Chapter 56

6 When Minoru’s morning classes ended, he hurried not to the lunchroom but to classroom eight of the freshman wing. This was Tomomi Minowa’s class, but he wasn’t going there to see her. That morning, her father had driven her to the general hospital; fortunately, she regained consciousness during the examination but was admitted to the hospital as a precaution because she showed symptoms of anemia. Since Minoru had been there when she collapsed, he came along to the hospital and explained the situation to the doctor, although it was very stressful to talk about Tomomi’s situation with her father listening. Luckily, Mr. Minowa was a very collected person, and while he’d of course shouted when he initially saw the unconscious Tomomi, he had stayed calm afterward and even thanked Minoru when he left. Mr. Minowa mentioned that both he and his wife had noticed that their daughter had been acting strangely for the past few days. The doctors were going to determine the cause of her condition with thorough testing, and hopefully, it would be something treatable—but the results wouldn’t be ready for a few days. So Minoru decided to do a little investigating of his own in the meantime. As he approached classroom eight, students rushed past him on their way to lunch. Spotting the face he was looking for among them, he jogged over to the student in question. “Ogu?” When he gathered up the courage to call out, the dark-skinned boy turned around. It was Shouya Ogu, a track-and-field member like Minowa. Ogu blinked a few times, then told his two friends to go on ahead, gesturing Minoru toward the other end of the hallway with his eyes. Once they reached the wall, it was Ogu who spoke first. “This about Minowa?” “Um…yeah.” Minoru nodded, and an expression of concern clouded the athlete’s healthy face. “She’s not here today.” “I know… That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” “All right.” Ogu nodded, then glanced down the hall. “The lunch room’ll be pretty busy… Guess I better take you to my secret base.” “S-secret base?” “Yeah, just this once. C’mon, let’s grab some food first.” Once they’d each bought a drink and some bread at the shop attached to the lunchroom, Ogu headed toward the south building. On the other side of that building was a training area. One month prior, Ogu and two male upperclassmen from the track-and-field club had threatened Minoru a little behind this building. Minoru wondered for a moment if they were going to the same spot, but once they went through the hallway into the south building, Ogu started heading up the stairs. This building contained staff rooms, offices, and specialized classrooms; the higher the floor, the less people were likely to be there. But Ogu went past the fourth floor and led Minoru even higher. Students weren’t allowed on the roof, but Ogu’s “secret base” turned out to be the landing at the top of the stairs in front of the door to the roof, about three square meters. It was all but invisible from the fourth-floor hallway, making it an ideal spot for a private conversation. “Huh…I never knew this place was here.” Minoru looked around the space, which got a surprising amount of sunlight, while Ogu puffed out his chest proudly. “I found this place myself. There’s never anyone around, so I come here when I wanna be alone.” So even Ogu has times when he wants to be alone. Minoru kept this thought to himself. That was probably obvious anyway. Considering how long Ogu felt guilty after harassing Minoru with his friends that time, he seemed to actually be quite a sensitive person. “…Is it all right if I use it once in a while, too?” At that, Ogu finally smiled. “Go for it. Careful, though, there is a rumor that this spot is haunted.” No wonder nobody ever comes here! Minoru bit back this remark, instead forcing himself to smile. The two of them leaned against the wall and slid down to sit on the floor, promptly opening the packaging of their buns. Minoru bit into his soy flour bun, while Ogu devoured his yakisoba bun. In no time, they were halfway through their meals. Minoru took a sip from his soy milk carton, then brought up the main subject. “So…about Minowa being absent…” “Lemme ask you something first.” Ogu held up his banana au lait to interrupt Minoru. “I’m just gonna ask you PB. Utsugi, are you and Minowa dating?” “………” Minoru couldn’t bring himself to point out that abbreviating point-blank to PB was a little ridiculous, so instead he rapidly shook his head. “N…no, of course not!” “Think you’re gonna ask her out, then? Or say yes if she asks you?” “No, neither!” “C’mon, dude, you can’t say no if she asks you.” Then why did you ask me that?! Minoru thought as Ogu shoved the rest of the yakisoba bun into his mouth. He chewed it up noisily, then washed it down with a gulp of banana au lait. Then he heaved a long sigh before he looked at Minoru again. “Look, I’m not gonna tell