Chapter 3 The Transfer Student
He came to town just before spring break started-a silly time to transfer to a new school, all the girls agreed, whispering and giggling.
“I hear he’s cute!”
“He gets really good grades.”
“I hear he’s fluent in English!”
“They say his dad worked overseas.”
The did-you-hears spread like wildfire until everyone knew everything there was to know, down to the last detail. But none of it was the sort of thing to make Wataru’s ears prick up with interest.
The new kid wasn’t even going to be in Wataru’s class. This meant Wataru would have to go out of his way to find out anything about him, which meant he probably never would, and that was just fine. He also knew that, until the aura of the “new kid” faded and whoever it was became just another classmate, he could be the most simpleminded rube on the face of the earth, and he would look at least three times better than he really was in the eyes of the class.
With the recent apartment-building boom in Wataru’s neighborhood, there were always lots of people coming and going. Wataru had seen four transfer students join them in his five years at Joto Elementary. He knew how it worked. The chances of the new kid being as incredible as everyone said at first were roughly equivalent to the chances of being struck on the head and killed by a meteorite while walking down the street. It was certainly nothing to get worked up over. Wataru, for his part, was far more interested in rumors of the haunted building. He hadn’t even properly committed to memory the name of the transfer student in the next class.
This was why it took him so long to figure out what they were talking about.
“They say that Mitsuru got a picture of the ghost!”
“Did you see it? Did he show you?”
“I didn’t see it myself, but they say it’s totally clear!”
It had been a week since his run-in with the Daimatsu family. He shuffled into class that morning, stifling a yawn, to find five or six of his classmates huddled in the back of the classroom, buzzing with excitement. It didn’t take long for Wataru to join them. Since that night, when the indelible image of Kaori had been burned into his mind’s eye, his ears would tingle the moment he heard anyone say anything that sounded even remotely like “haunted,” or “ghost.”
“Really? Someone got a picture?” Wataru wedged into the conversation. “When?”
“In the afternoon, two days ago!” one of the girls replied.
“During the day?”
“Yeah, he went there to sketch something for art class.”
Art class often had the students tromping all over town looking for flowers and trees to sketch.
“He went to draw the azaleas at Mihashi Shrine,” she added.
Wataru looked confused. “But our class didn’t go there.”
“Like I said, it was Ashikawa who took the picture.”
This was when Wataru realized that the subject of conversation was the transfer student from the next class.
“The new kid?”
“Yep. Mitsuru Ashikawa. He grew up overseas, you know,” one of the boys said self-importantly. He pronounced the name with all the vowels stretched out, so it sounded like “Meetsooroo Asheekawa.”
The girls giggled. “Just pronouncing his name like an American doesn’t make him one!”
Wataru couldn’t have cared less about the transfer student. He wanted to know more about this picture of the ghost. “You think he’d show me the picture if I asked?”
One of the girls shook her head. “Mitsuru said it wasn’t good to cause a fuss over such a thing, so he took it home. They say he hasn’t shown the picture to anyone since then.”
Wataru secretly rejoiced. Maybe he and this Mitsuru guy would get along. After all, that sounded suspiciously like something Wataru himself would say. In fact, if he had said something of the sort during that argument with those girls, maybe he would have come out looking better in the end. It was something to bear in mind.
“Did anyone in his class see it before he took it home? How about the people that went with him for art class?”
His classmates offered up the names of several people in the other class. Five had gone sketching to the shrine that day: three boys and two girls. One of the boys was the class president, Yutaro Miyahara. A stroke of luck—Wataru knew him.
“I hear the camera belonged to Yutaro. They were taking pictures so they could work on the sketch details after they went home.”
Apparently, Yutaro had brought a Polaroid, thinking that each of them could take one photo of the scene they wanted to sketch, so they could work on it at home. Mitsuru had chosen a shot from the shrine that took in the trees lining the grounds, looking out at the haunted building next door. Just as he was about to take a picture, something like a human face appeared above one of the azaleas.
That was how it happened.
“He noticed something weird, and that’s when the excitement started,” Wataru’s informant explained. “Everyone thought it was cool at first, but soon one of the girls started crying, and they all got scared and went home. I wonder what happened to the sketch assignment?”
This was all he needed to know. Wataru waited for the next break, then hurried over to the class next door. He looked in from the hallway to see Yutaro sitting way in the back by the windows, talking and laughing with a couple of classmates.
