Chapter III

Chapter III

 

“Um, so if x is an imaginary number, then the range of y is…a complete mystery. Suemaaaa! Help meeee…!”

One day late in March, my friend Miyashita Touka and I were hunched over our study guides in a quiet corner of the freshly emptied cram school. There was nobody else around.

This year’s students had mostly taken their tests and stopped coming, and next year’s crowd wouldn’t start attending seriously until next week. It was like a little breathing room between tests.

“We’ve only been studying twenty minutes. It’s too soon to give up.”

“Yeah…but I have. My head’s already spinning from all those numbers. If I see another equation, I’m gonna hurl!”

“Not like you’re a drunk or anything…” I giggled. Touka was at best artless and at worst…a little on the rude side—but still, I thought she was refreshing. At least she always admitted when she didn’t understand something.

“Come on, help me here, Kazuko-chaaaan! How does this thing work?” With a labored expression, she glared fiercely at the study guide, poking at it with the tip of her pencil.

This year, we would finally be seniors. While we’d effectively been so since January, once April came around, we would officially make the switch from being laid-back high school students to stressed-out exam students.

I met Touka back during the winter course at this cram school, and that was where I learned that we went to the same high school. Previous to that point, we had somehow managed to completely avoid running into each other—and even now, we pretty much only saw each other at cram school.

Still, we hit it off really well. I’m a little warped because of some stuff in my past, but she came over to me despite all that.

“Well, this one…” I leaned over and started explaining the problem to her.

“Uh huh. Uh huh.” Touka sat up, and leaned her entire upper body onto the table. From the side, we must’ve looked like we were about to arm wrestle. The very thought amused me.

“Got that?”

“Umm… Well…kind of.”

“Then explain it back to me.”

“Eh heh. That… That might be pushing things,” Touka replied, looking extremely embarrassed.

“Tut tut. You’ve got to understand this properly,” I said.

Touka giggled. “I’m sorry. It’s like I’m turning you into my own private tutor. And you’re not even getting paid. Still, if I didn’t make smart friends, I’d be totally screwed…”

“You aren’t gonna sweet talk your way out of this.”

“Ah, you noticed.”

“Yep. So, how do we use that equation to solve this problem?”

“Um… Pass!”

“You can’t do that! We’re not playing shogi here…”

Studying for exams was never easy, but at moments like this, it could be a lot of fun.

While Touka was grappling with the problem, I glanced away, turning my gaze to a painting that was hung on the wall.

It was a strange picture of a large number of people holding hands, sprawled on the ground of a wasteland. The style was pretty rough, with a lot of pencil traces left in it. To me, it felt awfully dated for such a hip cram school.

It was an abstract oil painting. The title was “Snow Falling in April.” The painter was Asukai Jin, who was one of the teachers that worked here. This painting had won some kind of an award and was probably just hanging on the wall to make the school look more important than it was.

Because of certain events in my past, I got pretty interested in criminal psychology and the unconscious psyche. This fascination has led me to read all I could find on those subjects, so it was out of habit that I started analyzing the painting in-depth.

(Hmm… The sky is cloudy…it lacks width. Must be a very closed off painting. But there’s something cheerful about it. Or maybe just shallow. The wasteland clearly represents a feeling of emptiness, so why is it I get a hint of deep conviction behind it?)

And with all those people, why weren’t any of them looking at each other?

“It’s a weird painting,” Touka said, following my gaze.

“Yeah…something about it I just don’t like,” I said in a snobbish Oh, I hate this painting sort of way. It might be a good painting, but I just couldn’t bring myself to like it.

“Not your type, Suema?”

“No, I think…the guy that painted this hates people like me.”

Or maybe…yeah, he was the same as me. It was a natural aversion.

“That’s beyond me,” Touka laughed.

“Too strange?”

“Nah, it’s cool. Go with your gut.”

In the past, more than a few people have told me that I was strange. But Touka always accepted what I said without question. You wouldn’t believe how happy that always made me feel.

“I bet he likes you, though,” I said.

“Is that a confession?” she joked, and we cackled.

A voice came from behind us, “Um, are you Suema Kazuko-san? From Shinyo Academy…?”

We turned, and there was a girl who looked about our age.

“Yes, and…you are?”

“I’m Kinukawa Kotoe. I… I go to Shinyo Academy, as well. I wanted to talk to you about something, Suema-san…” She opened and closed her hands. Clearly this was really important to her.

“What about?”

