Naw, See? I Totally Won! – Part 05

“Aikawa. Um… I… I’m sorry… but please… let me help.”

No way. I didn’t wanna bother her. I didn’t, but… how could I say no to a quiet girl asking me to let her help with those big eyes looking up at me?

“All right. Help me out.”

“O-Okay. Thanks.”

“Why are you thanking me? I should be the one thanking you.”

“Aight. I’ll be in the staff room, drinking.”

This motherfucker.

“Please help us with this, thanks,” I said fast, glaring at him. Would it kill him to care about his students for once?

“Ah, what a pain.”

And so, the three of us—an honor student, a gruff middle-aged man, and me—hurriedly tackled the sign-making.

“Look, look, look!”

Out of nowhere, that pretty genius Demon Baroness Magiclad Girl appeared again. She was carrying some gigantic object wrapped in a sheet under her arm.

She set the strange thing down at the back of the classroom, in front of the lockers.

“What do you got there?” Sighing, I yanked the sheet off.

There stood… me. No, a mannequin that looked exactly like me. Its left hand rested on its hip, its right hand raised, and its wide, adorable eyes stared at a point to its upper right.

What the hell is this? Some kind of a joke?

“It’s finally finished! Pretty amazing, huh?” Haruna threw out her nonexistent chest and sniffed proudly.

She bopped the mannequin (me) again and again. Like a daruma doll, it toppled but stood right back up. Apparently, it was meant to be beaten up for fun.

Why was it striking some kind of a victory pose anyway?

Give me a break. Even zombies have enough decency not to go naked.

“It looks… amazing,” Hiramatsu said, thoroughly impressed.

“Quite something indeed,” the homeroom teacher added with a yawn.

“It’s a yokai café, so it has to be this creepy!”

Wait, was she seriously planning to leave this here until the festival day?!

Aw, man. I might just refuse to come to school.

“No way,” I objected. “You’re not leaving this thing here. Take it home, now. Actually, I wouldn’t want this nightmare at my place either. Straight to the incinerator it is.”

“Oh, come on! Do you have any idea how much work I put into this?”

“Aikawa,” Hiramatsu said. “I think… it looks nice.”

“R-Really? I mean, no. Phew, that was close. You almost got me there. Anyway, get rid of it, okay?”

“Ugh, not cool at all!”

The idiot. I tried to make Haruna remove the mannequin, but she whined about it being heavy and whatnot. So our homeroom teacher went along with her, and neither of them came back.

I figured Haruna sulked off and went straight home. And that lazy teacher must have taken the chance to bail.

Hiramatsu didn’t seem to care and kept working silently.

I believed the difference between an honor student and everyone else came down to how much focus they had.

She had insane focus. I felt genuine respect watching Hiramatsu crouched over the newspaper-covered floor, working steadily without flinching.

How could someone stay in that position and keep going? No wonder she could win a karuta tournament.

“I can’t let you outwork me.”

I mirrored her crouched position, moving my hands while watching her hair sway gently.

Within minutes, my lower back was already sore. I just wanted to lie down.

Hiramatsu giggled softly. “You shouldn’t… push yourself too much.”

“I’mma lie down, then.”

“Sure. By the way, nighttime at school… kind of gets your heart racing, doesn’t it?”

“I get what you mean. It’s like a different side of the world you’ve always known.”

“Oh, right. Did you know? This school is built on what used to be a cemetery.”

“Really? I didn’t know that. Come to think of it, there’s a cemetery nearby.”

There was a cemetery I frequented, right between my house and school, where zombies often showed up. Naturally, as an undead, I liked to hang out there to cool off.

“They say… ghosts appear here.”

“Yeah, I guess they might. Vampires, zombies, that sort of thing.”

“Aw, come on. You don’t believe in ghosts?”

“I do. As a matter of fact, I’m already dead myself.”

Hiramatsu laughed. “You’re so funny.”

“What about you? Do you believe in ghosts?”

“Hmm. I don’t… really want to. You know what they say: people who believe… can see them. But you can’t see God… even if you believe, so.”

“So, what sort of ghost is supposed to show up here?”

“Huh? A little girl… in a white dress, apparently. She appears at night… in the science lab… with smoke.”

