by Yoru Sumino
Unlike yesterday, the school was quiet tonight. I turned my face into the night wind, letting all manner of thoughts run through my mind.
Why had Midorikawa said those words to me?
She had been reading Harry Potter. I genuinely wanted to ask her what she thought about it.
What was with Kasai?
The baseball club’s window was broken again…
Perhaps the reason that those guys knew that the classroom door would be unlocked when I was chasing them was because they had already been inside once.
Maybe Yano-san knew that, which was why she was hiding in the supply cabinet. If that were the case, then she was far too careless in giving a reply. Stupid, even.
…Hang on.
…
She…was scared…?
No matter what I thought about, my thoughts all led me to the same point.
I had felt my own fear when I heard Yano-san’s words, although it was a different type of fear than hers. I worried that, having heard those words, my attitude towards her was going to veer away from the rest of the class. If my thinking was aberrant, if my judgement was impaired, then who knew when I might suddenly slip up and do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing.
I could not allow myself to slip up like Iguchi-san and see my daily life ruined. I could think of nothing worse.
I ground my monstrous teeth in resolve.
Which type are you? I thought I heard her voice echo.
Well, I certainly wasn’t a Yano-san type.
Finally, midnight break drew to an end. Just as Yano-san opened the classroom door, I dismissed my clone.
Regardless of my presence—or lack thereof—Yano-san had her fill of midnight break and then headed home. I realized that, without my noticing, the midnight hour had become the focus of my nights.
Somehow, that felt dreadful. I decided to spend the rest of the night traveling here and there for sport.
No one knew that I was there.
Friday
Day
I BARELY GOT a full five minutes’ reprieve. A joy filled my heart after meeting up with Kudou around the shoe boxes and seeing her double-toothed smile, but it quickly withered away.
“Good…morning.”
As Kudou and I headed to the classroom together, Yano came down the stairs and gave us her usual cheerful greeting. As always, I ignored her. I didn’t look at her face. Kudou, naturally, ignored her as well. That was our class’s way, after all. Yano, likewise, continued straight down the stairs, not seeking any reply.
Just as the interaction ended, and I began to feel relieved, Kudou turned towards the descending Yano and threw the iced coffee carton she was holding at her—or so it appeared. I only turned to look after hearing the high sound of a shoe squeaking across the floor, so I could only guess how Kudou had moved, but I’m pretty sure I was on the mark.
The carton struck Yano in the back of the head and then fell to the floor. It seemed to be nearly empty, but a bit of coffee still spurted from the straw out onto Yano’s hair.
“Ow.”
Hearing this from Yano, Kudou turned right back around, grinning at me, and then picked the conversation right back up where she had left it with a “So, anyway…”
That was dangerous. Still, I managed to force my body back into its original course of action, matching pace with Kudou with an “Uh-huh.” In other words, I probably corrected course into someone who had met up with a classmate and was now walking to the classroom with them side by side, listening to their gossip.
As we arrived at the classroom and I reconsidered this accomplishment, realizing what it meant, a shiver ran down my spine.
Could it be that I was already beginning to veer off the rails?
Kudou used to be someone who ignored Yano so effortlessly, one wondered if she truly even really saw her. The only times she ever actively joined in on the harassment were when someone else cajoled her into it or when Yano overstepped the bounds of Kudou’s personal space. I had assumed her opinions and attitude to be the median amongst our classmates when it came to Yano.
And yet now she had done this thing.
Perhaps the incidents with Iguchi and Nakagawa had raised the bar for our class’s acceptable behavior, increased the demands of our shared sense of unity.
I corrected my stance.
I needed to be careful and decide how I was going to act. If I let myself slip, I might soon find myself targeted as an outsider. As I fretted over this, someone who lived life at his own pace approached, someone who never had such worries.
“You think that kaiju ate Motoda’s soul or somethin’? Ahaha.”
Kasai’s cheerful laughter was a balm.
I know that he meant it only as a joke, but as I thought about it, I realized that he was fairly on the mark. If Motoda refused to come to school because of what I had done to him, then one might as well say that I had eaten his soul.
Kasai took out his phone and showed me photos of a stray cat he had come across the day before. It was the same stray I had seen at night.
If the issue of cats versus dogs ever came up, Kasai was most assuredly a cat person, so I fell in step with that, talking to him just as another cat person would. Suddenly, however, a large shadow fell over us from the hallway.
“Kasai, hand it over.”
It was the homeroom teacher of Class 4. Kasai sputtered, “Wha?! Seriously?!” He didn’t recoil at all, even in the face of such an imposing authority figure. Around the room, a number of students suddenly shoved their hands into their pockets or their desks.
“Yes, seriously.”
“This is important to me, though! I should get to take care of it myself!”
“Then you should have left it at home instead of bringing it to school. C’mon, give it over, now.”
