Thursday - Night

Thursday
Night

 

THOUGH I KNEW it wouldn’t do any good, I was livid with Yano-san. If she hadn’t been doing that weird juggling thing in the hall, Iguchi-san wouldn’t have been berated so cruelly. However, the reason that I headed to school again that evening wasn’t just to criticize her for that, no. There was something else on my mind: the baseball club. On the off chance she really had broken that window, then that act was far more grave. It was downright criminal.

When I arrived at the school and slipped through the back door of the classroom, Yano was digging through the trash can near the blackboard for something. Unsure of how to call out to a girl who was elbow-deep in garbage, I decided to wait until she noticed me.

When Yano, clutching something thin in both hands with an Aha, finally noticed the monster at the back of the classroom, she cried out with a vapid “Wuh-hoh!”

“Yo,” I greeted.

“…Look…at that. You…came,” she said, flapping the object, which seemed to be some notepads, around in her hand.

I had thought at the very least that I would be met with that usual satisfied grin of hers, but she couldn’t seem to care less about the fact that I was here. It left me feeling a little down. Not that I was looking forward to her smile, or anything.

Just as I thought, Enough, I’m going home, and began to disassemble my form, she asked me a strange question. “Acchi…kun, are you a Fire…ball type? Or a Frizz type?”

Fireball? Frizz? Was she talking about games?

“You mean for fire magic?” I said. “I prefer Incendio.”

“What’s…that?”

“From Harry Potter.”

“Wow… Then can…you do…that?”

“Huh?”

“Can…you breathe…fire?”

“Sure can’t.”

She looked disheartened at my response. What was that face about?

I was the one who ought to be put out, I thought. But when I considered Yano-san’s disappointment, I recalled the rumors that Kasai had mentioned, about a kaiju appearing. Since she knew that the rumors were about me, she must have figured that if I was a kaiju, I could probably breathe fire or something.

“What d’you need fire for anyway?”

“To burn…this. Any…way, let’s go…to the…roof.”

As usual, she exited the classroom without waiting for my reply. Left without much choice, I locked the door in my usual way and followed behind. I was honestly a bit impressed by how conscientious I was every time.

By the time I made it out to the hallway, I found that my free-spirited classmate had already started towards the stairs, not waiting for me. My self-admiration turned to exasperation. The fact that I followed her was not conscientiousness but softhearted foolishness.

I prepared a Shadow clone just in case, but we arrived at the roof without incident.

As I unlocked the rooftop door and we stepped outside, I was struck by a crisp breeze. Though I had been here the night before last, I had forgotten how good a feeling it was being on the rooftop in the middle of the night. One got the feeling that the sky might just swallow us whole.

“People shouldn’t…smoke,” said Yano-san, pointing at a cigarette butt that was rolling by.

“Well, I mean…” I paused. “It’s no big deal, as long as they don’t get caught.”

“But it’s…bad for the…body.”

She was right, of course, but it was weird to hear something so sensible and mature out of Yano-san. The ones who came up here to smoke were probably the ones who kicked off the bullying against you, I wanted to say. But there was no need for it, so I kept my mouth shut.

“Now…then, show…me some…fire.”

“Uh, no, I just told you that I can’t.”

“Have you…tried?”

Now that she asked me, not only had I not tried it, I hadn’t even considered it.

“Just try…it…one…time. Oh, ac…tually, I’ve never tried it…either, so I’ll try…too. Go!”

She placed the two notebooks on the ground and held out her hands like she was trying to gather up energy. Her arms trembling, she muttered again and again: “Go…! Go…!” For some reason, partway through, she appeared to stop breathing. I watched her for a while, thinking about how stupid she looked. At length, she seemed to accept her own powerlessness and sat down, grumbling. “Guess I…can’t.” Her shoulders heaved, as though she had been putting in some real, serious effort.

“Okay… Now it’s your…turn, Acchi…kun.”

“Huh?”

I flicked my eyes away from her hopeful gaze and observed the two notebooks. Both had been scribbled all over in magic marker. What was written all over them were not childish little insults like “Big Dummy” or “Stupid Idiot.” This stuff was nasty. Their covers were scrawled with enough vitriol to deeply wound anyone who read it, not just Yano-san.

“If fire does come out, can I burn those?”

“That’s…fine. I’ve al…ready used them…all up, so I’d put…them a…side.”

Even if she hadn’t, would she really ever use them again, the way they were now?

