That didn’t seem likely. No doubt they’d just brush her off and send her on her way. I still had some time to work with.
Taking yet another close look at my mother in the washbasin mirror, I failed to find any button I could press to go back to normal, nor any other obvious solution out of my dilemma.
When did I even start looking like this?
That reflection I glimpsed when I first picked up the knife was myself. No doubt about that.
And I gave my aunt the scare of her life just a moment or two after that. Somehow, I transformed in the stretch of that single instant.
But why, though…?
There was one cause and effect I could think of, actually.
“N-no way…”
I closed both of my eyes and attempted to follow the thread.
The one thing I did in that instant.
The way that I “recalled” my mother’s looks, her voice, her scent.
Maybe “recalling” another “target” would bring me back to normal.
But.
If that was all it took for an idiot like me to shapeshift at will, we’d have an entire planet full of shapeshifters. IDing people would be impossible.
I didn’t have much hope, to be honest.
But let’s focus here. Concentrate.
Think about a look, a sound, a scent…and “recall” it.
…Around thirty seconds passed, I supposed.
“Okay.”
I didn’t know whether it’d be enough time or not, but I opened my eyes.
“…Whoa! Serious?!”
The image of my mother in the mirror was gone without a trace.
In its place was someone else. The girl I encountered in that park around two months ago.
Her shape, her skin color, her striking eyes…Everything I remembered about the girl was there, unchanged, in its full glory.
“Wow! What the hell…? This is amazing!”
I don’t think I had experienced this kind of “fun” in my entire life before this point.
In fact, I knew I hadn’t.
That was how shocking, how bizarre, and how curiosity-stoking this phenomenon thrust before me seemed.
I knew it was a waste of time, but I couldn’t stave off the urge to find out what I could turn into next. It was like all the youthful mischief I bottled up during my life was being uncorked in a single afternoon.
The eyes of the girl in the mirror began to sparkle, just as she did when she talked about her “secret move.”
This must be it. How you felt at that moment.
No wonder you were so eager to latch on to me like that.
Come to think of it, I never saw her after that day—after I made that promise.
If I ever get to meet her again, I’m gonna give her the surprise of the millennium.
I skipped around the bathroom a little, enjoying life as a girl for a few more moments, until I heard someone unlatching the front door.
My body froze on the spot. An uncomfortable sweat began to pour from my brow.
Straining my ears, I could hear my aunt shouting, “In here! There’s a strange woman…!”
Wow. Smart move on her part.
I wasn’t a “ghost”; I was an “intruder.” That was the trick she needed to get the cops in here.
Playtime was clearly over for now.
This really wasn’t any time for playing in the first place, admittedly, but now it was even less that time.
Luckily, it sounded like they were playing it safe. I didn’t hear any heavy footsteps tromping their way down the hallway yet.
Better get back to the original me before then. Having her intruder vanish might put my aunt in an awkward position with the police, but there wasn’t much I could do about that.
I’ll just have to atone for it later, somehow.
I closed my eyes. The darkness spread before them.
I focused as much as I could, straining to recall my shape, my scent, my voice…
Here I am…!
“…Um. Uh-oh.”
The sweat began to form waterfalls.
Crap. I couldn’t recall myself at all.
How little interest did I have in myself all my life, anyway?
Thinking about it, I realized I never had my picture taken. I had a habit of avoiding myself in the mirror, too.
And now that we were on this topic, I never thought much about my own voice, and that went double for how I smelled.
I held out against hope as I opened my eyes. I wasn’t disappointed. Just as I expected, the same pale girl as before greeted me.
Her face stiffened further as she heard the creak of multiple feet against the wooden floor.
I’d love for the cops to catch me looking like this. And what a huge pain it’d be on the real girl, too.
I scrambled to think of someone else to turn into, but with my mind about to short circuit, there was no way to focus on anything any longer.
“I—I gotta hide…!”
There was a separate room on the other side of the chamber that housed the actual bathtub and shower.
It wouldn’t suffice as a hiding spot for more than a few moments, really, but it beat standing right in front of the sink like this.
My mind made up, I sprang into action.
Then, on my first step, I tripped on the edge of the bathmat and fell to the floor.
“Ow!!”
A dull, yet intense pain erupted from my back.
Spotting my yelp, the multiple presences mere feet away from me in the hallway stormed into the bathroom.
As I expected, several police officers filed in, glaring down at what I presumed was still a young girl on the floor. My heart froze.
I had no idea how I was going to apologize to her for this.
Assuming I’d ever have the chance. If people found out I had this power, they’d instantly brand me as the cause behind all this furor.
I couldn’t even imagine how much of a pain in the ass that was going to be.
This was all my fault. I couldn’t even begin to apologize. I am such a careless idiot.
Just as I was about to drown in my own self-pity, one of the officers extended a hand out to me, the others still on high alert.
“You all right, kid? What happened in here?”
