Freefall, Ch. 1

Chapter 1: Thirty-Two Bar
	I’d say that the sky was the color of a television tuned to a dead channel, but I haven’t seen a tube TV in years now.  The rain hit the glass of my dorm room window near silently.  A May rain, cloaked in the heat and the humidity of the coming summer but missing all the ferocity of a thunderstorm.  It had been a dark week.
	I leaned back in my desk chair, pushing the papers around on my desk.  Mutou had assigned us homework over the past week but never got around to discussing it.  The whole school was in a bad way, especially 3-3.  Death is never easy, especially at such a young age.
	I picked up my notebook.  Small and leather-bound, it held most of my private thoughts and notes.  I’ve had it for years now, and it’s almost out of pages.  Sort of fitting, considering it’s my last year of high school.  Enough room for a few more months, I think.  I slipped the elastic cover off it and worked my fingers through the pages.  There’s a certain satisfaction you get when tracing your way through your own recorded thoughts and memories, and the finality of ink on paper.  It feels so worn, so lived in.  Almost something I should be proud of.
	There was a knock at the door.  Unusual and unexpected.  I took my feet off the desk, replaced the elastic band around my notebook and placed it on the surface with the rest of my mess.  I sat up from the chair and walked over to the door, peaking out through the fisheye peephole to see who was at my door.
	Long, dark purple hair, hand covering on side of her face, left eye fidgeting in its socket.  She was nervous, but then again Hanako Ikezawa was always nervous.  It was unusual, Ikezawa was not known for leaving her comfort zone.  She rarely was seen without her better half, Lilly Satou.  I supposed I better had let her in; she wouldn’t have come up all the way to the fourth floor of the dormitories without a good reason.  I unlocked the door and opened it wide, showing both my hands.  I knew she was prone to scares, so I had to be as open as possible.  She stood there, mouth trembling, words at the tip of her tongue.
	“Do you want to come in, Ms. Ikezawa?” I asked.
	She nodded, and I stood to the side, beckoning her in.  I motioned for her to sit on my bed.
	“I’m going to make some coffee.  Would you like a cup?”
	“S-sure,” she said.
	Alright, she’s talking, I thought.  I was lucky to have my own coffeemaker.  Smuggled in under the cover of night, or rather, in the bright of day in my suitcase after last summer vacation, the little device had kept me awake through many a long night.  I set the machine to brew two cups, then sat back down at my desk, turning my chair to face Ikezawa.
	“Okay, Ms. Ikezawa, what can I help you with?  You look shook up.”  A blatant lie, she looked like hell.  In the dim light of my room I could see bags under her exposed eye, and her eye itself was red.  She’d been crying.  Now that I was thinking back, I realized she hadn’t been in class much over the past week.  Since… the incident.
	“I-I… I-I-I h-heard f-fr-from some people… t-t-that…”
	“Slow down, take it easy.”  Damsel in distress.  What a cliché.
	She took a deep breath and started again.  “I-I heard… that you… y-you used to l-look into… things.”  She pronounced the last word as if it were a disease.
	“I used to be a member of the journalism yes.  But not for a while now.  I don’t do that anymore.”  I admit I had a little bit of the muckraking spirit in me but my days as a reporter were over.  Kicked out of the club, off the paper, abandoned and alone.
	“P-Please… y-you have to help me.”
	“I don’t know if I can Ms. Ikezawa.  After last time,” she must have heard about last time.  Everyone had.  “…after last time, too much went wrong.  I don’t do that anymore.”
	“B-B-B-But you must… I’m s-scared… I d-didn’t know where to go… w-who t-to trust.  Y-You didn’t know him… y-you were safe.”
	“Know who?”
	“Hisao.  Hisao Nakai.”
	The jumper.  Found dead a weak ago that morning, head smashed against the school courtyard.  An empty bottle of whiskey found on the roof above.  Textbook suicide.  Kid transferred to a new school because of a condition he never realized he had, something that changed his life.  Couldn’t take the change.  Got loaded the night of the festival and jumped.
	“Nakai?  Nakai committed suicide.”
	She looked like she was ready to bawl, eyes watery like the puddles outside.  I glanced at her shoulders.  She was wet, she’d been out in the rain.  It wasn’t a cold rain, but…
	“Here,” I said, draping a blanket over her shoulders, “You’re shivering.”
	The coffeemaker went off, so I walked over and poured out two cups.  I’d forgotten to ask if she wanted cream, but I didn’t have any anyway.  I handed her the cup and sat back down, sipping the dark liquid.  She raised the cup with two hands to her lips, the steam obscuring her face further.
	“Tell me about Nakai,” I said.
	“H-He… h-he was n-nice.  D-Different from the others… h-he saw m-my scars b-but looked past t-them r-right away.  I t-thought w-we were b-becoming f-friends.  A-And then…”
	“Then he jumped.”
	She shook her head.  “N-No.  H-Hisao w-was sad… depressed, e-even.  But he w-wouldn’t do t-that.”
	“It happens, every so often.  You have to accept it.”
	“NO!” She yelled, eye full of anger and rage and… sadness, loneliness.  “H-Hisao was ready… ready to s-start over.”
	She did know him better than I did.  All I remember about Nakai was his introduction.  Mutou had to introduce him, he was too shy.  He sort of stood there, wringing his wrists.  I looked down at my own wrists then, there with Ikezawa.  The black splints ran from halfway up my hand to halfway down my forearms.  Instinctively I picked up my coffee cup, hoping to distract myself from my own issues.
	“T-Tainaka… p-please… you have to help me with this.”
	“With what, exactly?”
	“I-I think… no, I-I’m s-sure… Hisao was murdered.”