“Well…you know a lot, don’t you? About, you know… And Kinoshita-san said you…”

“Kinoshita? You mean Kyoko?”

Kinoshita Kyoko was a former classmate of mine.

“Yes! She said Suema could keep a secret, and was very nice, and was very smart… So she said you could help me out!” Kotoe said earnestly, waving her hands around like she was worried this wasn’t enough.

“Um, well…” I hadn’t done that much for Kyoko, really. Just listened to her problems and told her what I thought. The person who had helped her out when she was really in trouble was another girl.

“Please, Suema-san. Help Jin-niisan!”

“H-help who? Touka, do you have… Touka?” I turned around to find Touka completely gone.

Somehow, she’d gotten up without my ever noticing, and was standing right next to this Kotoe girl.

“Sit down, Kinukawa-san,” she said, and handed her a cup of coffee from the vending machine.

When the heck had she bought that?

“Th-thanks…” Kotoe bobbed her head, and took a sip of coffee from the paper cup.

“Feel better now?” Touka asked, sounding oddly masculine.

“Y-yes, thanks.” Kotoe bobbed her head again.

“You need her help?” She pointed at me with her chin.

“Y-yes. And I am sorry, but, um…”

“I understand. I’m in the way. I’ll leave you two alone.”

“W-wait! Touka…!”

“Kinukawa-san needs your help. You should at least listen to her.” She sounded like she was on stage. Touka gave me a strange, asymmetrical expression, somewhere between innocent and mocking. I got the strangest feeling that I wasn’t looking at Touka—heck, that who I was looking at wasn’t even a girl. It was very unsettling. “Adios,” she said, and was gone.

“…………”

I stared after her like I'd seen a fox.

Kotoe pressed forward, “So…”

“Mm? Oh, right… Okay. If you're friends with Kyoko, then, sure, I'll hear you out,” I sighed.

 

***

 

“—Asukai Jin?” I said, eyes wide. This was the first name out of Kotoe’s mouth. “The painting guy?”

“Yeah. He teaches here. You know him?”

“Just the name. They say he’s a pretty good counselor.”

I’d heard the rumors. You went to him for guidance counseling, he’d give you very specific advice. Neither Touka nor I had ever met with the guy. A fine arts course teacher didn’t really have much contact with those of us in the national science course.

“I’ve…heard that too. I don’t really know much.”

“And you are his…niece? Or cousin?” I wasn’t sure which. The gist of her introduction had escaped me.

“Our parents didn’t really…get along. So Jin-niisan and I haven’t been friendly for all that long, but…the first time we ever really spoke to each other was at his father’s funeral. But I knew pretty much instantly that he was this really amazing guy.”

“Huh…” Her story just wasn’t coming together. I had to try to make sense of it somehow. “So, why does he need help?”

“Suema-san, you know a lot, right? If somebody…changes…then, I dunno…it’s, like, you know, that sort of thing.”

“That sort of thing?” I asked, perplexed. I found myself looking at the painting again.

There were a number of goats among the crowd. They were munching on the rose bushes that grew out of the wasteland. Black goats.

From what I know, roses are sturdy enough, and they could pretty much bloom anywhere—though, the quality of the flowers would probably suffer. So, seeing thorny rose bushes wasn’t all that surprising. But the black goats…those were usually an allegory for the devil.

They were eating the roses—flowers, leaves, thorns and all.

The picture itself didn’t give off all that unpleasant of a feeling…it was pastoral and peaceful. But something about it bugged me…

“Has he suddenly become stand-offish?” I asked.

“Not that…it’s like he doesn’t worry anymore.”

“He used to?”

“Yeah, all the time,” she said forcefully. “Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this but…his father, which was like his only family… He died in kind of a strange way…”

“How?”

“Well…”

“If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. Lately, I’ve been trying to avoid those kinds of stories, anyway,” I said, honestly.

Kotoe looked relieved. “I knew I could count on you. You seem so with it.”

“Never mind that. Why do you think he’s stopped worrying?” I never did like getting compliments. Especially about this type of subject. It felt like those times when somebody would tell you how cute you used to be when you were a child. It’s irritating because these people are all so lost in the past.

“Mm…” Kotoe told me that Asukai Jin had been staying out all night recently. It seemed like she was monitoring his behavior pretty closely.

“And when he does come home in the morning, he just claims to have spent the night at a friend’s house?” I said. “No other details at all? I mean, uh, couldn’t that just be what young guys do?”