Reluctantly, Kasai placed his phone into the teacher’s outstretched hand, and with that the teacher left, saying that he would hand it over to our homeroom teacher. Seemingly utterly mortified, Kasai moaned, “Seriously, though? Everyone’s got ’em, even Nakagawa…” He petitioned the sympathies of those around him, drawing piteous looks.
As I watched Kasai head to his seat, still peeved, I finally understood something that had been bothering me for some time.
Ah, I see. So that’s why Iguchi’s Totoro key chain was missing from her bag.
It was something that was important to her, and it was something that she could no longer hope to protect all on her own.
I glanced over at Iguchi. She was nodding and grinning at something the other girls were saying. Though they had made tenuous amends, Iguchi was well aware that she now stood on the wrong side of our bubble of shared unity. I wonder if she was scared, too…
I quickly put aside the thought. But now that I knew the reason for Iguchi’s actions, it made sense that I never saw Yano playing with her phone during the day, the way that she always did at night.
She knew firsthand how much devastation could be caused by harming something that was precious to someone else.
Just then, Midorikawa came into the room, a library book in hand.
“Morning.”
“Mm.”
Naturally, she gave no further reply.
Now and then I thought about Midorikawa, the only one in our class who was permitted to go against the grain. I couldn’t envy her. One step in the wrong direction and she would end up in the same place as Yano. She had only ended up in a defensible position because she knew the right expressions to make, because she never showed fear. However, one of these days, she might just slip from that pedestal of hers.
It was perhaps because Midorikawa knew this that she made such a show of bringing in a book from the library every day. Oh, poor me, this routine seemed to say, I’m so afraid of bringing my own books now that I have to leave them at home. If it really was a ploy of hers, then it had proved almost disgustingly successful.
The bell rang, and our homeroom teacher arrived. Just as he was in the midst of info
rming Kasai that he should come to the staff room after school, Yano dragged her feet into the room. “Be in your seat before the bell,” he sighed in warning, to which Yano replied, “O…kay,” and took her seat.
Normally, he would not have bothered about her any further; it was like he’d given up on worrying about Yano’s attitude. Today was different.
“Look here, what would you have done if today was exam day? Do you really think you could just say ‘Okay’ and be done with it?”
While I wished to retort that of course she would be more careful on an exam day, the thought simultaneously occurred to me that Yano would probably come in just as late no matter how important the day was.
“Oi. Yano.”
Just as I sighed internally over how pointless this sermon was, an angry voice rang out elsewhere in the room.
“This is nothing to smile about!”
I felt a wave ripple through my body, the very same kind that I did during the night.
Then the teacher really laid into a sermon. At first, it was directed specifically at Yano, but at length it blossomed into a tirade concerning the entire class, including addressing Kasai’s phone, self-discipline, our duties to society, and such and so forth, eating up all of our time and dragging on and on until just before the bell that signaled the break before first period.
It began in a gloomy atmosphere. The atmosphere could be nothing but gloomy. Everyone’s irritation was so palpable you could practically feel it press against your skin. It didn’t take long for that same feeling of resentment to be redirected toward the person who was at the root of it all.
At this point, I don’t think I need to explain any further.
Friday
Night
THE NIGHT PASSED much like the one before.
Besides my own feelings, all was quiet.
Monday
Day
EVER SINCE I BECAME a monster, I had stopped sleeping.
Thus, the form that my body took was determined by the boundary between day and night. Typically, I returned to my human form between four and five A.M., around when the sun began to rise. Naturally, when I returned home in monster form, not a soul was awake in my house. There was a long stretch until breakfast and heading to school, so I had a fair amount of free time.
A number of times, I had decided that I might at least try to sleep, even if only for an hour or two, and gone to snuggle in beneath my futon. However, again and again as I lay there, not sleeping, the smell of coffee would eventually come wafting up from the first floor. Ultimately, I gave up on it.
Today, as usual, I sat alone in my room on my bed with too much time on my hands. If I turned on my lights and the glow seeped out into the hallway, my family might notice and say something, so I opened my curtains and sat there quietly in the dark. It had been overcast since Saturday, and the moon was hidden.
Previously, I would use the faint light from my cell phone screen to read manga by, but lately I had no interest in this. Instead, once I finished my homework, I would just sit there blankly, like a fixture, waiting for time to tick by on its own.
As long as I thought about nothing, this time was rather relaxing. Actually trying to keep my mind clear was rather less so. The gurus in movies had the power to totally clear their mind, but even they often said something like: true zen takes much training.
I lay sprawled on my bed, gazing upward. Though I could not sleep, as long as I stared up at the ceiling, it felt like my body was resting.
If I was going to be thinking about things anyway, they may as well be fun things. I put my hands on my head and started to imagine what I’d do the following night.
When night fell, I would probably head to the school and watch over Yano from the shadows, as always, and then I would be free to go pass the time elsewhere. So what would I do tonight? I imagined various destinations, all sorts of ways to spend the hours. I had visited a number of islands over the weekend. When I crossed over the waves, I found nature and people who I had likely never once crossed paths with before. There were plenty of animals beyond the usual cats and dogs, too, but they all fled as soon as they became aware of my presence.
