Brave Story Page 6

  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.

&
nbsp; Chapter 4

  The Invisible Girl

  Wataru was hearing voices again.

  It was the same phenomenon he had experienced the night he met Mr. Daimatsu. His mouth felt strangely dry.

  “So you’re a liar.”

  Sure, it sounded like a girl’s voice, but Wataru knew it was an echo or something, probably coming from the neighbor’s TV. That was it. His neighbors were watching some television show with the volume cranked too loud. His father had complained when they moved in that the walls in this building were thinner than had been advertised.

  “Ignoring me won’t make me go away.”

  Now she was sulking. It must be a soap opera.

  “Why did you lie to your friend? Is that the kind of person you are? Was I wrong about you?”

  Definitely a soap opera. Wataru hesitantly looked around the room, but nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. His mother had changed the comforter on his bed. The old one had a blue check pattern, but this one was yellow. The spines of the books were aligned neatly on his bookshelf as usual. The shelf below them held the volumes of the Children’s Illustrated Encyclopedia that his grandmother in Chiba had given him as a present for being accepted into his elementary school. He couldn’t believe it when he had heard the set cost something like ¥200,000. If she was going to spend that kind of money, he wished she would have bought him a computer instead! When he pointed this out to her she had snapped and said the set of encyclopedias was just fine for a kid in grade school. He could buy himself a computer when he grew up, she said. Adding insult to injury, the volumes took up a huge amount of space on his bookshelf.

  He scanned the familiar scene: calendar on the wall, rug on the floor, eraser shavings on his desktop, light fixture on the ceiling.

  Wataru hunched over and peered beneath his desk, the movement accidentally causing his chair to scoot back several inches. No one hiding under there, of course.

  He swung around sharply and took a look under the bed. He felt like a special agent searching a criminal’s hideout. All he needed was a windbreaker with the big FBI logo on the back, a bulletproof vest, and a gun in a shoulder holster.