Chapter 1 The Haunted Building
No one believed it at first. Not even a little.
It began right after the beginning of the new school year, and no one knew who started it. Rumors are like that.
Everyone knew the story, down to the last detail. They could even tell you whom they had heard it from, and when. Still, even if you traced the chain of he-said, she-said a hundred people back, you wouldn’t find the original source.
“Hey, you know that big building next to the Mihashi Shrine, over in Kobune? They say it’s haunted!”
That’s how Wataru Mitani heard it, from Katchan, the son of the bartenders over at Bar Komura. Katchan’s real name was Katsumi, a girl’s nickname. The story went that his parents—expecting a girl—had decided upon the name way ahead of time. The obstetrician told his mother that the ultrasound showed it was “definitely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, a girl.” But on that ninth of April, eleven years ago, a healthy baby boy arrived one week ahead of schedule, his wailing cry so distinctive that soon everyone, even the people in the nursing ward across the hall, came to recognize it instantly. It was a funny cry. He sounded hoarse and gravelly.
“My old man says I must’ve been smoking inside my mom’s tummy.”
Wataru didn’t find it hard to imagine at all. He remembered, with a laugh, the year they entered Joto No. 1 Elementary School together. They walked to class one December morning, both donning their school-issue yellow hats. As soon as they got into the room, Katsumi had run over to the sputtering old kerosene heater and stood there, shivering, even when the teacher came in the room. When he was told to take his seat, he replied as casually as could be, “Oh, don’t mind me. Just get on with it, chop chop, chop chop.” Wataru had somehow managed to keep from bursting out laughing until he got home, where his parents thought he was making the whole story up. The episode had since become legend, and, even now that they were all in fifth grade, the teachers would say things like, “Doing your homework, Komura? Chop chop!”
Katsumi’s voice had been hoarse as ever when he told Wataru the rumor about the haunting in hushed, excited tones. His voice broke when he said the word “ghost.”
“You’ve always been into ghost stories, Katchan.”
“It’s not just me, everyone’s talking about it! Some guy was walking by there the other night and he saw it! And when he tried to run, it chased him!”
“So, what kind of ghost is it?”
“They say it’s an old man.”
Oh, how unusual. “What’s he dressed like?”
Katchan scratched his nose, and his raspy voice became even lower. “He wears a cloak. A black cloak, covering everything, like this,” he said, swinging his hands up as if to throw a hood over his head.
“So how could they see his face? How would they know he’s an old man?”
Katsumi’s face wrinkled. Wataru would sometimes run into Katsumi and his uncle at the market or at the station, and his uncle would always greet him with a bright “How are you,” his face wrinkling in exactly the same way.
“I don’t know, you can just tell. That’s the way ghosts are,” Katchan grinned. “Why do you take everything so seriously? I swear, your dad must’ve put a steel trap in your head by mistake.”
Wataru’s father, Akira, worked at a steel company, which wasn’t to say he actually spent time on a factory floor forging steel bars or anything like that. The company ran all sorts of ventures—from foundries to shipyards—continuously expanding as demand for its core product dwindled over the years. At thirty-eight years old, Akira had spent only a few weeks in the company’s steel factory, right after being hired. Since then he had worked in R&D, then the PR department, and now he was stationed at a subsidiary company specializing in vacation resort development. Still, Katchan had insisted on calling him Wataru’s “steel-workin’ dad” since kindergarten and had never tired of the joke.
But Wataru was stubborn. He could never just accept something without a clear logical rationale behind it. It was a trait he picked up from his father.
His grandmother on his father’s side had first pointed it out about three years ago. The family had gone to her house in Chiba for summer vacation, and, though Wataru was still shivering from a day of swimming, he had asked his grandmother for a shaved-ice treat.
“Shaved ice? With you fresh from the sea?” she had said. “You’ll catch your death of cold.” He had protested, and his grandmother had laughed and shaken her head. “Just like your father, always eager to argue a point. Poor Kuniko!”
His mother, Kuniko Mitani (always “that Kuniko” to his grandmother), pretended she wasn’t listening.
“In ten years of marriage, that’s only the second time I’ve heard your grandmother say something nice about me,” his mother had told him later. She asked why they had been arguing, and Wataru had explained, “She told me I couldn’t eat shaved ice after swimming in the sea, so I asked her why she sold it at her shop.”
