing was on a previous occasion, namely yesterday morning, and his audience had been attentive all through.

Just to drive his point home, he said:

“This really sucks.” When Koshino looked ready hurl a thousand and one bitter animadversions at Sendoh a second time, Sendoh hastily added, “Maki, could you lend me your jacket or something?”

Now, Maki loved his jacket. There was absolutely nothing that could make him part with it. It was a Christmas present from his grandmother, whose eyesight wasn’t very good: by a happy mistake, she had bought him the denim jacket he was now wearing instead of the old-fashioned pullover she had originally intended to buy.

“No way,” he said. “Ask someone else.”

Sendoh sighed.

“Coach,” he said. “Could I have your overcoat?”

It was a daring request. He knew how moody his coach could be.

Coach Taoka stared at him for a while, and then opened his mouth.

“I’d love to lend it to you, but it wouldn’t fit you,” he said, alluding to the substantial difference in their height and build.

“Toaka’s always been on the diminutive side,” said Coach Takato with something that was intended to be a sympathetic sigh.

“Watch your tongue, Takato,” said Coach Taoka. “I prefer to use the word ‘lean’. And besides, it isn’t as if you’re any taller.”

Coach Takato scowled, but quickly regained his composure, not wanting to make another scene in front of the boys. He had his dignity. The only question was if the other did.

Apparently the answer was yes, because Coach Taoka refrained from making any further comment on his rival’s physical deficiencies, however tempted he might have felt. He did, however, permit himself a well-concealed smile of satisfaction at the thought that Coach Takato resembled an orangutan.

Coach Takato simultaneously conceived a relation between Coach Taoka and a wild boar.

“It’s time to go downstairs for breakfast,” said Coach Anzai when he noticed that the other coaches seemed to have forgotten.

“Hey old man!” said Sakuragi, taking advantage of the remarkable elasticity of Coach Anzai’s double chin, and proceeding to bop it. “What’s the plan for today? Are we going anywhere?”

“Ah, yes,” said Coach Takato, clearing his throat. “As a matter of fact, we’re going to see this old, ruined palace somewhere nearby.”

“Somewhere nearby,” grumbled Uozumi. “Meaning another one and a half hours on the bus?”

“No, actually,” said Coach Takato cheerfully. “Two hours.”

“So what’s so special about this place?” asked Fujima interestedly. His parents being archeologists, and he had inherited the lucky gene.

“Nothing,” said Coach Takato jovially. “Just that it’s old, and in ruins.”

“Good enough,” said Fujima brightly.

“Does it have a basketball court?” asked Mitsui hopefully.

Coach Takato scowled at him.

“Use your commonsense!” he said. “Sixteenth century Japanese emperors never played basketball at their summer palaces.”

“So…” said Sendoh tentatively, not wanting to offend Coach Takato, who, it transpired, was an even worse case of permanent PMS than Coach Taoka. “Is this place open to tourists?”

“Obviously,” said Coach Takato, frowning even more deeply, and giving Sendoh the impression that he was caught in the act of perpetrating something unspeakable. “That’s why we’re wasting so much of our time going there. Goodness… Are my boys the only ones with commonsense here?”

Just then, Kiyota pointed out the window at a dark raincloud and shouted, “Look! It’s a UFO!”

Coach Takato groaned.

“HA!” laughed Hanamichi in derision. “You stupid wild monkey, that’s not a UFO! It’s a meteorite!”

They had a brief argument regarding what the object in the sky was, which Rukawa interrupted.

“It’s your brains,” he said deliberately. “They’re out of your heads.”

“Rukawa, you bastard!”

“Rukawa, you swine!”

Rukawa put on his earphones and began listening to music.

“Ahem,” said Uozumi. “Breakfast.”

“That’s the first intelligent thing I’ve heard all day,” said Coach Takato in relief, leading the way out of the room.

Breakfast, which was in the creepy dining hall, inspired poetry in Kogure.

