Whoever was on cleanup duty that day was sloppy, so the rows of desks were misaligned. However, it was not my responsibility to be concerned about such things, so I quickly opened my locker with one of my tails. I hated looking inside—I intentionally messed the contents up a bit, despite my daytime self’s love of order.
Inside were my math textbook, workbooks, and handouts. I kept them all in line with my tail, which I could easily control. I thought through my next steps. I would have to open up the door of the classroom and put these outside before I left, since unlike me, they were too thick to pass through the small crack beneath the door. Would exiting from the hall side be less work, or maybe the window side facing the courtyard? I definitely couldn’t just drop them out from the window. Perhaps it would be better to place the bundle of materials up on the roof and then come back down later to close the window? What a bother.
I scratched my head with my tail, rather than my hands, as I always did when I was lost in thought.
Then my gaze flitted back towards the blackboard.
“What are you…do…ing?”
I had been sure I was alone.
Before me, I saw the form of a girl standing with her hands on the lectern. I was so startled by her appearance that my breath stopped. I couldn’t form a single word. Instead, the sensation of goosebumps rippled across my whole body. The black drops began to writhe.
As the drops trembled, they kicked up a wind and then a storm. Papers tore from the wall. Desks went crashing to the floor. The droplets continued to rage, covering the whole classroom, even reaching out for the girl and the lectern.
“Aah!”
The cowering girl’s scream finally quelled the storm within my heart. The droplets ceased their rampage, and though they still seemed a bit distraught, they slowly started to return to my body. Despite their return, they refused to settle into their typical state. My whole body swelled, pulsing with violent, quivering waves.
The girl stared at me, as though she had only just barely worked up the courage to speak. I met her eyes with two of my eight. Why? Just how on Earth? Here? At a time like this?
I’m sure that she had a lot of questions about me, but I had just as many about her.
We stared at each other in silence.
I still hadn’t forgotten that I meant to escape—I was merely concerned. I didn’t know whether she had seen me fiddling with the lockers, nor if she had spotted the textbook lying at my feet, nor what I ought to do if she had.
She had me completely off balance.
“Y-y-y-y-y-you scared…me.”
She suddenly began to tremble, as though in delayed shock. Or perhaps she was a little slow on the uptake and had previously set her shock aside.
The girl looked around suspiciously, eyes roving the room, shoulders swaying from side to side. She appeared to be trying to determine just what position she’d been put into. I watched her, unsure of what to do. I don’t know whether she came to some silent conclusion, but she turned towards me and held out both hands, palms out flat.
“W-wait… Wait a…mi…mi…minute…”
She hurried out of the classroom. Apparently, the front door was already unlocked.
I took a brief look behind me and resolved to put the girl’s reason for being here and the meaning of her actions aside. I frantically gathered up my textbook bundle and shut my locker.
Once I had hidden the evidence of my identity, a number of thoughts began to run through my head. Why was she here at a time like this, and where had she gone? And moreover, how was it that she could even bring herself to speak to a monster?
Honestly, I should have just run away while my head was still racked with confusion, leaving those questions unanswered. But I began to worry about whether she’d been caught by the school nightguard.
And so I waited.
Relatively soon after, she returned, a satisfied grin upon her face.
“I’m baaack. I went and…explained everything, so…it’s fine…now.”
Explained? I began to ask but abruptly stopped myself. I had no idea how my voice sounded to other people. If it was the same as normal, she might end up realizing who I was. I needed to avoid that possibility.
With that thought in mind, I should have dodged the question, but I began to wonder. How did my voice sound when I was a monster? Both she and I were soon to learn the answer to that question.
“So…any…way, what were you…doing?”
I did not reply.
“You’re…Acchi-kun, aren’t you?”
“Huh?”
A strange voice came out of my unsuccessfully stopped-up mouth. There it was.
A cold sweat—or so it felt; who knows whether or not sweat was actually there—ran along my whole body. The pulsing waves that I had been trying to suppress grew again in magnitude.
How’d she know it was me?
I glanced behind me. She had seen my locker after all, hadn’t she?
“Oh, your voice…does…sound like Acchi-kun’s.”
She clapped her hands together very deliberately. The fact that it was the middle of the night, and that she was standing in front of a monster, didn’t stop her nearly irritating theatrics.
I did not reply. Instead, I tried raising a bit of a growl, thinking that I might be able to force her conclusion back out of her head. I knew that I could howl, at least. I’d done it before to chase away a stray dog.
She tilted her head, and I thought for a moment that she might be having second thoughts about me.
“Are you…hun…gry?”
Nope. Still speaking in that strange rhythm, punctuated in a peculiar way that made it difficult to follow, she approached me until she stood just before my eyes, her feet tapping across the floor. She peered into my face. I tried to back away, forgetting my own immense size, but I was trapped.
What could I do? I should have run away at once. However, if I were to leave now, and she tried to tell others that she’d met me as a monster in the middle of the night… Well, even if no one believed her, it would eliminate the distance that I had previously kept between us. That was no good.
She could probably tell that I was shaken. A vapid smile of self-satisfaction spread across her face.