Chapter 6

I wish I’d just run into somebody. I wish somebody would take me away from here. As I’m spacing out in a café, thinking pointless things, I run into Mr. Itou, of all people. Just as I notice this ridiculously built guy plopping down next to me, he plucks the cigarette right out of my mouth. What?! Who the hell?! For a moment, I panic a little. When I stare at the man in the stocking cap, trying to get a handle on the situation, it turns out to be Mr. Itou. He was my homeroom teacher during my first year, but he always wears his tracksuit and looks like a gym teacher at school, so I didn’t recognize him. He’s wearing a quilted down jacket with the collar standing straight up, and he seems even more like a thug than he does at school. He’s a stern-looking teacher, and the kids are pretty scared of him, but for some reason, he doesn’t tell me off about smoking today. (He does say to knock it off, but he kinda doesn’t seem to care.) He even buys me a caramel Frappuccino. (I’d actually told him to get a mocha chip, but he got it wrong.) “Here, I got you the really big one,” he says, shoving a venti in my face. “…Thank you.” I take a sip through the straw, and he watches me steadily. I can’t relax. Talk about uncomfortable. What in the world is this about? “What do you think, Shouko Aizawa? Is it good?” Why is he calling me by my full name? I answer in a small voice, “…It’s okay.” “What?” “Yes. It is.” “I see. Okay then, once winter break is over, come to the career guidance office.” “Huh?” “You drank that, remember?” “Oh, come on, that’s dirty!” “So you learned something: Nothing’s more expensive than ‘free.’” “Seriously, what is your problem? You’re the one who offered to buy it for me!” I keep grumbling, but Mr. Itou ignores me, reminds me of the career counseling date again, then makes a quick exit from the café with his latte in hand. Ugh, geez. That’s so frustrating and annoying, but… But I still feel a faint, ticklish happiness, as though someone’s roughly tousled my hair. Even though it’s December of my third year of high school, I still haven’t decided what I want to do with my life. For the whole year, no matter what anyone around me said, I kept turning in my “desired course” forms blank. By now, I should be a sort of untouchable entity for the teachers: As long as I at least graduate, they should be happy… Although even I don’t really understand why things turned out this way. I’ve finished my gigantic Frappuccino, and the cityscape is actually brighter than the sky now. I can’t just camp out in here forever, so I put on my face mask, stick my earbuds into my ears, wrap my scarf around my neck, put on my black stocking cap, and shuffle out of the café. I’d really like to wear sunglasses, too, but it would make me look way too suspicious, so for now I keep my eyes lowered as I start down the hill road. I’ve drawn on eyebrows, added extra eyelashes, and put on blush and lipstick, but out in town, I keep all of it under wraps. What on earth am I trying to do? The light is glaring off the streets, and for the moment I just walk with no idea where I should actually go. It feels as if I’m in a nightmare that’s dragging on forever, looking for the exit. It has to exist. * * * I wish somebody would take me away from here. How long have I held that wish? Was it since middle school? Since late elementary school? What did I hate so much about “here”? The boys, for starters. Half the world, in other words. I also hated the social system that said I could never be happy unless I got married to one of those boys. So I was already done with the majority of the world. Who the hell would like something that whispered or screamed, “Ugly” or “Fatty” or “Die” at you when you walked by in the halls? Look at you, you’re dirty and smelly and covered in zits and can’t go two minutes without thinking about sex. I didn’t like Dad or my big brother much, either. There was an unspoken understanding at my house that Dad had a lover somewhere else, and my brother (who was three years older than me, went to a famous private school, and hadn’t been without a girlfriend since grade school) was always looking down his nose at me and asking, “Are you sure we’re related?” In a world overflowing with awful, disgusting boys, the rampant obsession with romance among middle and high schoolers was even more exhausting. Actually, it was even worse than that; lately, people seemed to take it for granted that even elementary schoolers would be in love. Magazines meant for grade schoolers ran articles like “Hugely popular with today’s little fashionistas! Hot clothes that will make you look slim and curvaceous, even if you’ve got a teddy bear figure!” Girls have good figures so they’ll be popular? What’s “a teddy bear figure” anyway? And magazines for elementary school girls shouldn’t go calling them “little fashionistas.” As a grade schooler, it all made me so bitter and angry and hopeless. Even in middle school, I refused to have anything to do with gossip about love interests. “I mean, who really cares what happened with the Ashikaga clan anyway?” “Argh, I can’t handle Japanese history, either. And also, ‘Ashikaga’? How do you get that reading out of those characters? Sure it’s not ‘Ashiri’?” “I think I may actually like English better.” “Hmm. We’re Japanese, though. It’s not like we’re ever going to America.” “Yeah, well. I guess it is kinda pointless, huh.” That was why my conversations with my friend Saya at lunch were always about stuff like that. “It sure is hot today, huh” or “It’s cold, huh” or “There’s a typhoon, huh” or “It must be because of El Niño, huh.” Looking back, I was so unsexy that I feel kinda bad for myself. In middle school, when I was right in the middle of my unpopular period, I had two close friends: Saya and Teshigawara. We’d all gone to the same elementary school. Saya was a plain, short, pudgy, black-haired girl like me, and Teshigawara was just as plain, but male. In middle school, groups were usually either all guys or all girls, but Teshigawara stuck with us two girls as if it didn’t bother him one bit. Maybe it was because he still thought like an elementary schooler. He got carried away easily, but he never said anything mean to me. As