“Coffee is bitter,” he began, relishing a sip from his cup and smacking his lips as he assumed the relaxed poise of one who’s about to go into poetical rhapsodies of the highest quality. “Coffee is bitter, sugar is sweet, and girls are headless!”

Kogure had succeeded in killing everyone’s appetite.

Ayako, a strong supporter of women’s rights, aptly denounced Kogure’s morbid and incorrigibly chauvinistic ideology—something that she would never have ventured to do in any other situation, since she had great respect for the bespectacled Vice-Captain. Then again, she reasoned, said Vice-Captain was usually levelheaded.

“We all have our weaknesses,” admitted Kogure without the slightest compunction. “Mine’s scary things.”

Ayako glared daggers at Sakuragi since she couldn’t bring herself to do so at Kogure, no matter how serious the situation was.

“Forget it, Kogure,” said Hanagata sympathetically. “We are a seriously misunderstood group of people, we ghost-lovers.”

Kogure conceded the point, and began admiring the portrait before him. He had chosen to sit at a strategic point from where he could see the portrait in its full gory glory.

“The attention to detail is excellent,” he remarked dreamily, tracing the path of the blood with his eyes, all the way from the girl’s gaping neck to the ground on which it pooled.

“Uhm, Kogure,” said Ayako. “There’s a fly in your cereal.”

Kogure looked at her patronizingly, which was strangely uncharacteristic of him. What few people knew was that Kogure was remarkably competitive. He wouldn’t waste an opportunity to thwart someone in an attempt at getting back at him for something he might have done to offend them, intentionally or otherwise, in order to defend his views.

“There are no flies up at this altitude,” he said.

Ayako swore within her head.

And then Miyagi made a strange gurgling sound, and Ayako knew how she could get herself to be appreciated for a change.

“Ryota,” she said in a falsely cheerful tone which would have sounded genuinely cheerful even if you strained your ears to listen—Ayako could do that kind of stuff. “Did you get me anything for the trip?”

It was the cue Miyagi had been waiting for, and as if he had been filled with a second life, he sprang up from his chair in an unexpected burst of energy and said, “Of course, Ayako! I’ll be right back!”

He dashed out of the dining hall (with the other diners remarking unfavorably on the state of his mental health again) at a speed that would have otherwise compelled Maki and Fujima to acknowledge him as a worthy competitor for the title of Kanagawa’s Number 1 Point Guard. Right now, they just stared at him in awe.

“The things people do for love,” said Sakuragi in a tone that was unbecoming of him, glancing surreptitiously in the direction of Haruko, as if expecting her to get the hint.

Haruko, however, was too wrapped up in admiring Rukawa to notice anything, even Miyagi’s abrupt departure.

How cute, she thought, the way he eats his cornflakes.

Haruko was never a big fan of cornflakes, but Rukawa had sanctified the cereal by opting to eat it, and she couldn’t resist getting herself a bowl this morning.

Presently, Miyagi returned with a large pink bag that may have been scented at some point in the past, and dumped it in Ayako’s lap.

“I hope you like it,” he said with a conspicuous blush on his cheek.

Ayako glanced inside the bag and gasped. Getting to her feet, she slapped Miyagi resoundingly on the cheek, and then stormed out of the hall in indignation. (The other diners were now convinced that what Miyagi needed was the experienced supervision of a psychiatrist.)

“What just happened?” asked Uozumi.

Miyagi looked a wreck. He had spent twenty-three hours of his life picking out the best pieces of clothing for Ayako, and all in colors that she liked. He spent several thousand yen out of his own allowance in order to make such a purchase possible.

“Clothing?” said Akagi incredulously, hazarding a peak into the bag, as if expecting something to jump out and bite him. “These are panties.”

Everyone at the table gasped. The Coaches began talking loudly among themselves about irrelevant things, such as a certain species of wasp in Peru that grew to incredible sizes, or the probability of a penguin in Antarctica being injured at that moment and in need of medical aid.

