“Ngh…”
Tears began to come out. It was, of course, the first time I ever made a girl cry in my life.
“Ahhhh!! I’m sorry! I’m just kidding! I’m kidding, okay?! I didn’t feel that way at all, all right?!”
It was a commendable effort on my part, I thought, but it was already too late.
The girl stood there, sniffling to herself, interjecting little attacks on me as she did—“You’re not kidding,” “I’ll get you back for that,” “I swear,” and so on.
Great. I screwed everything up yet again.
I recalled how my mother warned me about girls. “Watch out,” she had said. “They can be pretty delicate creatures.” I didn’t realize this was what she meant.
“Umm…umm…”
This is going to be my home starting today. What am I doing, here in front of it?
If someone saw me right now, I might start getting treated like a problem child before I even made it through the door. I whirled my head around, checking for eyewitnesses. Once to the right, once to the left—and then, just as I was about to look right again, something startled me.
The short-haired girl, sobbing in front of me a moment ago, had vanished without a trace.
“Huh?! When did she…?!”
It was even more of a shock to me than when she first appeared.
If I offended her to the point where she couldn’t take it anymore and ran off, she still would’ve been visible in the distance somewhere. And unless she was wearing spongy slippers or something, I should’ve been hearing some footsteps.
But no matter where I looked, I couldn’t find any evidence of her.
It was weird. That short-haired girl just up and disappeared without any warning. It happened too fast to describe it in any other way.
“You’re kidding me…”
I rubbed my eyes, unable to believe what just happened.
“You’re kidding me!”
The voice startled me all over again.
In the second or two I was rubbing my eyes, the short-haired girl was right back where she was standing before.
Normally, this experience would’ve made me scream out loud. The only reason I didn’t was because it happened so suddenly, my mind couldn’t wrap itself around it.
It was a good thing I didn’t. If I raised my voice in front of this girl, still crying her heart out in front of me, I’d probably get slapped for it.
But as I contemplated this, I was greeted by an even more incredible sight, one that made my jaw clamp down in self-defense.
The short-haired girl’s body, from her feet to the bottom of her knees just below where her skirt ended, was gradually fading away from existence.
That was enough to make even me gasp a little. I meant it as a joke, but maybe I was right—she could be a ghost after all.
…Wait a minute.
Could she really be something like that?
I had a near-death experience of my own, not too long ago. Maybe she started talking to me because she thought I was one of her kind…or something.
“You probably think I’m a ghost, don’t you?”
She was going to make me break down in tears if she kept that line of questioning up.
I was paralyzed, shivers shooting up and down my spine as I scrambled to keep myself together.
“Ah…Ha! Ha-ha-ha! Oh, come onnnn! I don’t think anything like that at all! C’mon, we’re all friends here, right?!”
As I expected, I wasn’t capable of much coherent speech.
My legs began to tremble. I couldn’t blame her if she noticed how petrified I was.
“Friends…?”
She continued to sniffle a bit.
“Y-yeah! I mean…We’re both kinda the same, aren’t we? Like…uh…”
How were we the same? At least I had both of my legs intact. She was floating wispily in the air. I am such an idiot.
The girl looked less than convinced as she stared at me.
Great. She’s gonna kill me. I’ll be cursed and buried alive or burned to ashes or something.
If I had known this was going to happen, I would’ve borrowed a “magic amulet” or two from one of my aunt’s fraudulent exorcists.
It wasn’t the idea of death that scared me so much as how I had no idea what she’d do to me next.
Just when the panic was about to make me start bawling, my mind conjured up a brilliant idea.
“Oh! I know! Lemme show you this trick I’ve got! And once you see it, then…you know, we can be friends, then! Okay?”
“Huh?” the girl replied, edging back a little. “What’re you talking about?” It wasn’t the response I hoped for my teary-eyed pleadings. No turning back now, though. I kept going.
“J-just watch me, all right?! I promise you won’t regret it!”
The girl’s face indicated to me that she had no trust in me whatsoever. I paid it no mind as I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate.
Since that fateful day when I discovered my ability, I tried using it a handful of times, taking care not to have my family discover it.
Thinking about the rough outlines of someone—their voice, their scent, their shape—was enough to let me transform into them.
After a few test runs to satisfy my curiosity, I began to have a general picture of the ground rules. First, I couldn’t turn myself into inanimate objects. I tried turning into an airplane once—I figured it’d be fun to go on a little trip—but when I opened my eyes, the only thing I saw in the mirror was a demented boy with his arms outstretched in the air.
I’d never even seen a plane up close in person, much less taken a ride in one. It would have been a much bigger surprise if it actually worked. Plus—really, trying to become an airplane indoors? What was I thinking? How was I going to pay for the house I’d inevitably level in the process?
After a bit more experimentation, I came to the realization that I could only transform into living things I’ve (a) physically met before, and (b) could conjure a clear image of in my mind. Being able to transform didn’t mean I could engineer vast changes in terms of body size or musculature, either.