“It doesn’t seem like he’s got a girlfriend! When he comes home, there’s always…stains on his clothes. Dark red stains. They might be…”

I gulped a little at this one. “You mean, blood?”

“But he’s never injured! And his clothes never look torn, so…”

“He goes out every night and comes back covered in other people’s blood? That sounds like, I dunno… Like a vampire or something.” I shivered.

“But if I talk to the police, Jin-niisan might get arrested, and my father’s always looking for an excuse to just kick him out. Please, Suema-san, I… I don’t know what to do anymore!” Kotoe buried her face in her hands.

This was starting to sound a little dangerous.

I got this feeling sometimes—like a pounding in my chest, like an itch racing all over my body—and I had to remind myself, Come on, Kazuko! You’re an exam student! You don’t have time to go poking your head where it doesn’t belong!

But…one time, I’d almost been killed by something I’d never seen, and I didn’t find out about it until it was all over. And because of that experience, I have this weird compulsion of mine.

A compulsion to face off against darkness.

Before I could stop myself, I said, “Um, Kinukawa-san, why don’t you just leave everything up to me, okay?”

 

***

 

And so I found myself alone just outside the cram school’s guidance counseling office, which was essentially Asukai Jin’s personal domain. I’d sent Kotoe home minutes before. I knew that if she’d tagged along, she’d just have gotten in the way.

There was not a soul left in the building at this time of day.

I tried the door and it opened. It wasn’t locked or anything.

(Pretty careless…or is there simply nothing in here worth stealing?)

I went in. I’d been a student here for three months, but this was my first time ever setting foot inside this office. It was tiny and dark.

It’s like one of those police interrogation rooms from TV, I thought.

There was a desk next to the teacher’s chair, and a computer on top of that. I almost turned it on, but thought better of it. It was probably password protected, anyway.

(There must be something…a clue as to why he’s changed…)

I poked around his desk. But there was nothing there but cram school pamphlets and various papers with notes scrawled on them about students’ scores for different schools—nothing to do with Asukai Jin himself.

“Hmm…”

Had I underestimated the situation? Was this too simple a way of gathering information?

“Agh…!” I said, flopping down in his chair. I slouched down a bit, but my skirt started rising up, forcing me to twist my body a bit…

And then I saw it.

There was something white under the desk, crammed all the way towards the back. Like a scrap of paper crumpled into a ball.

“Mm?”

It caught my interest, so I dove down to fish it out.

I flattened it out. It was a page of sketchbook paper with a drawing of a girl penciled on it. The artist’s initial guidelines could still be seen below the face. Clearly a failed sketch.

“…………?”

There was something creepy about it.

I felt like I’d seen it before.

Like I knew this girl.

(Who is she?)

As I sat there thinking, I heard footsteps from the hall.

(Uh-oh…!)

I panicked. There were no other rooms in this hallway, and the only reason anyone would come down here was to come directly to this very counseling office.

(What should I do? Um…um…)

In hindsight, I should have just left the room casually. After all, the door wasn’t locked, and I was a student here, so it wouldn’t have been at all strange if I had just simply come by for some counseling. I could always say I’d come in for a session, but nobody was there.

But since I was feeling a little guilty, I just stayed and hid under the desk. It was a fairly large desk—it filled about a sixth of the room—with enough room for a large computer and plenty of desk space left for paperwork.

I hunched down in the shadow of the drawer, and breathed as quietly as I could. I was completely hidden.

The footsteps stopped in front of the door, and several people came in.

“—But Asukai-sensei, we really are friends. We don’t hate each other at all, right, Yuriko?”

“Y-yeah…”

Sounded like two girls and a man. The man must be Asukai Jin.

“Mm, maybe a bad choice of words. See, almost all humans hate each other. I just meant that you were no exception. I’m not making it out like you two are a special case or anything.”

Asukai Jin’s voice was very calm, a clear, beautiful tenor.

“But, that’s so…”

“………”

One of the girls was pretty outgoing, while the other one mostly did whatever she was told, it seemed.

“Shall we get started…? What is it?”

“Um…er, are we really going to…?” The stronger girl asked, sounding a little nervous.

“Everyone else is. I’m not forcing anybody, if you don’t want to join them.”

“No, we’ll do it!” The follower said.

“Yu-Yuriko?”

“Let’s do it, Misaki. I don’t want to be just an exam student anymore…!”

“Yuriko…”

“What do you think?” Asukai asked. “This is your choice to make. I can’t make it for you.”