far as I was concerned, Teshigawara wasn’t a guy. It goes without saying that our trio was at the bottom of the school hierarchy. Most of our class didn’t speak to us unless they had to because of something to do with school. The privileged cool kids actively treated us like we were gross, and the teachers weren’t interested in us. For people in our social stratum, their expectations were clear: “You’re totally harmless, but if possible, don’t go anyplace where we can see you.” Well, middle schoolers are total brats anyway, I thought, feeling like a wiser brat than the rest. But I still wasn’t happy with it. “Aizawa, Aizawa, c’mere a sec, this is nuts!” After class one day during our second year in middle school, Teshigawara waved me over, looking excited. “What?” I asked curtly, but I went over to the seat by the window. Saya was there, hunched over, writing for dear life with a mechanical pencil. She was doing one of the numwords we’d all been crazy about lately. Numwords was short for “numbered crossword puzzles.” Every square is numbered, and all the squares with the same number have to have the same letter. “Teshi-Teshi brought this book in, and I think we’ve almost got this one,” Saya said, gazing down at her hands and looking serious. Teshigawara explained with way too much enthusiasm, “So this puzzle is called ‘Surviving Everyday Life’—it’s twelve letters, we’ve got some p’s and e’s, and the one in the nine squares is probably s. If we get this one, we’ll have the whole thing solved!” I leaned back to avoid the spit, but I was paying attention to what he said. Teshigawara’s name made him sound like some sort of handsome, court noble type of guy, but not even the smoothest diplomat could have called him good-looking. He was tall and skinny, with weirdly long arms and legs, and he had the thick eyebrows and long, shaggy hair of a deserting samurai. Like the “long-arm, long-leg” monsters I’d seen in a youkai dictionary. He was weirdly friendly with me, and whenever he saw me, he’d yell, “Aizawa, Aizawa!” in this loud voice. Every time I heard Saya call him Teshi-Teshi, I’d think, What’s with this “Teshi-Teshi” business, huh? It’s way too cute for him. “It’s probably ‘peer pressure,’” I said, after thinking a little. “Hmm?” Teshigawara said, twisting his youkai face in a grimace. “…Oh, you’re right! That makes the verticals ‘trick,’ ‘liar,’ and ‘virtual’! ‘Peer pressure,’ that’s it! Of course you’d get it, Shouko!” “Whoa! Aizawa, you’re awesome! Gotta press those piers, huh? I see!” You have no idea what that phrase is, I thought, but snarking back at him felt like work, and I couldn’t help smiling at all the praise. Still, what a harsh puzzle. “Surviving Everyday Life,” “peer pressure.” It’s true, though. If you want to survive life, you have to fight peer pressure. Girls should be like this; urban teen girls should make themselves trendy; we should be constantly in love. You had to either keep fighting the pressure—or be on the side that exerted it. In the spring of my third year of junior high, I made up my mind. I was completely worn out by this endless fight with life. Wouldn’t it be better to go over to that side? Actually, I should do that, I resolved. By now, I understood that nobody was ever going to show up and take me away from “here.” I’d just have to get myself out. “I’ve made up my mind! I’m going to be up on all the latest fashions. I’ll change my whole life—you won’t even recognize me!” I made that declaration to Saya and Teshigawara on the way home after school, as we watched the Shibuya River trickle by from the Route 246 pedestrian bridge. They both gaped at me as, behind them, cars roared past on the elevated Metropolitan Expressway. “Actually, we should do it together! Tokyo fourteen-year-olds aren’t supposed to spend lunch and the time after school in a corner of the classroom doing numwords and shogi and Ouija! It’s like telling everybody, ‘Hey, we’re a bunch of weirdos, so you’d better not come near us!’” The other two had no idea how to react to my sudden proposal. “No, Shouko, don’t! We promised we’d never change, remember?! We promised we wouldn’t grow up!” Saya said, getting agitated and bringing up a promise I had no recollection of ever making. (I’m pretty sure she mixed up the lyrics of some J-pop song with reality.) With an utterly serious expression on his youkai face, Teshigawara put a hand on my shoulder and leaned in. “Aizawa, if something’s troubling you, tell me about it. Just me.” I wanted to ask him who he thought he was with a line like that, but then behind us, a group of cool guys walked by. “These geeky weirdos always look like they’re having fun,” they commented, loudly enough for us to hear. “…Listen, even if I change, we’ll always be friends,” I told them with tears in my eyes. For some reason, I’d said something that sounded like a line from a drama, too. The first thing I did was practice makeup. I bought a magazine for popular types at the bookstore and stared at the page about “LOVE makeup that will win you his .” After consulting the article, I decided that of the options for my face—“Round,” “Ethereal,” “Showy,” and “Retro”—mine was Retro (which was a bit humiliating). I carefully chose cosmetics from Mom’s huge collection of makeup, and after several tear-inducing failures, I drew “plump lower eyelids” and “casually cut those unwanted pudgy cheeks” and used “blush for a fresh, delicate face” and added “lip lines for glossy, plump lips.” After that, I grabbed my allowance for a beauty salon I’d carefully picked out online. Placing a phone call in a trembling voice, I made a reservation for three days later, and for that interim period, I was so tense, I couldn’t eat much (although, thanks to that, I lost just a little weight). The glass-walled beauty salon in Ura-Harajuku where I got my hair cut looked like an aquarium—but when they were done, and I saw my reflection in the mirror, I was startled. I’d gotten a tiny bit cuter, if I did say so myself. My too-thick black hair had been thinned out and streamlined, my newly asymmetrical bangs brushed my eyebrows softly, and the tips of the locks that hung down on either side of my face curled inward just above my collarbones. Thanks to my makeup