There was only so much I could do by myself, though, and there was a lot I still didn’t know. But now that I was in this situation, it was the only thing I could turn to.
Simply “recall” someone I thought this girl would enjoy seeing, and…
Sorry I keep relying on you, girl from the park.
When I opened my eyes, I saw the short-haired girl staring blankly at me, mouth wide open.
Hopefully that went over well. I began to sweat a little.
“Wh-what do you think? Neat, huh?”
The girl began quivering.
Whoops. Maybe not so much. It’s all over for me. I began reciting my final prayers in my mind when the girl finally spoke.
“Yeah…Pretty neat!”
Her eyes began to sparkle, just as mine did when I first used this ability. I called off the last rites and sighed to myself in relief.
“Y-you think so?! Whew…Great.”
“What is that, though…?”
“Um…How to put it? I guess you could say I can transform into anybody I want, maybe?”
“Wowww…!”
The astonishment in her voice was palpable.
Sweet. Now we’re back in business! That was a lot easier than I expected. If I can keep this up, maybe she’ll let me out of this alive.
“Can you show me anyone else?”
“…Um?”
The short-haired girl must’ve liked it more than I thought. She eagerly awaited my next transformation, eyes focused squarely on me.
“Uh, sure! Yeah! Okay, who should I do next…?”
I didn’t have many more tricks up my sleeve, though. In fact, the only other member of my repertoire I was confident I could break out at the drop of a hat was my mother.
Oof. My total lack of social relationships was really coming back to bite me now. I probably should’ve interac
ted some more with the kids in the park.
Becoming my mother was not at all something I wanted to do…but so be it.
Sorry, Mom. I just don’t want this ghost to kill me, that’s all. Just one more time…!
“…All right. Here goes.”
“Uh-huh…”
I shut my eyes and let it all enter my recall. Her shape, her voice, her scent…
Unlike the girl from the park, I had no problem remembering my mother at all. That was partly why this was so much more difficult for me. I opened my eyes.
“…What do you think?”
“Ooooh!”
The short-haired girl’s reaction was the brightest I had seen from her yet. She accentuated it with a few seconds of enthusiastic clapping. It made me a little self-conscious.
“Ha-ha-ha! Yeah, uh…thanks.”
…Well, look at that. She’s not so bad after all.
The blunt hostility she greeted me with at first was now firmly in the past, at least. Maybe there were some decent ghosts out there after all. And a ghost like this, I really could be friends with, maybe.
“Huh?”
Taking a glance downward, I noticed that the bottoms of the girl’s legs had reappeared.
“Um…what? Is there something wrong with my legs?”
The girl gave me a questioning look.
“Uh…no. Not really.”
“Not ‘really’? You weirdo.”
She shrugged, apparently not paying it too much mind. I wanted to argue that we were both weirdoes in a way, but I resisted, not wanting to say the wrong thing and trample on her delicate heart again.
Then she brought her hand out to me.
“Okay, then…Yes.”
“Yes?”
“No, I mean…Friends! We’re friends, okay? So shake on it.”
She waved her hand a little bit closer to my midsection.
Ah. Right. I forgot about it in the midst of my wild panicking, but I did mention something about that, didn’t I?
“Oh, uh…Sure. Right. Um…”
I should have just taken her hand, but in my infinite intelligence, I hesitated. Instead, the girl grabbed my right hand and forced it into her own. Then she grinned.
“Good. Friends, then.”
Something about it intensely embarrassed me. I felt like my head was going to catch on fire. This is the first friend I’ve ever made, isn’t it? Even I can make one of them. The kind of friend you can play with together, like the kids in the park I resented so much.
“S-sure!”
I firmed up my grip a little and smiled as broadly as I could. It was a moment to remember—myself and my very first friend, the short-haired “ghost” girl.
“Hey, what’s your name, by the way?”
“Oh!”
I exclaimed my surprise out loud. I couldn’t go around proclaiming she was my friend if I didn’t even know her name. Her eyebrows arched downward.
“Also, how long are you gonna hold my hand?”
I flung my hand back out of embarrassment.
“Oh! Right! Ha-ha-ha! My name. Um, my name’s Shuuya. Shuuya Kano.”
“Hmm…”
The short-haired girl nodded to herself for a moment.
“Wh-what about you?”
“My name is Kido…”
“Yeaaaaaggghhhhh!!”
Just as the girl was giving her name, I heard a now-familiar scream from the front door.
I turned around in a flash. I knew what I’d see there, and I wasn’t disappointed—my aunt stood bolt upright, all but ready to foam at the mouth.
…Oh. Right. I was waiting on her.
“Wh-why’re you following me here?! You chased me here, didn’t you?! Didn’t you?! Aaaahhhhhh…”
My aunt’s machine gun–like delivery ended with a rapid descent to the ground.
Shouts along the lines of “What was that?!” and “I heard screaming!” echoed out from inside.
Awful. Absolutely awful.
“Hey, who’s that lady?”
Instead of answering the short-haired girl’s question, I hurriedly attempted to find a solution to this dilemma, sweat pouring down my brow.