“What!” said Uozumi as if he had been the one on the receiving end of the ignominious present. “How could you do something like that?”

“I thought… She’d like it…” said Miyagi in a tone so low that Uozumi had to strain to hear.

“Obviously she didn’t,” said Rukawa uninterestedly.

Fujima slapped his forehead and swore. (“By Shakespeare!”)

“That was just the stupidest thing ever!” he said, speaking from experience, having mingled amiably with his female fans in the past, and thus gleaned knowledge about their personal tastes that he never had any real need of.

“Was it supposed to be a practical joke?” asked Jin, who thought it was a cool prank.

Miyagi shook his head and pouted. He looked to Sakuragi for help, but to his surprise, the redhead was examining the contents of the pink bag and drooling.

“YOU IDIOT!” yelled Akagi, who had a fair idea what Sakuragi was fantasizing about, and he acted accordingly, unleashing his wrath on the most troublesome member of his team with reverberating force.

Sakuragi was subdued.

“Now, there’s got to be some way to get rid of this,” said Akagi, glancing at the bag in disgust.

At that point, Kogure was struck by an epiphany.

“I’ve got it!” he declared. “Maybe we could use the… erm… clothes to lure out the headless ghost!”

His genius idea went unnoticed.

In the end, after much guarded debate, in which people dutifully maintained the sanctity of decency by contriving to replace the word “panty” with “Object-X”, it was decided that the bag would be clandestinely slipped underneath one of the tables when the waiters were not looking. This subterfuge would be carried out by only two people, who would remain in the dining hall after the others had left, and thus avoid attracting much attention to the group.

“I’ll do it,” said Sendoh with a smile that seemed to suggest an ulterior motive.

It was decided that Maki would be fill the second position.

“So…” said Maki when Sendoh persisted in showing no signs of carrying out their plan.

“What is it?”

“Let’s get this over with.” A whole ten minutes had passed since everyone else had left, and Maki was understandably impatient.

“I’m waiting for the right moment,” said Sendoh, glancing at the kitchen door. “Now is the right moment.”

In a single graceful movement he deposited the bag soundlessly underneath the nearest table and returned to his chair.

“Good,” said Maki. “Now let’s go.”

“Not yet,” said Sendoh, the wry smile returning to his face. “I’ve got a better idea.”

“What?” asked Maki dubiously. He had a misgiving about the way Sendoh said that.

“Just wait and watch. Waiter!” called Sendoh, and a waiter duly presented himself before him.

“What can I do for you, sir?” asked the man with a bow.

“There’s a bag under that table that I think the couple with the twins forgot to take with them.”

Maki groaned in consternation.

“You should take it back to their room,” said Sendoh.

“Thank you, sir, for informing me,” said the waiter with a respectful bow. “I will do so immediately.”

He scurried out of the hall, bag in hand. He had been trained not to invade the hotel guests’ privacy, and thus relegated thoughts of opening the bag to the hinterland of his mind.

“Well,” said Sendoh with a flourish. “That’s that. A job well done.”

Maki looked ready to explode.

“You fool!” he said through gritted teeth. “You ruined everything!”

The words had no effect on Sendoh’s exuberance.

“What’re you talking about?” he asked in an offhand way, rising from the chair and leading the way back to the common room.

“Don’t you see? When the waiter gives the couple the bag, and they notice that it isn’t theirs, or worse, what’s inside it, the waiter’s going to tell them that you were the one who told him to give it to them, which would ruin everything!”

“Relax,” said Sendoh. “We’ll just tell him it belongs to someone else.” He didn’t understand why Maki was getting so worked up.

He managed to calm Maki down, and subsequently led him to back to their suite, where a hero’s welcome awaited the two of them.

“Welcome back, Sendoh!” shouted Hikoichi. “And Maki!”

Maki secretly wished Hikoichi had said his name first.

Sendoh grinned sheepishly.