“Oh, uh, nothing. I just kinda tripped on the mat here…”
I told him the truth…somewhat selectively. Yes, that’s definitely what happened in the last half second, officer.
“Oh. Okay. Um…is there anyone else besides you?”
“No…,” I said, shivering for a moment.
Then, from behind the cops, my aunt fearfully peeked in at me.
It’s over. I’m dead.
I was sure the sight of this mystery girl would give her a heart attack.
After that, all the dominoes would fall at once.
I’d be taken away somewhere, interrogated…and I didn’t even want to imagine what came after that.
But despite my dreadful expectations, my aunt’s reaction defied all of them.
“Shuuya, what are you doing?”
“Huh?”
Being called by my name was usually nothing of particular note. But in these circumstances, it held major meaning.
I clambered back to my feet and stared into the mirror. And there I was. Back to my old self, a little teary-eyed.
“Sh-Shuuya? What’s going on with you?”
I didn’t respond. I was too busy pondering why I was back to myself.
“…Pain!”
The conclusion seemed a tad ironic to me.
That bolt of pain that shot across my back.
The one reaction I had to that…was nostalgia. Familiarity.
I thought I was used to the pain. But that was a grave mistake.
To me, pain was something I needed to truly feel like myself. The only identity I really had.
The idea of pain being my only insight into myself…Is that how little my own mind cared about
me?
As everyone else in the room looked on worriedly, I began laughing at myself. At the inanity of it all.
…The power to pose as someone else. To deceive people.
My first encounter with that eerie force was something I couldn’t have been more open to accepting.
YOBANASHI DECEIVE 3
The air felt heavy within the car.
The heater ensured we were kept at a comfortable temperature, but there was no lively conversation, no particular sense of comfort.
The rhythmical beat of light and dark from the passing streetlights brought the car the only sense of life it had.
I sighed, lightly, so that my aunt wouldn’t notice.
I was never that good in cars, anyway. I was bad. Really bad.
Really, any kind of rideable object. Seesaws and stuff were fine, but when it got up to cars and trains, I faced serious digestive trouble.
My lack of experience riding in them might have something to do with it. But there must’ve been something wrong with my inner-ear canals or something. My sense of balance was incredibly weak, and that made me sick to my stomach.
I remember how my mother got the insane idea to put me on a roller coaster once. That was one thing I could never quite forgive her for. It was awful. So fast, so shaky, all spinny and dazzly…It made no sense to me why anyone would enjoy that.
By the time I felt the contents of my stomach make a dash for my esophagus, I was prepared to kill myself right there. If I was going to debase myself in public, might as well go all the way, I thought.
I managed to avoid the worst-case scenario, luckily. But I had zero desire to repeat that experience again.
Regardless, we left home about forty minutes ago.
The car was headed for a special-care facility that would be my next home.
Why did this happen? There were several reasons I could think of. But that particular incident—the day I discovered my powers—probably sealed my fate.
Ever since that first day I fully awoke to my abilities, my aunt began to make clear and obvious efforts to avoid me whenever possible.
I never discussed my freaky new abilities with her, of course, and nobody ever found out about them in the end.
Or so I surmised, at least. But my aunt must have assumed the worst-case scenario. The next day, our elegant manor was visited by a string of self-styled exorcists, or spirit dispellers, or something like that.
These guys were all clearly frauds to any impartial observer, but my aunt seemed to like all of them, swallowing up everything they said about orbs and auras and electrostatic levels and so on.
That was the beginning of the end for me. It turned out I, as it went, was the cause of all this terror and eeriness. You can guess the rest.
I was planning to leave the whole time, of course, if I was getting in the way. It’s not like I was going to miss the place much, either.
If there was anything I did regret, it was the way I never made up for any of it. And how could I? How could a kid like me make up for triggering as much chaos as I did back there?
I wanted to, somehow, if I could. But right now, I couldn’t think of a single way.
Just as I let out another sigh, the car lumbered to a halt.
“We’re here,” my aunt said, exiting the car as I checked out the surroundings. “Time to get out.”
The light-brown building on the other side of the windshield must have been the “facility” my aunt was talking about.
The way she put it, it was a home for kids like me with no close relatives to turn to.
“I figured,” my aunt said with an awkward smile as she tried to sell me on it, “it’d be best if you were together with more kids your age.”
There was nothing more annoying in my life than other kids my age.
To someone like me, who had yet to make a single friend his entire life, the house before my eyes seemed like little more than a zoo.
After locking the car, my aunt looked at her watch.
“Wait here a moment, okay? I need to talk to the staff inside.”
“Huh? Um, okay.”
My aunt disappeared behind the front door, leaving me alone. My body, warmed by the heat of the car, began to shiver in the northerly winds.
The experience made me feel a little sentimental. Which was crazy. I never got that way.
But I didn’t have long to enjoy it. The wind began to kick up, howling, chilling my bones with astonishing force.
“Eesh, this is cold! How long’s she gonna make me wait out here…?”