“Tell me exactly what to do. That way I can…”

(What the hell are they talking about?)

Completely forgetting that I was supposed to be hiding, I started to get annoyed by the incomprehensible conversation.

Asukai continued, detached. “I can’t. The Imaginator doesn’t force anyone. It’s a simple choice. You can influence events, or you can be swept along by them.”

Imaginator?

A word I knew suddenly popped out, surprising me. That name was from the work of a writer I had been a big fan of. I wasn’t sure if it had the same meaning here or not, though.

Forgetting the danger, I poked my face out a little, peering up into the room through the gap between the chair and the drawer.

The girl called Misaki was biting her fingernails.

“Asukai-sensei, can you do me alone?” Yuriko asked. The two girls had similar hair styles and faces.

“Hmm?” Asukai Jin’s face was hidden from my vantage point. All I could make out were his white clothes.

He was moving slowly towards me. I stiffened, but he didn’t pull the chair out. Instead, he sat down on top of the desk.

Inches from my face, he started swinging his long, slim legs. I’d never seen a man’s legs this close up before. I could feel my cheeks burning, for no reason.

“Then you’d need a different partner, someone other than Kitahara-kun.”

“I’ll find one!”

“Wait, Yuriko!” Misaki yelped. I couldn’t figure out why she was so upset.

What were they up to? What were they talking about doing?

“Like I have a choice! You don’t want to?!”

“But I…”

“Get out!”

“Eh?”

“You have no right to be in the same room as Asukai-sensei!” Yuriko yelled harshly. It was no surprise he had said that they hated each other.

“N-no! That’s just…okay, I’ll do it! Please Sensei, I’ll do it!” she said, turning her gaze above me, presumably looking Asukai Jin in the eye.

“All right. I respect your decision.” Asukai Jin stood up.

Suddenly, he reached out his hands to the girl’s chests, and started undoing the buttons, stripping their shirts right off.

(What?! Whaaaat?!!)

I panicked. I’d been worried it was something like this, but for it to be this sexual…

But the bare-chested girls turned not towards Asukai Jin, but towards each other.

They closed the gap between them, and placed their hands on each other’s shoulders.

“Stop there…now, don’t move,” Asukai directed, just as their breasts were about to touch.

He turned his back towards me, and reached out towards their breasts.

Their transformation was dramatic.

Simultaneously, the girls flung their heads back, mouths gaping wide like some sort of animal, the air quivering at their soundless howls. The hands resting on each other’s shoulders clenched up tightly, nails digging into the skin, drawing blood.

I swear this was not the kind of transformation that pain or pleasure can cause. It was like they had temporarily ceased to be human, like—like something was being torn away from them.

Asukai Jin quietly stood before them, calmly doing something I couldn’t see.

Every time his shoulders shifted, the girls shook, bodies convulsing.

Like he was tinkering with them. But near as I could tell, he never touched their bodies directly. What on Earth was he doing?

“————!!!”

The girls gave one last great spasm, and Asukai Jin moved away.

Worn out, the girls leaned against each other. They were covered in sweat.

They were panting…but their faces looked human again, reason restored.

The girls looked at each other…and giggled.

Their expressions were so terrifying that I felt like something had its hand around my heart.

They looked exactly the same.

The features of their faces had not changed. In fact, their expressions were so identical that the resemblance between them that I had noticed before had grown far less pronounced.

But that expression—the emotion the muscles in their faces were shifting in reaction to—I couldn’t help but feel like it was identical.

“How does it feel to be true friends?” Asukai Jin asked.

“Nice…”

“Completely wonderful.”

Smiling, the girls stood up, and began dressing each other.

“That’s good,” Asukai Jin replied, and I swear I heard a flicker of a smile in his voice.

“Asukai-sensei, we’re no longer afraid of anything.”

“We feel like we could change the world for you right now.”

They came over to him.

They took his hands, and kissed the back of Asukai Jin’s hands like a pair of princesses swearing their allegiance to some heroic knight of legend.

I was shivering violently. It took all my self-restraint just to keep my teeth from chattering. I couldn’t move for a full three minutes after they left the room.

(Wh-what was that? What just happened here…?)

Stiffly, I crawled out from under the desk and spread out the drawing once again as my hands trembled.

I remembered her now. The girl in the sketch had gone to my high school.

Her name was Minahoshi Suiko.

But she had killed herself. She was long gone.

The sketch was clearly Asukai Jin’s, though… So how in the world was he connected to her suicide?