“Kaya.”
Would there ever again come a day when I was so relieved just to hear someone call my name? It had never happened before that moment.
Two weeks had passed since my brother had intruded on the bus shelter, and I was now a second-year student.
I had been worried sick that Chika and I might never meet again. It was bad enough that I was about ready to start ranting about it to the people around me. And so, the moment she next appeared, I had planned to tell her in certain terms just how happy I was and how worried I’d been. I would explain what had happened on my side that night and ask why she had vanished so suddenly, but more than anything, I would celebrate our reunion. I’d even started dreaming about it.
And yet, I never could have imagined the words that would come out of my mouth when I heard my name.
“Chika…what is that?” I asked before I sat down. Chika did not look at what I was pointing to. Instead, she drew her hands to the spot, a set of bright lights just a bit above her toenails that I had never seen until that day.
“Ah, so you can see it.”
Bright and clear.
The lights, which were not as uniform a shape as her eyes or nails, were somewhere around what would probably be her shin—assuming she was human. They were a series of overlapping lines of all shapes and sizes, like earthworm trails crossing one another. They shone more brightly than her eyes and nails, as though asserting their vitality.
“I got hurt. I was bitten by a loose ××××.”
I had to assume she was referring to some kind of domestic creature, like a stray dog. Certainly.
“Will you be all right?”
“Yeah, this is nothing. It’ll heal quickly.”
“That’s good. But, um…” The worry I felt upon hearing she was hurt was genuine. Still, I had to ask, “Why is it glowing?”
I thought of a number of possible answers—maybe the dog-like creature had some kind of venomous fangs or the medicine they used was that color, but I was totally wrong.
“Kaya, does your blood not glow…?”
I shook my head, breathing in deeply as I did. For the first time, I was certain about something: Chika and I were not the same type of life-form. It was not something as trivial as time or space that separated us—we lived in totally different worlds. All of the information and theories Chika had provided me with up until now were settling into a clear outline.
Of course, I’d never once considered discriminating against Chika simply because she was a strange life-form from another world. Her blood glowed. I had to accept that fact and move forward on the assumption that my common sense would not apply to her.
I then turned my attention to one more surprise, one which I was bursting at the seams to make Chika aware of. I felt like a kid. Unfortunate as it was, that was the best way to describe my behavior.
“No, our blood doesn’t glow.”
“I see. We really are in different—”
“But look,” I said, interrupting her, lifting the hem of my sweatpants to show Chika my own leg. It was my right leg, the opposite of Chika’s injured leg.
“Did you get hurt?”
I’d wondered if it might be too dark for her to see, but apparently my injury was clear to her.
“This is what our blood looks like.”
Plain, dried up human blood—completely unlike Chika’s.
“What happened? Were you attacked by a ××××?”
“No, I just tripped and fell while running.”
It was a lie. The embarrassing truth was that I, for no particular reason, had kicked a piece of lumber that was lying on the side of the road in a sullen fit and knocked my shin into it. As it turned out, there was a nail protruding from it.
“Never mind how it happened, though. I’m just surprised. I didn’t think you would’ve gotten hurt too.”
“Even stuff like that seems to be having a mutual effect.”
“I should probably take care not to let this get infected then. Wouldn’t want you to end up in pain too.”
Our two worlds, and our separate lives in those different worlds, were affecting one another. The peculiar circumstances were getting me so worked up that I had ended up telling what might almost pass for a joke. To cover up my sudden awkwardness, I tugged my pant leg back down. Even the fact that I was still standing there made me feel like I was getting carried away, and it embarrassed me. I sat down in my usual spot and put myself in order, looking at Chika. She looked silently back at me. I suddenly worried I had said something rude.
“I mean, uh, not that I’m not upset that we’ve both gotten hurt. Sorry if I gave you the wrong impression there,” I reflexively apologized before Chika could say anything.
“It’s okay, I wasn’t thinking that.”
The narrowing of her eyes was the only tell that I had that she was (probably) smiling.
“What were you thinking, then?”
Her eyeline lowered slightly from my face. I had more than enough time to consider what kind of reaction this was. Whenever I lowered my eyes like that, it was because I was searching for the right words. Finally, her eyeline raised again.
“I was thinking how happy I am to see you, Kaya.”
“Oh, yeah, I’m glad we could meet again. I was…thinking the same thing.”
While bearing the embarrassment of hearing such a blunt declaration, I embarrassed myself doubly with my own reply. Thankfully, I was able to hide some of my shame in the natural flow of the conversation. I continued, “That reminds me,” before launching into the topic that had been on my mind since earlier in the day.
“Sorry about last time. Someone showed up suddenly.”
“I figured that was what happened.”
“Yeah…it was my brother.”
I’d tried to act normal around my brother after that evening. If I seemed displeased with him, he might suspect that I had been somehow inconvenienced by being spotted at the bus shelter, which might bring about another intrusion just when I had gotten to see Chika again. To prevent that, I was currently acting the same way around my brother that I always did, neither getting close nor pulling away.
“Aw, I was hoping I could see what kind of person he was.”
That meant she had left before she had the chance to get a proper look at him.
“I figured you had already slipped away before I could talk to you again so that you wouldn’t be seen, but what actually happened with you?”
“The siren went off. I saw that you were talking to someone, so I left without saying anything so as not to interrupt. Sorry about that.”
“No, no need to apologize.”
I had been worried sick, but that didn’t matter now. We would certainly need a countermeasure in case anything like that happened again, but I also wanted to avoid doing anything unusual that would alert anyone else to Chika’s presence.
“The siren is practically sacred to us. We have to obey it. So if the siren ever goes off again when someone shows up over there, I’ll probably have to do the same thing.”
“Honestly, that worked out well since it kept my brother from spotting you. That won’t be a problem in the future though if we can come up with a plan.”
As I was speaking, I realized something: Chika regretted that she had left me without hesitation or reluctance, and she’d just told me as much. That she even felt that way made me happy. Sharing a genuine friendship was a boon in achieving all sorts of goals.
A sound like we humans would make when we’re thinking came out of the darkness—a “hmm” from Chika. I wondered if she had already come up with a countermeasure.
“That said, I sort of wonder whether your brother could see me at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, because I couldn’t see him.”
“Huh?”