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.