IT WAS AFTER FOUR NOW, and she couldn’t stay downstairs.
The curtains in her room upstairs were, as in the morning, still closed.
As she waited to hear the now-familiar sound, she began to tense up. She could never get used to it. She tried watching the TV, with the sound turned down, to take her mind off it, but nevertheless she sat on her bed, anxiously waiting.
Any minute now.
There it was. She heard the mailbox in front of their house swing shut with a clang as someone dropped a letter inside.
‘Ah – Tojo-san’s here,’ she said to herself.
Moé Tojo-san, a girl from her class.
Tojo-san was a transfer student who’d joined their class at the end of April, after the semester had already begun. She’d arrived late due to some formalities to do with her father’s job, apparently.
She was a pretty girl, good at sports too, and her desk in class was right next to Kokoro’s. Moé’s athletic build and long lashes took Kokoro’s breath away – she reminded her of one of those beautiful French dolls people used to collect. Tojo-san didn’t have any foreign blood, apparently, though she did have the attractive features often found among Eurasians.
The teacher assigned her to sit next to Kokoro for a reason – they were neighbours, with Tojo-san’s house only two doors down from Kokoro’s. His aim was that, as neighbours, they should get to know each other, and Kokoro hoped they would. And in fact, in the first two weeks after she began school, Tojo-san asked Kokoro if she could address her by the informal Kokoro-chan. They also walked to school and back home together.
Tojo-san had even invited Kokoro to come over to her house.
Her home had the same basic floorplan as Kokoro’s, though she got the impression it had been designed with Tojo-san’s family specifically in mind. The building materials were the same, as was the height of the ceilings, yet the ornaments on display in the hall, the pictures hanging on the wall, the light fixtures and colour of the carpeting were all different. The identical construction and layout made these differences stand out all the more.
Tojo-san’s home was so smart and stylish, with paintings just inside the entrance based on the fairy tales her father was apparently fascinated by.
Tojo-san’s father was a college professor researching children’s literature. On the wall, he had framed line-drawings from old illustrated books he’d picked up while in Europe. Scenes from stories Kokoro was familiar with: Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats, Hansel and Gretel.
‘Pretty weird scenes, aren’t they?’ Tojo-san said. By this time Kokoro was addressing her, too, more familiarly, as Moé-chan.
‘Papa collects drawings by this artist, including their illustrations for the Brothers Grimm books and illustrations from the Hans Christian Andersen stories.’
The scenes didn’t strike Kokoro as weird, exactly. The one from The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats was the well-known episode where the wolf breaks into the young goats’ house and they scramble to escape. The drawing from Hansel and Gretel, too, was one of the more famous ones, where Hansel is walking in the forest, tossing out breadcrumbs. There was a witch in the picture, but that alone told you which story it was from.
Their houses were the same size inside, but for some reason Tojo-san’s house seemed much more spacious.
In the living room were shelves lined with books in English, German and other languages.
Tojo-san took one out. ‘This one’s in Danish,’ she said.
‘Wow,’ said Kokoro. She could understand a bit of English, but Danish was totally alien.
‘Andersen was a Danish writer,’ Tojo-san explained bashfully. ‘I can’t read it either. But you can borrow it if you’re interested.’
Kokoro was thrilled. She might not be able to read Danish, but from the illustration on the cover she knew it had to be The Ugly Duckling.
‘And there are lots of books in German, too,’ Tojo-san said. ‘The Brothers Grimm being German and all.’
This made Kokoro even more excited. She knew many of the Grimms’ fairy tales, and these foreign picture books seemed so stylish and cool.
‘You should come over to my house next time,’ Kokoro said. ‘We don’t have anything nice like these, though …’ Kokoro really thought it would happen. At least she thought it should.
So why did things turn out the way they did?
Tojo-san ended up turning her back on Kokoro.
✦ ✦ ✦
KOKORO QUICKLY WORKED OUT THAT Sanada and her little cohort had said something to Tojo-san about her.
One day in class, Kokoro went over to her. ‘Moé-chan?’ she said, and Tojo-san looked up, obviously annoyed. What do you want? her expression said.
It was clear Tojo-san found Kokoro a nuisance. She no longer wanted to be in Kokoro’s company, especially not in front of Sanada and her gang.
Tojo-san and Kokoro had been discussing which after-school club to join. But when the time came to meet, as they’d promised each other, Tojo-san strode right out of the classroom with Sanada and her crew. When they were out in the hallway Sanada said, loudly enough for Kokoro to hear, ‘I feel so sorry for those loners!’
As she slowly packed away her school books, ready to go home, she noticed the stares from the other kids, and Kokoro finally understood: the comment had been meant for her.
Loner, loner – the word whirled around in her head as she left the school building. She intentionally avoided the other kids’ eyes. If that gang was going to be there, it was enough reason for her to lose all desire to check out any clubs.
Why did they pick on me like that? she wondered.
They gave her the silent treatment.
They whispered about her behind her back.
They told other girls not to have anything to do with her.
They laughed.
Laughed and laughed.
Laughing at her, Kokoro.
Her stomach ached and she locked herself in one of the toilet cubicles. She could hear Sanada giggling just outside. Break was nearly over, but she couldn’t leave while they were outside. She was on the verge of tears, but steeled herself anyway, and emerged only to hear a little exclamation from the adjacent cubicle, as Sanada was coming out. She looked directly at Kokoro and grinned.
When she later heard from a classmate what she’d done, Kokoro blushed with shame. Wondering why Kokoro was taking so long, Sanada had crouched down in the adjacent cubicle and was watching her from below. When she pictured the scene that Sanada must have witnessed – her squatting there, underpants around her ankles – Kokoro thought she felt something collapse inside her.
The classmate who’d informed her, while lamenting how horrible it all was, also made Kokoro promise never to reveal that she’d been the one who told.
Kokoro stood there, frozen, dazed, totally crushed.
She had nowhere left to go where she could feel at peace.
This happened again and again – until the incident took place, and Kokoro made the fateful decision.
She stopped going to school.
✦ ✦ ✦
EVEN AFTER KOKORO HAD DROPPED out, Tojo-san would stop by to deliver leaflets and notices from school.
She did it very matter-of-factly.
Kokoro had hoped they would still be friends, but Tojo-san merely placed the bumf in her mailbox and never once rang the doorbell. Kokoro had witnessed this any number of times from her upstairs window; Tojo-san dumping the leaflets, as if fulfilling a duty, then hurrying off.
Now she watched idly as the figure in school uniform, a shirt with a blue-green collar and a dark red scarf, appeared. The same uniform she herself had worn in April.
Kokoro felt relieved at least that Tojo-san came by alone on her errand, probably because the other girls lived elsewhere.
Her teacher had probably told Tojo-san to stop by and see Kokoro, and Kokoro decided not to think about the possibility that Tojo-san was intentionally ignoring these instructions.
The mailbox clanged shut and Moé-chan left.