techniques and my new hairstyle framing them, my formerly Retro face now looked as if it belonged to a passably modern girl. Maybe, just maybe, my attempt could work. In that moment, I sensed something like potential. The next step should have been a diet, but in the end, it wasn’t necessary. After May was over, the moment I turned fifteen, I started shedding weight. It was like a switch hidden deep in my genes had suddenly been flipped. I grew quickly, too. My round, stubby baby fingers grew slim and long, my voice and skin suddenly seemed to actually belong to a slim, pale girl, and my boobs grew heavier and heavier. As the crowning touch, my one remaining baby tooth (and the source of a massive complex) finally fell out and got replaced by a permanent tooth. Kachak. I could almost hear myself switching over—like a toggle, or a rail switch, or a version upgrade. On the last night of summer vacation, I dyed my hair in the bathroom. It was a dark brown, with just a hint of orange. I took up the skirt of my uniform, too, by myself. I’d always been good at sewing and knitting and basic handiwork like that, so I dragged out the sewing machine that was gathering dust in the storage room and whipped out a blind-stitched hem like it was nothing. Clink, clink, clink, clink: The sound of the machine’s advancing needle was like the noise of the vehicle that was going to take me away from “here.” Late at night, I put on my uniform and inspected my new self in the full-length mirror on the stairway landing. The girl in front of me looked like one of the models in the magazines for popular types. I twirled in place. The highlights in my hair glowed softly orange, while my pale thighs beneath the short skirt were kind of sexy (if I did say so myself) and made my heart beat faster. “Maybe you weren’t dumped on the doorstep after all.” My brother was looking down at me from the second floor. I was happy I’d made him say that, but at the same time, I didn’t like the way his eyes wouldn’t leave me. I didn’t respond. “Waaaaaaah, what the heck?! You’re so cute!” “Really? You think so? It isn’t weird? I’m not, like, trying too hard, am I?” “Not at all! So like, um, I feel like I can be honest about this now, but when you started messing around with makeup, I was a little worried you were kinda pushing yourself? But it’s perfect! You’re totally adorable! I bet you’re gonna get scouted—don’t you dare go to Harajuku or they’ll flag you down. Wait, maybe that means you actually should go? Yeah, you should! Let’s go to Harajuku!” In September, after summer vacation was over, Saya sincerely complimented my new look in the classroom. My greatest fear had been the idea that she might hate me, and I was so relieved, I could have cried. I started looking forward to seeing how Teshigawara would react. And right then, his youkai face and hunched shoulders walked into the classroom. “Good morning!” I called. He shot me a startled glance, then slunk right on by. Jerk. I smacked the back of his head. “I said good morning, Teshigawara!” Teshigawara gave me a frightened glance, promptly looked away, then looked back at me. His mouth fell open so far, I practically heard it hit the ground, and his expression turned to one of shock. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, Aizawa?!” Wow. So he hadn’t even recognized me. “You…” Teshigawara broke off, then pulled me out into the hall and spoke in a whisper. “Hey, did something happen at home? If you’ve got any problems, you can tell me anything.” “Is that literally the only thing you can say?!” As I retorted with disgust, I realized that the angle from which I was looking up at Teshigawara’s face hadn’t changed. I’d grown, and Saya’s head was lower now. So…had this guy gotten taller, too, then? Before I could become conscious of anything, my face abruptly turned red, and I hastily went back into the classroom. After the second term started, I might as well have been in a different world. Everyone I passed at school, both guys and girls, looked at me. I heard voices whispering “Who’s that?” and “She’s so cute.” Every time it happened, Saya and Teshigawara seemed kind of uncomfortable, but I felt like a sunny day after endless rain. What had changed more than anything else was the guys—specifically how they looked at and acted around me. I felt their eyes on my legs and hips and bust and face when I was simply walking through the station or down the street, or just riding the train. I never knew the men of the world would stare so rudely at strangers. I started occasionally encountering perverts on packed trains, and every experience was utterly nauseating. When I discussed it with Saya, she suggested that it was because I looked relatively meek. I made my makeup sharper and dyed my hair a lighter shade, and that alone was enough to cut down the number of perverts significantly. I was exactly the same on the inside, and yet simply changing my appearance had changed the world’s reactions dramatically. The idea startled and bewildered me, and I felt both a little disillusionment and an odd sort of pleasure. One day, when the three of us were doing a numword after school, somebody said, “Hey, Shouko, gimme a little of that” and snatched the strawberry juice I’d been drinking. Startled, I looked to see where it had gone and discovered it in the hand of a member of the cool guys group. He’d just called my name like we were friends or something and stolen an indirect kiss from my straw, but the only ones who found it strange were the three of us; the cool kids didn’t seem to think anything of it. After that, a group of fashion-conscious girls pulled me in, and I started hanging out with them. Before long, Saya began using makeup as well, and we’d walk through Harajuku after school with the other girls, and the sketchy-looking scouts really did flag us down. I screeched and squealed loudly with my new friends as we walked through town, not caring what people thought of us, and I thought, with relish, Yes, this is it, this is what life as a Tokyo teen should be. The world was noticeably brighter and easier to live in. Nobody made fun of me now. The world was kind to me, and forgiving. The only one who hadn’t changed was Teshigawara. He