His mother had laughed out loud. Akira Mitani’s parents ran a food and drink stand on Ohama beach, on the Chiba Peninsula. A small public beach house was attached to their setup, with showers and places for people to change. During the busy summer months, Wataru’s grandmother would be out in back, making shaved ice in a big metal can all by herself.
“That’s a good point,” Kuniko had said, giving him an affectionate pat on the head, “but your grandmother is right—you do have your father’s argumentative streak.”
When Akira heard the story days later, he had frowned. “Don’t confuse a kid whining for a treat with the argument of a rigorous, logical mind,” he had said, as logical as ever.
In any case, Wataru was not the sort of boy to readily believe in ghost stories, especially not one as riddled with holes as this one was.
The building in question, the one next to the Mihashi Shrine, was actually still under construction. It stood in an awkward, half-completed state almost exactly midway between Wataru’s home and the school, so he passed it every day on his way to and from classes. He knew its story well, even though the rumors kept getting it wrong.
The building had been under construction for what seemed like forever. A crew had started work on the site during spring break more than two years ago, when Wataru was still in second grade. The eight-story steel framework had gone up first, and everything seemed to be proceeding on schedule, until one day, work stopped, and the whole building was covered in blue plastic tarps. As far as Wataru could tell, there were no construction workers on-site anymore. A while after the heavy machinery stopped coming, somebody removed the old blue tarps and put up new blue tarps in their place. That’s when Wataru noticed a new construction company had moved in.
According to Kuniko, the tarps had been replaced once more after that, and the name of the construction company had changed, as well. After that there had been no change to the site at all, and so the building stood there, draped all in blue, not quite a proper building, coldly looking down on the surrounding houses. A placard out in front that had listed a timetable of projected completion dates had disappeared.
“The contractor and the builder had some kind of dispute, so construction stopped. Happens all the time these days,” his father had said with a roll of his eyes, and Wataru soon forgot about it himself. But Kuniko’s interest was piqued, and she had started asking around.
The Mitani family lived in a large apartment complex with nearly three hundred units. They bought their apartment right after Wataru was born, and moved in right away.
Wataru had several friends among the kids who lived in their building, and they rode the same bus to kindergarten. Kuniko, too, made friends among the circle of mothers in the complex. One of the women she came to know was married to the manager of a local real estate agency. Because of this, she was well informed about all the local properties. One day, their conversation had drifted to the topic of that “terrible eyesore” next to the revered Mihashi Shrine.
“Remember how the temple grounds used to be so large? Well, I guess it was hard to maintain all of that. So, once when they were refurbishing one of the old shrines, they sold off some of their empty acreage. That’s where that building is standing.”
The company that had bought the land and begun construction of the building was a rental office place called Daimatsu Properties, headquartered in downtown Tokyo. It managed properties throughout the metropolitan area, and while attracting a shrine’s business spoke well of the company’s pedigree, it wasn’t particularly large. In fact, from the sound of it, the whole operation was run by one man with the stuffy-sounding name of Saburo Daimatsu.
Wataru’s family lived on the eastern side of Tokyo, or “Old Tokyo,” as the locals called it. Years ago it had been little more than a string of factories, but the quick commute to the city center (only thirty minutes or so) made it attractive to residents. Over the past ten years, apartment buildings had sprung up like mushrooms after the rain. With the coming of the apartments and the people who lived in them, the face of the town changed. To long-term residents like the real estate agent’s wife, their little borough was like a poor girl who had suddenly married into wealth. “Oh, it’s the same old town,” she would say, “but now it’s all dressed up for a cocktail party.”
Wataru’s father was born in the countryside of Chiba, and his mother came from Odawara, a coastal town to the west. Being recent imports themselves, neither of them completely understood how the locals felt, but they did sense the town’s vitality. It was an easy place to live, and it was only getting better. A quick glance at real estate advertisements confirmed that property values were rising. The price tags on all the new apartment buildings jostling up against each other were comparable to those in other more established parts of town. For Daimatsu Properties, it must’ve seemed like a great idea to buy the land next to Mihashi Shrine. Apparently, Mr. Daimatsu had paid quite a bundle for it.
