Armed with knowledge that the method to stopping this phenomenon is within reach, Koichi calls a few friends from class 3 to search.

———————————————————————-

Knowing that deaths can happen outside of Yomiyama people are starting to become afraid. But as Koichi explain what happened to the librarian he says that he was probably already dead before the speed boat hit him and what led him to that death was when he hit his head badly at home in Yomiyama. I.e. the cause of his death occurred in Yomiyama.

Having dreamt that the dead have come back to blame him, Koichi tells Teshigawara and Mochizuki what Matsunaga said about hiding the ‘thing’ in the classroom. He only wants them to know, no one else. The classroom is in the old school building and they plan to search the next day.

They’re spotted by two girls from class the next day and decide to come clean as to why they’re there. They pass on tagging along and bids farewell to Koichi. As they arrive, Misaki was at the rendezvous point for the guys and she tags along.

After a long search and a few close calls of death, they finally find the object they’re looking for stuck on the top of a cleaning locker. Koichi unwraps the rectangular package and finds a cassette tape. They head to the A/V room and borrow a cassette player.

The tape starts and Matsunaga introduces himself on the tape and says that he has two reasons for recording it. One is to confess his sins and the other is to offer advice on how to stop this phenomenon. He starts by explaining that his class of 22 went on a trip to the shrine. On the second day of the trip they went to the shrine, cleaned it up and prayed.

But that didn’t work, the skies turned dark and a thunderstorm started. As the students rushed down the mountain the first victim was the only person who’d brought an umbrella as he was struck by lightning and killed instantly. The moment they started running for their life a second person died by tripping and falling to their death down the mountain.

Praying had no effect, but the important part came after they reached the bottom of the mountain where he did something. Before the tape could get to that part there are footsteps outside and everyone hides as a security guard comes in.

In his hurry to hide the tape, Teshigawara breaks it by accident. Mochizuki thinks he can fix it so they leave it with him.

Elsewhere, the phenomenon claims its next victims.

Thoughts:

Ah, so that guy’s name was Nakao, probably mentioned it before but oh well, he was a minor character, I’m sure I can be excused for forgetting… but anyway, even though he died beforehand the boat still hit him which would’ve killed him. Although I suppose that if he was alive, they’d see him as in he wouldn’t be floating about randomly so he’d be easier to spot if he was alive cos he’d probably be frantically waving his arm and the boat guy should’ve seen him. So yeah, if that’s the case then he probably would’ve been still alive, so he died solely because of an incident in Yomiyama.

I approve of the dream he had this time. It showed more obviously what he fears at this moment that the others still thinks it’s his fault. Dream made more sense this time than the melting away thing…

Thought this episode didn’t really get the story going forward. It pretty much told us what we know already, i.e. that they went on a trip, two people died, only new thing is how they died. So the main thing left to figure out from this episode is what he did, what his sin was. I believe he killed someone, as he says it’s a sin and that stopped the phenomenon, well I’m not sure if he said that exactly, but I’m sure the sin and the way to stop the phenomenon are related. What I think is that he killed someone and that was enough to lower the classroom to the acceptable amount of people as the other ‘accident’ deaths are the curse’s fault. Either that or he found some way to identify the dead guy and killed him. Yes, I think he killed someone, what other sin can be this bad that he’s that traumatised?

You’ll have to excuse me again as I forgot those two girls’ names. The ones that said goodbye to Koichi in a foreboding way, which of course meant that either they would die or Koichi would, and our main character can’t die. So unfortunately for them, it’s one of them who died along with family and a relative of the other one.