Thursday
Night
THOUGH I KNEW it wouldn’t do any good, I was livid with Yano-san. If she hadn’t been doing that weird juggling thing in the hall, Iguchi-san wouldn’t have been berated so cruelly. However, the reason that I headed to school again that evening wasn’t just to criticize her for that, no. There was something else on my mind: the baseball club. On the off chance she really had broken that window, then that act was far more grave. It was downright criminal.
When I arrived at the school and slipped through the back door of the classroom, Yano was digging through the trash can near the blackboard for something. Unsure of how to call out to a girl who was elbow-deep in garbage, I decided to wait until she noticed me.
When Yano, clutching something thin in both hands with an Aha, finally noticed the monster at the back of the classroom, she cried out with a vapid “Wuh-hoh!”
“Yo,” I greeted.
“…Look…at that. You…came,” she said, flapping the object, which seemed to be some notepads, around in her hand.
I had thought at the very least that I would be met with that usual satisfied grin of hers, but she couldn’t seem to care less about the fact that I was here. It left me feeling a little down. Not that I was looking forward to her smile, or anything.
Just as I thought, Enough, I’m going home, and began to disassemble my form, she asked me a strange question. “Acchi…kun, are you a Fire…ball type? Or a Frizz type?”
Fireball? Frizz? Was she talking about games?
“You mean for fire magic?” I said. “I prefer Incendio.”
“What’s…that?”
“From Harry Potter.”
“Wow… Then can…you do…that?”
“Huh?”
“Can…you breathe…fire?”
“Sure can’t.”
She looked disheartened at my response. What was that face about?
I was the one who ought to be put out, I thought. But when I considered Yano-san’s disappointment, I recalled the rumors that Kasai had mentioned, about a kaiju appearing. Since she knew that the rumors were about me, she must have figured that if I was a kaiju, I could probably breathe fire or something.
“What d’you need fire for anyway?”
“To burn…this. Any…way, let’s go…to the…roof.”
As usual, she exited the classroom without waiting for my reply. Left without much choice, I locked the door in my usual way and followed behind. I was honestly a bit impressed by how conscientious I was every time.
By the time I made it out to the hallway, I found that my free-spirited classmate had already started towards the stairs, not waiting for me. My self-admiration turned to exasperation. The fact that I followed her was not conscientiousness but softhearted foolishness.
I prepared a Shadow clone just in case, but we arrived at the roof without incident.
As I unlocked the rooftop door and we stepped outside, I was struck by a crisp breeze. Though I had been here the night before last, I had forgotten how good a feeling it was being on the rooftop in the middle of the night. One got the feeling that the sky might just swallow us whole.
“People shouldn’t…smoke,” said Yano-san, pointing at a cigarette butt that was rolling by.
“Well, I mean…” I paused. “It’s no big deal, as long as they don’t get caught.”
“But it’s…bad for the…body.”
She was right, of course, but it was weird to hear something so sensible and mature out of Yano-san. The ones who came up here to smoke were probably the ones who kicked off the bullying against you, I wanted to say. But there was no need for it, so I kept my mouth shut.
“Now…then, show…me some…fire.”
“Uh, no, I just told you that I can’t.”
“Have you…tried?”
Now that she asked me, not only had I not tried it, I hadn’t even considered it.
“Just try…it…one…time. Oh, ac…tually, I’ve never tried it…either, so I’ll try…too. Go!”
She placed the two notebooks on the ground and held out her hands like she was trying to gather up energy. Her arms trembling, she muttered again and again: “Go…! Go…!” For some reason, partway through, she appeared to stop breathing. I watched her for a while, thinking about how stupid she looked. At length, she seemed to accept her own powerlessness and sat down, grumbling. “Guess I…can’t.” Her shoulders heaved, as though she had been putting in some real, serious effort.
“Okay… Now it’s your…turn, Acchi…kun.”
“Huh?”
I flicked my eyes away from her hopeful gaze and observed the two notebooks. Both had been scribbled all over in magic marker. What was written all over them were not childish little insults like “Big Dummy” or “Stupid Idiot.” This stuff was nasty. Their covers were scrawled with enough vitriol to deeply wound anyone who read it, not just Yano-san.
“If fire does come out, can I burn those?”
“That’s…fine. I’ve al…ready used them…all up, so I’d put…them a…side.”
Even if she hadn’t, would she really ever use them again, the way they were now?
“I threw…them away, but…I thought it… might be better to…burn them.”