you to ask her out, but if she does ask you out, you gotta say yes. If you don’t, I’m gonna punch you myself this time.” The old Minoru probably would’ve fled as soon as someone threatened even mild violence, but now he was able to accept the real feelings behind Ogu’s remarks. But he couldn’t just blindly agree to Ogu’s demand, either. I don’t intend to go out with anyone, ever. But how could Minoru explain that in a way Ogu would understand? Before he could open his mouth, however, Ogu smacked Minoru lightly on the shoulder. “I don’t think that’s gonna happen, though!” He chuckled, then opened his melon cream bun and took a big bite before looking serious again. “So…what’d you wanna talk to me about? D’you know why Minowa’s not here?” “…Yeah.” Minoru nodded and explained the situation as best he could. How they’d been meeting up to run in the mornings lately. How Tomomi admitted to him yesterday that she’d been feeling strange. And how this morning, she had collapsed as if from anemia… “Anemia? Is that what it was, then?” Minoru had been bracing himself for Ogu to be angry that they’d been running together outside of school, but instead he looked more troubled by the last part. “I think so… They’re going to do some tests over the next few days, but that’s what they said the symptoms looked like.” “That’s weird. Tomomi is the girls’ team’s long-distance ace, so her hematocrit and hemoglobin levels are probably even higher than the average guy’s. I’m pretty sure she takes iron supplements on the regular, too…” Hematocrit levels referred to the number of red blood cells in the blood, while hemoglobin levels meant the amount of hemoglobin present inside those red blood cells. Young athletes were susceptible to something called “sports anemia,” but even Minoru took occasional iron supplements because of his personal running habit, so surely a strong athlete like Tomomi would be even more careful about it. So if she was showing symptoms of anemia despite all that… “Some other illness, then…?” But Ogu shook his head. “That’s crazy. I heard she just broke her personal best time the other day. What kind of illness would make someone decline that quickly?” It probably wasn’t impossible, but he had to admit that would be unnatural. Gazing at the last piece of his bread, Minoru mulled it over for a while. “No…wait a sec,” Ogu said suddenly. “I think I’ve heard about something like this pretty recently…” Minoru looked to his right at the other boy. “Huh? You have…?” “Yeah. Lemme think… Y’know Yuka Maezaki, that attacker from the girls’ volleyball team? She’s in Class Six.” “Sorry, I don’t think so…” “Damn, you really don’t care about girls at all, huh?” Ogu pulled out his smartphone and fiddled with it for a moment. “Here, the one on the right.” The photo he showed Minoru was of three boys and two girls. The female student making a peace sign on the right side was about the same height as Ogu, who was striking a goofy pose next to her. She had sharp, handsome features and bright eyes. “Oh yeah… I think I’ve seen her around.” “Well, yeah. She’s a first-year like us. Maezaki only started volleyball in high school, but she hits a mean spike, so she became a regular really fast. She was a total MVP in the varsity girls’ volleyball tournament last November.” “Huh… Why do you know so much about her when she’s in a different class and sport?” Minoru’s blunt question set Ogu on the defensive. “I—I don’t know that much, dude. You just hear these kinda things when you play sports.” “Uh-huh.” Then why do you have a photo of her? he thought, but instead he just returned to the main topic. “So…what about her? You mentioned something similar to what happened to Minowa…?” “Yeah… I dunno all the details, but I heard she got sick during practice over winter break, and they had to bring her to the hospital from school. That kinda thing can happen if you’re doing intense training, so I didn’t think that much about it at the time, but…” Ogu frowned down at his phone for a minute, then started tapping the screen again. He seemed to be contacting someone with a messaging app, since the pop! that indicated a reply followed shortly after. Looking at the message, his frown deepened as he showed it to Minoru. “Maezaki’s been out of school since yesterday, too. The hospital said it was anemia… D’you think it’s just a coincidence?” “……” Unable to respond right away, Minoru blinked a few times. It was probably a coincidence…right? Otherwise, that must mean Tomomi Minowa and Yuka Maezaki had both contracted an infectious disease that caused iron-deficiency anemia or something. But did such a disease even exist? Minoru pulled out his own phone and searched with the keywords anemia and infection. Skimming through the results, he found that a stomach bacteria called Helicobacter pylori could induce anemia. But thanks to modern sanitation, the bacteria were usually only passed