“I threw…them away, but…I thought it… might be better to…burn them.”

Ah, so it wasn’t that someone else had thrown them in the trash; she’d done it herself.

I wondered how long they’d been defaced. I highly doubted that whoever did it had the courtesy to choose a notebook she’d already filled.

While I stood there thinking, there came a demand of “Hurry…up!”

Yano-san had moved some distance away from the notebooks, clearly believing in my power. I had my doubts, but those notebooks looked so pitiful. If I could honor them with a proper cremation, I thought that I might as well try.

If I could make a Shadow, then why not fire, too? If I said I wasn’t a little optimistic about my chances, I’d be lying.

I visualized it, the same way I had the night before.

In order to breathe fire, I needed to store up enough energy to make my whole body vibrate. Then, I had to make the black drops inside of my monstrous form crank like an engine and heat up. Then, the droplets had to ignite, gathering up into a big flame, which I would spit from my mouth.

Suddenly, I was assailed by a bright light shining in front of me.

“Gaaah! It’s…hot!”

The flame that flew from my mouth was exactly as large as I had imagined. So large it came dangerously close to catching Yano-san’s uniform. Quickly, I breathed in, picturing a sudden end to the heat, a re-absorption of the burning droplets. As I did, the flames returned to my body, stopping just short of injuring her.

The moonlight-tempered darkness returned to the rooftop, and there in the midst of it sat two notebooks burned to a crisp.

The two of us looked at each other.

“Whoa! Wow! That’s a…mazing!”

Yano-san stared fixedly at me as she walked from the edge of the rooftop back to where I stood. Inadvertently, I stared right back with all eight of my eyes.

“No way,” I said.

I had hoped, at least a little bit, that I might be able to do something like that, but I never believed that I actually could.

I totally was a kaiju.

If I wasn’t careful with this fire-breathing, I could set the whole town ablaze, just like a real kaiju.

I could still feel the flame kindling within my body. Excitement burned with its own fire deep inside my heart.

“That’s so…cool, Acchi-kun. How’d you…do it?”

How had I done it?

“I just, like, imagined how I thought it would feel, and then I did it,” I tried to explain as Yano-san timidly approached. She stared at me with the wide-eyed look of someone facing down a monster.

“With the power of…imagination, any…thing is…possible,” she said.

“Power of imagination?”

Was there really such a thing? A real power, like a wizard or sorcerer’s?

Yano-san gave the burnt notebooks a powerful kick, and they scattered into black flecks. Apparently, I had burned them completely to ash.

After scattering the ashes to her satisfaction, Yano-san took a step back and once again stared at me. I wondered if she might be afraid, knowing that I was a genuine fire-breathing monster, but that was probably wrong. I realized then that the color in her eyes was a completely different hue from what they’d shown before. It was the color of envy.

She really was a strange girl. Who would want to be a monster? I doubted that I could really do anything I wanted, like she’d implied, anyway. But then…what if I could…?

As I pictured it, a whisper of fear ran through me.

But just what was I so afraid of…?

“…Say… Acchi…kun.”

I was afraid that she might come to say something like, If you can do anything, then rescue me.

So I interrupted her. “That reminds me, Yano-san.” It was time to finally finish the business that had brought me here in the first place. “Do you know about what happened with the baseball club?”

“Hm? What…happened?”

“Seems like someone smashed their clubroom window.”

“Right, some…one was saying…that.”

“Yeah, so…”

I had only spoken two words when Yano-san suddenly began to cackle. She kicked at the ashes again, her feet loudly thumping on the ground. Just when I was starting to wonder if she’d finally lost it, she pointed at me.

“And you thought…I was…the culprit.”

Though she was in fact right on the mark, I was startled that she could guess it.

“Uh, well, yeah. I thought, maybe.”

“I’d never…do something like…that.”

For the first time that night, she showed me that smug grin.

“If I got…revenge for my…self, I would be…just like…them.”

Just like them—by which she meant she would be just the same as Motoda. Which further meant that, as far as Yano-san was concerned, that was a bad thing.

“If not for yourself, then what about for the frog?”

“I…wouldn’t. I have no…idea what that…little one would have…wanted. I wouldn’t… do something so…stupid.”

I was lost for words. For so many reasons, but mostly because I was stunned that Yano-san would ever think that carefully about her own actions. If that were the case, why didn’t she always exercise a bit more self-awareness, I wondered. And as I wondered, I realized that the insults written on those notebooks might be a little bit off the mark.

