At Night, I Become a Monster

by Yoru Sumino

  “A boy, like Kasai…” I said.

  “Could’ve been a…girl.”

  “There are no girls in our class that height with hair that short.”

  “Maybe they…cut it. Well then, Acchi-kun, your conclu…sion is that it’s Kasai…kun?”

  “Mm, I mean, I don’t think he’d have done it.”

  “Why…not?”

  “He’s not that kind of person.”

  Yano-san didn’t know much about Kasai. I tried to explain to her that he didn’t have a wicked bone in his body. Naturally, I omitted the parts about what Nakagawa-san had been trying to do, and Kasai’s feelings for Midorikawa. Yano-san at least knew that Kasai never participated in harming her, so my image of him seemed to jive with her impressions.

  As I continued giving my one-sided exposition, Yano-san sighed. “Hm…hmm. He really is…smooth,” she said.

  I wasn’t sure what she meant by “smooth.”

  “And he’s…smart, too.”

  “Actually, his grades suck. He doesn’t like thinking too hard about things.”

  “That’s about what I…imagined,” she continued. She sounded dissatisfied, despite not being much of a decent judge of anything. Despite knowing nothing about Kasai. She added, “He seems…like the kind of person who could never…ever fall for…anyone.”

  See? She knew nothing at all.

  “Not like you, Acchi…kun,” she said.

  “…I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking…about Igu…chan. The one you…like.”

  Uninterested in all this mushy talk, I quickly reached for a change of subject. “Why don’t we go see what the library’s like at night?” Even if those guys showed up, there were plenty of places where we could hide there, and it wouldn’t take us much time to get there from here.

  I’d only proposed it as a way to kill time, but Yano-san’s response was, “Sounds…hella lame.”

  “I don’t want to hear that from you,” I spat, to which Yano-san replied, “That was a com…pliment.”

  And just what about it was complimentary, exactly?

  Despite the disagreement, eventually the two of us decided to head to the library. We followed the same procedure as always upon exiting the room—me unlocking and then relocking the door.

  “I was thinking that it might be…Kudou…chan.” We walked down the hallway, her voice as thoughtlessly loud as always.

  “She’s not that sort of person, either.”

  “Hm…hmm. Like I said, Acchi…kun. Hella…lame.”

  Finally, it occurred to me that she was baiting me, and when I realized that I was falling for it, I managed to calm down. Getting riled up was exactly what Yano-san wanted out of me.

  As we approached the library, Yano-san went galloping in. I followed behind at a measured pace, impeded by my own sense of decorum. Like the nurse’s office, the library—which I hadn’t visited in a while—had a scent all of its own, different from the rest of the school. This unique atmosphere, the smell and the silence of the night, it all gave my spirits a gentle lift.

  Whenever I happened to come here, I couldn’t help but think of a particular classmate of ours, but I did not broach the subject. It was a daytime topic, after all, best left alone.

  “Oh, there’s Harry…Potter.”

  I looked to where she indicated and saw the series on prominent display. There it was, proof positive that reading Harry Potter wasn’t weird—I found myself relieved.

  Yano-san began to wander all about the library. After a few minutes, I realized how much of a chore it was to follow her and decided to wait by the entrance instead. If anyone showed up, I’d be in the perfect position to scare them off and settle the matter.

  So far, I hadn’t seen any disturbance through the eyes of my clone waiting at the gate. It seemed that this was to be a quiet night after all. Everyone loves a little peace and quiet after dark.

  Gazing into the darkened library, I suddenly got the feeling that it had reached a certain point in the night. Sure enough, I soon heard the alarm from Yano-san’s phone jingling from a corner of the library. I saw Yano-san herself poke her head out through a gap in the shelves before she came trotting back over.

  “Didn’t see…anything I wanted to read,” she said.

  “Didn’t you say you don’t read books, anyway?”

  “Yeah, but you said there were some in…teresting ones out there…too.”

  Though I didn’t show it on my face, I was surprised. I couldn’t recall saying such a thing, nor could I believe that she would actually accept it.

  “But the books…that are just all full of words…don’t seem very in…teresting.”

  “You can’t judge books at a single glance like that.”

  “I like things that you can judge…at just a glance.”

  Tell that to the ones making the books, I thought, standing, ushering her to the exit ahead of me. I locked the door in the usual fashion.

  “Hm?”

  “What’s…up?”

  “When we came in, you went in before me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Was it locked?”

  “Nope.”

  Maybe someone forgot to lock it. The guards would probably be back to lock it later. I recalled my clone from the gates and proceeded down to the entrance with my usual firm caution. Along the way, Yano-san hummed to herself, truly devoid of any sense of self-preservation. When I warned her about this, she replied in a singsong voice. “Igu-chan’s gonna hate you…if you’re always so fussy.” This earned her a second warning, that the next day I would be bringing a towel or something so I could shut her up by force without directly touching her if I needed to.

  Yes, I would be seeing her again, same time tomorrow.

  “See you tomorrow,” I said, moving through the gate.

  “Okay,” she replied, nodding with a weirdly serious look upon her face.