Maybe it was time to try sightseeing in another country. I supposed that, though I couldn’t stay long, I could make it to some of the other countries of Asia, at the very least. And if that worked, then the whole world was my oyster.
As I pondered this, suddenly, a thought occurred to me.
Just how long did I intend to keep doing this? I’d been thinking as though these strange nights of mine would last forever, but in truth, I had no idea how long the nightly transformations might continue. Like I’d thought on the night I chased Motoda away, my nights might return to normal at any moment.
I prayed that it would continue for as long as possible. But what did “as long as possible” mean? Until the end of junior high? Until the end of high school? Until the end of university? Until I was an old man?
I couldn’t really pin it down in concrete terms. At the very least, it would be nice if it lasted until I had some freedom. Until I didn’t feel so stifled all the time. I’d love to keep my monstrous form at my disposal until then.
And still, just when would that be?
Perhaps it was like Noto said—you could live a bit more freely once you’re an adult.
If that was true, at what age did she mean? How many more years would it take?
How much longer would I have to keep watch to ensure that no one ruined my classmate’s nights? How much longer would Yano keep up this habit of sneaking into the school at night?
How long would this go on? I don’t simply mean protecting her midnight breaks. How much longer would Yano keep irritating us all by being unable to read the room? How long would Midorikawa refuse to communicate with others? How long would Motoda and Nakagawa take pleasure in harming others? How long would Iguchi be unable to have faith in the people around her?
Just how long would it all continue?
Perhaps it might end once we graduated from junior high. Perhaps we would all go off to different high schools, our class becoming only a thing of memory, and everyone’s treatment of one another—their personalities, their beliefs, their twisted hobbies—would all change.
But who could know for sure?
Once again, I felt anger build up inside of me at Noto for saying something so clueless.
Then I realized that this was no time for me to be worrying about other people. I needed to keep from slipping up in the classroom, to take care not to step out of line, to live my life with the utmost caution in the upcoming week. As I imagined this, I felt a cold sweat come over me.
It was fine, though. I still had the night.
As I comforted myself, shifting from side to side, the sounds of human life began to stir.
***
There was a light shower coming down on the way to school—a gloomy Monday, through and through. I walked with my umbrella out, cursing the weather that I hoped might suddenly clear up overnight.
I continued along the road, thinking over the day’s schedule. There would be an extended homeroom, then English, then math. Not an especially taxing day. The issue here was how much of the class’s tension from last Friday had carried over into this week. I had to be extra careful when gauging it. If I didn’t, I might find myself suddenly on the wrong side at any time. I might end up outside of the circle of unity before I knew it. Like day and night, my position could be reversed in an instant. And just as drastically as between human and monster, I would change.
I had to choose my actions wisely. Truthfully, even the sort of things I had been thinking about at dawn were starting to veer off course, so perhaps it was already too late.
I had to be careful.
“Acchi!”
As someone called me, I returned to my senses. I turned around to see a jovial Kasai.
“Ahaha, you’re totally soaked.”
Apparently, I had neglected to properly keep the r
ain off of me while I was spacing out. I brushed off my dampened left shoulder and corrected my stance—both bodily and mentally.
“Don’t usually see you walking, Acchi.”
“No? I always walk when it’s raining.”
“Huh. Guess so.”
Kasai lived comparatively close to the school and always walked in the mornings. After school, he often hitched a ride home on the back of someone’s bike. Obviously, such a thing was prohibited within the schoolgrounds, but as soon as he stepped outside the gates, such rules probably meant nothing to him.
Little of note happened as we walked along, avoiding puddles. The usual group who were chauffeured by their parents on rainy days passed us by, and eventually, we arrived safely at the school gates. “Safely,” I thought internally and then had to laugh at myself for thinking something so carefree.
It was here that the real trial would begin. To put it in a word, the path stretching forward from here was a minefield.
Kasai flew through the gates, not a care in the world, striding nimbly around every single land mine as he headed towards the entrance. As skilled as always, that one.
I could do no such thing. I didn’t have the slightest bit of the innate sense that allowed Kasai to live that way. I had to proceed step by cautious step through life, careful not to step on any of the mines, but making sure that that vigilance did not weigh me down. If not, I would end up exposed. Shunned.
But the tedium of this slow progress weighed on me. It was my own fault, a flaw in my disposition. And yet, there were times when I worried I might have this problem forever, just as I had at dawn.
I shook my head, as though shaking off the raindrops from my hair, shedding myself of these cowardly thoughts as I did.
I just had to keep living carefully. I just had to be sure to always choose the right things. It wasn’t that complicated.
As I politely folded my umbrella outside of the entrance, careful not to send the drops flying onto anyone’s uniform, I heard a cheerful voice.
