Friday
Day
I BARELY GOT a full five minutes’ reprieve. A joy filled my heart after meeting up with Kudou around the shoe boxes and seeing her double-toothed smile, but it quickly withered away.
“Good…morning.”
As Kudou and I headed to the classroom together, Yano came down the stairs and gave us her usual cheerful greeting. As always, I ignored her. I didn’t look at her face. Kudou, naturally, ignored her as well. That was our class’s way, after all. Yano, likewise, continued straight down the stairs, not seeking any reply.
Just as the interaction ended, and I began to feel relieved, Kudou turned towards the descending Yano and threw the iced coffee carton she was holding at her—or so it appeared. I only turned to look after hearing the high sound of a shoe squeaking across the floor, so I could only guess how Kudou had moved, but I’m pretty sure I was on the mark.
The carton struck Yano in the back of the head and then fell to the floor. It seemed to be nearly empty, but a bit of coffee still spurted from the straw out onto Yano’s hair.
“Ow.”
Hearing this from Yano, Kudou turned right back around, grinning at me, and then picked the conversation right back up where she had left it with a “So, anyway…”
That was dangerous. Still, I managed to force my body back into its original course of action, matching pace with Kudou with an “Uh-huh.” In other words, I probably corrected course into someone who had met up with a classmate and was now walking to the classroom with them side by side, listening to their gossip.
As we arrived at the classroom and I reconsidered this accomplishment, realizing what it meant, a shiver ran down my spine.
Could it be that I was already beginning to veer off the rails?
Kudou used to be someone who ignored Yano so effortlessly, one wondered if she truly even really saw her. The only times she ever actively joined in on the harassment were when someone else cajoled her into it or when Yano overstepped the bounds of Kudou’s personal space. I had assumed her opinions and attitude to be the median amongst our classmates when it came to Yano.
And yet now she had done this thing.
Perhaps the incidents with Iguchi and Nakagawa had raised the bar for our class’s acceptable behavior, increased the demands of our shared sense of unity.
I corrected my stance.
I needed to be careful and decide how I was going to act. If I let myself slip, I might soon find myself targeted as an outsider. As I fretted over this, someone who lived life at his own pace approached, someone who never had such worries.
“You think that kaiju ate Motoda’s soul or somethin’? Ahaha.”
Kasai’s cheerful laughter was a balm.
I know that he meant it only as a joke, but as I thought about it, I realized that he was fairly on the mark. If Motoda refused to come to school because of what I had done to him, then one might as well say that I had eaten his soul.
Kasai took out his phone and showed me photos of a stray cat he had come across the day before. It was the same stray I had seen at night.
If the issue of cats versus dogs ever came up, Kasai was most assuredly a cat person, so I fell in step with that, talking to him just as another cat person would. Suddenly, however, a large shadow fell over us from the hallway.
“Kasai, hand it over.”
It was the homeroom teacher of Class 4. Kasai sputtered, “Wha?! Seriously?!” He didn’t recoil at all, even in the face of such an imposing authority figure. Around the room, a number of students suddenly shoved their hands into their pockets or their desks.
“Yes, seriously.”
“This is important to me, though! I should get to take care of it myself!”
“Then you should have left it at home instead of bringing it to school. C’mon, give it over, now.”
Reluctantly, Kasai placed his phone into the teacher’s outstretched hand, and with that the teacher left, saying that he would hand it over to our homeroom teacher. Seemingly utterly mortified, Kasai moaned, “Seriously, though? Everyone’s got ’em, even Nakagawa…” He petitioned the sympathies of those around him, drawing piteous looks.
As I watched Kasai head to his seat, still peeved, I finally understood something that had been bothering me for some time.
Ah, I see. So that’s why Iguchi’s Totoro key chain was missing from her bag.
It was something that was important to her, and it was something that she could no longer hope to protect all on her own.
I glanced over at Iguchi. She was nodding and grinning at something the other girls were saying. Though they had made tenuous amends, Iguchi was well aware that she now stood on the wrong side of our bubble of shared unity. I wonder if she was scared, too…
I quickly put aside the thought. But now that I knew the reason for Iguchi’s actions, it made sense that I never saw Yano playing with her phone during the day, the way that she always did at night.
She knew firsthand how much devastation could be caused by harming something that was precious to someone else.
Just then, Midorikawa came into the room, a library book in hand.
“Morning.”
“Mm.”
Naturally, she gave no further reply.
Now and then I thought about Midorikawa, the only one in our class who was permitted to go against the grain. I couldn’t envy her. One step in the wrong direction and she would end up in the same place as Yano. She had only ended up in a defensible position because she knew the right expressions to make, because she never showed fear. However, one of these days, she might just slip from that pedestal of hers.
It was perhaps because Midorikawa knew this that she made such a show of bringing in a book from the library every day. Oh, poor me, this routine seemed to say, I’m so afraid of bringing my own books now that I have to leave them at home. If it really was a ploy of hers, then it had proved almost disgustingly successful.
The bell rang, and our homeroom teacher arrived. Just as he was in the midst of informing Kasai that he should come to the staff room after school, Yano dragged her feet into the room. “Be in your seat before the bell,” he sighed in warning, to which Yano replied, “O…kay,” and took her seat.
Normally, he would not have bothered about her any further; it was like he’d given up on worrying about Yano’s attitude. Today was different.
“Look here, what would you have done if today was exam day? Do you really think you could just say ‘Okay’ and be done with it?”
While I wished to retort that of course she would be more careful on an exam day, the thought simultaneously occurred to me that Yano would probably come in just as late no matter how important the day was.
“Oi. Yano.”
Just as I sighed internally over how pointless this sermon was, an angry voice rang out elsewhere in the room.
“This is nothing to smile about!”
I felt a wave ripple through my body, the very same kind that I did during the night.
Then the teacher really laid into a sermon. At first, it was directed specifically at Yano, but at length it blossomed into a tirade concerning the entire class, including addressing Kasai’s phone, self-discipline, our duties to society, and such and so forth, eating up all of our time and dragging on and on until just before the bell that signaled the break before first period.
It began in a gloomy atmosphere. The atmosphere could be nothing but gloomy. Everyone’s irritation was so palpable you could practically feel it press against your skin. It didn’t take long for that same feeling of resentment to be redirected toward the person who was at the root of it all.
At this point, I don’t think I need to explain any further.