Monday
Day
EVER SINCE I BECAME a monster, I had stopped sleeping.
Thus, the form that my body took was determined by the boundary between day and night. Typically, I returned to my human form between four and five A.M., around when the sun began to rise. Naturally, when I returned home in monster form, not a soul was awake in my house. There was a long stretch until breakfast and heading to school, so I had a fair amount of free time.
A number of times, I had decided that I might at least try to sleep, even if only for an hour or two, and gone to snuggle in beneath my futon. However, again and again as I lay there, not sleeping, the smell of coffee would eventually come wafting up from the first floor. Ultimately, I gave up on it.
Today, as usual, I sat alone in my room on my bed with too much time on my hands. If I turned on my lights and the glow seeped out into the hallway, my family might notice and say something, so I opened my curtains and sat there quietly in the dark. It had been overcast since Saturday, and the moon was hidden.
Previously, I would use the faint light from my cell phone screen to read manga by, but lately I had no interest in this. Instead, once I finished my homework, I would just sit there blankly, like a fixture, waiting for time to tick by on its own.
As long as I thought about nothing, this time was rather relaxing. Actually trying to keep my mind clear was rather less so. The gurus in movies had the power to totally clear their mind, but even they often said something like: true zen takes much training.
I lay sprawled on my bed, gazing upward. Though I could not sleep, as long as I stared up at the ceiling, it felt like my body was resting.
If I was going to be thinking about things anyway, they may as well be fun things. I put my hands on my head and started to imagine what I’d do the following night.
When night fell, I would probably head to the school and watch over Yano from the shadows, as always, and then I would be free to go pass the time elsewhere. So what would I do tonight? I imagined various destinations, all sorts of ways to spend the hours. I had visited a number of islands over the weekend. When I crossed over the waves, I found nature and people who I had likely never once crossed paths with before. There were plenty of animals beyond the usual cats and dogs, too, but they all fled as soon as they became aware of my presence.
Maybe it was time to try sightseeing in another country. I supposed that, though I couldn’t stay long, I could make it to some of the other countries of Asia, at the very least. And if that worked, then the whole world was my oyster.
As I pondered this, suddenly, a thought occurred to me.
Just how long did I intend to keep doing this? I’d been thinking as though these strange nights of mine would last forever, but in truth, I had no idea how long the nightly transformations might continue. Like I’d thought on the night I chased Motoda away, my nights might return to normal at any moment.
I prayed that it would continue for as long as possible. But what did “as long as possible” mean? Until the end of junior high? Until the end of high school? Until the end of university? Until I was an old man?
I couldn’t really pin it down in concrete terms. At the very least, it would be nice if it lasted until I had some freedom. Until I didn’t feel so stifled all the time. I’d love to keep my monstrous form at my disposal until then.
And still, just when would that be?
Perhaps it was like Noto said—you could live a bit more freely once you’re an adult.
If that was true, at what age did she mean? How many more years would it take?
How much longer would I have to keep watch to ensure that no one ruined my classmate’s nights? How much longer would Yano keep up this habit of sneaking into the school at night?
How long would this go on? I don’t simply mean protecting her midnight breaks. How much longer would Yano keep irritating us all by being unable to read the room? How long would Midorikawa refuse to communicate with others? How long would Motoda and Nakagawa take pleasure in harming others? How long would Iguchi be unable to have faith in the people around her?
Just how long would it all continue?
Perhaps it might end once we graduated from junior high. Perhaps we would all go off to different high schools, our class becoming only a thing of memory, and everyone’s treatment of one another—their personalities, their beliefs, their twisted hobbies—would all change.
But who could know for sure?
Once again, I felt anger build up inside of me at Noto for saying something so clueless.
Then I realized that this was no time for me to be worrying about other people. I needed to keep from slipping up in the classroom, to take care not to step out of line, to live my life with the utmost caution in the upcoming week. As I imagined this, I felt a cold sweat come over me.
It was fine, though. I still had the night.
As I comforted myself, shifting from side to side, the sounds of human life began to stir.