from person to person through oral transmission. The rate of infection for youths and teens was only around 10 percent, but since Yoshiki High School had more than twelve hundred students, that would mean roughly 120 of them would likely become infected by H. pylori. Actually, was it possible that maybe someone was somehow artificially spreading the infection? “I wonder if any other students are absent…,” Minoru murmured. Ogu shrugged exaggeratedly. “Probably. It is flu season.” “No, I mean with anemia.” “How would I know that?” He looked exasperated, but Minoru pressed on anyway. “Is there any way you can try to find out with your Ogu network? There might be an illness going around at Yoshiki that causes it.” Minoru went on to somewhat clumsily explain the information he’d just researched. Ogu was admittedly more interested in athletics than anything else, but he hadn’t gotten into Yoshiki High by chance; he caught on quickly and started rubbing his stomach, looking unhappy. “Isn’t an H. pylori infection the thing that gives old guys stomach cancer?” “I don’t know if it’s just old guys, but yes, that’s the one. Apparently, it can also cause anemia. I read that seventy percent of young patients who get anemia for unknown reasons actually have H. pylori infections.” “Hrmm… But, like, would someone really be spreading something like that at our school? Where would you even get the bacteria in the first place?” “I know it’s kind of a far-fetched idea, but still…” Realizing how ridiculous his own theory sounded, Minoru fell silent. Ogu, who had finished eating a melon cream bun, leaned against the handrails and stretched out his legs. “Maybe the thing with Minowa and Maezaki is just a coincidence after all. If there was really a pylori pandemic at Yoshiki, wouldn’t there be more people feeling sick, even if they weren’t passing out from anemia? I haven’t heard anything like that in our class or in the track-and-field club.” “I guess I haven’t in my class, either…” But then it dawned on him. Multiple students feeling off, even if they weren’t actually passing out… Hadn’t he just heard about something like that yesterday? “No, wait a sec…,” Minoru murmured. Ogu peered down at him. “What, didja think of something else?” “Mm…I don’t think it’s related to anemia, but… You know how the math and science classes take proficiency tests along with midterms?” “Oh, that thing they throw back in your faces right on the first day of each semester? Those teachers are total sadists.” “I agree. But yesterday, when those results came out…a group of people who had always been at the top suddenly all had their grades take a huge dive. Someone told me it was the biggest shake-up since the inception of the math and science program.” “Huh…” Ogu didn’t sound that interested at first, but then his brow furrowed. “Wait, are you saying that might be because of anemia due to H. pylori infections, too? That’s crazy; how could a bacteria only infect the kids with the highest grades?” “It’s not just the high-performing students. Minowa is the girls’ track-and-field ace, and didn’t you say Maezaki is the MVP of the volleyball team?” Ogu’s jaw dropped. He drew his legs back in, grabbing his knees with his hands. Then he glanced to either side for some reason, leaned in close to Minoru, and spoke in a whisper. “You mean…the kids who are good at school and sports are being targeted? Like someone went after Minowa and Maezaki and those nerds and infected them with H. pylori on purpose?” “It might be limited to first-years, too. Although we can’t say for sure that a pylori infection is really the cause…” As he continued, Minoru thought back to Tsumori’s unusually pale face when he’d glared at Minoru for being praised by the teacher. “But I do think it’s possible that all the students who are off their game are suffering from something like iron deficiency. It can affect more than just your physical strength, right?” “Yeah, ’cause it causes an oxygen deficiency in the brain. The track coach said it can affect your thinking and memory, too.” Ogu shook his head slowly. “But…if that’s actually what’s happening, then it’d be no joke. ’Cause if someone’s going after the people who are smart or good at sports, then…” “Yeah…the culprit is probably a student. A first-year, too.” “For real? Dude, that’s gotta be a crime, right? You’re not saying we should find the culprit ourselves, are you, Utsugi?” Minoru smiled grimly. “Of course not. If it’s true, then we should talk to the teachers…maybe even the police. Although there are ways we could track the culprit down.” “Wait, seriously?” Ogu’s eyes widened. Minoru was about to explain the method he had just thought of, but then he clamped his mouth shut. If the culprit was systematically targeting students with the highest grades, then the obvious suspects would be students whose grades had either stayed the same or greatly improved. Minoru