  I secretly followed her as she tottered home on her bike, worried about what might happen if she encountered those boys en route. For the first time, I realized just how close her house was to mine. It was an average, garden-variety house.

  Not that I ever had any intention of going there.

  Wednesday

  Day

  TODAY, AS ALWAYS, Yano-san’s “Good…morning” went ignored. Some of our classmates had begun to believe that she was responsible not only for Nakagawa’s missing shoes, but also for stealing Takao’s bike, and everyone sneered to see her digging through the garbage in the morning. Seeing Nakagawa hurt had only strengthened the sense of unity between the girls of our class. However, there was at least one blessing from Yano’s rapidly deteriorating circumstance.

  The necessary conditions had finally been fulfilled.

  “Tonight?” I said. “That’s pretty sudden.”

  Though I was thankful to Kasai for providing this intel, I was racked with nerves and let my true thoughts slip.

  “Yeah. I’ll be busy playing games, so I told him not to bother calling me.”

  Right. As far as Kasai was concerned, that time of night was always booked solid for gaming. Yano and Motoda weren’t the only ones in our class who could be seen nodding off in the middle of the day.

  “You find out what’s up for me, Acchi,” he said.

  “I’ll be asleep.”

  “Guess so. You’ve always been a real early-bird type, huh?”

  He heaved a sigh and then smiled warmly at me, resigned. I couldn’t tell if it was because he had accepted this as a quirk of mine or if this was a smile of pure exasperation, but either way it seemed that he had forgiven me. I felt relieved.

  “Anyway, I guess either the kaiju won’t show, and then they just go home, or else they’ll catch it, which is a whole new can of worms. It’d be a lot cooler if they caught it though, ahaha.”

  I laughed along with Kasai, who was probably imagining what it would look like if Motoda and the others caught me. I continued to laugh along, ev
en as he said, laughing, “Apparently he hurt that first-year pretty bad, and now he’s on suspension.”

  This was not the time for me to be worrying about the injuries of people I didn’t know. The final battle was tonight.

  As I watched Iguchi walking a firm distance away from Yano after cooking class, unlike last week, my resolve grew firm.

  Wednesday

  Night

  IT FEELS LIKE there have been countless times in my life where I’ve been at the mercy of Murphy’s law—though perhaps it’s only that I’m more inclined to remember the times when things go wrong, while the good times slip my mind.

  Tonight was just one of those nights.

  Tonight, on the night when Motoda and company were supposed to be sneaking into the school, already twenty minutes into Yano-san’s midnight break, I was still at home—in my house, in my room, and still in human form, pacing a hole into the floor.

  “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” I chanted quietly to myself, but the black drops were not forthcoming—on this night of all nights!

  This was bad. According to Kasai, they would be showing up around the same time that Motoda had spotted the monster before, which meant that it wouldn’t be surprising if they were already inside of the school.

  Maybe I ought to have already started making my way to school while still in human form. Then again, it would be much worse for someone to see me transforming along the way.

  Thinking maybe there might be some problem with my stance or something, I tried lying down, then squatting, then sitting, but there was no transformation in sight. The worst-case scenario, which had never occurred to me before, floated through my mind.

  What if I had already used up all of my transformations?

  Though that seemed impossible, if it were the case, I would have no choice but to accept it. Given that I had no idea why I was even transforming into a monster in the first place, it wouldn’t be all that strange for the transformations to just as suddenly stop.

  Wondrous things are only wondrous when you still wonder about them. Mysteries should remain mysteries.

  Monsters were born shrouded in mystery, and they would vanish just the same.

  Which would be great—any other day than today!

  I tried to remember the first night that I had turned into a monster. What had I done to bring on the transformation then? Black droplets had suddenly started falling from my mouth. I was startled at first, frightened, with no idea what was happening to me. I thought it was a dream.

  However much it had felt like a dream, it was not one.

  It was only because of that serious streak I possessed, the one Kasai-san had so helpfully pointed out, that I accepted it so readily. What did I lose, if I became a monster after dark? There wasn’t anything there for me in the night, nothing I needed to protect.

  Things were different for Yano-san. The night was her refuge. And the night could be lost.

  I was sure she was there, waiting for me.

  Was it okay to leave this a mystery? Not to know?

  That couldn’t…

  “Ah… There it is.”

  Quite suddenly, the transformation began. This time, the black droplets spread from my fingertips, across my whole body, as though I was being eaten alive by ants.

  I opened up the window and flew out before my transformation was even finished. I had faith in my monstrous self. The droplets shifted around my body almost frantically, and the next moment, I was soaring in streamlined form.

  I rushed to the school. It felt like my speed was rising higher and higher, but perhaps it was just my imagination.

  Even on this harrowing night, the night wind felt good brushing past each of the black droplets.

  Far faster than normal—now that I think about it, perhaps it was only a few seconds—I arrived at the school. I quickly formed a clone and sent it to the building where the guard room was located, and I headed for the block where my own classroom was.

  The door of the entryway had been left open slightly.

  Was it by Yano-san? Or by the others?

  Putting that question aside, I steeled myself for battle, and flung myself into the darkened school building.