“It was a cinch,” he said.

The Coaches had shut themselves in their room, not wanting to be part of the embarrassing discussions that would indubitably follow the consummation of the task of getting rid of the compromising bag.

Ayako was also conspicuously absent. The door to the girl’s room was shut tight, and Miyagi was sitting in front of it like a loyal dog, whimpering.

Nobody paid him any attention.

When the excitement had died, the Coaches exited their room.

“We leave now,” said Coach Taoka.

“Ayako,” called Akagi.

Ayako came out of her room. She didn’t glance down at Miyagi. She did, however, step on his hand, on purpose, at which he let out a yelp of pain.

Even in the bus, Ayako made sure she was as far from Miyagi as possible, still pretending Miyagi didn’t exist.

To Miyagi, the idea of visiting an old, dead place seemed strangely appealing all of a sudden.


From the moment the bus driver started the engine, Miyagi officially became emo.

“The palace is on a different hill altogether,” the bus conductor explained. “That’s why we have to go down this one first.”

The descent was not a particularly pleasant one, especially for Jin. The numerous hair-pin bends coupled with the steepness of the road gave his stomach a hard time. He immediately regretted having such a heavy breakfast.

“Sick bag?” he asked the conductor pleadingly.

“Ah, we have plenty,” the man replied cheerfully. “Use as many as you wish.”

Kogure looked out the window of the bus and drank in the scenery with his eyes. Once he was satisfied he had gathered enough horror story material, he assumed the role of the raconteur, which was his favorite, and started telling Mitsui and Ayako a story.

The thing about Kogure was that his manner of narrating stories made them sound frighteningly real. He would first frown, and then his eyes would assume a distant look, as if they were staring into the infinite. His voice would become heavy with misgiving.

“It was the summer of 1968, I think,” he began solemnly, pausing for a moment to let the sentence sink in. “A rich family came vacationing to a hill much like this one. It should be one of those out there, if not this very hill.”

Mitsui felt a chill run down his spine. Ayako was only just emerging from her state of impassivity.

“A rich businessman, along with his wife and children, were driving down a hill like we are now to get to another hill, to spend the day.”

Kogure looked out the window at the morning sun, which was still low in the sky.

“They were laughing, and joking, and having fun,” said Kogure. “And then, the man thought he saw a flash of bright light in the east. When he turned to look, he was staring straight into the morning sun. When he averted his gaze and turned to look at his wife, he saw that she was gone. He turned to look at the children, but they were gone, too.”

“Gone?” asked Ayako, raising her eyebrow.

“Gone,” repeated Kogure with a wistful smile. “As in ‘poof!’”

“How could all them just disappear?” demanded Mitsui with a frown.

“I’m not finished yet,” said Kogure. “The man was so frightened that he intentionally drove the car off the edge of the hill, hoping that the whole thing would turn out to be merely a bad dream. The last thing he heard before he faded into the afterlife was the terrified screams of his wife and children.”

“They were still there, then?” said Ayako.

Kogure nodded.

“The man was momentarily blinded by the sunlight, so he couldn’t see his wife and his children. He thought they had disappeared.”

“That’s sad,” said Mitsui with a sniffle.

“Mitsui?” said Ayako incredulously. “I never knew you were the emotional type.”

Mitsui inhaled deeply.

“Hey, I can have my moments, can’t I? Just like Miyagi over there.”

Ayako looked at Miyagi. He was sobbing uncontrollably into a handkerchief and going through a picture album, each picture eliciting a louder sob from him than the last.

“I guess,” said Ayako, turning to Mitsui again. “But I didn’t think it was a sad story: I thought it was pretty superficial.”

“Superficial?” said Kogure, taking great personal offense from this remark. “Excuse me, but that was one of my best stories ever. You couldn’t even tell I made it up on the spot.”

“Yes, but I was still expecting more. I was expecting something genuinely scary. Like, really, really scary.”

