Wednesday
Day
TODAY, AS ALWAYS, Yano-san’s “Good…morning” went ignored. Some of our classmates had begun to believe that she was responsible not only for Nakagawa’s missing shoes, but also for stealing Takao’s bike, and everyone sneered to see her digging through the garbage in the morning. Seeing Nakagawa hurt had only strengthened the sense of unity between the girls of our class. However, there was at least one blessing from Yano’s rapidly deteriorating circumstance.
The necessary conditions had finally been fulfilled.
“Tonight?” I said. “That’s pretty sudden.”
Though I was thankful to Kasai for providing this intel, I was racked with nerves and let my true thoughts slip.
“Yeah. I’ll be busy playing games, so I told him not to bother calling me.”
Right. As far as Kasai was concerned, that time of night was always booked solid for gaming. Yano and Motoda weren’t the only ones in our class who could be seen nodding off in the middle of the day.
“You find out what’s up for me, Acchi,” he said.
“I’ll be asleep.”
“Guess so. You’ve always been a real early-bird type, huh?”
He heaved a sigh and then smiled warmly at me, resigned. I couldn’t tell if it was because he had accepted this as a quirk of mine or if this was a smile of pure exasperation, but either way it seemed that he had forgiven me. I felt relieved.
“Anyway, I guess either the kaiju won’t show, and then they just go home, or else they’ll catch it, which is a whole new can of worms. It’d be a lot cooler if they caught it though, ahaha.”
I laughed along with Kasai, who was probably imagining what it would look like if Motoda and the others caught me. I continued to laugh along, even as he said, laughing, “Apparently he hurt that first-year pretty bad, and now he’s on suspension.”
This was not the time for me to be worrying about the injuries of people I didn’t know. The final battle was tonight.
As I watched Iguchi walking a firm distance away from Yano after cooking class, unlike last week, my resolve grew firm.