  It’ll be fine, I assured myself, it’ll be fine. Anyone would run if they saw a monster.

  So it would be fine.

  I stayed in my larger form, in case I bumped into anyone unexpectedly. I wanted to be ready at a moment’s notice.

  I began quietly creeping along. My clone hadn’t spotted anything as of yet.

  First, I would head for the classroom. If those guys did run into Yano-san, if they had found her… Well, I honestly hadn’t considered what they might do after that, but it definitely wouldn’t be pretty.

  I climbed to the third floor, doing my best kaiju impression as I proceeded down the hall. I squared my shoulders and held my tail higher than usual—though I have no idea if it was as frightening as I imagined. Step by step, I approached the classroom, glancing inside just before entering, but I saw no one within. I typically snuck in through the back, but wanting to see if Yano-san had arrived, this time I tried the front door.

  The door opened with a shrill squeal. Yano-san was here. I always wondered how it was that she managed the lock, but now was not the time to bring that up. I timidly stepped inside and knocked my tail twice on one of the nearby desks.

  “Come…in.”

  I was immediately relieved to hear that insipid reply, but just as quickly felt the urge to make my displeasure known. “Idiot,” I muttered, approaching the cleaning supply cabinet.

  “What would you have done if that wasn’t me?”

  She replied with two knocks of her own, rather than speaking. Just what was the point of doing so now?

  “Apparently, they’re coming tonight,” I said. “You should hide yourself.”

  Hearing one more knock, I locked the front door, and slipped out into the hallway. Were they not here yet? My clone still hadn’t spotted anything. It would be best if I could face them down at the gates.

  I might as well try looking upstairs, I thought, moving to the stairwell, slowly and quietly.

  Now that I thought about it, Motoda had been going on about catching a kaiju, but that was surely just a bit of pretext. Surely those guys had a healthy skepticism about there being a monster. Maybe they didn’t believe it at all and were just sneaking into the school for the fun of it. Actually finding a kaiju would be nothing more than an added bonus. All in all, it couldn’t be that difficult to scare them off.

  Honestly, if they did catch a kaiju, what did they intend to do with it? Keep it as a pet? Kill it? Sell it?

  This was a kaiju we’re talking about, right? A friggin’ monster. Just what could a bunch of kids do to me? There was no way I could lose to them. No way that I, at night, in my element, could ever lose to a bunch of guys who had nothing but their measly arm strength to boast of.

  “Huh?”

  It was on the fifth floor that I came face-to-face with a boy, exiting the bathroom by the stairs.

  I held back the cry I was about to let out. I hadn’t paid any attention to the sound of water from the bathroom at all, assuming it was just some automatic cleaning system.

  “Bwuh?! Aaaaaaaaaaaah!!!”

  The boy proved slightly less talented at holding back his scream. As I recalled, he was one of Kasai’s friends from the baseball team. I summoned up all my strength, body and mind. I shook my form and opened my mouth, evoking the night that I had scared off that stray dog—and roared.

  Even to me, my voice sounded sharp, unnatural, more like the sound of aluminum foil being crushed than any sound made by a living being, and the boy was knocked onto his rear end.

  Good. He was frightened.

  I glared at the boy, still scrambling backwards on his backside, speechless. Then I heard a sound from behind me. As I turned to look, the door of the music room opened, revealing two people staring at me, dumbfounded. It was Motoda and a guy from the next cla
ss over. I decided to disregard for now the fact that the music room had been unlocked.

  So, there were three of them?

  I just had to frighten this trio, so that they would never come near this place again. That was my mission. I silently burned it into my mind. Without hesitation, I leapt over the boy who’d fallen, getting all three of them into my field of vision. The one on the ground let out another shriek, rolling.

  As I let out a low growl, the fallen one managed to get to his feet, tripped over himself, and fled toward the stairs that I had just come up. Scaring him off was just what I wanted, but it seemed like it would be more fun to dispatch all three of them at once.

  “Eek!”

  Just then, my clone arrived from below. As the clone approached the scrambling one from the stairs, I advanced from behind him, trapping the three boys between us. Having them shut themselves up in the music room would be a bother.

  Leaving my clone to keep an eye on them, I leapt out the window, slipped around into the music room, and locked the door. Hearing a miserable, almost girlish voice stammering behind me, I leapt back outside.

  Going straight back out into the hallway from here would hardly be exciting.

  I was sure that the guards would merely think that this was all a dream. Out in the courtyard, I enlarged myself to a size that would truly be worthy of a “kaiju,” glaring in at the boys through a window with my elevated gaze.

  For a moment, it was so quiet that time seemed to stop. Then, from within, there was a scream. I watched and laughed as the three boys tried to run, terror on their faces, looking like they might crumble at any moment. Naturally, I did so in a monstrous cry, careful not to let out any hint of my human voice.

  In order to guide them to the stairs, I left the clone where he was and slipped back into the building myself. They’d go exactly where I wanted, whether they wanted to or not. Partway down, Mr. Backside tripped and tumbled on the landing. I menaced them from the floor above, skulking like a beast stalking prey. Meanwhile, I sent my clone running to the floor below, halting Motoda and the other on the fourth floor.