kept on lecturing me—“Your skirt is too short; take it back down!” and “I really don’t think it’s wise of you to be that friendly with guys you don’t know”—until I wanted to ask, What are you, my dad?! In that sense, I realized that he was pretty reliable, and it made my opinion of him go up. But the three of us were gradually spending less and less time alone together. It wasn’t long until we stopped doing numwords after school; I wasn’t really sure whether we’d gotten tired of them and lost interest or gotten tired of our relationship itself. Before we knew it, the graduation ceremony was upon us. Teshigawara ended up going to a boys’ school, and Saya and I went on to the same high school together. We’d been friends since elementary school, but the relationship ended kind of vaguely, like the air gradually leaking out of a balloon. High school life was solid fun right from the start. The address book on my cell phone was bursting with new names, both guys’ and girls’, and once a week I’d stay over at a friend’s house or goof around all night long at twenty-four-hour hamburger shops or someplace similar. Saya and I had joined the wind ensemble, but I was so busy having fun that I turned into a ghost member right away. I also fell in love. That said, it wasn’t with a boy; I fell for the young female classics teacher. I don’t think it was about wanting to get married, or wanting to date her, or wanting to touch her and have her touch me. I had almost no experience with romance, though, and there didn’t seem to be anything else to call these feelings. Her first class, I felt like a coastal fisherman spotting his first blue whale on a rare deep-sea fishing trip: Whoa, lookit that, there’s a natural beauty up on that thar platform! …Is that too weird a metaphor? Anyway, what I’m getting at is that I was well versed enough in the artificial, cosmetic variety of beauty that I was a bit of an authority. I could tell right away that her light makeup wasn’t there to enhance anything, but to mute it. She’d been gorgeous from the time she was a little girl. I couldn’t even imagine a life where you needed to tone your beauty down. Her voice was sweet and gentle, and I concentrated like crazy in her class so I wouldn’t miss hearing a single breath. I wanted to hear her voice call my name, “Aizawa,” and I put an abnormal amount of effort into studying just for classics, because I wanted to be able to give a flawless answer when she did call on me. The teacher was fair to everybody, and she was a very good person. Even if I’d still had my middle-school looks, I doubt she would have treated me any differently. For some reason, I was sure of that. Her name was Ms. Yukari Yukino. “Oh, Ms. Yukino! Are you headed home now?” Whenever I spotted Ms. Yukino after school, I’d run up to her at full speed. I didn’t even hide the fact that my tail was wagging. I thought, time and time again, how great it would be if Ms. Yukino were my homeroom teacher instead of burly Mr. Itou. (Not that I hated him, though—he was one of the few men who didn’t have that look in their eyes.) “Oh, Aizawa. No, I still have some work to do in the staff room.” Oh my God, oh my God! She said my name! “I’ll wait until you’re done, then. Let’s go home together, Ms. Yukino.” “I don’t think so. I’ll be here for a while.” “I’ll wait for you.” “You’d better not.” “Tell me your e-mail address, then.” “Where’s this coming from?” Ms. Yukino asked, smiling and admonishing me gently. “I’m just a teacher. You’ve only just started high school, Aizawa. You should go make friends your own age first.” Her tone was kind, but Ms. Yukino just would not let her guard down. That’s not true. I’ve already got contact info for a bunch of the male teachers, and college guys and businessmen are always chatting me up at parties. But the one I really want to get to know better is you, Ms. Yukino.—Still, that’s not the kind of thing you can say aloud. All I could do was keep pining for her. I’d been at the ticket gate for three hours already, since ten in the morning, and three guys had spoken to me. I knew from experience that there would have been a whole lot more at Shibuya or Harajuku or Shinjuku, but this was Sendagaya. The place was full of uptight athletic types, and almost nobody gave me the once-over. So this is where she lives, I thought. It’s relaxed and spread out—it does feel a little like her. Should’ve guessed. I’d dressed up a little bit, in a white knit dress and a black Chesterfield coat, and I was leaning against a pillar in front of the ticket gate. Right across the street, the shell-like silver roof of the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium was glaring in the autumn sunlight. “Say, are you waiting for somebody?” Here comes number four. I didn’t exactly hate the attention—I’d never go with them, but I did feel my value was being recognized. This guy was a slender, more effeminate type in too-fancy clothes. “Yep. My boyfriend,” I responded, keeping my face blank. “But you’ve been all by yourself for ages,” he insisted—just as I heard a sweet, familiar voice from elsewhere. “…Aizawa? Oh, it is you. What’s one of my students doing here? Oh—are you with a friend?” “Mi—M-Ms. Yukino!” Ms. Yukino was right in front of me, dressed a little more casually than usual in a beige tie-waist coat. My stalking gambit had paid off—I’d finally met the person I’d been waiting for all this time, and yet I just felt embarrassed. When he realized Ms. Yukino was my teacher, the guy made a silent exit. “He was a total stranger!” “Hmm. Were you waiting for someone?” “No, um, I—Sho-sho-shogi!” “Shogi?” “Um, I came to pay my respects to the god of shogi!” I said the first thing that popped into my head, remembering the statue of a shogi pawn on the station platform. Ms. Yukino’s eyes softened with understanding. “Yes, we do have that shrine around here, don’t we? I didn’t know you played shogi, Aizawa. That’s wonderful.” The smile she gave me then would’ve been enough to melt anyone into a puddle of goo. Aaaaaaah! If anyone’s wonderful here, it’s you! The rest of that day only got better from there. I said I’d finished my visit to the shrine (a lie, of course), and that I was thinking of going to the park