Yutaro Miyahara was the top student in his class. Joto Elementary had long since abandoned the practice of hanging up report cards at the end of each year so everyone could see who had gotten the best grades, but still, word got around. Often, the students were more aware of their fellow classmates’ progress than their teachers were.
Wataru recalled walking in on his parents one day as they were engaged in a debate on education. Akira had been throwing around a lot of rather difficult words, so Wataru only understood about half of what was said. But, out of the jumble of unfamiliar terminology, there had been one thing that was immediately understandable. It had stuck with Wataru ever since.
“The best students, the gifted ones, they don’t have to sacrifice their lives and chain themselves to a desk studying all day to be the best,” Akira said. “Why? Because they’ve got ability.”
When he heard that, the first image that had floated into Wataru’s mind, quite naturally, was the face of Yutaro. He was the one his father was talking about, no doubt about it. No matter when you saw him, Yutaro always looked bright, happy, and laid-back. Yet his grades were impeccable. He was good at sports too: first pick in the relay race, gifted swimmer, ace baseball pitcher. At the same time, he was popular because he somehow managed to watch all the right shows on television and knew a ton about video games. The teachers called him “dedicated,” and “a hard worker,” which Wataru didn’t get at all. Sure, Yutaro was a good kid, but he certainly wasn’t a hard worker. It was all so easy for him! Why couldn’t the teachers see that?
Yutaro seemed engrossed in his discussion, and the classroom was pretty noisy. Wataru figured his chances of calling out softly enough to get his attention without making a scene were close to nil. He looked around for another in, but none of the other faces he could see in the classroom were familiar enough for him to start a conversation with.
In Joto Elementary, if you were in a different class, you used a different water fountain, and that meant students from different classes rarely met. In fifth grade, some subjects like music or P.E. brought multiple classes together, or split them off into boys and girls, allowing a rare chance for cross-class communication, but like an unspoken rule, any friendship that developed lasted only for the duration of those periods, and no longer. Wataru knew Yutaro only because they were in the same class at cram school.
Wataru drifted toward the entrance at the back of the classroom and lingered there for little while. Yutaro was still too involved in his discussion to notice him. Wataru had a timid streak that came to the surface at times like this, and he found himself unable to step boldly through that doorway into unfamiliar territory. Moments later, the bell rang to signal the end of break.
Whatever, I’ll just talk to him tonight.
Wataru spun on his heels to make for his own room, and walked right into something large and black looming before him.
“Ow!”
The thing he had collided with made no noise. It smelled faintly of cough syrup. It was a boy in a black sweatshirt. For a fleeting moment, Wataru thought he was looking in a mirror, so much did the boy resemble himself.
“S-sorry,” he managed to say, and the illusion faded. The face bore some passing similarity to his own, but that was all. Too bad, because the boy was incredibly handsome. Wataru stood staring, his mouth gaping open. He had something of a reputation as a funny guy and he wore that title like a badge, always turning over a potential joke or a good comeback in the corner of his mind. It was like he had graduated from some sort of comedy boot camp and now, in overdrive, his brain crackled at super speed, turning over snappy oneliners in his head, considering and discarding one every thousandth of every millisecond.
What is this? National Good-Looking Boys & Girls Week? He abandoned the line as soon as it occurred to him. Too smug. Then he noticed the name tag on the black sweatshirt: “Mitsuru Ashikawa.”
“…Mitsuru Ashikawa. He grew up overseas, you know…”
It’s him! The transfer student!
Before Wataru could think of something clever to say, Ashikawa slipped past him into the classroom. He moved so swiftly that Wataru stood staring at the blank space where he had been standing for a full two seconds before he realized the boy was gone. When he finally turned around to look back into the room behind him, most of the students were seated at their desks, and the period bell (actually a computer-generated tone) tolled over the P.A. system for the last time, its final synthesized note shimmering and fading into silence.
Wataru sprinted back to his own classroom. His heart was racing.
After school, Wataru walked home, and then headed back out to cram school a bit earlier than usual. He knew that Yutaro often came early as well, and could be found quietly studying in a corner.
Kasuga Seminars was a five-minute bike ride away, and occupied the entire third floor of a four-story building. It was divided into three classrooms, and Wataru’s fifth-grade class met three times a week in the northernmost corner room. He attended a two-hour class focusing on Japanese and math.