was about to say as much, but then he realized that he fell squarely into the latter category. Mr. Mano had even said so himself: His ranking on the proficiency test had gone up more than any other student. “Hey, what kinda ways?” Ogu leaned in eagerly, but Minoru quickly shook his head. “No, we probably shouldn’t try to play detective.” “C’mon, you’re the one who said it in the first place…” “A-anyway, could you look into whether any other athletic kids aren’t feeling well? I’ll try to talk to some people whose grades went down. If some of them also have symptoms of anemia…” “Yeah, then your pylo-terror theory gets a lot less crazy.” “P-pylo-terror…?” “I mean, this is basically bioterrorism we’re talking about, yeah? H. pylori infection terrorism, so pylo-terror. Damn, now it’s starting to feel like we’re characters on one of those American hospital dramas.” This isn’t a game, Minoru noted, but he refrained from saying it. As of now, this was all just a baseless theory and lots of conjecture, so maybe it was best to just think of it like a game. Ogu slapped his knees and stood up abruptly. “All right, I’m gonna get started right now. Utsugi, gimme your LANE ID.” “Oh, right…okay.” I never thought the day would come that I’d exchange IDs with this guy, Minoru reflected as he pulled up the code on his phone and held it out to Ogu. Once fifth-period math and a short homeroom session were over, Minoru hurriedly gathered his things. The time was 3:30 p.m. Their meeting with Liquidizer was in Yoyogi Park at six, but he was meeting Yumiko at Harajuku Station at five, so there was no time to waste. Technically, as long as he made the Saikyou line express train that left Yonohonmachi Station at 4:17 p.m., he would arrive at Harajuku by 4:59, but he was hoping to catch the train before that just to be safe. Even for that one, though, he still didn’t need to leave school for another fifteen minutes. For the time being, Minoru stayed in his seat, his eyes drifting toward the right side of the classroom. The student his eyes fell on was Satoshi Tsumori. He had always ranked in the top three of the whole school, but in the most recent proficiency test, he had dropped all the way out of the top twenty. Minoru had to find out whether the cause was actually anemia. As he watched, Tsumori sluggishly shoved his textbooks into his shoulder bag, then put both hands on his desk to stand up. He stayed in that position for a few moments—had he gotten dizzy?—before he finally dragged his feet out of the classroom. Minoru waited a little, then followed after him. Tsumori didn’t seem to have noticed Minoru following him, but the goal was to talk to him, not just tail him. When Minoru remembered his angry glare from the previous day, though, it was hard to imagine having a friendly exchange with him. Especially when the subject was Hey, did your test scores drop because of a sudden, inexplicable, and totally unknown medical epidemic? Ten minutes left. Unsure of what else to do, Minoru kept following his classmate. If he remembered right, Tsumori had gone to middle school on the north side of Saitama City, so he was likely headed in the opposite direction of Minoru’s destination. He had to talk to him before they left the school. If only there was nobody else around, he pleaded, but school had just gotten out, so the stairwells and hallways were all full of students. Tsumori’s movements were a bit stiff as he started to head down the stairs. He definitely appeared to be in worse shape than yesterday, but he wasn’t wearing a mask, which made the anemia theory that much stronger. If he really had been infected with H. pylori bacteria, then he should definitely go to the hospital and get checked out before it got any worse, but would Tsumori listen to someone he viewed as an enemy? Minoru hesitantly started following him down the stairs when something happened. “Eek!” There was a high-pitched shriek from somewhere ahead. Looking down the stairs, Minoru saw that Tsumori was on top of some girl on the landing. Of course, it was clear at a glance that he had crashed into her and fallen, not done anything on purpose. “Ah…s-sorry…” Apologizing in a muffled voice, Tsumori tried to stand up, but he couldn’t seem to extract himself. The strap of his shoulder bag was tangled up with the girl’s left arm. Seven or eight students had gathered around them, but they were all just frowning or snickering. Nobody offered to help—in fact, one of the boys in the crowd took out his phone to record it. On impulse, Minoru leaped down the last three steps and pushed his way in, deliberately blocking the boy’s view. First, he freed the girl’s arm from the bag strap, then helped Tsumori get up. The other boy’s skinny frame was lighter than he expected, which made Minoru even more worried, but this was no time to quiz him about his health. After hesitating a moment, Minoru reached out