“Um… well… just so there’s no misunderstanding. It wasn’t because I was scared of the ghost that I couldn’t stand up. I have a bad back, and it was just acting up.”
An hour after we’d seen the ghost in the school yard, Tohko and I were walking through a darkened neighborhood, huddling close together.
It wasn’t a flirtatious thing. Tohko had been scared stiff and was totally unable to walk on her own, so I had to walk her home.
“I swear, it’s just a bad back. Not because of the ghost. I sprained my back when I was little, and it’s just flaring up,” she persisted, her face a deep red, wobbling and clinging to my arm.
Amazingly, even in a state like this, Tohko had proclaimed, “I’m going after the ghost!” and forced herself to her feet. She had then wheeled forward and face-planted into the grass. The tip of her nose was still red.
“I never heard about you having a bad back before.”
My bag was slung over my left shoulder, and I carried Tohko’s bag in that same hand. With my right, I supported her. When I took my jab at her through ragged breaths, she drooped her head, apparently in the repentance I had expected.
“I’m so sorry! I’m an awful role model.”
Maybe I was being too harsh… But no, if I let up now, she would definitely get cocky.
“If you realize that, then why don’t you stay away from crazy stuff like this? No matter how flat chested you may be, you’re still a girl, so—ow!”
Tohko’s face immediately transformed, and she pinched my cheeks hard.
“You’re awful! That’s sexual harassment! You should have more respect for your elders.”
She pulled at my cheeks, clamped between her thumb and forefinger.
“Owwww. And I think you should have more consideration for people younger than you.”
“I can walk on my own now. You can go.”
“You’re still wobbling, though.”
“After that corner, I’m only another minute or two from home. I’ll manage.”
She pursed her lips and turned curtly away.
“You’re awful!”
We heard the shrill voice of a girl nearby.
“Just what am I to you, Ryu?”
“Yeah, let’s hear it! Are you going to pick me or her?”
“Hey! Don’t pretend like I’m not here!”
It sounded like some people were getting worked up to fight around the next corner. Tohko and I peeked around at them and saw three girls surrounding a boy, shouting at one another under a streetlight.
All three of the girls were fuming, snapping at each other: “I’m the one dating Ryu!” “You’re just in the way!” “No, you are!” It looked like the boy had been three-timing. But even though it was his fault, he was doing nothing to stop the girls. A smile tugged at the corners of his lips, and he had his arms folded casually. He was tall and broad shouldered, a manly physique that meant he was probably an athlete or something. His clothes and hairstyle were casual, too. He looked like someone girls would go crazy over. Was he a college student?
“Look, why don’t we go somewhere else? Getting into it here is gonna get me in trouble. We’re right next to my house.”
When the boy said that, I felt a frigid jolt down my spine.
I looked over and saw Tohko grinding her teeth, charging up her rage for some reason.
Huh? Wait, what? Why is Tohko angry? I started to panic in my ignorance.
Tohko grabbed her bag out of my hand and strode forward.
But, Tohko—what about your back?
Her eyes burned and she squared her shoulders, but all of that obliterated in the face of her rage. She headed straight toward the group of arguing girls.
Then her bag arced over her head and she shouted, “Ryuto! Take that!”
“Urk—Tohko!”
The boy’s eyes bugged out as she swung her bag down right into his face.
There was a whump as her bag and his face collided. The girls around him recoiled. I was gaping myself.
“I can’t believe you! How often have we told you not to start these fights near the house? What will the neighbors think? And now you’re three-timing again! How can you like girls that much? Don’t you have even a shred of loyalty?”
The boy had been knocked back onto the ground, and Tohko was peppering his head and face with blows, using both hands.
The girls were frozen in terror at Tohko’s aggression. I quickly ran over to her and caught her arms behind her back.
“Stop, Tohko! I don’t know what’s going on, but you can’t hit people. You have to calm down or you’ll hurt your back again.”
“You stay out of this, Konoha!”
Tohko shook my arms off and turned to the girls frostily.
“You girls would be a lot better off at home reading the complete works of Sōseki Natsume instead of arguing over a worthless, three-timing guy like this. Start with his collection of interconnected short stories, Ten Nights’ Dreams! The aesthetic, phantasmagoric stories have the flavor of a mature wine. Drink yourselves silly on the unparalleled fragrance and warmth of the poetic sentences slipping down your throat! You’ll be grateful you were born Japanese. Once you finish reading that, you start his first trilogy. Even more powerful emotion is waiting for you in that.”
The girls’ mouths hung open while she said her piece in utter seriousness. Then Tohko grabbed the boy sharply by the ear. “We’re going home now, Ryuto.”
“Ow! Quit it, quit it, quit-it!”
Just like that, she dragged the boy away, though he was bigger and beefier than her, sailing off down the moonlit street.
“Wh-what just happened?”
“I-I’m not sure. What’s a first trilogy?”
“The real question is how that girl knows Ryu!”
I stood in shocked silence beside the girls as they muttered.
How did Tohko know that guy?
