Once, I’d taken a tumble and received a nasty gash on my forehead, where a tiny, millimeters-wide scar still marked the injury. Tucked into my hairline, the scar was essentially a tiny bald spot, small enough to go unnoticed. I swept up my bangs to show him. “See? This is from a nasty fall when I hit my head so hard I had to go to the hospital.”
He squinted at it, furrows forming on his brow. I could tell he wanted to say something like, “You should be more careful,” but I was a child back then, okay? Children are top-heavy. When they fall, it’s usually headfirst. My propensity for face-plants was a concern my mother initially raised and partly why I started ballet in the first place. Dance was a means to improve my balance, and amazingly, it kind of worked. I stopped tripping as often, though ballet did little to enhance my overall lack of athleticism.
Before our conversation had run its course, we arrived in front of my house. Wait, right in front of my house? Why didn’t I ditch him at the nearest intersection or something?! Thank goodness none of our neighbors were out and about. They all knew who I was because they’d seen me walking Koro. If they caught me gallivanting home with a guy I’d die on the spot.
“Um, are you really going to come in and say hi?” I asked.
“Well, they told me to.”
Right, they did tell him to. In fact, his sense of responsibility was downright admirable. Most boys would’ve fled before even entertaining the idea of interacting with the parents of a girl they barely knew.
Resigning myself, I wrenched open the door and announced my arrival. Mom materialized with a pile of fresh laundry. “Welcome home, Haruka. I just got back myself and—oh, well hello there.”
“Mom, this is Takumi Towada. You know, Ayako’s…”
“Nice to meet you,” Towada said.
Mom’s eyes darted first to the gauze on my cheek, then the boy beside me. I could practically glimpse the gears turning in her head. She really did miss that call from school then.
After informing her that the school would be in touch later, Towada folded in a deep bow of apology.
“Oh dear, please don’t bow,” Mom fussed. “Really we should be thanking you for walking Haruka all the way home.”
I was flustered right alongside her. Towada hadn’t launched the ball my way, and his actions since then—accompanying me to the nurse’s office and then home—warranted no apology.
“My club was at fault,” he reminded us, still bowing.
How very vice presidential of him. Indeed, Towada was the tennis club’s vice president, I’d discovered in the nurse’s office. Mom shot me a sidelong glance before smiling. “Okay. Apology accepted. Your teachers and I will handle the rest, okay?”
He finally lifted his head. He seemed to want to say something else—his expression hinted at concern—but instead, he offered a simple goodbye and left. I was just about to step out of the entranceway and into the house when my mother let out an appreciative hum. “So that’s Takumi… He seems like a nice boy, don’t you think?”
Why are you asking me?
Without waiting for my reply, Mom changed the subject. “How’s your cheek? Still hurting?”
“It stings a bit.”
But thanks to the nurse’s ice pack, it had yet to swell.
“Oh, Haruka, when do you think you’re going to grow out of it?”
“Mom, you don’t think I’m accident-prone, do you?”
“Well, you do kind of have a habit of tripping over nothing.”
“Hey…”
“Just try to avoid getting seriously hurt, okay?”
I headed to the bathroom, clutching the topical ointment the nurse had given me as a precaution. I removed the gauze and examined my cheek. The skin was still a little red, but the flush was hardly noticeable unless you knew it was there.
He missed most of club, didn’t he? My mind wandered back to Towada. Instead of practicing, he’d been stuck escorting me home for a minor scrape. And I never learned what he was trying to tell me in the nurse’s office. Ugh, what am I doing?
Swallowing my self-loathing, I climbed the stairs to the second floor and trudged into my room to find my laundry on my bed. Until recently, Mom left our clean clothes downstairs, and we were responsible for sorting and fetching our own. But evidently she had taken over that task too. What a peculiar way to fold them. She must’ve picked up some newfangled, efficient folding method from an infotainment program or something.
One of her socks was mixed in with mine, so after I changed out of my uniform, I brought it down to her in the kitchen. “Here, Mom, your socks.”
“Oh, thank you. Are you all done?”
“All done with what now?” I responded, a little confused.
“The laundry. You’ve been helping me out with that, haven’t you? Folding it and bringing it up to our rooms. I really appreciate it.”
What was she talking about? I hadn’t folded any laundry.
“Ah, the soy sauce! I knew I was forgetting something,” she suddenly exclaimed. “I’ll be right back.”
She dashed toward the door, abandoning me to my unanswered questions. Dad and my brother weren’t home yet, meaning only Mom and I had been there that afternoon. If I hadn’t folded the laundry, she must have, right? But then why did she think I’d done it?
“That’s weird,” I muttered.
I made myself a cup of instant coffee to try and settle my thoughts. Because no cup of coffee is complete without a snack, I reached for the biscuits I’d purchased just the day before to find—nothing. The shelf was empty.
“Huh?” I squeaked, even more befuddled.
Hold on, they were here this morning. I remembered the packaging: bright red and impossible to miss. I checked the trash can—nothing, not even a trace. And Mom couldn’t have finished them all.
Abruptly, Towada’s words replayed in my mind: “Have you noticed anything unusual at your place?”
Yes, something unusual was happening all right!
“Like food—snacks or milk—disappearing, or finding items not where you left them.”
My biscuits had vanished, the laundry had mysteriously folded itself—in a strange fashion, no less—and the trash can was empty, contrary to the pick-up schedule.
“Is this what you meant, Towada?” I whispered.
I was standing there, struck dumb in the middle of the kitchen, when a flash of brown zipped across the corner of my vision—or was that just my imagination?