Not being particularly stout of frame, the blustering wind made my body shiver.
I wouldn’t have minded so much if she was in and out in a couple of minutes. When that grew to ten or twenty or so, though, that was a different story.
C’mon, lady, why’d you have to take me out of the car if you were going in by yourself first? Didn’t you think at all? And you even locked the door so I couldn’t go back inside. Thanks a lot. I’m going to freeze out here, waiting by the door.
I paced around a little, trying to stave off the cold. The effort was a failure, all the heat in the world actively avoiding my presence. Time passed.
“…Argh, I can’t do this! It’s too cold! I’m gonna die out here!”
I scoped out my surroundings one more time as I complained to myself. I didn’t know what I had been expecting. There certainly wasn’t a space heater nearby.
This is what I get for slapping on whatever was lying around my room this morning. I knew I should’ve worn another layer or two.
I’m not asking for a fancy padded ski jacket or anything. Just some gloves, at least…
As I contemplated this, I suddenly saw a scarf thrust in front of me.
Sure. That’ll do. Any port in a storm.
It was right when I breathed a sigh of relief, smiled serenely, and reached out to pick it up that I realized what was strange about this.
Just an instant before—the blink of an eye—there was nobody else here. Now there was, like nothing could be more typical.
I reared back with an ugly-sounding “Agghh!”
As I did, I noticed the person offering me the scarf was a girl, one around the same age I was.
She had a pair of large purple earmuffs and a heavy, warm-looking coat on. It all looked nice on her, but her hair was a mess, going off in all directions and sticking out into the air in spots.
I almost thought she was a boy at first, but given the skirt she was wearing, it seemed safe to assume otherwise.
My shocked reaction made the girl flinch a bit. Then she sheepishly glared at me.
“I’m trying to give this to you, you know.”
“Uh…”
My hesitance was starting to annoy her.
“It’d be weird for someone right next to me to die, all right? So I thought I’d give this to you!”
“Agh! Um…oh. Well, thanks! Ha-ha! Guess I might as well…”
I reached for the scarf. “That’s what you should’ve been doing all along,” she snorted.
Maybe it was just my imagination. It really did seem like she popped up out of nowhere.
I still had my concerns about that, but at a time like this, it’d probably be better to just shut up and take it.
Just like the rest of the short-haired girl’s outfit, the scarf was perhaps a little too fancy to be kids’ wear.
A quick examination revealed a label that prominently featured a major brand.
My mother had a watch from that same brand.
I remembered how rarely she actually wore it. It was so expensive—or expensive-looking, at least—that it spent most of its life deep in a drawer somewhere.
“I, um, I dunno if I should take this from you…”
I tried to smile politely. The short-haired girl clearly didn’t appreciate the gesture.
“I’m trying to help you…”
“Oh, no! I really appreciate it! Really! But this is a really nice scarf, isn’t it
? You shouldn’t just be giving it to people like this.”
The girl gave me a confused gaze.
“What, this is…expensive, or…?”
“Oh! Didn’t you know? Umm…well, look, I’m fine, okay?”
I pushed the scarf back at the girl. She wordlessly accepted it, the frustrated dejection written clearly on her face. Her eyes focused on it for a moment…and then on me, as she began to wrap it around my neck herself.
“Whoa!”
“I’ll let you borrow it anyway. You look really cold. I’ve been watching you for a while.”
A lot more obstinate than I thought she’d be.
I wasn’t much in the mood for it, but it wasn’t like I was going to indignantly strip it off my head in front of her.
From the neck down, I could feel my body warm up a little. Then, in a few short moments, you couldn’t have paid me enough money to give the scarf back.
“Aw…Well, thanks. This is really good.”
That’s what buying brand name gets you. It was shockingly warm.
I didn’t have much of a grasp of how much things cost in general, but I reasoned that the scarf must’ve been worth shelling out for a little.
But I was left in my reverie of cozy warmth for just a few scant moments before the meaning behind the words “watching you for a while” finally registered in my mind.
“Say, uh, where were you watching me from, though?”
“Huh? What do you mean, where? I was right next to you…”
The short-haired girl reached that point in her reply before something dawned on her. Her face grimaced, a soft moan escaping her lips.
“Um…I’m sorry, did I say something I shouldn’t have?”
I asked it carefully, worried that I was hitting a sore point of some kind with her. “Not really,” she gruffly replied. “People’ve said that a lot lately. Like, ‘since when were you there,’ kind of thing.”
It made sense, as I gauged her gruff, annoyed-looking demeanor. She didn’t act like she particularly enjoyed conversation. Maybe she just didn’t stand out much.
“Yeah…I mean, you kind of surprised me because it seemed like you appeared out of thin air, kinda. I thought you were a ghost or something for a sec.”
It was a joke. But in hindsight, I wasn’t sure that intention came across. I added a strained “ah-ha-ha” at the end, but the girl still reddened before my eyes.
The Deceiving Page 4