for a little while. “I was just thinking of doing a little reading in the park myself,” said Ms. Yukino, and so we went together. My teacher even paid my ¥200 entry fee (“Just this once, all right?”). I’d brought a box lunch, the product of skills cultivated during my years as an ugly duckling, and we split it between us. We gossiped about school, I told her things about my family situation that would get me sympathy points, and my teacher told me about the books she liked and her own experiences in high school. In no time at all, the autumn sun began to go down. We left once we heard the announcement warning us the park was about to close, and Ms. Yukino walked me to my bus stop. When we turned a corner in a cozy mixed neighborhood of houses and low buildings, the evening sun flared straight through the gap between two buildings, illuminating us like a spotlight. When I looked over my shoulder, our shadows stretched over the asphalt forever, sharp and clear. Ms. Yukino was glowing in a transparent halo of orange light. I want to glow like her someday, I prayed. Let me become like her. And let this happiness last forever. But it didn’t matter what I wanted; the sun suddenly vanished behind the buildings, shrouding us in cold ultramarine. I had wanted to tell her something, no matter what. It was why I’d secretly found out which train station she used and had ambushed her there on the morning of one of her days off…but I hadn’t been able to put the “something” into words. And so it went. My first year of high school was fun and happy, but I had the ticklish, tantalizing sense that there was something missing, and I just couldn’t seem to remember the name of that particular spice. Saya and I were in different classes, so by then, I had almost no opportunity to see her anymore. When we ran into each other in the corridors or at the station, we’d stop to chat. We now had practically nothing in common to talk about, but the spark did return a bit when we traded rumors about Teshigawara. He’d joined the cheer squad at his boys’ school, and he’d started growing a beard, and for some reason, he’d dyed his hair blond. Remembering Teshigawara was strangely depressing, though, and I hated feeling that way. “It’s been a long time,” I said brightly. “Why don’t we get together and go somewhere fun, just the three of us? You, me, and Teshigawara.” “Good idea, he’ll love it. I bet he’ll start crying.” “No, I bet he’ll try to be all cool about it.” “I can’t wait.” “Yeah, I’ll text you!” But in the end, I never sent that text. Because I met Makino. Because this time, as fate would have it, I fell in love with a boy. I wish somebody would take me away from here. I’d forgotten that feeling for a long time, but the moment I saw Makino on the subway, I remembered it. Maybe he’s the person I’ve been waiting for, all this time. It was April, and I’d just begun my second year of high school. On a crowded Ginza Line subway on the way home from school, I saw Makino leaning against a door, reading a paperback. I was standing by myself, near a door on the same side as his, but facing him across a row of seats. At school, he was always surrounded by gorgeous guys and girls, but now he was alone. It was surprising, but then again, I was alone, too. Even though he was almost twenty feet away, I thought I could see sadness in his long eyelashes as they slanted down toward the words in his book. That was all, but it was enough to make me fall for him, head over heels. Makino was famous at school. He was tall and handsome and captain of the basketball club; he was a good student, the teachers trusted him, and everyone around him was just as charismatic. I’d seen him walking alone with a girl from time to time, so when I decided to tell him how I felt, I expected to get shot down. “You said your name was Shouko?” he said, his voice somewhat cool. He used my name as if we’d always been close. “I tend to be kinda selfish with the girl I go out with. You wouldn’t mind?” I couldn’t believe that answer. Yes, do! Be selfish with me, only me! I couldn’t say it out loud. With the gravity of one who’s just discovered she has an incurable illness, I nodded, fighting back tears. During the spring of my second year of high school, I was walking on air. For the first time in my life, I had a boyfriend, and he was the star of the school. This was the “something” I’d been missing. Plus, starting in April, I finally got the homeroom teacher I’d been longing for: Ms. Yukino. It was like getting the Bon festival and New Year’s at the same time, or Christmas and Halloween, or a wedding and the celebration of a birth. I don’t even really know, but it was like all of life’s blessings had come showering down on me all at once. I was giddy. Under the circumstances, it would have been impossible not to be. So when Makino was selfish, as he’d warned right at first he would be (and looking back, that was definitely a warning), it only made me happier. “Huh? Shouko, did you curl your hair?” he asked. “Oh, yes. I’m not used to doing it yet, so it isn’t very good…,” I replied, looking down. “It looks good on you,” he said, and he gently set his big hand on my head. That alone made my cheeks so hot, they felt like they were on fire. “Aww, look, Shouko’s bright red!” “Makino, you lucky bastard. I want a girlfriend like that, too.” His friends all teased him. We’d fallen into the habit of walking back to the station together, after I waited for his club’s practice to finish. “Lay off. There’s nobody at our school who’s purer than Shouko.” Makino laughed. After a lively exchange (“Get a load of this guy” and “Ugh, at least pay me to listen to you gushing about your girlfriend”), his friends went home on a different line. He and I boarded the train together. It wasn’t even a ten-minute ride to my station, but Makino said he wanted to spend as much time with me as he possibly could, so I stayed with him the extra twenty minutes until his station. Once it was just the two of us, he’d change a little. At first, it wasn’t much, but little by little, he became a completely different person. “Shouko, your hair…,” he began, running his fingers through it and then tugging it, just a little rough. His voice was as gentle as