Wednesday - Night

Wednesday
Night

 

THAT NIGHT, after I transformed, I headed to the school with a heavy heart.

I entered the classroom via the same route as the night before, but Yano-san wasn’t there. I started to grow fairly irritated at her absence. She’d told me to come early, hadn’t she? I tried to tell myself that perhaps she might be hiding—but no, she really wasn’t there. Was she running late? Or was she not going to come at all? The latter would be just fine, I thought, adjusting myself to a comfortable sitting size and planting myself in the back of the classroom, when suddenly the front door flung forcefully open.

“You’re here…already.”

“You told me to come, didn’t you?” I complained, but Yano-san appeared to pay me no mind.

“Oh… I’ll go wash…my hands,” she said and once again exited the classroom. What was with this girl?

Shortly, she returned, rubbing her hands on her skirt to dry them. Now that I thought about it, why was she still in her uniform? I hadn’t bothered to consider it the night before.

“I was…just dig…ging…a grave.”

I hadn’t asked her, but Yano-san explained why she’d been absent all the same.

“A grave?”

“Yes, a frog…got stuck in…my shoe box and died…there. Poor thing.” Without prompting, she continued, “It was such…a little thing.”

She held her thumb and index finger a short distance apart, indicating its size.

“Do…you pre…fer tree frogs…or horned frogs?”

“…I like Keroppi.”

“Oh, I see.”

Her dispassionate attitude really rubbed me the wrong way. Yano-san dutifully took her own seat and then looked my way, her legs dangling.

“Eight…eyes. Six…legs. A lot of…tails.”

I began to feel like an anatomical model as she pointed out the features of my body one by one. I couldn’t tell you why exactly, but the whole thing made me feel kind of weird.

I thought that she might ask me why I assumed this form, so I had prepared my answer ahead of time: “I don’t know.” It was a perfectly honest answer. However, the question she did ask caught me completely off guard.

“Is that…your real form?”

“…Huh?”

“Why…do you…change into a…human?”

I had never even considered the possibility. She was totally off-base. I told her truthfully, “I transform when night falls.” I suddenly felt embarrassed, realizing how much the word transform made it sound like I thought I was some kind of superhero.

“I thought…for sure that you had…been born in that…form.”

“If that were true, I wouldn’t bother turning into a human and going to school.”

“I thought that…you might…change into a human because it’s…difficult to…live in a strange form like…that.”

It hurt to be called “strange.” Even imagining it vividly, it didn’t seem like a very difficult life. At the very least, no worse than Yano-san’s every day.

“Yano-san, why do you come to school?”

Behind my question was the unspoken barb: It doesn’t seem like a fun place for you to be at all. I had meant it in a retaliatory way, but her reply was indifferent.

“I don’t…have a break during…the day, so I…like to play during…midnight break.”

I had no idea what she meant. I seemed to recall her saying something about “midnight break” the night before as well.

“So what is ‘midnight break,’ anyway?”

“You want to…hear?”

“…I mean, not really.”

“Midnight break is… Well… Oh… That’s it… How do you think I…get in here?”

“Dunno.”

“You want to…know?”

She was such a pain in the butt. I already knew as much, of course, but talking to her one-on-one just reaffirmed the point. As I waited in frustrated silence, she began to answer a question that no one had asked.

“The security guard looks…the other…way. Only for one…hour every night. That is…midnight break.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

If that was true, it was information that thieves would be dying to know.

“It’s not a…lie. Obviously, it’s…only for students.”

And just what was obvious about that? That obviously wouldn’t be acceptable for students, either. Not that I, standing there, was in any position to talk.

“I knew the…one be…fore…too. There…were, um…three guards whose…names I heard but forgot, but…they were all…nice peo…ple.”

For them to have been “nice people” meant that not only had Yano-san met with the guards and talked to them, but those guards had neglected their duties and allowed her to remain here. If that story was true, I couldn’t imagine what would have persuaded them. The more I thought about it, the more obvious it seemed that such a thing could never have happened.

