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I have a classmate with the family name Morino whom I talk to occasionally. Her given name is Yoru. If you read the names together, you get Morino Yoru, or “the woods at night.” Her hair and eyes are both jet-black. Our school also has black uniforms, and Morino always wears black shoes. The only color anywhere on her is the uniform’s red scarf.
The name Yoru matches Morino’s black-clothed figure perfectly. Her commitment to the color is so great that I imagine if the darkness of night were given human form, then it might well look like her.
In direct contrast to all that black, her skin is pale like the moon, as though it’s never known the sun. There’s no flush of health; she seems to be made of porcelain. There’s a small mole under her left eye, and she has a mystic air, like a fortune-teller.
I once saw a girl with a similar air in a movie, a movie that opened with a couple drowning. The rest of the film depicted their attempts to adjust to life after death. The leading ghosts were invisible to normal humans—but eventually, they found a girl who was able to see them. That girl was the heroine of the movie, and her name was Lydia.
“I’m basically half-dead myself,” Lydia had said, explaining why she was able to see the ghosts. “My heart is filled with darkness.”
Lydia wore all black and was sickly pale. She preferred staying indoors and reading to playing outside, and she seemed very unhealthy.
Some people began calling people like her “Goths.” Goth refers to a culture, a fashion, and a style. If you search for Goth or “gosu” online, you’ll find any number of pages. Goth is short for Gothic but has little connection with the European architectural style. It has much more to do with the Gothic horror novels popular in Victorian London, like Frankenstein or Dracula.
It seems fair to call Morino a Goth. She frequently expresses an intense interest in torture methods and execution devices, and a fascination with the dark side of humanity is a common characteristic among Goths.
Morino rarely exchanges words with anyone else. She has nothing fundamentally in common with our healthy, overenergetic classmates. If classmates smile and speak to her, Morino will simply stare back at them, her blank expression never crumbling—and she’ll say, “Oh.” Even if classmates wait for her to say something else, nothing will happen: Morino will react no further.
Most people who speak to her end up feeling ignored. The girls in class have said as much. Ever since, they have begun looking down on her.
This attitude only helps complete the barrier around her that keeps everyone else away. While everyone else is laughing and talking, Morino alone remains utterly silent, as though she is in some other dimension, as if there is a shadow cast on the spot where she sits.
But Morino doesn’t intend to ignore anyone. After talking with her awhile myself, I became convinced of this. It isn’t out of spite that she doesn’t happily respond; rather, it is simply because she is that kind of person. She has nothing against the others, and she is equally distant with everyone.
After carefully observing such interactions, what I sensed was confusion. When someone spoke to Morino, she couldn’t figure out how to respond, and she was unable to think of anything to say. But this was all speculation on my part, as I didn’t know what she was actually thinking. Most of the time, her emotions didn’t register outwardly, and it was hard to tell what she felt.
For a while after we first spoke, I thought she was like some sort of doll. The impression she gave off was one more like an object than something animate.
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One Wednesday in October, just after the leaves were changing from green to red, Morino came into the classroom with her head down, and everyone fell silent. Her long black hair was hanging down, obscuring her face, and she was walking slowly, dragging her feet in a very creepy fashion. Most of the students must have thought she looked like a ghost—but her air was much more dangerous, like some sort of wild animal.
The barrier around her had transformed from its usual transparent sphere into something covered in spikes; she seemed like she might attack anyone who got too close to her. She was silent, as always—and nobody ever spoke to her, anyway—but you could see just how different her mood was by the tension on the faces of those sitting near her.
I was not all that intrigued. I simply assumed she was in a bad mood. That day, we didn’t have a moment to speak, so I didn’t learn the reason why. (Morino would never approach me to speak when I was talking to any of our other classmates.) I learned the reason the next day, though, after school.
When homeroom ended, the other students stood up and left the room. Eventually, the class was empty—and so quiet that it was hard to imagine how noisy it had been a few minutes earlier. Only the rows of empty desks, Morino, and I remained.
A pleasantly cold breeze drifted in through the windows. The class next door had not been dismissed yet, and I could hear the teacher’s voice from down the hall.
Morino was sitting low in her seat. Both her hands hung listlessly at her sides, and she looked exhausted.
“I’m not sleeping much,” she said, yawning. There were shadows under her eyes. Her eyelids were half-closed, and she stared past them into the distance.
I was in my seat, preparing to head home. Her seat was over on the other side of the room. There was no one else there, so I could hear her well enough, and it didn’t occur to me to move closer to her to talk.
“Is that why you were so strange yesterday?”
“I get like this sometimes. No matter how hard I try to sleep, I can’t. Insomnia, I guess.”
She stood up. Still looking very sleepy, she staggered toward the chalkboard.
There was an outlet at the front of the room, and an extension cord plugged into it, which was connected to the eraser cleaner. Morino unplugged the cord, which was a good sixteen feet long. Leaving the other end connected to the eraser cleaner, she wrapped the cord around her neck. She stood there that way, motionless.
“No, doesn’t feel right,” she said, shaking her head and dropping the cord. “When I can’t sleep, I always wrap something around my neck, close my eyes, and imagine myself being strangled to death. Then I can fall asleep—it feels like sinking deep underwater.”
I was disappointed: she hadn’t yet gone mad from lack of sleep. “If that helps, you should try it before you’re this far-gone.”
“Not just any bit of rope will do.”
Morino was after a certain type of rope, and the extension cord had not proved an effective substitute.
“I’ve lost the one I used the last time. I’m trying to find a new one, but …” She yawned, looking around blearily. “I don’t really know what I’m looking for. If I could figure that out, goodbye insomnia.”
“What did you use last time?”
“No clue. It was just something I found, and I tossed it out as soon as I could sleep without it.”
She closed her eyes, fingering her throat. “I just remember how it felt …” She opened her eyes, as if she’d just had an idea. “Right, let’s go rope shopping. You should buy some rope or cord yourself; it might come in handy. You might need it when you kill yourself.”
The class next door had finished, and I could hear the sound of all those chairs being pushed back at once.
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