Five
A series of unusual events began that morning. I already mentioned my missing school slippers, but that was just the start.
I arrived at school the same as always, and when I went to retrieve my indoor slippers from the shoe rack, they were gone. I was wondering what could have happened to them when someone said, “Morning…”
The girl was the only person in my class who ever greeted me, but this didn’t sound like her usual high-energy voice. Wondering if her pancreas had gone kaput, I turned and was surprised to see it wasn’t her at all.
The best friend, standing at her shoe cubby, glared at me with open hostility.
A shiver ran down my spine, but even an antisocial person like me knew not responding would be rude. I returned her greeting with a noncommittal, “Morning.” The friend stared me in the eyes, then snorted and began exchanging her sneakers for school slippers. With my own pair missing, I didn’t know what to do. For now, I kept standing there.
Once her slippers were on, I thought the friend would just go, but she gave me another dirty look and snorted again before she left. I didn’t mind. That’s not to say I enjoyed it—I’m not a masochist or anything—but I saw uncertainty in her eyes. I suspected she was having trouble deciding how to act toward me.
Even if she chose to be hostile, I respected her for greeting me. If our positions were reversed, I would have hidden around the corner until she was gone.
I gave the shoe racks a quick search but couldn’t find my slippers. Hoping someone had taken them by mistake and would eventually return them, I decided to go to class in only my socks.
When I entered my classroom, I felt rude stares upon me from all sides, but I ignored them. When I decided to keep doing things with the girl, I had resigned myself to being scrutinized. She wasn’t here yet.
I sat at my desk in the back row and transferred over what I needed for class from my school bag. Since this was the day we got our tests back and reviewed our answers, all I needed was the question sheet. I also put my pencil and a paperback into my desk.
I was glancing over last week’s test questions and wondering what could have happened to my slippers when there was a commotion at the front of the classroom. I looked up to see the cause: The girl had strolled cheerfully into the classroom. A bunch of clamoring students rushed over to her, surrounding her in their circle. Absent among them was her best friend, who wore a conflicted expression as she watched from her desk. The friend glanced at me, and since I was looking at her, our eyes met before I quickly looked away.
I decided to stop paying any attention to the circle of students and their excited murmur. If the fuss had nothing to do with me, then I didn’t care. If it did, then I didn’t want to know.
I took the paperback from my desk and dove into the world within its pages. Chattering classmates were no match for a booklover’s powers of concentration.
At least that’s what I thought, until I discovered that when one of those classmates was directly talking to me, the depth of my love for reading mattered not; I was going to be dragged back to the real world.
Now two people had talked to me in one day, and it was still morning. Another surprise. I looked up and saw the boy who had shown me his (previously unseen) potential as a cleaning partner. He looked down at me with a grin that, if I was being critical, I’d say showed no sign of a thinking mind beneath.
“Hey, [Controversial Classmate],” he said, drawing out the “a” at the end of my name. “Why’d you throw away your slippers, huh?”
I blinked a few times then said, “What?”
“I saw ’em in the restroom trash can. They still looked good to me, so why’d you toss ’em? Did you step in dog poop or something?”
I said, “I think dog poop in the school would be the bigger concern. But all right, thanks. I’d been upset because I’d lost them.”
“Oh. Well you should be more careful. Do you want any gum?”
“No. Let me get my slippers. I’ll be right back.”
“Oh, hang on, did you go somewhere with Yamauchi? Everyone’s talking about you again. You two really are dating, aren’t you?”
Luckily, everyone who sat around me had gone to join the commotion, and they weren’t around to hear this blunt and artless question.
“No,” I said. “We just happened to meet at the train station. Someone must have seen us or something, I guess.”
“Hmmm, okay. Well, if anything juicy happens, you tell me first.”
Chomping on his gum, he went back to his seat. I could have dismissed him as naïve, but that seemed negative; he made the quality into a great virtue.
I got up from my desk and went to the nearest bathroom, where my slippers were indeed in the trash. Luckily, they were near the top, and nothing too unsanitary had been thrown away after to make them dirty, so I reclaimed them, dutifully slipped them on, and returned to class. When I entered the room, a brief silence fell before giving way to the chatter once more.
Class was uneventful. I got my tests back, and I’d done well enough. Toward the front rows, the girl and her friend were excitedly comparing their scores. The girl met my eyes once, and she proudly displayed the front sheet of her exams to me. I was too far back to make out the score, but I saw many more circles than strikes. The best friend noticed our exchange and looked uncomfortable, so I glanced away. That was the only contact the girl and I had that day.
We didn’t speak the next day, either. My only interactions with my classmates were the best friend glaring at me again and that one guy offering me gum. The only other incident—and this was just a personal matter—was that I lost a pencil case I’d bought at a hundred-yen store.
The first opportunity to talk to her in several days came on the last day before our six-week summer break—although our class got the news we were to show up for two weeks of summer school, which made the distinction rather meaningless. Still, as the last day of the term, this was only supposed to be a half-day, ending after the assembly and announcements, but the librarian asked me to stay after to do some work. She asked me to bring the girl, as well.