Wednesday
Night
THAT NIGHT, after I transformed, I headed to the school with a heavy heart.
I entered the classroom via the same route as the night before, but Yano-san wasn’t there. I started to grow fairly irritated at her absence. She’d told me to come early, hadn’t she? I tried to tell myself that perhaps she might be hiding—but no, she really wasn’t there. Was she running late? Or was she not going to come at all? The latter would be just fine, I thought, adjusting myself to a comfortable sitting size and planting myself in the back of the classroom, when suddenly the front door flung forcefully open.
“You’re here…already.”
“You told me to come, didn’t you?” I complained, but Yano-san appeared to pay me no mind.
“Oh… I’ll go wash…my hands,” she said and once again exited the classroom. What was with this girl?
Shortly, she returned, rubbing her hands on her skirt to dry them. Now that I thought about it, why was she still in her uniform? I hadn’t bothered to consider it the night before.
“I was…just dig…ging…a grave.”
I hadn’t asked her, but Yano-san explained why she’d been absent all the same.
“A grave?”
“Yes, a frog…got stuck in…my shoe box and died…there. Poor thing.” Without prompting, she continued, “It was such…a little thing.”
She held her thumb and index finger a short distance apart, indicating its size.
“Do…you pre…fer tree frogs…or horned frogs?”
“…I like Keroppi.”
“Oh, I see.”
Her dispassionate attitude really rubbed me the wrong way. Yano-san dutifully took her own seat and then looked my way, her legs dangling.
“Eight…eyes. Six…legs. A lot of…tails.”
I began to feel like an anatomical model as she pointed out the features of my body one by one. I couldn’t tell you why exactly, but the whole thing made me feel kind of weird.
I thought that she might ask me why I assumed this form, so I had prepared my answer ahead of time: “I don’t know.” It was a perfectly honest answer. However, the question she did ask caught me completely off guard.
“Is that…your real form?”
“…Huh?”
“Why…do you…change into a…human?”
I had never even considered the possibility. She was totally off-base. I told her truthfully, “I transform when night falls.” I suddenly felt embarrassed, realizing how much the word transform made it sound like I thought I was some kind of superhero.
“I thought…for sure that you had…been born in that…form.”
“If that were true, I wouldn’t bother turning into a human and going to school.”
“I thought that…you might…change into a human because it’s…difficult to…live in a strange form like…that.”
It hurt to be called “strange.” Even imagining it vividly, it didn’t seem like a very difficult life. At the very least, no worse than Yano-san’s every day.
“Yano-san, why do you come to school?”
Behind my question was the unspoken barb: It doesn’t seem like a fun place for you to be at all. I had meant it in a retaliatory way, but her reply was indifferent.
“I don’t…have a break during…the day, so I…like to play during…midnight break.”
I had no idea what she meant. I seemed to recall her saying something about “midnight break” the night before as well.
“So what is ‘midnight break,’ anyway?”
“You want to…hear?”
“…I mean, not really.”
“Midnight break is… Well… Oh… That’s it… How do you think I…get in here?”
“Dunno.”
“You want to…know?”
She was such a pain in the butt. I already knew as much, of course, but talking to her one-on-one just reaffirmed the point. As I waited in frustrated silence, she began to answer a question that no one had asked.
“The security guard looks…the other…way. Only for one…hour every night. That is…midnight break.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
If that was true, it was information that thieves would be dying to know.
“It’s not a…lie. Obviously, it’s…only for students.”
And just what was obvious about that? That obviously wouldn’t be acceptable for students, either. Not that I, standing there, was in any position to talk.
“I knew the…one be…fore…too. There…were, um…three guards whose…names I heard but forgot, but…they were all…nice peo…ple.”
For them to have been “nice people” meant that not only had Yano-san met with the guards and talked to them, but those guards had neglected their duties and allowed her to remain here. If that story was true, I couldn’t imagine what would have persuaded them. The more I thought about it, the more obvious it seemed that such a thing could never have happened.
“You don’t…believe me…huh?” she asked.
“Believe that you come here because of some kind of midnight break?”
“Well, you were…here too yest…erday, Acchi…kun.”
“I came here to collect my math book. We had homework from it.”
“You’re so…serious.”
I doubt that Yano-san had intended to tease me, but hearing what my friends had said to me at lunchtime again now, not knowing whether it was her intention, I felt a pained flutter in my gut.