“Fine,” said Kogure. “How about: ‘The man still roams these hills, trying to atone for his mistakes. You can still hear him moaning in the dusk, pleading with the setting sun to bring back his family.’?”

Ayako shook her head.

“Still not scary enough,” she said. “I want something scary. Really scary.”

“You mean like that?” said Kogure, pointing at something in the luggage rack overhead.

Ayako screamed.

All eyes were on her.

“What’s the matter, Ayako?” asked Akagi.

And then he noticed the large pink shopping bag on the luggage rack.

“How in the world did that get here?” he demanded. “Miyagi, did you bring it with you?”

Ayako shot a disgusted look at Miyagi, but Miyagi denied it with a shake of the head.

“Sendoh,” said Akagi next. “I thought you’d got rid of it.”

Sendoh put up his hands in defense.

“I’m just as confused as you are. I thought it was gone, too.”

“What a pain,” said Maki. “We’ll just have to throw it out, then.”

“And risk someone coming across it? No way,” said Ayako. “I’ve got an idea. Let’s burn it.”

“At the old palace. Then we could actually use the fire to summon the spirits of the departed,” added Kogure with vim.

“No,” said Akagi flatly. “That’ll pollute the air.” He was an environmentalist at heart, and deplored the idea of polluting the environment. He spent half an hour every day trying to persuade the school authorities to completely ban plastic on the premises and instead endorse biodegradable stuff.

“Come on,” said Kogure in dismay. “You’re such a killjoy!”

Akagi resented that.

“Kogure,” he said. “I’m surprised at you.” He sounded like a disappointed father reprimanding his wayward son at length. “You were always so levelheaded. What’s the matter with now? I wonder if it’s the relatively thin mountain air, or something else that’s brought about this change. You are not the Kogure I know.”

Kogure couldn’t hide his embarrassment.

“W-well…” he stammered, trying in vain to come up with an explanation to his uncharacteristic behavior.

Meanwhile, Akagi, satisfied that he had succeeded in knocking some sense into his friend’s head, closed his eyes and let his mind wander off to opera music and other soporific thoughts. He was asleep in no time.

“He snores so loudly,” Uozumi complained, shooting a disgusted glare at the Shohoku Captain.

“You’re one to talk,” said Ikegami. “Remember that campout we had in our sophomore year? I got up in the middle of the night to what I thought was the sound of a volcano exploding.”

“Exploding?” said Sendoh in awe.

“Exploding,” asseverated Ikegami with a grave nod of the head. “Not erupting.”

Uozumi scowled deeply.

“You’ll pay for that Ikegami!”

He was just short of ripping Ikegami’s head off when Coach Taoka’s booming voice rang out across the length of the bus.

“Uozumi! Let go of him now!”

Those who trained regularly under the forty-one year old coach knew what it felt like to be on the receiving end of his yelling. To them there was no worse fate than being glared up at by those beady little eyes that seemed to hide all sorts of malevolent intents. The yelling that inevitably followed could make even the most powerful men shrink.

Uozumi shuddered and let go of Ikegami’s collar, going so far as to pat him apologetically on the back.

“I was only pretending, Coach,” said Uozumi, smiling benevolently. Once the coach had averted his gaze, he glared pointedly at Ikegami.

Elsewhere, in the interest of uncovering the darker secrets of the reclusive Shohoku Ace, and finding out how the boy managed to stay alive without ever permitting a smile to grace his lips, Sendoh was asking Rukawa questions regarding his social life, if he had one, and what he did in his spare time.

After answering the first seven or so questions with a flat “None of your business,” Rukawa decided to ask Sendoh a question in turn.

“Why are you so curious?”

Sendoh raised an eyebrow and began laughing sheepishly.

“Oh,” he said. “It was part of a bet I had with Hikoichi. Nuff said.”

It was Rukawa’s turn to raise an eyebrow. He contrived to do so inconspicuously.