He arrived to find Yutaro sitting by himself, as expected, in his favorite place in the corner of the classroom. He was looking at a textbook, with his handwritten notes on pieces of paper spread out in a strange pattern on the desk around him. It looked like he was studying math.
In the Miyahara household, Yutaro was the oldest of three children. Their father ran a gasoline stand. Yutaro’s younger brother was in preschool, and his sister was still in diapers. Miyahara’s mother had divorced his father some time ago, and his siblings were children from his mother’s second marriage.
Yutaro was studying at cram school because it was too noisy at his house to get any work done. The instructor understood his dilemma, and let him use the room prior to classes. He got special treatment not because he had younger siblings—plenty of other students were in the same boat—but because Yutaro was the only one among them who would actually go out of his way to study. Everyone else just used noisy brothers and sisters as an excuse to goof off.
Wataru walked into the classroom, and Yutaro looked up. He twitched and glanced at the clock on the wall. He must’ve thought it was time for class to begin already.
Wataru waved and made his way over to the other side of the room. “Do you have a second to talk?” he asked.
“Sure. What is it?” Yutaro said, bluntly.
Wataru paused. Now that he was here, he realized he couldn’t just blurt out that he had come to ask him about the picture of the ghost. That would sound too childish. Still, after a bit of small talk, he managed to get around to the topic at hand.
“Oh, that!” Yutaro said, his face brightening. “It’s the talk of the school these days, I hear.”
“So was it really a ghost in the picture?”
“Nah,” Yutaro leaned back in his chair and ran his fingers through his perfectly combed hair. He was still smiling. “Sure, there was something that looked kind of like a face above this one particular azalea. But it could’ve been anything. We all acted like it was a ghost and had a good laugh about it, but I don’t think anyone really believes it.”
“You know the rumors that the half-built building next to the Mihashi Shrine is haunted, right?”
“Sure, everybody knows that.”
“You think there’s a connection?”
“A connection between a rumored supernatural presence and a smudge on Mitsuru’s Polaroid? Not a clue!” Yutaro laughed out loud. “I never figured you were the type to fall for that kind of talk, Mitani!”
Wataru’s face reddened. Suddenly, he felt embarrassed and defensive. He wanted to shout that he hadn’t believed the rumors at all from the beginning. He restrained himself, and instead told Yutaro about the incident where he had won the ire of the girls in his class by insisting they check the facts before assuming anything about the haunting.
“Heh,” Yutaro chuckled, nodding. His smile slowly faded. “I don’t believe in ghosts and all that stuff either. Those girls were just being dumb. Don’t worry about it.”
“Easy for you to say.”
Wataru was mollified, but the conversation had ended before he heard everything he wanted to know. He wondered if he should tell Yutaro about Kaori Daimatsu. About how pretty she had been, and about how he couldn’t get her out of his mind. Yutaro would understand. He wouldn’t laugh at him, or tease him about it. Wataru opened his mouth, but the words that came out were, “So what’s Mitsuru Ashikawa like?”
Yutaro blinked, plainly startled. “What’s he like? What do you mean?”
“I saw him for the first time this morning. He looks kind of too perfect, like a…like a mannequin, you know what I mean?” Their encounter that morning had definitely been a “saw” not a “met.” Wataru wasn’t entirely convinced Mitsuru had even noticed him.
Yutaro shrugged. “He’s cool.”
Utterly casual. No reservations, no hidden meanings.
“Like a mannequin, heh?” Yutaro chuckled. “You should see the girls in class going crazy for him.”
It occurred to Wataru that Yutaro might not welcome this new challenge to his status as most popular in class. “Isn’t he a little strange? I mean, taking a picture and calling it a ghost, then taking it home and acting all cool.”
“I don’t think he was acting cool,” Yutaro laughed. “If you’re curious about him, you should talk to him yourself when he gets here.”
“Gets here? You mean he’s coming to cram school?”
“Yep. Today’s his first day.” Yutaro explained that Mitsuru had asked about good cram schools, and Yutaro had recommended Kasuga Seminars. He had obviously wasted no time getting enrolled.
“Good news for the girls, I guess,” Wataru suggested with a grin.
“Whatever. Let them get all excited if they want.”
“So how’s Mitsuru in school? He get…”
“Good grades? Yeah. He’s a good student.”