“Now, with its neighbor being a shrine and all, they couldn’t rent the building out to just anyone. The area is zoned for industry, but it’s right up against a residential zone,” Kuniko told them at the dinner table, repeating what she had heard from the real estate agent’s wife. “Still, they went around to a lot of potential tenants: a coffee shop, a beauty parlor, a cram school. They were going to make the upper floors into rental apartments. Until…”
Days after the building’s steel frame had gone up, the first contractor on the job went bankrupt. Daimatsu Properties quickly began a search for another contractor to pick up where they left off, but since starting that kind of work halfway through is much more difficult and costly than starting from scratch, it was hard for the company to find a deal. After a two-month delay, they finally found a new contractor to resume construction. Thus the blue tarps changed for the first time.
“So this new place came, and they got started, and then…”
Unbelievably, after only a few months, the new contractor, too, went bankrupt.
“As you can imagine, Mr. Daimatsu was in quite a fix, and went dashing about looking for another contractor. He finally found a small one interested in the property. In fact, just like Daimatsu Properties, this new contractor was basically a one-man operation.”
It was the last job he ever took. Three days after the paperwork was signed, the third contractor died of a stroke.
Kuniko shook her head. “Such a small operation couldn’t run without its foreman, and there was no one to take his place. There was a son, but he was still in college. Ultimately, the contract was voided, and so the building still stands, unfinished.”
Walking by the building on his way to school every day, even Wataru could clearly see the signs of deterioration on the abandoned edifice. The concrete had dried out and begun to flake at the corners. Exposed steel struts were stained gray by the rain. Inconsiderate passers-by had thrown garbage at the base of the tarps, and stray dogs and cats had taken to using the building grounds as a litter box.
One day in early spring, a strong wind blew off one of the tarps, exposing a steel support post and a steel staircase and landing on the second floor. This was the only part of the building interior visible from the outside. If the ghost had been seen anywhere, that was the place.
Whose ghost was it supposed to be, anyway, Wataru wondered. If it was an old man, then, based on what he knew of the story of the site’s construction, maybe it was the ghost of the third contractor who had died from a stroke just after taking on the project. But why would he be wearing a hooded cloak? Wataru couldn’t imagine the foreman of a building contractor walking around dressed like that. Even if, for argument’s sake, the man had owned a favorite hooded coat, and now wore it as he haunted the empty halls of the building, that still didn’t explain why he was haunting it in the first place. Was he concerned about the progress of construction? Did he regret having died unable to fulfill his contractual obligation? It seemed a little dry, for a ghost story. And, if he was in the construction business, surely he would realize that rumors of a haunting would drive away other potential contractors, making things even worse for Mr. Daimatsu, the very client he had promised to help.
Wataru had thought about it all through recess, and when he got back to the classroom and found that everyone was still talking about the haunting, he gave them his opinion. That was when one of his classmates claimed she knew exactly what kind of ghost it was.
“It’s a bound spirit,” she explained with utmost seriousness. “It’s what happens when somebody dies in a car accident or something. They’re bound to the place where they died, haunting it.”
Of course, that didn’t make any sense either. The building stood on old temple grounds. There couldn’t have been a car accident there. Wataru told the girl as much.
“Then maybe somebody snuck onto the grounds and committed suicide,” she retorted. “There, their spirit wanders, as lost in death as it was in life.”
The other girls around her ooohed and aaahed in approval.
“You know,” one of her friends said, “whenever I walk by that shrine I get a weird tingling feeling down my back. Once my knees started knocking together—like I was cold, right? Even though it was warm outside.”
“Totally! I get that too,” another chimed in.
“Well, did you think to check whether there really was someone who committed suicide on the shrine grounds?” Wataru asked. “Did you ask the priest or something?”
Their faces went red.
“Don’t be stupid!”
“You can’t just ask something like that!”
“I don’t even want to go near the place.”
Wataru continued, doggedly. “But then you’ll never know the facts, will you?”
The first girl pursed her lips in a pout. “Look, the place is haunted, all right? And that means there’s a bound spirit there. Those should be facts enough for you. You know, this is why everyone says you’re so lame, Mitani! Why do you always have to argue about everything?”
“Yeah! Make fun of ghosts, and one of them will end up cursing you!”
“You deserve it too, creep!”
Satisfied, the girls went back to their desks, laughing as they went. Wataru sat quietly in his chair. He was in shock. He was right, he knew he was. What they were saying made no sense. But how could he hope to win when his mind went blank whenever they called him things like “lame” and “creep.” The words stuck into him like sharp knives.
