by Yoru Sumino
“You really…didn’t have…to close it,” she said.
Now that I considered it, if this whole midnight break thing was fake, then how did she unlock the door?
“At that…size, you’re kind…of like a…pet.”
“We should be careful.”
As I lowered my voice, she clapped her hands over her own mouth and said, “We’re playing phan…tom thief.”
It took me a few seconds to reassemble her words back into “phantom thief” in my head.
After several more steps down the hall, she pointed at my face and asked, “Can you…stretch out your…eyes?” She pointed right at them, in case there was any doubt which eyes she meant.
“Nope. Or at least I don’t think I can.”
“It’d…be pretty con…venient if…you could stretch…them out really far and look…around cor…ners, huh?”
While it would be useful for reconnaissance, other than that, the uses of such a skill would be limited. Plus, it was difficult to even picture.
Even if it wasn’t a trick I could manage, the more I thought about it, the cooler it sounded.
Maybe I could transfer just a little bit of the black droplets from my body into the shadows cast by the moonlight peeking in through the windows, to create a second monster, a Shadow. It would function just like a support character from a video game, and operate by my will, making reconnaissance within the school a breeze. Having an ability like that would be so cool.
“Acchi…kun,” Yano-san called out to me, walking alongside. I looked at her, but she didn’t look back. Instead, she was gazing slightly behind me.
“Can you…do some…thing like…that?”
I looked back to where she indicated and was immediately startled.
“Maybe, you know…a clone…technique?”
I could only shake my head. I had no idea of what that was.
Behind me loomed the very thing I’d imagined: a second monster. Pure black, it followed us step for step. It differed from me in one important way—the portion where the eyes should be was all black. I was certain that there had been nothing there moments ago. When I looked out the window, the moon was shining in from roughly ahead of me.
Temporarily ignoring Yano-san, who was staring curiously at the Shadow, I tried commanding it.
Move.
I pictured it running forward, flying past me. I was skeptical, but it couldn’t hurt to try.
After a few seconds’ lag, the Shadow moved, roughly as I had imagined. Careful not to break my concentration, I had it continue down the hallway and around the next corner.
It surprised me to see the Shadow behaving exactly as I ordered it to. I guess I really did have that ability after all.
Just as I thought that simply making the thing move wasn’t particularly good for reconnaissance, a second viewpoint suddenly appeared inside of my head. It seemed I was seeing from the Shadow’s point of view, beyond the corner.
What a useful body this was.
“It’s…gone.”
“It’s our lookout. Let’s continue.”
“How profes…sional.”
She must have been talking about our phantom thief game again.
“Yano-san, where is it you wanted to go?”
“Maybe the mu…sic room. I want…to see if it’s true what…they say a…bout pi…anos playing at…night.”
“Was there some kind of urban legend about that?”
“Well…there often…are, anyway.”
“That’s vague.”
Yano-san gave another self-satisfied smile at my retort. Just what was so funny?
Thanks to the Shadow’s reconnaissance, I confirmed that there appeared to be no one between our current location and the music room above. Just in case, I checked the hall to the left and right but saw no one there, either. I didn’t want to look at Yano-san’s hunched back, so I walked a bit ahead. Following right behind her made me look a bit too much like a pet for my tastes.
We climbed the stairs and finally arrived at the music room at the end of the fifth floor. I entered first and unlocked the door—the opposite of the way we’d left the classroom before. Within the music room, which was encased in soundproofed padding, the grand piano was as eerie as a monster itself. It lingered there, shrouded in tense silence. It seemed like the sort of thing that very well might eat somebody alive.
“The pia…no isn’t…playing.”
Obviously not. No spirit would bother lingering in the mortal world just to surprise someone who came barging in like this.
The Shadow stayed outside as our lookout. If anyone were to come, they would surely run away in shock.
As I stood around aimlessly, suddenly I was startled by a twanging sound. A single wave ran through the black droplets. When I turned to look, Yano-san had opened the lid of the grand piano and taken a seat on the bench. She was so short that when she sat, she looked very much like an elementary schooler at a recital.
“Acchi…kun, are you a Moz…art fan? Or a Vi…valdi fan?”
“I prefer Beethoven,” I replied. “Also, the sound of that piano really can’t be good.”
“Beetho…ven, huh?”
Not heeding my warning, she began to strike the keys with her tiny hands—four times in sequence. A dissonant chord reverberated throughout the room. I immediately withdrew my body and slipped into a box of cleaning supplies. Pretty quickly, I realized that if I was found, I could just scare the person away. Yano-san was the one who might end up having a hard time.
I slipped back out.
I had the Shadow check the perimeter outside the room. Apparently, the sound-proofing in this room was the real deal, as even after some time passed, no one appeared to be coming.
Yano-san looked my way, not appearing particularly panicked.
“Is this…what fate feels…like?”
“You think that was fate just now?” After I got over my astonishment, I shot her a sharp glare. “What’re you gonna do if we get caught?”
She gave a satisfied smile and a weary reply. “It’s mid…night break, so…it’s fine.”