Wataru marveled at the utter lack of concern on Yutaro’s face. He really wasn’t bothered by this at all. There was no show of bravado, no false projected sense of security. He was perfectly natural. Here there was a clear threat to his position in the class pecking order and he didn’t seem to mind at all.
It was like he had already given up, or maybe…
He has nothing to lose.
No matter how good a student Mitsuru Ashikawa was, no matter how cool or handsome, it wouldn’t affect Yutaro’s status. It wouldn’t make him stupid or “lame.” He would still be Yutaro, still a good student, still a fast runner, a good swimmer, a good-looking guy who could do anything. None of that would change. In fact, having a friend of his own caliber would be a good thing. He wouldn’t have to be the only one excelling in class. And they wouldn’t have to fight for the title of “most popular.” They could sit side-by-side on that throne if they wanted to.
Wataru felt a pang of envy. How nice life would be in a world like that. How different it was from what he knew. In Wataru’s world, the more cool, able students there were in the class, the less room there was for people like him. There was a double standard. They could say whatever they wanted, and no one would ever get mad at a Yutaro or a Mitsuru. The reality of it stared him in the face. Mitsuru had taken a picture of the ghost himself, then dropped a line like “It’s not good to cause a fuss.” Certainly, that was no less cold or logical than what Wataru had said to the girls in class. But no one who was on that sketching trip ever thought Mitsuru was lame for not believing in ghosts.
What’s more, he could imagine Yutaro telling the girls, “You know, Wataru’s right. Until you go to the Mihashi Shrine and make sure that someone actually died there, you can’t say you know whose ghost it is.” They would have eaten up every word. It was an absolute certainty. If Yutaro says so, it must be right.
How utterly, totally unfair. Wataru’s frustration rose in his chest, choking out everything else. A few girls came in, chatting about something, and Wataru retreated back to his seat. Seating in cram school was supposedly on a first-come, first-served basis, but people tended to pick a spot on day one and stay there the whole year. Wataru’s seat was exactly midway down the room, on the side with the doors.
Five minutes before class was to begin, their teacher, Mr. Ishii, strode in. Mitsuru walked in immediately behind him. The room was filled with students who were all talking at once. As soon as everyone saw Mitsuru, there was complete silence.
Most of the kids in Wataru’s class, however, came from one of three elementary schools. The first was Wataru’s school, Joto Elementary. The second school was also called Joto Elementary. Because of the high population in his district, there were several public schools for the area, each with the same name, and a number to tell it apart from the others. Wataru’s was Joto Elementary No. 1, the other that shared his cram school was Joto Elementary No. 3. The third school was a private school. For the kids from Joto Elementary No. 3 and the private school, it was their first time seeing Mitsuru, and the excitement was palpable.
The teacher made a few opening remarks, and then introduced Mitsuru to the class.
“This is Mitsuru Ashikawa, who will be joining us starting today. I believe those of you from Joto No. 1 know him already.”
Mr. Ishii was twenty-four years old. His real job was doing research as a grad student at a nearby university. Teaching here was his part-time gig. He was an easygoing fellow with a youthful face. He could be mistaken for a high school student depending on how he dressed. Still, he was incredibly smart, and a good speaker, and class was always interesting. The students liked him.
Standing next to each other, the teacher seemed small compared to Mitsuru. He looked mean, meager, and outranked. Everyone noticed it. If they didn’t know that Mr. Ishii was the teacher and Mitsuru was the student, it would have been easy to imagine things being the other way around.
“Hello,” Mitsuru said to the class. Another student might have been more formal, or given a full self-introduction, but for him, this one word was plainly sufficient. His voice rang clear in the silence.
Mitsuru found an empty seat and sat down. He caught Yutaro’s eye, and smiled. Yutaro smiled back. The girls sitting next to Wataru huddled their heads together, giggling quietly and whispering something. Their eyes sparkled.
Mr. Ishii preferred to lecture and then have the students work individually, so there were few group activities. Wataru would have little opportunity to gauge for himself whether Mitsuru was as gifted a student as Yutaro had suggested. Still, from the questions he asked in class, and the way he sped through the worksheets, it was clear he was a student of ability. It seemed that, against all odds, Mitsuru was the real deal: the transfer student who was just as amazing as all the rumors said. A meteorite.