On the walk home, Katchan couldn’t stop talking about how the Japanese soccer team had given the Iranian team a run for their money the night before. Wataru didn’t feel like talking. The trouble at recess was still fresh in his mind. Blissfully unaware, Katchan waxed poetic about his favorite players and gave a blow-by-blow description, waving his fist in the air to mark every kick, pass, and goal. Even if Wataru hadn’t seen the match, Katchan’s reenactments were always vivid enough to make him feel like he had been there, on the field, watching every moment of the action.
They neared the haunted building. Usually, Katchan would turn right at the corner just before and say goodbye, but today he was so wrapped up in his soccer replay that he seemed to have entirely forgotten about going home.
“Hey, Katchan.”
Katchan paused, one leg raised high in mid-reenactment of a critical kick thirty-two minutes into the first half. He looked back over his shoulder at Wataru. “You say something?”
“We’re here…”
Wataru stood and looked up at the building. It was a tall, empty box of steel and looked pitiful dressed in its shoddy blue tarps. It was a clear day in May, and the pure blue of the afternoon sky made the grimy plastic tarps look even more miserable. The building was abandoned, lonely.
“What’s with the serious face?” Katchan brought down his foot and straightened up, looking at his friend.
“I want to find out. I want to see if there really is a ghost. And, if one shows up, I wanna see whose ghost it is.”
Katchan blinked. “How?”
“I’ll sneak in at night,” Wataru replied, beginning to walk faster. “You’ve got a big flashlight at your house, right? Lend it to me.”
Katchan stood silent for a moment, then came to his senses and ran to catch up to his friend. “Hey! Sure, no problem, but it’s kind of hard to get that thing out of the house. Dad says it’s for emergencies, and he gets mad when we use it for playing.”
Katchan’s father had been born in Kobe, in southern Japan. He had lived in Tokyo for years now, since before Katchan was born, but even still, the Kobe earthquake in 1995 had come as quite a shock. To hear Katchan tell it, the level of disaster preparation in the Komura household rivaled that of the metropolitan government offices downtown.
“I’m not playing, I’m serious.” Wataru began to walk faster, calling back over his shoulder, “Don’t worry about it, I’ll make do.”
“Wait,” Katchan said, hurrying to keep up. “It’s fine, really, I’ll get it.” It was only just dawning on him that Wataru meant every word he was saying. “Why the sudden interest anyway? I thought you didn’t care about ghosts.”
That’s right, he didn’t care about the ghost. He was hurt when the girls had called him “lame.” Was it so bad being argumentative, even if he had a point? He wasn’t trying to be difficult; it was just that the girls’ story was so ridiculous. Wataru’s mind filled with questions. Was it wrong to say something no one believed, even if it was right? Did he have to just sit there and take it when no one agreed with him? Was he doomed to an existence of being hated, shunned by every girl in the fifth grade?
Of course, he couldn’t tell Katchan that. Wataru’s face twisted into a scowl.
“Hey, what time?” his friend called out to him. “Hey, I’m talking back here!”
Wataru stopped and turned around. “What time…?”
Katchan swung out his right leg as though to kick an imaginary soccer ball floating in the air before him. “What time you going in? I’ll go with you.”
Wataru was so happy he almost laughed out loud. “Twelve o’clock.”
“Midnight, eh?” Katchan laughed. “Good time for ghosts. My dad works at night so I can be there, no problem…but how are you getting out?”
Now that he mentioned it, Wataru realized it would be nearly impossible to sneak out of his house that late at night. Officially, Wataru lived with his mother and father, but for most of the year, it was more like he and his mother lived alone. Akira came home late as a rule, and, even on holidays, he always found something to do out of the house. Since he had been transferred to his company’s resort development department, he was often gone on long-distance business trips, and they were lucky to see him for two weeks out of any given month.
Akira had not once attended parents’ day or the annual sports competition at Wataru’s school. He would always promise to go, and then something would inevitably come up at the last moment. He wasn’t the kind of father who kept promises.
Wataru didn’t mind. Who cared about parents’ day anyway? He knew his dad was busy, and it was more important keeping appointments for work. He had a bigger concern right now. His dad would most certainly be getting home after midnight tonight, and that meant his mother would also be up late, waiting for him to come home. She would knit, read a magazine, or flip through the TV channels to see if anything good was on. Sometimes, she would rent a movie and watch that. No matter how late his father was, she would never go to sleep before drawing him a bath, making him dinner, and cleaning up when he was finished. How could Wataru possibly hope to sneak out under her watchful eye?