In an instant, I thought up both the most innovative and the most painful of potential methods. It was the only way. The only way I had left. I grabbed the girl by the shoulders and attempted a friendly grin.
“Listen, can you punch me as hard as you can, like, right now?!”
“…Uh?”
The girl’s face rewound back to the hostility she originally greeted me with, her eyes throwing a baneful glare at me. It didn’t matter to me. I had to get back to normal, and I had to do it now.
The shouting grew louder inside, accompanied by footsteps. “Hey!” one of them said. “There’s someone collapsed on the floor out there!”
“Please! I mean it! Don’t hold anything back! Just punch me right now! Please!!”
The short-haired girl’s face was a stone mask of disbelief. No more smiles from her now.
But I didn’t care. I lightly shook her by the shoulders, and that was enough for her face to transform instantly.
The next moment, she gave me a look of naked, murderous rage.
Farewell, Friend Number One. It wasn’t for long, but it was really fulfilling.
A sharp smack! echoed against the building walls.
It was a moment to remember—the very first of what’d turn out to be the many, many times Kido punched me.
YOBANASHI DECEIVE 4
The pale-orange light from the ceiling shone dolefully on the room and its tidily organized contents.
Which sounds like a good thing, but that cleanliness happened mainly because the room was almost devoid of possessions.
There was a small flat-screen TV, a low table with a checker pattern, a few pillow seats around it, and several children’s books on a shelf.
Otherwise, it was flat and inorganic, decorated with little else but a couple of plain shelving units with our clothes and so on.
Room 107, the far end of the dormitory rooms on the ground floor.
On top of my dingy bed, the bottom bunk of one of the room’s two bunk beds, we were engaged in yet another uncomfortable postmortem session.
The theme of today’s meeting: how to deal with our reputation around the facility as “monsters.”
Of course, yesterday’s theme was on the same topic, and if you wanted to press the issue, it was the same thing the day before that, too.
Today, as well, I didn’t get any particular feedback from the other two participants. There was no answer when I asked them what they were thinking about, and we had already spent the past two minutes under the dim light in silence.
Unable to withstand the silence any longer, I spoke up again.
“Yeah, uh…Heh-heh-heh. What should we do, huh? Really.”
I made every intention of inserting the nuance of “We’re screwed” into that. Seto, in response, clutched the pillow in his hands even harder, looking ready to bawl at any moment.
“This is really all my fault. I’m so sorry…”
Kido immediately stepped up to cut off the mealy-mouthed Seto.
“No, no, it’s not just your fault, Seto. We’re not here to assign blame on people. Also, stop apologizing.”
Seto shuddered for a moment, then buried his face into the pillow like he wanted to disappear, muttering “I’m sor…I mean, I’m not” into it.
Seto was always like that. Always ready to cry. Kind of like a cross between a small animal and a baby.
He cried when he tripped and fell, he cried when he was hungry, he cried when the sun set, and he cried even when nothing in particular happened to him.
That was the main identifying characteristic of Kousuke Seto, also known in my own mind as New Friend Number Two.
One would think it best to approach Seto with kid gloves when talking to him, but Kido never had any time for that. “Huh,” she gruffly replied as she started constructing a miniatu
re Tokyo Tower string figure in her hands.
It felt a little cruel to just leave it at that, so I hurriedly tried to intervene.
“Listen, it’s fine. Really. Seto, I know you’re trying to seriously think about us and everything, so…”
“…Um, I’m sorry, but I’m really not thinking that much.”
His muttered response through the pillow put an end to my noble attempt at comforting him.
“What did I just tell you?” Kido said, adding to the pressure. This made Kido twitch once again and fall into silence. Back to square one we went.
I sighed deeply and leaned back into the comforter I had propped against the wall.
We wouldn’t make much progress today, either. I could already tell that this conference would end with all of us falling asleep sooner or later.
It had already been several months since I came here.
The days were, shall we say, quite a lot more eventful than the two months or so I spent at my aunt’s place.
I wasn’t sure how things would work out on that first day, when I acquired a nice crimson-red bruise on my cheek. But, thankfully, I’ve managed to keep a roof above my head here so far.
I was pretty surprised when I learned that Kido, the girl responsible for that bruise, was an orphan brought here for pretty much the same reason as myself.
What’s more, we wound up being assigned to the same room, which was a further shock to me.
Room assignments usually weren’t coed like that, but since the other rooms were full and we were among the youngest residents, they made an exception for us.
I’d heard stories about how some people were just destined to meet each other, but this was the first time I’d actually felt it.
The name “Kido,” by the way, also dates back to that first day, where she only got her last name out before I grabbed her and made her think I was some kind of weird predator. For a time afterward, she didn’t even speak to me.
I kept hounding her after that, not wanting to lose Friend Number One so soon after making it. When she finally told me, “Stop breathing down my neck all day,” I thought I was going to break into tears of joy. It took another month before she finally told me her first name, so I stuck to calling her Kido.
Lying in wait for the two of us in this room was Seto, the original occupant.
The Deceiving Page 5
