Chapter 24Miki looked from her new friend to the small, plush bear sitting between them on the bed, the soft scent of jasmine rising from the teapot placed upon the desk by her mother.
“I-I don’t understand,” she murmured.
“You don’t have to,” Shizuka said, again standing up, again riffling through the stack of magazines on Miki’s desk, finding this time an old newspaper, and opening it at random.
“Mystery illness leaves specialists baffled,” she read aloud. “A spate of deaths across the world.”
She turned to look back at Miki and the small stuffed bear, holding up the newspaper, a grainy photograph of an ambulance on a crowded street outside a family home.
“There will be more of this soon,” she said, “unless we put a stop to it.”
She looked pointedly at Miki, and then looked away, r