it had been. Worried that he would wreck my hair after I’d put so much effort into it, I looked up at him. “You weren’t kidding when you said you weren’t used to this. It’s terrible. Besides, I’d like to see you with brighter hair. I bet it’d look better on you.” Okay, I thought. On the way back home, I went right to a drugstore and looked for hair dye. I decided I’d go all out and grabbed a pink type, then dyed my hair that night. The next day at school, everybody complimented me on my new color. “How cute!” they said. “You look all mature.” But I couldn’t relax until I was alone with Makino. When his friends weren’t around anymore, he grabbed my hair and tore his fingers through it so hard, I worried it would come out. He was still wearing that tranquil smile. Ow, ow, ow! I love you, I love you, I love you, my hair screamed. “Ha-ha! Man, now it looks ridiculous. You’re not in a gang, you know. Black hair is better on you after all.” And so that night I re-dyed my hair black. Because of all the treatments in such a short time, my hair turned coarse and lost all its luster. But Makino’s other face was for me and me alone, and that made me happy. In my own mind, I was lucky. All I could think about was what I could do to please him. “You’re a virgin, right, Shouko?” After school, the moment the two of us were alone together in a third-year classroom, Makino brought up the topic out of nowhere. His mood was still exactly the same as a minute before, when he’d been talking with his friends about a cell phone game. “Huh? Oh, ohhh, um…” I wasn’t sure whether to take it as a joke or not. Makino wanted something from me, and I couldn’t afford to guess wrong. The fluorescent lights weren’t on; outside, the dirt of the athletic field acted like a giant reflector and filled the classroom with indirect orange light. I could hear the after-school chatter in the halls beyond the door, like the faint noise from somebody else’s headphones. I always thought this time of day was beautiful—it was the classic school experience. “Well?” In the light of the reflector, Makino’s well-formed features were unbelievably beautiful, like a magazine model’s. The hair at the nape of his neck shone softly. I had to answer him. “Umm… Y-yes, I’m—Well, I’ve been abstinent!” As I answered, I was so hideously embarrassed that I felt dizzy. “Ha-ha, ‘abstinent,’ huh? Well, keep it that way until my birthday. I don’t even want to touch a girl who’s been with some other guy.” As he said that, he put a hand against my hot cheek. His lips came nearer. A kiss! I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the sensation of his lips on mine. And waited. And waited. I heard a laugh. “You look like a dog with your eyes squeezed shut like that, Shouko.” I was so embarrassed, I almost burst into tears. Ohh, I’d have to practice being kissed, too. Would I be able to hang on to my sanity until Makino’s birthday next month? In the orange light, his eyes were cool. Pain prickled across my skin, and the only word I had for that feeling was happiness. “Sorry ’bout the wait! Let’s head home.” One of his friends poked his head into the classroom. “Let’s go, Shouko,” Makino said gently. My armpits were soaked with sweat, and it embarrassed me so much, I wanted to run away… But I couldn’t escape, not ever. The summer was sweltering. For the month up until Makino’s birthday, I was embarrassed to sweat or secrete anything that smelled in front of him, so I desperately cut down on my water intake until I collapsed from dehydration. Then I realized he might be disappointed if I was too thin, so I’d hastily go to beef bowl places in the middle of the night—but what if the cheap meat created BO? So I’d go to the bathroom and throw it up. I was like a blindfolded small animal, scurrying this way and that. When I managed to lose my virginity without incident, I was so relieved. To be honest, I was scared that Makino would dump me once I wasn’t a virgin anymore, but he did nothing of the sort. He was as kind to me as ever. The day it happened was sweltering, too, I think. After all, the unbearable heat didn’t let up for a single day that summer. But when I try to remember that day, I realize all the physical sensations are gone from my memory—things like sweat and temperature and humidity. From that day on, I think I lost sight of what I was feeling at all. It was after school, right before summer vacation. I’d just finished tallying up the class handouts, as Ms. Yukino had asked me to do, and I was on my way to the Japanese-language prep room. It felt like I was going to meet a friend after a long time apart. Yaaaay, I’m going to go talk to Ms. Yukino! Ever since Makino and his group had quit their club in June, I’d been so busy with him in one way and another that I hadn’t had time to have much fun with other people. I climbed the stairs and turned into the corridor, but just as I was about to knock on the prep room door, I stopped. I could hear something that sounded like arguing inside. As I was wondering, What should I do? Should I come back later? I heard angry shouting. “That’s enough!” The voice belonged to Ms. Yukino. Footsteps approached from beyond the door, and I ducked around the corner of the stairwell. The uniformed boy who left the room was Makino. He was wearing the slightly cruel smile he sometimes showed me when we were alone, and he ambled off toward the third-year classrooms in his usual calm way, as if nothing had happened. I didn’t understand what had happened, and I think I stood there for a while, dazed, hugging the papers to my chest. I was sure I needed to know about whatever it was, though—or maybe it was something I couldn’t afford to know. Quietly as I could, I made my way toward Makino’s classroom. And then I heard several people roaring with laughter. “Holy shit, Makino, are you serious? You actually took a shot at Yuki?” “What a dumbass! You’ve got balls, man. There’s no way she’d say yes!” “I’m not so sure,” I heard Makino say, as evenly as ever. “Women like her will give in if you push for long enough. I can see it in her face. She needs a man.” I didn’t really grasp what they were talking about. I mean, of course I knew what the words meant, but everything in me was