Not that I had the slightest intention of validating Yano-san, of course.

“Ah, seems like…you still…doubt me.”

“I mean, uh, not really.”

“Well then.”

Yano-san grinned again, not smugly, but as though she were plotting something.

“Let’s…catch the true…cul…prit.”

“Hm?”

The true culprit? That was the first time I’d ever heard a phrase like that outside of a detective manga.

“Acchi…kun, are…you a…Detective Conan fan or a…Kindaichi…fan?”

“I prefer Neuro. Anyway, it’s not like I doubt you. There’s no point in searching for the true culprit just to prove me wrong.”

“I like…Yako-chan.”

“Oh, cool.”

So she was a Jump reader. I found myself getting more and more surprised every time I found out this strange girl shared something in common with me.

“Why don’t you…want to look?”

“I mean, it was obviously just a random idiot throwing a rock or something.”

“Oh, I see, so…the broken window was…on the road…side.”

Once she said that, I realized what it was that I had just assumed, not even thinking. The broken window was on the field side. That I needed Yano-san to point that out, even though I had been the one to see the broken window, was embarrassing.

“Anyway, let’s…go and see the…scene of the…crime.”

I didn’t see any reason for Yano-san to be so enthusiastic, but when I heaved a heavy, obvious sigh, she merely replied, “It’s im…portant to breathe…deeply.” Oh, forget it.

“Won’t you get caught if you go out on the field?”

“It’s mid…night break, so it’s…fine. I’ll stick along the…wall, which should block views from…the outside, too. Acchi…kun, you can…hide yourself in the…shadows.”

“Wait, I’m coming, too?”

“Oh yeah, I…hear it’s gonna… rain to…morrow.”

As usual, she wasn’t listening to a word I said.

If she was going to ignore me, then I really should have just ignored her, too. I got the feeling that someone somewhere was condemning me as a softie.

If it rained tomorrow, that meant that Yano-san might not make her nighttime visit to school. I prepared a Shadow and then headed down the stairs back off the roof. Today would be the last day. I could do her at least this much of a favor for now.

Along the way I became aware of the sound of Yano-san’s indoor shoes tapping on the floor. I warned her about it, and she smiled dimly. She removed the shoes, stuck them on her hands, and then proceeded to clap them together, which meant I had to warn her again. Was she a little kid?

As I considered where the safest exit from the building might be, a question occurred to me. “How do you usually get into the building?”

“I come…through the front…entrance from the…main gate.”

“I don’t mean during school hours.”

Seemingly uninterested in my clarification, Yano-san walked right on ahead of me. I quickly sent the Shadow down first to make sure that no one was around. Thankfully, we were able to make it to the first floor without running into any guards. The guard room was located in another structure that adjoined to the main hallway. Next to the front door that the teachers used as an entrance was the guest reception area. Now that I thought about it, the student entrance didn’t face out onto any conspicuous places like the fields or the courtyard, so that might be fine.

As I pondered, we arrived at the entrance. Of course, though I was perfectly fine barefoot, Yano-san would need to switch from her indoor shoes to her sneakers.

I waited nervously as she rummaged boldly and noisily through the shoe box. She switched her shoes on the spot and proceeded straight for the closed door. Wouldn’t the door be locked? I wondered, but neither Yano-san nor the door itself cared about my concerns.

By which I mean, the door was open.

Why?

“Let’s…go.”

“Why was that unlocked?” I asked.

“Be…cause it was un…locked when I…got here.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

Ignoring my retort, that idiot plodded out towards the field. When I pointed out that no matter how far we were from the guard room, there was still a chance that they might spot us out on patrol, Yano-san only replied, “Keep it…down.” She crouched low and stuck close to the side of the building. I wondered whether I shouldn’t just stop her mouth up with black specks but stopped myself before I could try. It would turn into a pretty dreadful ordeal if I accidentally suffocated her, and since I hadn’t yet made physical contact with any human in my monstrous form, I had no idea what might happen. I couldn’t even begin to think about how I’d cope if the black droplets swallowed her up the same way they did me.

We crept low along the building walls, passing behind the gym until we approached the cluster of clubrooms. Poised between the trees that grew up against the fence, we ascertained the location of the broken window. Obviously, it hadn’t magicked itself back to normal; the carboard sheet was still fixed in place.