As he ate dinner, Wataru prayed for a miracle. Maybe his dad would get home early for a change. He’d eat and, saying he was exhausted, both of his parents would go to bed early. Once they were sound asleep, he could sneak out quietly. And, just in case they happened to look into his room, he would hide his stuffed bear under the blankets as a decoy. Akira had won the toy at a company party raffle the year before and given it to him. Wataru didn’t care for stuffed animals, but he was glad to finally be able to put it to use.
Miracles were one thing, but reality was reality. He ate dinner with his mother as usual. Later, she told him to do his homework, and she checked over the writing assignment his teacher had returned to him, pointing out the spelling mistakes without even knowing what the assignment was about. Consequently, Wataru was chained to his desk doing schoolwork for an hour or so. Afterward, it was bath time. When he was done, his mother told him there had been a phone call from Katchan.
“It didn’t sound like it was all that urgent, so I told him he could talk to you tomorrow at school. I believe I’ve mentioned before that elementary school students shouldn’t be phoning each other after nine o’clock.” His mom put her hands on her hips. “Katchan’s parents run a bar, so they may see it differently, but this is my house.”
It always irritated Wataru when she said this—like she was pinching the thinnest patch of skin on his body with the tips of her fingernails. She didn’t have to get all snippy for him to know that she didn’t think much of Katchan. He knew she didn’t like his parents. All because the Komuras ran a bar, which, as anyone could tell you, attracted the “wrong sort of people,” according to his mother.
But Katchan was Wataru’s friend. His best friend.
Maybe his father was a bit seedy. Once, he had come to a school function having drunk too much, his face bright red. Wataru had heard the teacher telling him off. And Katchan’s mother often wore so much perfume you could tell when she was out shopping by the pungent trail she left—even when she was on the other side of the supermarket. He even said that everyone at the local cosmetics shop knew her by name. Still, none of that made Wataru hate Katchan’s parents. At sporting events they would cheer for both Katchan and Wataru, and during spring parents’ day in third grade, when Wataru had solved a difficult math problem at the math bee, Katchan’s father had shouted out “Way to go!” Even if everyone had sniggered, it made Wataru happy. He had never been praised like that in public before. Even now, years later, that day stood out in his memory like a shining piece of colored glass in a sea of mud.
When his mother looked askance at the Komuras, he always wanted to tell her how good they were, and how nice they had been to him, but somehow the words caught in his throat until they dissolved away into nothing. That he couldn’t stand up for them made him feel like he was somehow betraying Katchan and his parents. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to contradict his mother on this point. Maybe because he saw the logic in what she was saying. Wataru didn’t know much about people who went to bars, but judging from Katchan’s comments they weren’t the same class of people that, say, worked at his father’s company. Once he had asked Katchan if he wanted to take over his family’s business when he grew up, and he shook his head, and muttered something about doing some research at a university, or maybe becoming a lawyer. Regardless, the long and the short of the situation was that relations weren’t exactly great between the Mitani and Komura households. That much was painfully clear.
Katchan had probably called to see if Wataru really could make it out of the house that night. The only phone in their house was out in the living room, so it was impossible to sneak a call. Wataru felt suddenly guilty.
What if I’m the “wrong sort of people” too?
He sat with his chin in his hands, his elbows propped up on the desk, staring blankly at the chart of class periods he had stuck on the wall above. The first hour tomorrow was Japanese class. They would probably have to write another essay. Katchan was particularly bad at writing, and he was always asking Wataru for help. Of course, if Wataru stood him up tonight, he probably wouldn’t bother him tomorrow at all. He’d be too angry.
“Of course he won’t be, silly.”
The voice was high and sweet—a girl’s voice, coming from right behind him.
Every muscle in Wataru’s body tensed. He jumped out of his chair, the four casters creaking loudly beneath him. He whirled around. There was no one in his tiny room. He glanced down at his television, a fourteen-inch his parents had bought him after much wheedling and begging last summer. It was turned off.
He looked around some more, then looked back at the desk and sat down. He must have dozed off while he was looking at his class chart. He remembered a scientist on television once saying that the dreams you have when you doze off unexpectedly could be very vivid. Sometimes, so vivid they are impossible to separate from reality.
Then the voice spoke again.
“You will be able to leave tonight. Rest up while you can.”
Wataru scanned the room. Everything seemed to be in its right place: the bed with its blue-checked comforter, his bookcase filled with reference books and comic books, and his video game console next to the television set. The carpet was depressed where the casters on his chair had sunk in, and the slippers he had been wearing were tossed haphazardly on the floor behind his desk.