rejecting them. That day, Makino went home by himself, without saying anything to me. He hadn’t done that since we’d started going out. He called my phone once, but I didn’t answer. On the way home, and after I got inside, and in the bath, the possibilities kept circling around and around in my head. Maybe every single word I’d heard that day was a delusion; maybe I’d simply heard wrong. I thought so long and hard that I gave myself a killer headache. I desperately wanted to text Makino. I prayed frantically that he’d call or text me again. He could be as selfish as he wanted; I just wanted him to tell me what to do, what to be. But nothing came. I’d known it wouldn’t. He’d called me once, so now it was my turn. He would never call me twice in a row; it was an unbreakable rule. We hadn’t talked it over and decided on it, but I knew in my bones. In homeroom the next morning, Ms. Yukino was no different from usual. She didn’t strike me as desperate for a man. I must have just misunderstood what I’d heard the day before. During lunch, I took her the worksheets I hadn’t been able to give her then. “Thank you, Aizawa,” she said, kind as ever. “What happened yesterday? I waited for you in the prep room for a while.” “Oh, umm, something suddenly came up. I’m sorry,” I told her. There, you see? I’m the one who screwed up. This time, I was sure of it. After class, I felt good about going to Makino’s classroom. “Makino, do you like Ms. Yukino?” My mind should have been at ease; I’d been so confident it was just a misunderstanding. But when I stood facing him, that question was the first thing out of my mouth. It caught me off guard. “Why would you think that?” he asked me, completely mystified, and I could tell I’d just messed up. “Um, yesterday, I was on my way to the Japanese-language prep room, and…” “Oh, you heard that?” he asked, like it was nothing. He hardly reacted at all. “I don’t have feelings for her or anything. It’s just that Yukino makes you curious, you know? She’s a total mystery. I haven’t done anything yet, but I bet I’ll be able to before too long. They say women her age are the sluttiest.” “…Really?” “Yes, really. Haven’t you heard that? Geez, you need to loosen up, Shouko.” Oh, I guess I do, I thought. “I guess so,” I murmured. Maybe I was the one in the wrong. The thought came more and more easily to me as I listened to Makino. After all, he didn’t sound the least bit guilty. After that day, Makino stopped responding to my texts and calls completely. I could only see him if I went to meet him after class. Sometimes we walked back to the station with his friends, too, but it seemed he was avoiding being alone with me. The only exception was sex. He’d hold me at his house when his parents were out, or when I could afford to pay for a hotel, and that was it. You need to loosen up, Shouko. I was terrified of hearing him say that to me again, so I tried to do everything, no matter what it was. The more I tried, though, the more I’d freeze until I couldn’t even get wet. Before long, Makino wouldn’t sleep with me anymore. Summer vacation of my second year of high school was hell. Makino never responded to me at all. I missed him, so I went to his neighborhood over and over. Even when he spotted me, he just ignored me. It was like I was invisible to him. He was so unaffected by my presence, I started to worry that maybe I really wasn’t there. Once, just once, he spoke to me in front of his house. “Shouko, come here,” he said, as kind as he’d ever been. Oh, I thought, yeah, it really was all in my head. I was so relieved, I could have cried. I might have, in fact. But Makino took me to a police box. When I heard him tell the officer he was there to report a stalker, I got scared and ran away. I needed a reason. What was I doing wrong? What had I done wrong? How could I get him to forgive me? Could I earn his forgiveness? It’s Ms. Yukino’s fault. I was eating a convenience store rice ball in our empty living room when it hit me. Why hadn’t I seen it before? Ms. Yukino had stolen Makino’s affections from me. As soon as I put the pieces together, I almost melted with relief. I had the answer. I just had to hate Ms. Yukino with the same intensity as my love for Makino. It’s so easy. The thought made me happier than I’d been in a long time. * * * Years later, I would know the truth. Makino had never thought anything of me at all, and Ms. Yukino was just a kindhearted victim. If today I met Masashi Makino and the Shouko Aizawa I was then, I’m sure I could handle it better. I could draw out what it was they really wanted in a more appropriate way, and show them how to get there. I just didn’t know at the time. …It’s a lovely thought, isn’t it? I’m sure it would be a relief—both for me and for anybody who might be listening to my story—if I did have that older, wiser perspective. Unfortunately, though, this story isn’t over and done with. It’s still happening. I already know Makino is a self-centered child, that I’m no different, and that Ms. Yukino isn’t responsible for any of this in any way. “I loved him, I loved him, I loved him, and you—!” I still have dreams where I’m screaming and crying and hitting Ms. Yukino, again and again. * * * I discovered I had a power that startled even me. I could almost see the traffic signs floating before my eyes, showing me with incredible clarity what I needed to do to effectively ruin Ms. Yukino. I was a little impressed. I never knew I could do this. The first thing I did was be tardy for Ms. Yukino’s classes. I’d march in through the door at the front of the classroom thirty minutes after the bell. “You’re late, Aizawa. What’s wrong?” the teacher would ask me, but I wouldn’t answer. Instead, I’d glare at her. Then, after a while, I’d just say, “Ask your conscience. You know why” and sit down. At first, that was all I did, but it was enough for my classmates to sense that there’d been an incident. The whole mood in the classroom changed. “Hey, Shouko, did something happen with Ms. Yukino?” my friends would ask me during break, but I wouldn’t give a straight answer. “Mm, sorry, it’s kinda personal.” I made sure not to look them in the eye, and that was all it took to make them seriously worry. After summer vacation, I’d