Ah, so it wasn’t that someone else had thrown them in the trash; she’d done it herself.
I wondered how long they’d been defaced. I highly doubted that whoever did it had the courtesy to choose a notebook she’d already filled.
While I stood there thinking, there came a demand of “Hurry…up!”
Yano-san had moved some distance away from the notebooks, clearly believing in my power. I had my doubts, but those notebooks looked so pitiful. If I could honor them with a proper cremation, I thought that I might as well try.
If I could make a Shadow, then why not fire, too? If I said I wasn’t a little optimistic about my chances, I’d be lying.
I visualized it, the same way I had the night before.
In order to breathe fire, I needed to store up enough energy to make my whole body vibrate. Then, I had to make the black drops inside of my monstrous form crank like an engine and heat up. Then, the droplets had to ignite, gathering up into a big flame, which I would spit from my mouth.
Suddenly, I was assailed by a bright light shining in front of me.
“Gaaah! It’s…hot!”
The flame that flew from my mouth was exactly as large as I had imagined. So large it came dangerously close to catching Yano-san’s uniform. Quickly, I breathed in, picturing a sudden end to the heat, a re-absorption of the burning droplets. As I did, the flames returned to my body, stopping just short of injuring her.
The moonlight-tempered darkness returned to the rooftop, and there in the midst of it sat two notebooks burned to a crisp.
The two of us looked at each other.
“Whoa! Wow! That’s a…mazing!”
Yano-san stared fixedly at me as she walked from the edge of the rooftop back to where I stood. Inadvertently, I stared right back with all eight of my eyes.
“No way,” I said.
I had hoped, at least a little bit, that I might be able to do something like that, but I never believed that I actually could.
I totally was a kaiju.
If I wasn’t careful with this fire-breathing, I could set the whole town ablaze, just like a real kaiju.
I could still feel the flame kindling within my body. Excitement burned with its own fire deep inside my heart.
“That’s so…cool, Acchi-kun. How’d you…do it?”
How had I done it?
“I just, like, imagined how I thought it would feel, and then I did it,” I tried to explain as Yano-san timidly approached. She stared at me with the wide-eyed look of someone facing down a monster.
“With the power of…imagination, any…thing is…possible,” she said.
“Power of imagination?”
Was there really such a thing? A real power, like a wizard or sorcerer’s?
Yano-san gave the burnt notebooks a powerful kick, and they scattered into black flecks. Apparently, I had burned them completely to ash.
After scattering the ashes to her satisfaction, Yano-san took a step back and once again stared at me. I wondered if she might be afraid, knowing that I was a genuine fire-breathing monster, but that was probably wrong. I realized then that the color in her eyes was a completely different hue from what they’d shown before. It was the color of envy.
She really was a strange girl. Who would want to be a monster? I doubted that I could really do anything I wanted, like she’d implied, anyway. But then…what if I could…?
As I pictured it, a whisper of fear ran through me.
But just what was I so afraid of…?
“…Say… Acchi…kun.”
I was afraid that she might come to say something like, If you can do anything, then rescue me.
So I interrupted her. “That reminds me, Yano-san.” It was time to finally finish the business that had brought me here in the first place. “Do you know about what happened with the baseball club?”
“Hm? What…happened?”
“Seems like someone smashed their clubroom window.”
“Right, some…one was saying…that.”
“Yeah, so…”
I had only spoken two words when Yano-san suddenly began to cackle. She kicked at the ashes again, her feet loudly thumping on the ground. Just when I was starting to wonder if she’d finally lost it, she pointed at me.
“And you thought…I was…the culprit.”
Though she was in fact right on the mark, I was startled that she could guess it.
“Uh, well, yeah. I thought, maybe.”
“I’d never…do something like…that.”
For the first time that night, she showed me that smug grin.
“If I got…revenge for my…self, I would be…just like…them.”
Just like them—by which she meant she would be just the same as Motoda. Which further meant that, as far as Yano-san was concerned, that was a bad thing.
“If not for yourself, then what about for the frog?”
“I…wouldn’t. I have no…idea what that…little one would have…wanted. I wouldn’t… do something so…stupid.”
I was lost for words. For so many reasons, but mostly because I was stunned that Yano-san would ever think that carefully about her own actions. If that were the case, why didn’t she always exercise a bit more self-awareness, I wondered. And as I wondered, I realized that the insults written on those notebooks might be a little bit off the mark.
Not that I had the slightest intention of validating Yano-san, of course.