What the hell, I thought to myself, but I was the one who’d look like an idiot, getting mad at a dunce like her. Nothing I could say would get through to her, no matter what it was, and so I sighed.
“If we get caught, don’t bring up my name,” I said sternly.
“Of…course not.”
When I looked at Yano-san, my eight eyes dripping with mistrust, I saw that she had moved to one of the student seats. Just like during the daytime, she was a girl who lived life at her own tempo.
During lessons we sat in the seats here in the same seating order that we did in the classroom. Naturally, Yano-san followed that order now.
As I closed the lid of the piano with my tail (so that she couldn’t play it again), Yano-san asked a friendly question. “Acchi…kun, what music do you lis…ten to?”
“I mean, the normal stuff.”
“Like…who?”
She was staring straight at me, so I gave the same answer that I always gave. I offered up the names of artists who everyone at least knew by name, but weren’t overly famous, who were on trend but not necessarily household names. There were singer-songwriters who always made the rankings on Tsutaya whenever they put out a new CD, and bands that a few girls in our class were raging over not being able to grab concert tickets for. Yano-san listened, nodding dutifully.
“What about you?” I asked her out of politeness. A second later I found myself thinking that she was probably the sort who listened to quirky things. The kind of music I would never get even if I tried.
I was wrong.
“Well, as…for me…”
She happily divulged the name of just one group. The smile on her face was not her usual smug grin. In fact, her cheeks glowed with pure elation, like she was revealing a secret that she had kept for a long time to a friend. It was the first time I’d ever seen such an expression on her.
I
was stunned. The group she had named were not the sort of musicians that one would speak of so confidentially. They were a group that nearly everyone in Japan knew of, who even I had known of since elementary school. The kind of group you would be embarrassed to bring up in serious discussions amongst your friends, who would get you ridiculed if you admitted that you still listened to them. To put it frankly, they were overhyped and super lame.
These were the artists for whom Yano-san confessed her love, as though they were a splendid treasure kept by her and her alone.
I was stunned. “I see,” I said, the only suitable reply.
She asked me, “Acchi…kun, do you like them…too?”
“I listen to them now and then. They’re all right.”
I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know who they were. Not when, honestly, I still listened to them fairly often.
Yano-san then fervently began explaining the group’s appeal to me—the songs, the lyrics, the melodies, the members—all things that I already knew.
As she was explaining which of their albums was the best, her alarm rang from her pocket. I was relieved to know that our time was over, though for a different reason than the night before.
After poking at the phone and silencing the alarm, Yano-san stood and stretched.
“Guess it’s…over. I’ll go…home and…sleep.”
Saying nothing, I opened the door with my tail and allowed her to exit the music room first. I locked the door in the same way I had locked the classroom.
“You can…go ahead,” she said to me, as I returned from the black droplets to my original form on the other side of the door. I had no idea how Yano-san returned home, but there was no need for me to know. Following her suggestion, I headed outside.
I wasn’t sure whether or not I should be giving some word of parting, but then again, I had only come to fulfill a bargain, so exchanging pleasantries would be weird. That said, it would be just as weird to ignore her. As I sat considering this, she gave that satisfied grin.
“Will…you come here again to…morrow?”
I was silent. I had no intention of coming. And yet, she had given the decision to me, leaving me unable to say as much bluntly.
Unable to answer her question, I decided to simply leap away into the night sky. However, I realized there was still one thing I should say to Yano-san, if nothing else. So, with my back still turned, I tried my best to keep my voice calm. “Sorry for kicking you after gym class.”
“Don’t ap…ologize for things…that happened during the…day at…night.”
Seriously? After I bothered to apologize at all?
Night really was a time best spent alone.
Thursday
Day
I THINK THERE ARE REASONS for bullying. Bullying always starts because of some concrete reason. Trivial things like behavior or personal characteristics are a substantial enough reason, at least for the aggressors. It never seems like enough for the one being bullied, obviously. But there’s always some rationale, whether it’s a good pretext or not—and there’s no limit to the evil that can grow within someone once they have the excuse.
In the case of our class, the bullied party was utterly the one at fault and fully in the wrong.
Yano Satsuki had brought her circumstances down on her own shoulders.
I had known Yano since we were second years. Dense, awkward, needlessly loud, with a strange way of speaking, Yano was ridiculed by the boys and some of the girls behind her back. But for some time it just went on like that, with no reason for it to solidify into outright bullying. The members of our class all had a decent amount of sense.
That good sense was swallowed up by a deep tide of righteous anger in the middle of our second year, when a single action of Yano’s finally crossed the line.
By this point, it had already become a daily pattern for Yano to rudely impose herself on others and to be shrugged off. That was the basic arrangement between Yano and our classmates. However, there was one person who was the exception for her.
That day, for some reason—which honestly I will never know—she walked up to the desk of one of our classmates, Midorikawa Futaba, who normally came nowhere near her. I really had no idea what kind of relationship they shared. I only thought to myself, That can’t be good. It was normal for Midorikawa to never actively speak unless she was spoken to, but the fact that Yano wasn’t speaking at all meant that she had a poor sense of social awareness or something.