There was no one else in the room. Wataru was alone.
“You can’t find me by looking, you know.” The girl’s voice rang in his head. “Not yet.”
His heart raced. He felt his blood pumping. He imagined his heart throbbing like Pac-Man, gobbling his way through his maze.
“Wh-who’s there?” Wataru stammered. Here he was in his familiar room with its familiar, slightly dusty smell, talking to no one. His voice sounded like a whisper. This was ridiculous. It was stupid to hear voices in his head, and even stupider to try to talk to them. Still, it felt less embarrassing somehow if he talked really quietly.
“Who could it be, I wonder?” the voice said mischievously. “Never mind that now, you should go to bed. If you’re going out to play tonight, you’ll need your rest. You’ll be late for school tomorrow!”
Several possible courses of action occurred to Wataru in an instant. He chose the most childlsh of them all. He ran out of the room.
“Wataru? Is something the matter?” Kuniko looked up from where she sat peeling an apple at the kitchen table. “Want a slice? Here, have one, brush your teeth, and then it’s bedtime.”
Wataru suddenly felt weak. He leaned back against the wall.
“My, you don’t look well at all,” Kuniko said, putting down the knife, then she tilted her head to one side and looked at him closely. “That reminds me, you had a cough this morning, didn’t you? Have you caught a cold?”
Wataru didn’t answer, so his mother stood up and walked over to him. The skin of her hand was cold and soft on his forehead.
“You don’t seem to have a fever…have you been sweating? Do you feel ill?”
Coming to his senses at last, Wataru muttered something about it being a fine and good night. Still floating, he went back into his room, shut the door and leaned against it. He heard the sound of knocking.
“Wataru? What is it? Are you sure you’re okay? Wataru!”
“I-I’m fine, Mom. I feel fine,” Wataru said, slowly regaining his composure. Thinking of a way to explain what was happening to his mother made him feel even more lost and confused. Finally, the knocking stopped. He moved away from the door and flopped down on his bed. His breathing was shallow, his pulse was racing, and his eyes spun in his head.
“You poor thing,” the girl’s voice said. “I’m awfully sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Wataru slapped both hands over his ears and screwed his eyes shut. He willed his mind to go blank, to slip into unconsciousness. And, though he hadn’t imagined he would be capable, he fell asleep. When he woke it felt like he was leaping out of darkness. The alarm clock next to his bed said it was ten minutes to midnight. Wataru shot up in bed, wide awake. He had been sweating when he fell asleep in his clothes, and now they felt itchy and cold.
Quietly, he opened the door to his room, and peered out into the kitchen. The television was on, tuned to some late-night news program his mother often watched. But tonight, she was asleep, her arms sprawled on the kitchen table, lightly snoring.
Katchan was first to arrive at the meeting place, the entrance to a park just south of the haunted building. Katchan always tended to be early, probably a habit he picked up from helping out at the bar.
“S-sorry, I’m l-late,” Wataru said, panting to catch his breath. Normally a little running wouldn’t make him breathe this hard, but he was still excited by the events of the evening.
“Your mom sounded pretty fierce on the phone. I’m surprised you made it out.” Katchan jumped up onto the park’s chain link fence and swung from it like a monkey.
“Sorry.”
“No biggie. Your mom is always like that to me.”
His friend said it like he really didn’t care, but it made Wataru a little sad to realize Katchan had noticed his mother’s judgmental attitude.
“Did she fall asleep or something? Hey, doesn’t she wait up for your father to get home? How did you get out?”
Wataru realized again how odd it had been for his mother to fall asleep.
He glanced back in the direction of his apartment.
“She…she fell asleep.”
“She sick or something?”
Wataru silently shook his head. Several questions rose in his throat, but none of them made the least bit of sense, so he swallowed them down like a bitter pill. Katchan, have you ever had everything go black, and pass out, but you didn’t fall asleep? Have you ever heard someone talking to you when no one was there? Is that strange? Would it be stranger if it were a girl talking? And has your mother or father ever fallen asleep sprawled on the kitchen table like that? Sleep so deep you could push them and pull them and they wouldn’t budge? Or shout in their ear and they wouldn’t wake up? It was almost like a mage from one of his fantasy games had cast a sleeping spell on her. He was afraid.
“Whatever, you made it. Let’s get going!” Katchan sprang from the top of the fence. With those words, all of Wataru’s questions went swirling away. He nodded and ran.