his free hand to the girl on the floor, but she mumbled “I’m fine” and stood up on her own. With that, she dashed up the stairs and fled. At least she didn’t seem to be injured. Looking back at Tsumori, Minoru spoke out of 70 percent concern and 30 percent calculation. “Tsumori, you don’t seem to be feeling too well. I can take you to the nurse if—” But before he could finish his sentence, he was interrupted by an unexpected turn of events. Tsumori suddenly raised his right hand and violently shoved Minoru away. “Mind your own business!!” he shrieked, his high voice drowning out the murmurs of the surrounding students. Then, after glaring daggers at Minoru through his rimless glasses, Tsumori tottered away down the steps. Stunned into silence, Minoru stood stock-still for a moment. “That was unfortunate, eh, Utsugi?” A voice behind him made him whirl. Standing on the stairs, leaning lightly on the banister, was Akitoshi Hazama from Class Two. With a refined shrug of the shoulders, he walked up to Minoru, addressing him in a friendly tone. “Tsumori’s been irritable lately, so I’d avoid him if I were you. He hasn’t come to math club at all, either.” “…Math club?” I didn’t know such a club existed…, Minoru thought. Hazama smiled faintly. “Would you like to come check it out sometime? I’m sure you’re more than qualified to join the math club now.” “Oh, erm…no, I don’t really do…clubs…” Minoru shook his head meekly, though his instinct was to reject the offer more aggressively. Since when do you need to be “qualified” to join a damn school club? Trying to maintain a poker face, he inched away a little. “Really? Well, that’s too bad.” Still smiling, Hazama made his trademark gesture of waving two fingers next to his face, then went up the stairs. What in the world was that? Minoru sighed, then checked the time. He had less than five minutes before he had to leave, so there wasn’t any time to chase Tsumori down and question him. Besides, it didn’t seem like he would be willing to talk right now anyway. Thinking to himself that he could try again tomorrow, Minoru hurried to the entrance, changed his shoes, and headed to the bike rack area. Just as he was reaching into his pocket for his bike key, his phone started ringing. He thought it might be Ogu, but when he looked at the screen, the name displayed was Yumiko Azu. Glancing around quickly to be sure there were no other students around, he held the phone to his ear. “H-hello, this is Utsugi.” “Where are you right now?” The Accelerator didn’t bother with so much as a hello. Minoru checked the watch on his left wrist again before he responded. “Um, I’m just leaving my school now…” “Don’t you get out at three thirty? What have you been doing for the past ten minutes?” “I-it’s kind of a long story…” “Whatever. That works out, actually.” “Huh?” Minoru had expected the lecture to go on for longer, so this caught him by surprise. “What works out?” “Leave your bike at school and head north out of the front gate.” “Huh…? But I won’t make the train without my bike.” At least not unless I use my Third Eye powers to run there at top speed, but— Minoru’s thoughts were interrupted by another unexpected statement. “You don’t need to take the train. Your ride will be waiting for you on the main road.” “M-my ride? You came to pick me up, Yumiko?” “No, not me. You’ll see when you get there. Just hurry up!” With that, she abruptly ended the phone call. “What in the world…?” Grumbling as he put away his phone, Minoru left his bike locked up and went toward the gate. Around 70 percent of the students leaving were walking south from the gate, in the direction of the Saitama New Urban Center, but Minoru went north as instructed. He reached the four-lane main road in just a hundred or so meters, where he stopped and looked around. True to her word, Yumiko’s black Agusta F3 was nowhere to be seen. But this meeting with Liquidizer was a top secret mission that only Yumiko, Minoru, and Olivier knew about, so if Yumiko wasn’t coming, that only left Olivier. Could Olivier even drive, though? There were only three vehicles stopped on this side of the street: a delivery truck, a Lexus SUV, and a Daihatsu Copen. He doubted Olivier would be in any of those. …Wait, a Copen? Minoru’s eyes widened, and he looked closer at the yellow sports car. The hazard lights were on, but there was nobody inside—or so it appeared. However… Forcing his frozen legs to move, Minoru walked toward the cute sports car. Just as he reached the side door, it unlocked with a low click. It wasn’t being remote controlled. There was a driver inside. One Minoru couldn’t see but wanted to meet again more than anyone else. Taking a deep breath, Minoru reached out to the passenger-side door and pulled it open. Holding his messenger bag in front of himself, he slid into the low seat. Then, closing the door, he looked first to the front, then at the driver’s