“I come…here to en…joy midnight…break.” It wasn’t the proper timing for it at all, but Yano-san grinned. “Since I…don’t get to…rest dur…ing the day at…school.”
How could she possibly be smiling about that? I wondered. When I didn’t say something like “I see,” or, “That’s not true,” she withdrew her smile and asked something strange.
“Acchi…kun, do…you have a…midday break?”
I didn’t answer either way. I simply stayed quiet. And then, I thought about my break that day. I had shoveled down a katsudon, played soccer, gotten hurt, and met with Noto-sensei. Now that I thought about it, I wasn’t actually sure that I had gotten a break.
“Well…then. Let’s leave the talk of…daytime there.”
Even though she was the one that started it.
“We still have…some time in mid…night break. What…shall we…do?”
“Uh, well, I was just thinking of going home.”
“How do…you normally pass the time…at night, Acchi…kun?”
“What do I do at night?”
“I don’t mean…that in a dirty…way.”
Seeing this idiot say such a weird thing with such a straight face, I let out a big sigh. I couldn’t help myself, hearing Yano-san say something so typical of a normal junior high-schooler.
“At night, I usually go to the beach, or the mountains,” I told her.
“So, you go…wherever you want… That’s nice.”
“I used to go around scaring people who were out walking, but I got tired of that.”
“Must be…hard to be a…ghost.”
“After that—oh, right—I tried going to a theme park. I was surprised that there were a lot of employees still working there after hours.”
“Really?! They…must have thought…you were some…kind of new at…traction, Acchi-kun.”
Yano-san listened to my tales, giving exaggerated reactions in between. I was a bit surprised; I’d never expected such interest from her. “What about you, Yano-san? What do you do at school?”
“I watch vi…deos on my phone and…read manga, even though those are…both against school…rules.”
The rules weren’t in effect right now. If they were, we would probably have been breaking a lot more than just those two.
“Why not just do it at home?”
“That’s not…the point.”
She looked at me straight on. Unthinkingly, I averted all eight of my eyes. I didn’t understand, but if Yano-san said that wasn’t the point, then I guess it wasn’t. It wasn’t that I understood her, but that she clearly had her own code. Of course, everyone has their own code, but hers was probably more extreme. A product of her current circumstances. Thus, it was probably pointless to try and understand.
“But come…to think of it, there is some…thing to what you…said, Acchi…kun.”
While it was surprising that anything I’d said to her had actually sunk in, I was grateful. At any rate, it looked like my quiet evenings might return to me.
“Let’s ex…plore the…school,” she said.
“…Yeah, no thanks.”
“But you were…saying I should…do some…thing that I can’t…do at…home.”
“No, I wasn’t. I was saying we should go home.”
“I will…go home. In another thirty min…utes.”
She took out her phone and checked the time. Somehow, it seemed peculiar to see her holding a phone. Did she ever actually contact anyone with that thing?
“Let’s go…then.”
Without even waiting for my answer, she stood up and moved to exit out the front door of the classroom. I thought for a moment—and while I was endlessly unenthused about this—I resigned myself to shrinking down to the size of a large dog and following her for now. I worried that if she was caught by the guard, she might tell him about me.
And truthfully, I can’t say that I wasn’t a little bit interested in what the school building was like at night.
After Yano-san left the classroom, I closed and locked the door, then slipped out into the hallway in the form of droplets. When I shifted back into monster form, the girl gave a small round of applause.
“You really…didn’t have…to close it,” she said.
Now that I considered it, if this whole midnight break thing was fake, then how did she unlock the door?
“At that…size, you’re kind…of like a…pet.”
“We should be careful.”
As I lowered my voice, she clapped her hands over her own mouth and said, “We’re playing phan…tom thief.”
It took me a few seconds to reassemble her words back into “phantom thief” in my head.
After several more steps down the hall, she pointed at my face and asked, “Can you…stretch out your…eyes?” She pointed right at them, in case there was any doubt which eyes she meant.
“Nope. Or at least I don’t think I can.”
“It’d…be pretty con…venient if…you could stretch…them out really far and look…around cor…ners, huh?”
While it would be useful for reconnaissance, other than that, the uses of such a skill would be limited. Plus, it was difficult to even picture.