The next morning, I left home at my usual time and headed to school. Along the way, I spotted a long braid like a cat tail swinging out from behind a utility pole.
“Look who it is…”
Tohko emerged sheepishly, ducking her head with her face bright red, holding an open paperback in her hand. “Good morning, Konoha.”
It looked very much like she had been waiting for me. There was color high in her cheeks when she bowed her head.
“I’m sorry about yesterday. You were nice enough to walk me home, but then I just lost it and forgot all about you… I’m really sorry.”
Tohko seemed to feel truly bad about it. She looked like she was worried that I would be angry at her, and she kept peeking out at me from behind her copy of Atsushi Nakajima’s Legend of Moon Mountain. The fact that she had come expressly to apologize did a lot to placate me, but something still bothered me.
“Who’s that Ryuto guy? You guys seemed to know each other pretty well.”
Tohko answered with some difficulty. “I board with a family, and Ryuto is their son, so he’s sort of like my little brother.”
“You board with a family? Are your parents in the goblin lands?”
She quickly swatted me with her fist. “Stop calling me a goblin!”
Tohko pouted, prickling with anger, because she said it wounded a girl’s innocent heart to be called a goblin and she didn’t know how I could be so careless. I still wondered whether her parents were really goblins and just where they were and what they were doing after leaving their daughter in someone’s house, and whether the people Tohko was staying with knew that she chewed up books, but I didn’t think I could ask about any of that.
I gave up. “We’re going to be late,” I said and started walking.
“Wait for me!”
Tohko hurried after me.
“So what do you think that supernatural phenomenon last night really was? And that girl…”
As we walked side by side to school, I changed the subject. Tohko bent her mouth into a frown and folded her arms.
“It has
to be some kind of trick. I’m going to figure it out.”
“What? You still want to continue the investigation?”
I was astounded, but Tohko replied crisply, “Of course.”
At the school entrance, she waved good-bye and headed off to the third-year lockers. “I’ll see you later, Konoha.”
She hadn’t repented at all!
The day had just started, and I was already exhausted. As I headed to my classroom, a classmate called out to me, “Morning.”
I returned his greeting. “Oh. Morning, Akutagawa.”
Lately, I’d spent a lot of time with Akutagawa in class. He was a sedate guy, both inside and out, tall and taciturn. He never said more than he needed to and never got emotional. He had an unswerving spirit that was like a strong tree, and it was easy to be around him. He wasn’t a particularly close friend, but I found a certain distance pleasant these days.
“Did you do the math homework? Can I check my answers against yours?”
“Sure.”
We opened up our notebooks and started talking when Akutagawa poked me in the arm and subtly pointed behind me.
I turned around and saw our classmate Kotobuki watching me reproachfully.
Not again…
Kotobuki had some kind of animosity toward me and was always glaring at me like that. I had once overheard her telling some girls in our class that she hated me. Apparently it made her uncomfortable that I gave feeble, deliberate-looking smiles so that no one would know what I was actually thinking.
But would she be so persistent about giving me dirty looks just because I bugged her? What had I done to her?
Akutagawa signaled “see you” with his eyes and then moved away nonchalantly.
Kotobuki took a step forward, then pulled back, then fiddled with her manicured nails, looking conflicted. But when she realized I was watching her, she blushed and came up to me.
“What do you want, Kotobuki?”
She pinched her lips in annoyance and curtly answered, “Nothing from you.”
She had lovely dyed brown hair. She also had long, shapely legs and large breasts, which made her extremely popular with the boys in our class. Apparently they even liked this harshness of hers because they said it hid a softer side. But I had never once seen Kotobuki soften up. I couldn’t picture her ever smiling sweetly for a boy she liked.
“If you don’t want anything, then I’d like to review for math.”
“What a jerk. You think acting like the perfect student impresses me?”
“… Did you want to chat, Kotobuki?”
“N-no way. Why would you say that? I would never talk to you—I just—” Kotobuki looked away and then muttered with the barest hint of timidity, “You came to school with Amano this morning, didn’t you?”
“What?”
“Don’t play dumb. You two came in together.”
Her gaze fell on me again and she leaned forward pointedly.
“I’m not playing dumb… I was just wondering how you knew that.”
“I just happened to see you! It’s not like I was watching for you! But since you came in side by side, I just thought maybe you had come together on purpose… N-n-not that I care even if you did, of course. Nobody cares about you, Inoue. But Amano has helped me out at the library, so I owe her my respect.”
That caught me off guard.
“Really? You found something to respect about her?”
Was there something about Tohko that an underclassman could look up to?
Kotobuki answered, her face red, “She reads a lot of books, and she knows practically everything about the library. And she doesn’t have a big head about how beautiful she is. She’s nice.”
Hmmmmm.
“Why do you look so suspicious? Is there something wrong with me looking up to her?”
“Ha-ha-ha… I guess not.”
Sometimes it was better not knowing the truth. Tohko was lucky that anyone looked up to her, so why destroy Kotobuki’s image of her?
My fake smile seemed to rub Kotobuki the wrong way, and she snorted and looked away.