However, that assumption was definitely wrong. In fact, Yano most likely had a deep sense of animosity towards Midorikawa. Perhaps she hated Midorikawa for the fact that everyone loved her, even though she never spoke a word, far more than they did Yano herself, who always tried to talk to them.
Whatever the reason, Yano suddenly approached Midorikawa’s desk by the window, snatched up the book that she was reading, opened the window, and flung it out into the yard. It was a rainy day. I remember everything, right down to the seating arrangements. Iguchi, sitting in the seat behind Midorikawa, was petrified for several moments.
As far as Yano was concerned, the girl she had targeted was probably also in the wrong. Midorikawa was the class loner and rarely showed her emotions on her face. Now, though, the girl began to cry right there on the spot. She didn’t reproach Yano—she simply wept. Later, we learned that the waterlogged book that had been tossed out into the rain was very important to her.
However, the book’s significance to Midorikawa was something that we only learned later. That wasn’t the reason that the class labeled Yano a villain or why our torment of her became as harsh as it did.
It was because she was smiling. As Midorikawa cried, Yano stood in front of her with that self-satisfied grin, not apologizing. In fact, from that day on, Midorikawa never brought books from home anymore. She only borrowed them from the library, which spurred us on all the more.
When I looked at our class punching bag, I always thought the same thing: her behavior is atrocious. That was the best one could say for Yano.
If she just behaved better, she wouldn’t be bullied. That’s what I thought the next day as I watched her clean her desk out of the corner of my eye. Since the same thing had happened the day before, I now knew what had happened to the desk. Apparently, someone had covered it in chalk dust from the erasers.
“I heard the monster didn’t appear last night.”
Kasai was enthusiastic, but I responded with deep caution as we walked down the hall. Deep down, I thought, Obviously not. The night before I had headed straight for the school, and after that, I was at the beach, alone.
As we stood in the middle of the hall facing the science lab, I pretended to be deeply interested in this monster story and asked Kasai a vital question.
“Has anyone snapped a pic of it with their phone or anything?”
“They have.”
Concealing the pounding of my heart, I replied, “Whoa, awesome.”
“Apparently, none of the pictures came out, though. So I still don’t believe it.”
I prayed that he would just lose interest there. But it was interesting to learn that my monstrous form apparently couldn’t be caught on film. Suddenly, I recalled Pom Poko and the plan that the spirits in the movie enacted. At any rate, this was advantageous to me. If I was immune to being recorded, I could go wherever I wanted.
When we arrived in the science lab, our good-natured science teacher was already writing on the blackboard. I followed after Kasai and took my seat without any overt greeting. The seating order from the classroom wasn’t used in the science lab. We sat in groups of six at long tables arranged into even rows, sorted by attendance number. I was in the “A” row, closest to the door, my spot shielding the seats occupied by the boisterous Kasai and company one row behind.
I didn’t hate our lessons in the science lab. The other five students in my group weren’t the type to stand out or cause trouble; I mostly enjoyed their company. As long as I did my job well in the group leade
r role I was forced into, class went smoothly.
Of course, when you considered not just myself, but our whole class, arranging the seating this way was probably all the better.
Kasai loudly said something or other to me, but just as I was replying, his gaze flicked away towards the entrance of the room. I slowly turned around, saw who it was, and then returned to my conversation with Kasai.
Midorikawa was walking slowly through the entrance. As always, she carried nothing more than what she needed for class, along with a book from the library. The seat she was headed for was on the window side, second group from the back. Motoda was already there, asleep with his face against the table. Midorikawa took the seat diagonal from him, opened up her textbook and notebook, and then her library book. She sat up straight and tall as always.
After a short while, the bell rang. The teacher paused what he was writing on the board and turned around. “Let’s begin,” he said with a smile, accompanied by a command of “All rise!” from the class representative.
With timing so perfect that it almost seemed planned, the instant that we all stood, there was a click and then a rattling sound from the door at the front of the lab. It shook within its frame. I wasn’t startled—I’d anticipated this and put myself on guard. Even though there was no need to, and honestly, no reason to, whoever had entered the room last had locked the door.
With a look of exasperation on his face, the teacher instructed the girl sitting closest to the door to unlock it. The girl reluctantly opened the door, her disinterest plain.
On the other side of the door stood Yano, blinking rapidly. Without saying a word, she headed quickly for her seat. Chalk-colored dust shaded some of her hair. She didn’t appear to have noticed.
Throughout the lab, you could feel a coldness brimming in everyone’s hearts, save for the teacher’s. The sound of Yano’s shoes tapping across the floor resounded, and until she stood at her assigned place, everyone stared forward, waiting in silence.
When the teacher’s second call to begin finally rang out, the tense atmosphere seemed to defuse. I didn’t look Yano’s way, but she was probably smiling, as she always did. She was at the same back table as Midorikawa.