“I see. We’re here right now, so maybe we’ll get to see her.”

“D-Don’t scare me, you meanie.”

We continued working while chatting away. Shortly after nine, we reached a good stopping point. In the end, that no-good teacher never came back.

“We should head home,” I suggested.

“Yeah. Let’s… finish the rest tomorrow, okay?”

We cleaned up and grabbed our bags.

“Ah, I should tell Mr. Kurisu… that we’re leaving.”

“It doesn’t matter, does it? I always leave without telling anyone.”

“But… we should inform him anyway.”

Spoken like a true model student.

We headed to the staff room to look for our homeroom teacher, but he wasn’t there. Where the hell did he disappear to?

“M-Maybe the ghost… got him.” Hiramatsu gripped my blazer tightly.

“You go ahead, then. I’ll let him know we’re leaving.”

“B-But…”

“Or do you wanna look for the ghost together?”

“S-Stop it!” Hiramatsu said, puffing her cheeks.

I walked her to the shoe lockers and watched her leave through the school gate before heading back into the building.

The science lab, was it?

I believed in ghosts. Because supernatural creatures actually existed in this world. And if a ghost had been stirring at night…

I went straight to the science lab where the ghost had reportedly been spotted. The school at night was completely silent, with only the sound of my footsteps echoing down the hallway. The atmosphere alone made it feel like a ghost could appear at any moment.

Hm? I stopped in front of the science lab. Peering through the glass in the door, I saw what looked like smoke curling up inside. Seriously? Could it really be a ghost?

I reached for the door. It wasn’t locked.

My heart started pounding wildly. I was practically a ghost myself, so I shouldn’t have been scared. But the atmosphere was unbearable.

The door creaked open, and I stepped inside. I tensed up, preparing for any kind of attack, as I scanned the room. The lights were off, leaving the lab dark. There was only one source of light: a single blue flame from an alcohol burner, holding a small wire mesh.

A girl in a white Gothic Lolita outfit was sitting at the nearby desk.

“What the hell are you doing?!”

The girl-ghost flinched. “Huh? Aaaah!”

Was she running some weird experiment? I darted over to stop her.

She knocked over the alcohol burner and the mesh on top of it. Why was a ghost scared?

The burner’s flame went out when it hit the floor, and the science lab went pitch dark.

I used the last bit of light to find her and realized she was an incredibly cute girl. Maybe ten or eleven? Way too pretty to be wasting her time as a ghost. Well, I’d never heard of an ugly, fat ghost, so if you stripped away the ghost equals scary prejudice, they were probably all lovely.

A huge bottle sat on the desk. She was definitely doing some kind of suspicious experiment.

I moved closer to ask what she was up to, but she put a finger to her lips. “Shh!” she whispered through her teeth. “Here, take this! Don’t tell anyone.” She shoved a wad of cash into my hand.

Okay… definitely not a malicious ghost. She grabbed the big bottle from the desk.

“Hey.”

She ignored me and chugged it down in one go, then sprinted out of the lab. I just stood there, dumbfounded, watching the whole thing.

Wait, so I’m cleaning up this mess? Sigh.

I picked up the fallen alcohol burner and the hot mesh still radiating heat. Other things were scattered too.

I cautiously examined what she’d been up to in the dark.

“Why the hell was she roasting dried squid?”

Yup. It was dried squid. A ghost had been trying to eat roasted squid in the science lab.

“I saw it on Furuhata Ninzaburō.^[1] It looked so tasty!”

Why was she watching Furuhata? Then again, life as a zombie wasn’t exactly what I’d imagined, so maybe life as a ghost was just as mundane.

Wait, she was still here? I looked around, but she had vanished, likely bolted away.

Opening my hand, I realized she hadn’t given me money after all. It was a coupon for a pub.

Was she a middle-aged guy or what?! That explained the squid too.

“You must never tell anyone I roasted dried squid here!”

Get out of here already!

Oh, right. For the record: the dried squid was consumed by the staff.

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1. Furuhata Ninzaburō is a Japanese television series that ran periodically on Fuji Television from 1994 until its final episode in 2008. It was written by Japanese playwright Kōki Mitani and is often referred to as the Japanese version of Columbo.