“It’s hard to…see it from…here.”

“Even if we got closer, it’s not like we could fix it or anything. Let’s go back.”

“A perpe…trator always re…turns to the scene of…the crime.”

“Even if they did come back, I don’t think they’d come back right now.”

“You like Harry…Potter, right?” She leaned back against the fence, clearly confident in her words. I resisted the urge to rip my own hair out (so to speak) and sat down on the ground, resigned.

“We’ve got them at home, anyway. My parents bought them because they were popular.”

“Oh…so you’re more…of a DVD type than…a movie theater type?”

“…I prefer the books.”

Even though that was true, and even though there was no reason anyone ought to be embarrassed by it, for some reason, I still hesitated to admit it. I’d never anticipated anyone in class asking me what kind of books I read, so I hadn’t taken the time to prepare a sufficiently appropriate answer.

Yano-san looked shocked. “Wow!”

That girl was way too loud. “Come on, quiet down…”

“I can’t…believe you’ve read…books that big. Are you…a big reader, then?”

“I mean, maybe a little. Not that much.”

Of course I had read all of Harry Potter. The books weren’t hard reads, and they were fun, too. Knowing how worked up she got when it came to talking about her interests, though, I didn’t elaborate.

“I can’t imagine being…interested in…books.”

Just as I was thinking that the girl in front of me did not seem like much of a reader, she confessed to it herself. Wait, confessed was probably a little too in line with Yano-san’s detective game. It was more like an admission. One that she had made of her own free will.

“I wonder if I should…watch the movies. Books are…all full of letters, and my eyes…get tired. And they…take so long. I…know that there are…people who can get…through a book just like…that, but manga are way…quicker to read. And more…fun.”

“There are novels that are fun, too.”

Crap, I thought. I hadn’t meant to get into a debate with her, but she just shook her head, saying, “I…doubt that.”

I was shocked at myself. For the first time in these last three nights, I was glad that she was the only one here. The late hour, being a monster…it must have all been getting to me. Here, now, I had asserted my own interests. During the day, I never would have made that stand. I just would have gone with the flow.

“I feel…like you…would just get…stupider…if all…you read…is letters.”

Yano-san’s words floated out into the air as though they were a song.

I couldn’t help but feel those words were directed towards a specific one of our classmates. Come to think of it, Yano-san’s midnight breaks or whatever, all this sneaking into the school, it was directly related to that one girl who did nothing but read books.

Midorikawa Futaba.

What did Yano-san think of her ever since that incident? I can’t say that I wasn’t curious to know, but I had no interest in sticking my nose into problems that I couldn’t solve, so I didn’t ask.

We remained there until the alarm rang on Yano-san’s phone, but the true culprit never showed. I told her that I would search for them later, so she could shut off the alarm, but she let it ring all the way through.

“If you get caught, I know nothing about this, seriously.”

“You’re so per…sistent. There are…guards here, so…it’s fine.”

But that wasn’t fine. Also, I had no idea if there were any teachers who ever came in after dark, but if any of them caught her, the consequences would be far more dire than just being caught by a guard. I had kept silent about the possibility at first, since I knew that no matter how much I warned her, she wouldn’t listen…but if she wanted me to come with her, then…

“Worry…wart. You’re such a…worrywart.”

I was annoyed at the teasing. And so, as I faced the entrance, sticking to the wall, I decided to finally lodge one complaint that I had been putting aside.

“Yano-san, why are you always so thoughtless? Why’d you go and yank that eraser from Iguchi-san like that, after she picked it up for you so nicely?”

“Don’t talk about…the daytime,” she said dismissively, not looking at me. Gazing at her from behind just then, I felt the droplets of my body grow restless, like hackles standing on end.

Any longer and that restless motion would have become something unspeakable.

“I’m…sure that…”

It was only because Yano-san began to speak that the trembling of my body settled. I was a monster who listened closely to what others had to say.

“…Igu-chan is a…nice girl.”

Really? Was that all she had to say? Obviously, I knew that already.

We shared no more words until we reached the school gates, which for some reason were open like normal.

I gave her the simplest word of parting and left the school behind. As I leapt up into the sky and headed for the sea, I saw Yano-san below me, climbing atop a bicycle near the gates. I worried a little about whether she would be okay all alone at this time of night, but she was grinning as always, so I let her be.

My anger at her had drifted somewhere far away without me ever noticing.