Thursday
Day
I THINK THERE ARE REASONS for bullying. Bullying always starts because of some concrete reason. Trivial things like behavior or personal characteristics are a substantial enough reason, at least for the aggressors. It never seems like enough for the one being bullied, obviously. But there’s always some rationale, whether it’s a good pretext or not—and there’s no limit to the evil that can grow within someone once they have the excuse.
In the case of our class, the bullied party was utterly the one at fault and fully in the wrong.
Yano Satsuki had brought her circumstances down on her own shoulders.
I had known Yano since we were second years. Dense, awkward, needlessly loud, with a strange way of speaking, Yano was ridiculed by the boys and some of the girls behind her back. But for some time it just went on like that, with no reason for it to solidify into outright bullying. The members of our class all had a decent amount of sense.
That good sense was swallowed up by a deep tide of righteous anger in the middle of our second year, when a single action of Yano’s finally crossed the line.
By this point, it had already become a daily pattern for Yano to rudely impose herself on others and to be shrugged off. That was the basic arrangement between Yano and our classmates. However, there was one person who was the exception for her.
That day, for some reason—which honestly I will never know—she walked up to the desk of one of our classmates, Midorikawa Futaba, who normally came nowhere near her. I really had no idea what kind of relationship they shared. I only thought to myself, That can’t be good. It was normal for Midorikawa to never actively speak unless she was spoken to, but the fact that Yano wasn’t speaking at all meant that she had a poor sense of social awareness or something.
However, that assumption was definitely wrong. In fact, Yano most likely had a deep sense of animosity towards Midorikawa. Perhaps she hated Midorikawa for the fact that everyone loved her, even though she never spoke a word, far more than they did Yano herself, who always tried to talk to them.
Whatever the reason, Yano suddenly approached Midorikawa’s desk by the window, snatched up the book that she was reading, opened the window, and flung it out into the yard. It was a rainy day. I remember everything, right down to the seating arrangements. Iguchi, sitting in the seat behind Midorikawa, was petrified for several moments.
As far as Yano was concerned, the girl she had targeted was probably also in the wrong. Midorikawa was the class loner and rarely showed her emotions on her face. Now, though, the girl began to cry right there on the spot. She didn’t reproach Yano—she simply wept. Later, we learned that the waterlogged book that had been tossed out into the rain was very important to her.
However, the book’s significance to Midorikawa was something that we only learned later. That wasn’t the reason that the class labeled Yano a villain or why our torment of her became as harsh as it did.
It was because she was smiling. As Midorikawa cried, Yano stood in front of her with that self-satisfied grin, not apologizing. In fact, from that day on, Midorikawa never brought books from home anymore. She only borrowed them from the library, which spurred us on all the more.
When I looked at our class punching bag, I always thought the same thing: her behavior is atrocious. That was the best one could say for Yano.
If she just behaved better, she wouldn’t be bullied. That’s what I thought the next day as I watched her clean her desk out of the corner of my eye. Since the same thing had happened the day before, I now knew what had happened to the desk. Apparently, someone had covered it in chalk dust from the erasers.
“I heard the monster didn’t appear last night.”
Kasai was enthusiastic, but I responded with deep caution as we walked down the hall. Deep down, I thought, Obviously not. The night before I had headed straight for the school, and after that, I was at the beach, alone.
As we stood in the middle of the hall facing the science lab, I pretended to be deeply interested in this monster story and asked Kasai a vital question.
“Has anyone snapped a pic of it with their phone or anything?”
“They have.”
Concealing the pounding of my heart, I replied, “Whoa, awesome.”
“Apparently, none of the pictures came out, though. So I still don’t believe it.”
I prayed that he would just lose interest there. But it was interesting to learn that my monstrous form apparently couldn’t be caught on film. Suddenly, I recalled Pom Poko and the plan that the spirits in the movie enacted. At any rate, this was advantageous to me. If I was immune to being recorded, I could go wherever I wanted.
When we arrived in the science lab, our good-natured science teacher was already writing on the blackboard. I followed after Kasai and took my seat without any overt greeting. The seating order from the classroom wasn’t used in the science lab. We sat in groups of six at long tables arranged into even rows, sorted by attendance number. I was in the “A” row, closest to the door, my spot shielding the seats occupied by the boisterous Kasai and company one row behind.
I didn’t hate our lessons in the science lab. The other five students in my group weren’t the type to stand out or cause trouble; I mostly enjoyed their company. As long as I did my job well in the group leader role I was forced into, class went smoothly.
Of course, when you considered not just myself, but our whole class, arranging the seating this way was probably all the better.
Kasai loudly said something or other to me, but just as I was replying, his gaze flicked away towards the entrance of the room. I slowly turned around, saw who it was, and then returned to my conversation with Kasai.
Midorikawa was walking slowly through the entrance. As always, she carried nothing more than what she needed for class, along with a book from the library. The seat she was headed for was on the window side, second group from the back. Motoda was already there, asleep with his face against the table. Midorikawa took the seat diagonal from him, opened up her textbook and notebook, and then her library book. She sat up straight and tall as always.
After a short while, the bell rang. The teacher paused what he was writing on the board and turned around. “Let’s begin,” he said with a smile, accompanied by a command of “All rise!” from the class representative.
With timing so perfect that it almost seemed planned, the instant that we all stood, there was a click and then a rattling sound from the door at the front of the lab. It shook within its frame. I wasn’t startled—I’d anticipated this and put myself on guard. Even though there was no need to, and honestly, no reason to, whoever had entered the room last had locked the door.
With a look of exasperation on his face, the teacher instructed the girl sitting closest to the door to unlock it. The girl reluctantly opened the door, her disinterest plain.
On the other side of the door stood Yano, blinking rapidly. Without saying a word, she headed quickly for her seat. Chalk-colored dust shaded some of her hair. She didn’t appear to have noticed.
Throughout the lab, you could feel a coldness brimming in everyone’s hearts, save for the teacher’s. The sound of Yano’s shoes tapping across the floor resounded, and until she stood at her assigned place, everyone stared forward, waiting in silence.
When the teacher’s second call to begin finally rang out, the tense atmosphere seemed to defuse. I didn’t look Yano’s way, but she was probably smiling, as she always did. She was at the same back table as Midorikawa.
Yano had been the perpetrator here, so the contempt she inspired was only to be expected. After all, you reap what you sow.
On the other hand, one had to wonder how Midorikawa felt; she never showed her emotions on her face. The very fact that she said nothing made the rest of us worry that she might actually hate this seating arrangement, which intensified the hostility towards Yano all the more.
Yano had probably arrived late because she had been asleep somewhere during our twenty-minute break. She could always be found napping in some relatively quiet place around then. I was the only one who knew why she was always so sleep-deprived, but I had nothing pertinent to say in her defense. That too was all her own doing.
The beginning of class only offered a brief distraction from thinking about Yano, interrupted by Yano running up to the front of the classroom after I and the other group leaders collected the handouts for our groups from the front desk. As I began to wonder if she hadn’t gotten a handout, she told the teacher that she had forgotten her textbook and then asked if she could go and get it.
The teacher wearily responded with something twisted. “We can’t waste any more time today. Just share with your neighbor.”
Saying nothing, Yano returned to the back of the lab, a satisfied smile on her face. Without waiting for her to take her seat, class began. I looked straight ahead towards the blackboard. I didn’t so much as glance back. Even without looking, I could picture exactly what was going on. There was no need to see it with my own eyes.
One of the best things about science class, I thought, was probably that Yano never had to cross my line of sight for the whole class period. I couldn’t shield myself from any noises that came from behind us, of course, but there was nothing to be done about that.