“Can I ask you a question, Sendoh?” he asked.

Sendoh nodded his assent.

“Why don’t you mind your own business?”

Sendoh, being the suave, insouciant person that he was, found it rather hard to mind his own business, and he said this to Rukawa.

“I just like talking.”

Koshino, who was sitting in front of them, turned.

“That’s a lie. He never talks.”

“That’s a lie,” said Sendoh. “I always talk. See, I’m talking now.”

“He’s got a point,” said Uekusa.

“Oh? Then what about the time the history teacher asked you a question in class? You were as dumb as a horse!”

“Are they dumb?” asked Sendoh curiously.

“And the other time, when the reporter from the local basketball magazine that I’d never heard of—”

“That’s my sister’s magazine. It’s very popular,” interpolated Hikoichi.

“Yeah,” said Koshino with a glare. He didn’t like to be interrupted. He turned to Sendoh again. “All you ever said that time was ‘See ya around’. So excuse me for thinking that you never talk.”

“Ah, Koshino,” said Sendoh superciliously. “You’re so daft. It was fishing season, and I really wanted to catch some big ones.”

Rukawa, who was for some reason unfamiliar with this aspect of his rival, despite the numerous surreptitious studies on him and his lifestyle that he conducted in order to uncover the secret behind his being such an infallibly good basketball player, couldn’t not but voice his incredulity.

“You fish?” he said.

“Yeah,” said Sendoh, preparing to talk at great length. “I like to fish. I started fishing when I was a kid. Maybe four or five years old. One of my uncles, who was visiting, took me out to the sea one day, handed me a fishing rod, and said, ‘Fish’.”

“Did you manage to catch any?” asked Hikoichi, who was rapidly taking notes.

“No,” said Sendoh reminiscently. “The line did get caught on something, though, and I got pulled into the water.”

Rukawa looked amused.

“Did sharks take a bite out of you?”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “But I could have sworn I was being strangled by an octopus.”

“Must have been seaweed,” said Uozumi, who was also listening to the interesting tale Sendoh was recounting.

Sendoh reflected awhile, and said, “Very likely. But I was being strangled by something, and it wasn’t pleasant.”

“So did your uncle save you?” asked Hikoichi, who liked nothing better than a story ending with heroism.

“No,” said Sendoh. “He left. The coast guard saved me.”

There were gasps.

“He just… left?” asked Uozumi.

“Yeah,” said Sendoh. “Mom gave him hell. Sent him packing to Mongolia, although I think he died on the way.”

“That still doesn’t explain,” said Rukawa, who hated it when people digressed, “why you like fishing.”

“Oh, right,” said Sendoh. “I fish because it reminds me that my uncle’s dead and probably burning in Hell.” He laughed airily.

Not even Rukawa was expecting that kind of an answer. To say that it was unsettling was an understatement.

“You have violent thoughts?” asked Hikoichi. This stuff was perfect for his self-assigned project on Sendoh.

“Hey, you weren’t the one abandoned by an uncle and left to be strangled by what you thought was a giant octopus.”

“True,” said Hikoichi.

But Rukawa wasn’t done.

“I also found out that you play the violin.”

Sendoh was visibly surprised.

“Who told you that?” he asked.

Hikoichi was on the point of drooling.

“No one,” said Rukawa. “Just wanted to see your reaction.”

Hikoichi reluctantly scratched out the last sentence in his notebook.

Uozumi wanted to say something about the ride being way too long to be real, but just then, the bus conductor spoke into the mike.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “we have arrived.”

“Finally!” said Uozumi. He was the first to be out. What he saw, though, confused him.

“Are you sure we’re at the right place?” he asked.

“Well, yes,” said Coach Takato, who looked equally confused. “At least that’s what the brochure says.”

They were standing at the mouth of a large, gaping cave. There was nothing but darkness inside it. A couple of bats flew out, screeching noisily, leaving the impression that there were more where they came from.

“Summer palace?”