ALTHOUGH IT was summer vacation, there was still one day over the break when all students were required to come to school. It was our first time back on campus in weeks, and my classmates had been pretty rowdy over the course of the day—but now that they’d all gone home, the summer silence settled over the classroom once more.
“You still haven’t made up your mind, then?” asked my homeroom teacher. He was seated across from me at the next desk over. He’d asked me to stay after class so we could talk about my higher education plans.
“No, sir,” I said.
“Well, don’t wait too long. With your academic prowess, I’m sure you could get in just about anywhere you applied.”
In his hands, he held a results sheet for a mock entrance exam with my name on it. There were grades for each of the five tested subjects on a scale from A to E, and I had gotten all As. We had a one-on-one meeting about this before, back during the spring semester. As my guidance counselor, it was his job to help me figure out what path I’d be taking after graduation, what university I wanted to go to, and so forth. I didn’t have any good answers for him then, and I still didn’t have any answers for him now.
“I’m planning to talk it over with my mother and decide from there.”
“Good. Try to come up with a shortlist of ideas before break’s over, at least.”
This entire conversation, of course, was premised on the assumption that I would be going to college after high school. And I could tell from his tone that he wanted me to apply for the most elite schools I could possibly be accepted to. After all, the more students he sent off to prestigious universities, the better it would reflect on him during his next performance review. Or at least I assumed that was his incentive.
“God, I wish they could all be as bright as you,” he said with a sigh. “It’d make things so much easier for me.”
After making my way away from campus, I hopped on the train and headed for home. Under the harsh August sun, the walk from the station to my apartment building would have been pretty brutal, were it not for the shelter provided by the row of big, shady trees that lined the sidewalk.
I strode past a roadside bench where a mother and father were sitting with their newborn baby. The family seemed very content. I wondered if there’d ever been a time when I was an infant that my family had been as happy as that. As far back as I could remember, my mother and father always fought. Then, when I was in late elementary school, they finally bit the bullet and got a divorce, and I had lived with only my mother ever since.
I took the elevator up to our floor and let myself into the apartment. My mother had to work late tonight, so I’d have the place to myself for several hours. After turning on the air conditioning in my bedroom, I changed out of my sweat-soaked uniform and into a fresh set of loungewear. Then, I opened up my closet and pulled out the sketchbook that I’d buried deep beneath my winter clothes. The most recent drawing inside was still the rough sketch I did of the Summer Ghost the other day, back at the café where I met up with Ryo and Aoi. It still amazed me how close the resemblance was to the real thing, despite me having drawn it before we even met Ayane.
Like a repressed Catholic hiding his rosary beneath the floorboards in the Tokugawa period of Japan, I hid my sketchbook deep in my closet to keep it safe from my mother’s prying eyes. I knew that if she ever were to find it, she’d almost certainly throw it in the trash, just like she tossed my wooden easel, canvases, paints, and paintbrushes before I started high school. She wouldn’t even let me keep the few award certificates I’d won. My mother claimed my art was only going to get in the way of my studies. She had no idea I was still drawing to this day behind her back—and if she found out, there’d be hell to pay.
I decided I would put on some music and do a few sketches to pass the time until my mother got home. I tried to make a habit of drawing as regularly as I could so as not to lose my touch and let my technical skills atrophy. I grabbed a soft-lead pencil and got to work, drawing lines across the page. First I sketched the three of us, making the trek over to the abandoned airfield. Then, I drew the runway as seen through a rusty chain-link fence, stretching off into the horizon. And finally, I drew Ayane, as best I could remember her.
It was only in retrospect that it finally sank in just how surreal that whole experience was—to the point that I almost wondered if it had merely been a particularly lucid dream. One that the three of us had somehow all experienced together. But no, the Summer Ghost really did exist, and we’d all had the chance to converse with her. I had proof to show for it too. Specifically, her name: Sato Ayane.
I looked her up online shortly after I made it home that night, thinking perhaps I might find some information as to who she really was, and sure enough, I quickly found mentions of a Sato Ayane that perfectly fit the bill. A twenty-year-old woman who went missing three years ago under mysterious circumstances—just weeks before the first reported sighting of the Summer Ghost. Assuming her disappearance was directly related to her death, the dates lined up almost perfectly. The apparition we met was no dream or hallucination, but an actual human being who lived and died right here in our neck of the woods.
It was already dark outside by the time I heard my mother walk in the front door. I snapped my sketchbook closed to stow it away, swept my loose pencils into a drawer, and joined her for dinner out at the dining room table. Our main dish for tonight was a smorgasbord of small, pre-prepared side dishes she picked up from the store on her way home. The only nights she actually cooked a full meal were ones when she got off work early, though I also made dinner for us from time to time.
“You had school today, didn’t you?” she asked. “How’d that go?”
“Fine,” I said. “Just normal.”
“Normal meaning what? Elaborate.”