Once class ended and it came time to go home, no one left. Yutaro and Mitsuru naturally formed a pair in one corner of the room, and the other kids naturally gravitated toward them. Not just the girls, but the other boys as well.
Wataru still had questions unanswered, but he didn’t exactly fancy striding through the crowd and blurting out something about the ghost photograph in the middle of all the excitement over the new student. Instead, he picked up his bag and headed home. He walked at first, then picked up his pace until he was jogging. Am I running away? From what? It was a rhetorical question. Wataru knew the answer before he asked it. He kept running, all the while convincing himself that he wasn’t escaping.
He opened the front door and shouted out, “I’m home.” Through the glass-paned door leading into the living room he could see his mother talking on the phone. When Wataru opened the door she frowned and slammed the phone down violently.
“What’s wrong?”
“Another silent call,” Kuniko said, snorting with anger. White steam bubbled out of a boiling pot in the kitchen. “That’s the third time today. It’s almost like they knew I was busy trying to get dinner ready…”
For the first time, Wataru realized that his mother wasn’t just angry. She was frightened.
“If they call again, I’ll pick it up,” he offered. He glanced in the direction of the kitchen. “Um, looks like something’s boiling.”
“Oh dear!” Kuniko launched into the kitchen, and Wataru went to his room and began putting away the things in his bag. As soon as Kuniko had the kitchen back under control, the rapid-fire questions began. How was cram school? What did you have for lunch? Fried rice for dinner okay? Wataru was used to this conversation and he answered everything perfunctorily, but his head was filled with Mitsuru. He found himself just wanting some peace and quiet.
He washed his hands and began setting the table when the phone rang. Wataru flew to the wall and picked up the receiver.
“Hi, it’s me, Katchan.”
Wataru gave his mother a look that said, “It’s okay.”
“You had cram school today, right?”
“Yeah. But this is a bad time to talk. We’re about to eat.”
“Oh, should I call back? Don’t want your mom to get mad at me.” Wherever he was calling from, there was a lot of activity in the background. It was hard to hear his voice. “I’ll call back.”
“Sure, thanks.”
Wataru hung up the phone swiftly. He knew his mother wasn’t fond of Katchan’s calls. But what if it was Yutaro calling? He was sure his mother wouldn’t frown at that. Best friends with Yutaro. Wouldn’t that please her? And what if they were friends? This was a thought that hadn’t occurred to him. Would Yutaro Miyahara be a better friend for him than, say, Katsumi Komura?
Wataru dismissed the idea as soon as he had it. Yutaro was a good kid, but would he be fun to hang out with? If he could find someone as well respected as Yutaro, and as fun as Katchan, that would be perfect.
Yutaro and Mitsuru.
Katchan and Wataru.
As he sat there in a daydream, the phone rang again. It had to be their silent caller this time for sure. Wataru snatched up the receiver.
“Mitani speaking!”
“Wataru?” It was his father.
“Oh, it’s you.”
“‘Oh, it’s you’? We need to talk about your phone manners.”
“We’ve been getting more silent calls. Mom’s getting scared.”
There was a pause. “Today?”
“Yeah, three times this afternoon already.”
Kuniko walked over and Wataru handed her the phone. He went back to sit at the table. Dinner was all laid out. He would be eating alone with his mother again tonight.
Kuniko talked for a while. He heard her agreeing to something, saying, “Very well, I’ll get it ready,” and then she ended the call with her customary, “Keep up the good work, dear.” Wataru had grown used to this habit of hers, and never given it a second thought until one day about a year ago, when a visitor came to their apartment while Wataru and his mother were there alone.
The woman was a sales lady for a cosmetics retailer. She had been in the same class as his mother in college and this was a social call—an opportunity to gossip and push some cosmetics. She was pretty enough, but she smelled too strongly of perfume, and it made Wataru’s nose wrinkle just to be in the same room. He had made some perfunctory greeting and then shut himself in his room to play video games.
His father had called that day while his mother and the sales lady were talking away. His mother had ended the phone call with her usual words of encouragement, and the sales lady had been astonished. Wataru heard her loud voice clearly through the door.
“I just don’t believe it. That was your husband, was it not? Heavens! You shouldn’t act so obsequious. We aren’t living in the Middle Ages, dear.”