seat next to him. Visually, it appeared to be empty, but Minoru knew better. He recognized the faint floral scent. And the warmth he could just barely detect through the air between them. “…Welcome back, Suu.” Immediately, there was a staticky noise in the air, and someone appeared in the leather seat. Short, fluffy hair that peeked out from under a yellow cap. A small face that was almost breathtakingly beautiful. And violet eyes the color of the sky just before sunrise… Suu Komura, the SFD member known as the Refractor, looked at Minoru with her head slightly tilted to the side, then responded in a soft near-whisper. “Thank you, Minoru.” There was a smile on her pale lips, faint but enough to warm Minoru’s heart. The same transparent smile had been on her face right before she pushed Minoru in order to free him from the concrete hell they were trapped in together. Now Suu was right before his eyes again, but she seemed so ephemeral that Minoru was afraid she would disappear if he looked away. He leaned unconsciously toward the driver’s seat, then restrained himself. “When did you get out of the hospital…? Is it safe for you to be moving now?” “I was released just this morning. The bones in my head are all healed now, so it’s fine. Although I’ll be wearing this hat until my hair grows back over the scars from the stitches.” She touched the brim of her yellow cap. Then she raised it just a little bit and nodded to him. “I’m sorry I didn’t contact you sooner… I wanted to thank you in person.” “N-no, you don’t need to apologize…but after such a major head injury, shouldn’t you be resting at headquarters for a while…?” Suu smiled at his concern and shook her head. “The internal bleeding has completely stopped, and they said my brain waves are normal again. The doctor was surprised, too… Minoru, do you remember when you brought me into your shell at the hospital…?” “…Yeah.” “When you did that, something touched my head… It almost felt like someone’s hand. It felt like it reached right into my brain and removed the hematoma that they couldn’t operate on. I know it sounds hard to believe, but that’s how it seemed to me.” Minoru shook his head slowly. “No, I believe you. I felt the same thing…like there was someone else inside the shell with you and me. The shell was only two centimeters around our bodies, but…I know I felt another presence there.” “Amazing, isn’t it?” Suu moved closer to Minoru, looking straight into his eyes from a close distance as she whispered, “I don’t know who that presence was who healed my injury, but it was you who saved me, Minoru. Thank you.” Then she reached out with both hands, wrapped her arms around Minoru, and pulled him into a tight embrace. It would be a lie to say Minoru wasn’t startled at all. But his feelings of relief and affection were far stronger, and so he instinctively put his arms around Suu and hugged her back. They were in the opposite direction of the station, but the car was still only a hundred meters away from the school, so it was possible a student might walk by and notice Minoru in the car. But in that moment, all such anxieties were far from his mind. Minoru simply held Suu, carving every last emotion it entailed deep into his memories. The engine wasn’t running, so the only sound was the quiet beep of the blinking hazard lights. The sound of Minoru’s heart and Suu’s breath seemed to match its beat. After a few seconds, or maybe even minutes, a small voice tickled his left ear. “I’d like to stay like this longer, but…if we don’t leave soon, we won’t get to the operation in time.” “The operation…” Only then did Minoru finally remember the important mission that was coming up in just two hours’ time. And then the fact that Suu shouldn’t be here with them. Looking up, Minoru blinked a few times, then responded in a slightly shrill voice. “W…wait, what are you doing here exactly, Suu? Do you know what this mission is?” But Suu simply smiled, withdrawing from the embrace and settling back into the driver’s seat. “I’ll explain on the way. Just put your seat belt on for now, please.” “Um…right.” Minoru nodded. His messenger bag had fallen to his feet, so he returned it to his knees and clicked his seat belt into place. Suu pressed the ignition button, and the engine roared to life. Gliding smoothly onto the road, the Copen entered the right lane and quickly started to gain speed. Wait, isn’t Suu still a third-year in middle school? Where did she learn to drive—and doesn’t she have high school entrance exams coming up…? Minoru’s thoughts spun, but only until the moment the car pulled onto the expressway. Taking the New Urban Center west ramp onto the Saitama-Omiya Route, the Copen sped up even more, passing other vehicles one after another despite its small size. Why do all of the female SFD members drive so darn fast?! Letting out a silent scream in his mind, Minoru clung tight to his bag.