“What do I do now…? What do I do…?”
It was nighttime. Kana, dressed in a Kiuchi Kawara Junior High School uniform, was walking down the street, clutching her school bag to her chest, her head bent down low. She had a completely different energy from when she was at Café LycoReco, emanating gloominess as she walked with a hunched back, her overgrown bangs completely covering her eyes. She had always been like this outside of the café.
“What do I do…? How could I not see that coming…?”
She was sure nobody would recognize her school uniform, because who paid that much attention to school uniforms? She didn’t really have a choice anyway—that was the only outfit she could wear in the city, and to the café. She didn’t have many clothes, and what she did have would look embarrassing in Tokyo. Maybe she had one outfit that would pass muster, but she’d draw attention to herself by always wearing the same one. Her uniform had drawn attention to her in the end…
She shouldn’t panic, though. Itou recognized the uniform because she used to live near her school, but she had no business hanging out there now. Even if she did happen to visit Saitama, it would be silly to think the manga artist would try to check in on Kana.
She was safe.
“It’s fine… It’s fine…”
She could keep hanging out at the café. If she talked to everyone like normal, nobody would suspect a thing. She’d just be Kana, the schoolgirl who liked to come to the café.
She wasn’t doing anything bad anyway. Well, except for telling lies, like her name. She wasn’t really called Kana. Her name was Kyouko Katashiki. An old-fashioned first name and a harsh-sounding second name. She hated them both, the first unwanted gift from her parents.
Kana got on the train at Kinshicho Station to go to her home in Saitama. After leaving the café in a hurry, she spent a ridiculous amount of time sitting in Kinshicho Park. It was already past nine PM. It was a late hour for a girl her age, but some other schoolkids were on the train to Saitama. It wasn’t unusual for parents living in Saitama to send their kids to posh private schools or cram schools in Tokyo. Kana was sure she didn’t stand out among them.
She turned when she heard laughing. She saw two high-school girls sitting opposite some tired-looking grown-ups returning from work.
The high-schoolers were well dressed and looked tough to Kana. They were slim, wore proper makeup, and their stuff was from brands so famous even Kana had heard of them. They belonged in a different world than Kana’s.
The two girls laughed openly without any sign they might be worried about what the adults thought about them. Then they noticed Kana staring at them. They looked at her, then back at each other, and laughed again.
Kana clutched her bag more tightly. She felt like the girls were laughing at her, mocking her. No, they were definitely mocking her. She had no proof, of course, but she was sure of it. She felt terrible about herself, as usual.
She’d be fine, though. They could laugh at the person she was at that moment. She could become someone else who wouldn’t be scared of anyone.
“I’ll let you off the hook this time…”
The noise of the train drowned out her whisper. Kana held the bottom of her bag tightly, clinging to it as the train continued, taking her back to the world she hated.
Only when she was at Café LycoReco, only when she was Kana, did she feel alive. The rest of the time was pure suffering.
✦ ✦ ✦
Kana lived in a large apartment block in a Saitama suburb. She got home past ten PM, but nobody said a thing to her. Her parents never asked her where she’d been, and she was okay with that.
When she entered her room, Kana blocked the door with a board to ensure nobody could get in from the outside. She had no way to lock the door, though, so she always had to make sure to have anything valuable to her in her bag when going out.
Suddenly, Kana sensed someone was on the other side of the door. It was that woman.
“A neighbor was asking why you get home so late. I told her you go to a cram school in Tokyo,” the woman said to make sure Kana would repeat the same story if asked.
Kana understood immediately. She was glad the woman asked her to lie instead of telling her to return home earlier so that people wouldn’t talk.
“Okay.”
Kana heard the woman walk away.
The woman was effectively Kana’s stepmom. Kana’s mom had left three years earlier, and soon after, that woman had appeared in their house and stuck around. At some point, she’d started using the same surname as them, but Kana wasn’t sure that her father had actually married her.
The stepmother wasn’t a bad person; Kana knew that. She avoided dealing with Kana, kind of ignoring her as much as possible, but she wasn’t mistreating her. And every weekday, she left Kana a thousand yen on the table, for lunch and other expenses. She was basically treating Kana like a stranger living in the same house.
She probably disliked Kana but tolerated her presence. She was a grown-up, after all.
Kana, though, couldn’t tolerate the woman. How could she stand some woman her father had been having an affair with moving in after her mom suddenly up and vanished? How could she stand having that woman live in the same house and use the same bath and toilet?
Kana missed her mom, but her mom probably didn’t miss her, or she wouldn’t have left Kana, who hadn’t done anything wrong. But if she had her mom, at least she could have told her about that thing that happened, and maybe they’d report it to the police. Perhaps something could have been done about it. Without her mom, though, it was impossible, which made Kana feel awful.
And the woman who contributed to that problem was living under the same roof as her. That only made Kana feel even worse. That’s why she wrote her name fourth on her list, and her father’s name fifth.