There was a light shower coming down on the way to school—a gloomy Monday, through and through. I walked with my umbrella out, cursing the weather that I hoped might suddenly clear up overnight.
I continued along the road, thinking over the day’s schedule. There would be an extended homeroom, then English, then math. Not an especially taxing day. The issue here was how much of the class’s tension from last Friday had carried over into this week. I had to be extra careful when gauging it. If I didn’t, I might find myself suddenly on the wrong side at any time. I might end up outside of the circle of unity before I knew it. Like day and night, my position could be reversed in an instant. And just as drastically as between human and monster, I would change.
I had to choose my actions wisely. Truthfully, even the sort of things I had been thinking about at dawn were starting to veer off course, so perhaps it was already too late.
I had to be careful.
“Acchi!”
As someone called me, I returned to my senses. I turned around to see a jovial Kasai.
“Ahaha, you’re totally soaked.”
Apparently, I had neglected to properly keep the rain off of me while I was spacing out. I brushed off my dampened left shoulder and corrected my stance—both bodily and mentally.
“Don’t usually see you walking, Acchi.”
“No? I always walk when it’s raining.”
“Huh. Guess so.”
Kasai lived comparatively close to the school and always walked in the mornings. After school, he often hitched a ride home on the back of someone’s bike. Obviously, such a thing was prohibited within the schoolgrounds, but as soon as he stepped outside the gates, such rules probably meant nothing to him.
Little of note happened as we walked along, avoiding puddles. The usual group who were chauffeured by their parents on rainy days passed us by, and eventually, we arrived safely at the school gates. “Safely,” I thought internally and then had to laugh at myself for thinking something so carefree.
It was here that the real trial would begin. To put it in a word, the path stretching forward from here was a minefield.
Kasai flew through the gates, not a care in the world, striding nimbly around every single land mine as he headed towards the entrance. As skilled as always, that one.
I could do no such thing. I didn’t have the slightest bit of the innate sense that allowed Kasai to live that way. I had to proceed step by cautious step through life, careful not to step on any of the mines, but making sure that that vigilance did not weigh me down. If not, I would end up exposed. Shunned.
But the tedium of this slow progress weighed on me. It was my own fault, a flaw in my disposition. And yet, there were times when I worried I might have this problem forever, just as I had at dawn.
I shook my head, as though shaking off the raindrops from my hair, shedding myself of these cowardly thoughts as I did.
I just had to keep living carefully. I just had to be sure to always choose the right things. It wasn’t that complicated.
As I politely folded my umbrella outside of the entrance, careful not to send the drops flying onto anyone’s uniform, I heard a cheerful voice.
“Heya, Non-chan, you goin’ out?”
“My name is not Non-chan.”
I tapped my umbrella along the ground, drawing closer to the little scene playing out between Kasai and Noto in front of our class’s shoe boxes. I noticed that Noto was holding her shoes and umbrella, currently donning said shoes. She had probably just come from the nurse’s office.
“Morning, Adachi-kun.”
“G’mornin’.”
“One of the first-years fell off of their bike and broke a bone, so I have to take them to the hospital.”
“You can’t just leave ’em?”
“Kasai, would you want me to leave you to fend for yourself if you broke a bone? There will be someone else in charge while I’m gone. You boys do your best in class today.”
With that, Noto hurried out of the entryway.
“I guess that’s just another of a school nurse’s duties,” said Kasai, laughing nonchalantly as he watched her walk away. “Still, seems like she’s got it pretty easy. It’s not like she’s gotta do all that much.”
Being a school nurse did seem pretty easy…from what we had seen firsthand, anyway.
But really, there was no reason to even consider anything more than that. Having the ability to imagine things beyond what you could see with your own two eyes was fruitless, excessive. Kasai knew this well enough. We switched from our sneakers into our indoor shoes, and finally, it was the start to another perfectly typical week.
I neither enjoyed nor particularly hated the fact that things were just as they always were. It was just that, even on days like these that weren’t especially bad, I still had to take care that my comfortable existence remained intact.
Honestly, I didn’t really need to be thinking about any of this. Once I was an adult, I would be free. I just had to live a proper life. That took even less work than avoiding traffic accidents. All I had to worry about was just avoiding the things that I shouldn’t do. There was no point in wondering now how long things might continue.
All that I had to maintain here was my place. I could come to school normally, sit for my lessons, and take my breaks. I just had to be sure that this tolerable status quo didn’t suddenly take a turn for the worse. I needed to keep on maintaining things as I had thus far, keep on with the strategies that had gotten me to where I was.