“Anyway, I just wanted to know why Amano would come to school with you.”
“We ran into each other on the way, so we came in together.”
It wasn’t actually that accidental, but I didn’t want to bother explaining all the details. I played it off nonchalantly instead.
Kotobuki threw me a glance.
“Hmph. Okay then.”
Then she turned her back on me and went back to her seat.
Maybe Kotobuki had such a huge grudge against me because she was jealous that I was always with Tohko?
I was in the middle of a lunch my mother had packed for me when Tohko dropped by.
“Hey! Konoha!”
Her clear voice rang out from the door at the back of the room, and she waved me over with a grin.
“What’s going on?”
Kotobuki was sitting with a group of friends. She had just taken a bite of her melon bread, but she froze and glowered at me, pinching her lips. I could feel her gaze stabbing into my back as I went out into the hallway. Tohko’s eyes were gleaming, and she grabbed my hand exuberantly.
“I found the girl from last night, Konoha.”
“You what?”
“I knew she wasn’t a ghost! Come on!”
Tohko dragged me with her down the hall.
“You mean, that Kayano Kujo girl? And could you please let go of my hand? It’s embarrassing.”
“Fine, fine.” Tohko snickered and released me. “But yes, I saw her coming out of the bathroom during a break, and I followed her.”
“You sound like a deviant.”
We stopped at a second-year classroom. Seijoh Academy was a big school, so even though the girl and I both were second-years, the room was pretty far away from mine.
“That’s her.”
I peeked in through the door at the back of the room with Tohko. The room was alive with activity during the lunch break, but a girl with midlength hair sat in the middle of it all alone.
The other girls had moved their desks together with their friends’ and were talking animatedly over their lunches. She was the only one who didn’t have a lunch on her desk, and she wasn’t even reading or studying. She sat with her head bent slightly down, not moving a muscle, not even blinking, like an object made of ashen glass. What I could see of her face and her morbidly thin limbs was identical to the girl we had seen in the school yard last night.
“Am I right?”
“But she seems totally different. Didn’t she seem more imposing yesterday?”
“She could be sleepy because she was out so late.”
“You think so?”
As we whispered back and forth, the girl silently stood up.
No one took any notice. She set off with a vacant expression and went through the door at the front of the classroom.
“Do you think she noticed us?”
“It didn’t look like it.”
“Let’s follow her.”
“What? Hey, Tohko—”
I can’t believe this… I followed Tohko helplessly.
The girl moved down the hallway with unsteady steps and then descended the stairs. Her legs peeked out beneath her skirt like dainty stalks supporting a white flower. They looked like they would snap under the slightest pressure.
“Where do you think she’s going?”
“Maybe she’s going to go buy some food?”
“Then she’s going the wrong way.”
About halfway down the stairs, Tohko called out, “Can we talk to you?”
As the girl was descending the final step, her body pitched forward, and she crumpled to the ground.
The two of us ran down the stairs and bent over her.
The girl was curled up limply, her eyes closed. Up close her skin was so pale it seemed transparent, and her collarbone was visible at the neck of her uniform.
“Wake up! What’s wrong?”
“Konoha, you take that side. We’re taking her to the nurse’s office. Slowly now.”
“Got it.”
Supporting the girl on either side, we stood her up. When I picked up her arm, I was astounded by how frail and unresponsive it was. She was as light as Styrofoam.
When I had helped carry Tohko home the night before, I’d been glad that she was such a wisp, but this girl was way past slender or even delicate. I couldn’t feel any weight to her body, and it made me wonder if there was anything inside her at all.
When we reached the nurse’s office on the first floor, the nurse shouted, “Not again! I’ve told her again and again that she needs to eat right, but she’s still going on with her insane diet.”
We laid our cargo on a bed as the woman muttered.
The girl’s eyes fluttered open and the nurse lectured her furiously.
“Amemiya, this is the fourth time you’ve been brought to me because of your anemia. Didn’t I tell you to eat properly and follow the menu I gave you? But your arms are thinner than ever! You weigh much less than you ought to. There is no need whatsoever for you to lose even one more ounce with this diet. You don’t have to do it all at once, but you must make an effort to eat.”
The girl—Amemiya—sat up silently in the bed, her eyes downcast.
“Did you hear me, Amemiya?”
“Yes… I’m sorry,” she whispered, her thin body drawing in on itself, feebly defenseless. It reminded me of a tiny, meek animal.
“I’ll give you some vitamins. I want you to take them with you.”
When the nurse went into the next room, Amemiya got out of bed and slipped her tiny, babylike feet into her white sandals.
She looked over at us and silently dipped her head.
“Thank you for bringing me here. I’m sorry to trouble you.”
She seemed on the verge of fading from reality. She was a completely different girl from the night before. I was bewildered. Tohko seemed troubled as well.
“Um, Amemiya? My name is Tohko Amano. I’m a third-year. This is Konoha Inoue, and he’s a second-year student. I think we met you last night in the school yard.”
Amemiya responded to the inquiry with a blank look. “No.”
Book Girl and the Famished Spirit Page 3