“You don’t…believe me…huh?” she asked.

“Believe that you come here because of some kind of midnight break?”

“Well, you were…here too yest…erday, Acchi…kun.”

“I came here to collect my math book. We had homework from it.”

“You’re so…serious.”

I doubt that Yano-san had intended to tease me, but hearing what my friends had said to me at lunchtime again now, not knowing whether it was her intention, I felt a pained flutter in my gut.

“I come…here to en…joy midnight…break.” It wasn’t the proper timing for it at all, but Yano-san grinned. “Since I…don’t get to…rest dur…ing the day at…school.”

How could she possibly be smiling about that? I wondered. When I didn’t say something like “I see,” or, “That’s not true,” she withdrew her smile and asked something strange.

“Acchi…kun, do…you have a…midday break?”

I didn’t answer either way. I simply stayed quiet. And then, I thought about my break that day. I had shoveled down a katsudon, played soccer, gotten hurt, and met with Noto-sensei. Now that I thought about it, I wasn’t actually sure that I had gotten a break.

“Well…then. Let’s leave the talk of…daytime there.”

Even though she was the one that started it.

“We still have…some time in mid…night break. What…shall we…do?”

“Uh, well, I was just thinking of going home.”

“How do…you normally pass the time…at night, Acchi…kun?”

“What do I do at night?”

“I don’t mean…that in a dirty…way.”

Seeing this idiot say such a weird thing with such a straight face, I let out a big sigh. I couldn’t help myself, hearing Yano-san say something so typical of a normal junior high-schooler.

“At night, I usually go to the beach, or the mountains,” I told her.

“So, you go…wherever you want… That’s nice.”

“I used to go around scaring people who were out walking, but I got tired of that.”

“Must be…hard to be a…ghost.”

“After that—oh, right—I tried going to a theme park. I was surprised that there were a lot of employees still working there after hours.”

“Really?! They…must have thought…you were some…kind of new at…traction, Acchi-kun.”

Yano-san listened to my tales, giving exaggerated reactions in between. I was a bit surprised; I’d never expected such interest from her. “What about you, Yano-san? What do you do at school?”

“I watch vi…deos on my phone and…read manga, even though those are…both against school…rules.”

The rules weren’t in effect right now. If they were, we would probably have been breaking a lot more than just those two.

“Why not just do it at home?”

“That’s not…the point.”

She looked at me straight on. Unthinkingly, I averted all eight of my eyes. I didn’t understand, but if Yano-san said that wasn’t the point, then I guess it wasn’t. It wasn’t that I understood her, but that she clearly had her own code. Of course, everyone has their own code, but hers was probably more extreme. A product of her current circumstances. Thus, it was probably pointless to try and understand.

“But come…to think of it, there is some…thing to what you…said, Acchi…kun.”

While it was surprising that anything I’d said to her had actually sunk in, I was grateful. At any rate, it looked like my quiet evenings might return to me.

“Let’s ex…plore the…school,” she said.

“…Yeah, no thanks.”

“But you were…saying I should…do some…thing that I can’t…do at…home.”

“No, I wasn’t. I was saying we should go home.”

“I will…go home. In another thirty min…utes.”

She took out her phone and checked the time. Somehow, it seemed peculiar to see her holding a phone. Did she ever actually contact anyone with that thing?

“Let’s go…then.”

Without even waiting for my answer, she stood up and moved to exit out the front door of the classroom. I thought for a moment—and while I was endlessly unenthused about this—I resigned myself to shrinking down to the size of a large dog and following her for now. I worried that if she was caught by the guard, she might tell him about me.

And truthfully, I can’t say that I wasn’t a little bit interested in what the school building was like at night.

After Yano-san left the classroom, I closed and locked the door, then slipped out into the hallway in the form of droplets. When I shifted back into monster form, the girl gave a small round of applause.

“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.