“Obsequious”? Wataru had leafed through his dictionary. “Full of or exhibiting servile compliance; fawning,” it said. Now he was only slightly less confused. He heard the sales lady go on, trying to persuade his mother of this and that. He listened closely, hoping he would figure out what she had meant with her opening remarks.
“Oh, it’s good to be traditional,” she was saying, “but you can’t pamper your husband too much, or he’ll just take advantage of you. Once he’s married, it’s his duty to work and support his wife and children while you run a household. It’s a fifty-fifty partnership. There’s no need for you to act like an underling.”
His mother had laughed and said she wasn’t pampering anyone and she was pretty sure she wasn’t being taken advantage of.
“Well, you never know what he’s doing once he’s out that front door,” the sales lady replied, chuckling deep in her throat. “My husband and I, we’re very laissez-faire. I don’t interfere with his goings-on and he doesn’t interfere with mine. Why, if we didn’t have children, I’m sure we’d have split up long ago. The bonds that tie, the gags that choke, am I right?”
Wataru had the strange feeling that the more the woman spoke, the dirtier the air in the room became. It was as though her words themselves clung to the walls and the floor and the furniture that his mother had spent years polishing and made them all somehow unclean. This woman had barged in, declared the Mitani household to be a mess, and, quite uninvited, begun buffing things with her own filthy rag.
The sales lady never came back. Wataru was relieved that, apparently, his mother hadn’t liked her either.
He finished dinner and called Katchan back. This time he could hear the sound of a television blaring in the background.
“Think you could turn that down?”
“Oops, sorry.” The sound of the television faded.
“So, what’s up?”
It turned out that Katchan had run into none other than Mr. Daimatsu on his way home from school that day.
Wataru couldn’t contain his excitement. “How? Where?”
“Right in front of the haunted building. He was with some construction-type guy in a gray uniform.”
Maybe he’d found a new contractor. “Was it just Mr. Daimatsu? His son wasn’t there?”
“Nope, just him. Why?”
“Why…” Wataru paused. “No reason.”
Katchan had this annoying habit of answering most questions with “Why?” He just assumed there was a why to everything. Wataru had always thought it was kind of a simple and refreshing attitude, but today for some reason, it irked him.
“Mr. Daimatsu looked pretty happy. He said they’re going to resume construction.”
So he did find a new contractor.
“Well, once they finish that building, it’ll put an end to those rumors,” Wataru said. “It’s probably for the best. The longer it sits there, the more people like Mitsuru will go there and take ghost pictures to show off to their friends.”
Now that wasn’t a nice thing to say. Nor had it been entirely truthful. In fact, Wataru was pretty sure it was a lie. Mitsuru certainly hadn’t been boasting to anyone, and Wataru had just heard firsthand testimony that the picture probably wasn’t a ghost at all. Still, he knew the shock it would cause on the other end of the line, and it made his tongue tingle with excitement. The sensation was like an exotic spice. Once he got the idea, he couldn’t stop. He would probably lie more often if he wasn’t so afraid of it becoming a habit.
But this time nothing stopped him. As predicted, Katchan gobbled it up. “What’s that? He actually got a picture of a ghost?”
Wataru explained, piling lie upon lie. Katchan hadn’t heard about this latest development at all, and every twist and turn of the story elicited fresh squeals of excitement.
“Cool! I gotta see it!”
“I wouldn’t,” Wataru advised. “The more people that get all excited about it, the bigger that Mitsuru’s head is going to swell.”
“Yeah, but my old lady says if you don’t see a ghost by the time you’re twenty, you’ll never see one at all.”
“Then you’re in luck. You can avoid the whole thing if you just hang on for a few more years.”
“No way! I wanna see a ghost before I’m twenty! Man, how boring would that be to go through your whole life without seeing one.”
This was classic Katchan-style logic. One, you only have until twenty to see a ghost. Two, to avoid leading a boring life, you must see a ghost. Ergo, time was short. Wataru felt like telling him that seeing a ghost wasn’t exactly a requirement for living the good life, but he swallowed his words. Saying that would just incite Katchan to wax even more poetic about the ghost, and for some reason everything was getting under Wataru’s skin tonight.
“Look, I gotta take a bath and get to bed.”
Katchan was still talking when Wataru hung up the phone. Kuniko asked him what the call had been about, and Wataru made something up. He went back to his room and closed the door, breathing a deep sigh of relief.
“Liar.”
The girl’s voice echoed through the room. In his chair, Wataru froze.