Unfortunately, she wasn’t wrong. I swallowed back the complaint lingering in my throat and pondered the best way to deal with the invaders.
“I’ll leave a clone at the front gate, then.”
“Your Sha…dow, right? Shadow.”
I continued, “When they get here, I’ll lure them into the building and then come after them.”
“Sounds…good.”
I quickly prepared a clone and sent it to the gate. This one couldn’t change its size or breathe fire. Furthermore, if I sent him outside of the gates, he would vanish—perhaps because I had only envisioned him as being useful within the school, the first time.
“Come to…think of it, who was that, yester…day?” Yano-san asked.
The question came so abruptly that it took me a moment to process what she was talking about.
“Oh yeah, the one who set off the alarm in the courtyard?”
“May…be some idiot from our…class.”
As I wondered why Yano-san would assume that, I recalled something—though I didn’t do it of my own volition.
“Nakagawa-san was saying that someone threw her shoes out into the yard. Maybe whoever was here yesterday dropped them.”
“That’s day…time…talk.”
“But them dropping them might’ve happened at night,” I pointed out.
Yano-san fell silent despite her initial protest, as though having accepted this explanation. I ignored her immediate, childish reply of, “Can you…prove it?”
“If it is someone from our class, I wonder who.”
“Someone who hates Yuri…ko-chan.”
By Yuriko-chan she meant Nakagawa. When I thought about the people who hated her, a single human immediately came to mind. Not a monster, a human.
“What’s your de…duction, De…tective Acchi-kun?”
Though I couldn’t make anything approaching a “deduction,” I at least knew that the culprit wasn’t me, so I had to start with considering the retreating form I had seen the night before. The person was short, though not as short as Yano-san, with hair that did not extend past their shoulders.
“A boy, like Kasai…” I said.
“Could’ve been a…girl.”
“There are no girls in our class that height with hair that short.”
“Maybe they…cut it. Well then, Acchi-kun, your conclu…sion is that it’s Kasai…kun?”
“Mm, I mean, I don’t think he’d have done it.”
“Why…not?”
“He’s not that kind of person.”
Yano-san didn’t know much about Kasai. I tried to explain to her that he didn’t have a wicked bone in his body. Naturally, I omitted the parts about what Nakagawa-san had been trying to do, and Kasai’s feelings for Midorikawa. Yano-san at least knew that Kasai never participated in harming her, so my image of him seemed to jive with her impressions.
As I continued giving my one-sided exposition, Yano-san sighed. “Hm…hmm. He really is…smooth,” she said.
I wasn’t sure what she meant by “smooth.”
“And he’s…smart, too.”
“Actually, his grades suck. He doesn’t like thinking too hard about things.”
“That’s about what I…imagined,” she continued. She sounded dissatisfied, despite not being much of a decent judge of anything. Despite knowing nothing about Kasai. She added, “He seems…like the kind of person who could never…ever fall for…anyone.”
See? She knew nothing at all.
“Not like you, Acchi…kun,” she said.
“…I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking…about Igu…chan. The one you…like.”
Uninterested in all this mushy talk, I quickly reached for a change of subject. “Why don’t we go see what the library’s like at night?” Even if those guys showed up, there were plenty of places where we could hide there, and it wouldn’t take us much time to get there from here.
I’d only proposed it as a way to kill time, but Yano-san’s response was, “Sounds…hella lame.”
“I don’t want to hear that from you,” I spat, to which Yano-san replied, “That was a com…pliment.”
And just what about it was complimentary, exactly?
Despite the disagreement, eventually the two of us decided to head to the library. We followed the same procedure as always upon exiting the room—me unlocking and then relocking the door.
“I was thinking that it might be…Kudou…chan.” We walked down the hallway, her voice as thoughtlessly loud as always.
“She’s not that sort of person, either.”
“Hm…hmm. Like I said, Acchi…kun. Hella…lame.”
Finally, it occurred to me that she was baiting me, and when I realized that I was falling for it, I managed to calm down. Getting riled up was exactly what Yano-san wanted out of me.
As we approached the library, Yano-san went galloping in. I followed behind at a measured pace, impeded by my own sense of decorum. Like the nurse’s office, the library—which I hadn’t visited in a while—had a scent all of its own, different from the rest of the school. This unique atmosphere, the smell and the silence of the night, it all gave my spirits a gentle lift.
Whenever I happened to come here, I couldn’t help but think of a particular classmate of ours, but I did not broach the subject. It was a daytime topic, after all, best left alone.
“Oh, there’s Harry…Potter.”
I looked to where she indicated and saw the series on prominent display. There it was, proof positive that reading Harry Potter wasn’t weird—I found myself relieved.
Yano-san began to wander all about the library. After a few minutes, I realized how much of a chore it was to follow her and decided to wait by the entrance instead. If anyone showed up, I’d be in the perfect position to scare them off and settle the matter.
So far, I hadn’t seen any disturbance through the eyes of my clone waiting at the gate. It seemed that this was to be a quiet night after all. Everyone loves a little peace and quiet after dark.
Gazing into the darkened library, I suddenly got the feeling that it had reached a certain point in the night. Sure enough, I soon heard the alarm from Yano-san’s phone jingling from a corner of the library. I saw Yano-san herself poke her head out through a gap in the shelves before she came trotting back over.
“Didn’t see…anything I wanted to read,” she said.
“Didn’t you say you don’t read books, anyway?”
“Yeah, but you said there were some in…teresting ones out there…too.”
Though I didn’t show it on my face, I was surprised. I couldn’t recall saying such a thing, nor could I believe that she would actually accept it.
“But the books…that are just all full of words…don’t seem very in…teresting.”
“You can’t judge books at a single glance like that.”
“I like things that you can judge…at just a glance.”
Tell that to the ones making the books, I thought, standing, ushering her to the exit ahead of me. I locked the door in the usual fashion.
“Hm?”
“What’s…up?”
“When we came in, you went in before me.”
“Yeah?”
“Was it locked?”
“Nope.”
Maybe someone forgot to lock it. The guards would probably be back to lock it later. I recalled my clone from the gates and proceeded down to the entrance with my usual firm caution. Along the way, Yano-san hummed to herself, truly devoid of any sense of self-preservation. When I warned her about this, she replied in a singsong voice. “Igu-chan’s gonna hate you…if you’re always so fussy.” This earned her a second warning, that the next day I would be bringing a towel or something so I could shut her up by force without directly touching her if I needed to.
Yes, I would be seeing her again, same time tomorrow.
“See you tomorrow,” I said, moving through the gate.
“Okay,” she replied, nodding with a weirdly serious look upon her face.
I secretly followed her as she tottered home on her bike, worried about what might happen if she encountered those boys en route. For the first time, I realized just how close her house was to mine. It was an average, garden-variety house.
Not that I ever had any intention of going there.