returned to school haggard and skinny, and besides, I’d never been one for mean-spirited gossip. So everyone just assumed that I’d been victimized somehow. Of course, Ms. Yukino worried about me, too, and she tried to talk to me again and again. I just said “I’m sorry” and avoided saying anything specific. I kept it up, carefully and tenaciously, for about three months. Then, the girls I was close to began avoiding Ms. Yukino, too. The students trusted her deeply, but the fact that I wouldn’t talk about whatever it was convinced them that she was part of the problem. Before long, rumors began spreading about something sketchy between Ms. Yukino and Makino. I knew right away that either Makino was still chasing her around, or he’d started the rumors himself out of spite. There had been other, similar rumors before, but they were so dumb, they always fizzled out promptly (usually because “There’s no way Yuki would give that guy the time of day”). This time, though, my silence gave the rumor a certain air of credibility. Makino’s counting on me for help! I told myself. By then, I wasn’t even able to talk to him anymore, but the rumor seemed like a gift from him to me. He was telling me we should screw over Ms. Yukino together. Makino and I had to pull this off; I doubled down on my resolution. “Shouko, did something happen between Makino and Ms. Yukino?” The next time my friends asked, I just teared up. I didn’t even have to act; simply hearing about the whole thing was enough. “Shouko, are you having a good time at school?” When my new mom asked me during dinner, I discovered a new angle of attack. “Hmm… Well, we’re having some trouble in my classics class. Everyone gets so loud, we can’t really have proper lessons. Maybe they’re just messing with the teacher ’cause she’s young, but I’ve got entrance exams next year, you know.” As we sat around the dinner table, I did my best to get some of the super-expensive-looking meat into my stomach as I explained. This beautiful stranger and I were only about ten years apart. It was like my old mom had been made young again. Her face lit up at my story, as if she’d finally discovered something she could do for her daughter. It really was a piece of cake. Through a complicated series of channels, Mom managed to find her way to the rumor about the relationship between her daughter’s former boyfriend and the problematic classics teacher. By then, Ms. Yukino’s classics lessons for my class had gotten so out of hand that they didn’t really function as education. Several hardworking students had complained to the staff that they weren’t able to study for tests in Ms. Yukino’s class, and at almost the exact same time, some parents submitted a formal complaint to the city’s board of education. Ms. Yukino was nothing but faithful and good, and she was completely helpless in all this. I had power, and she didn’t. Simple, cruel facts. Before long, Makino graduated, and I lost both my motivation and my reason for bullying Ms. Yukino. But the situation was out of my hands now; it didn’t need my help to keep spinning. Like when you stuff the cord of your headphones into your pocket, and the next thing you know, it’s all tangled up in impossible knots. Several students kept harassing Ms. Yukino, and she got sicker and sicker. My idol was now just a depressed, unhealthy middle-aged woman. I found a new boyfriend and dumped him, then got another one and dumped him, and so on and so forth. Then, one evening during the rainy season, Mom was very pleased to announce that my teacher had decided to leave her position. I didn’t respond. Instead, I silently got up from the dinner table, went to the bathroom, stuck my finger down my throat, and threw up everything that woman had made for me. Tears started falling from my eyes. Without telling a single lie, I’d run Ms. Yukino out of the school. In June of my third year of high school, I ran into Teshigawara by accident. A sudden evening shower had driven me under the eaves of Shibuya Station. The air was full of steam, so humid I could almost imagine tiny fish about the size of killifishes swimming in it. Someone else had taken shelter a moment after me, and when I looked to the side, there he was. “…Hmm? Oh, ohhhhhhhhhhhhh! Aizawa, is that you?!” Teshigawara shouted at me, completely soaked. “Teshigawara…,” I murmured, surprised. He hadn’t dyed his hair, and he didn’t have a beard. He was as weird and uncool as I remembered, only taller, and his blazer looked terrible. His mouth was wide open in a grin, and he was so overly enthusiastic, I wondered if he was going to jump on me and hug me. “Aizawaaaaaaaa! Ah, geez, it’s been forever! Two years?! How’ve you been, huh?! Aw, man, you’re wearing even more makeup than before!” The fact that Teshigawara was right there didn’t seem real to me somehow, and I couldn’t even duck away from his spit. I just stood there, dazed, as if I were in a dream. “Hmm? Why the long face? Did something happen at home? Or at school? If something’s troubling you, you can always talk to me.” I could feel something inside me about to break down. If I suddenly heard what I’d wanted to hear for so long, right now, from Teshigawara, I’d cave. Thanks to the rain, my brightly colored bra was probably showing through my uniform blouse. It was humiliating. I desperately fought back the impulse to cling to Teshigawara, blinked away any tears, and snapped. “Don’t talk to me, creep. Ugh, this is embarrassing.” Without looking at him, I fled through the ticket gate, up the stairs, and into the nearest train, wherever it was going. If I’d talked to Teshigawara any more, I would have done the same thing to him that Makino had done to me. And I was more afraid of that than anything. * * * Summer vacation of my last year of high school ended, and the second term began. On that day, I didn’t leave for school until afternoon. For no particular reason, I boarded the Yamanote Line instead of the usual Ginza Line and went to school the long way. The sun was almost blinding—when someone says midsummer day, this is exactly the kind of image that comes to mind. I sat in one of the seats, gazing absently at the puddles of sunlight around the train car. The puddles moved slowly, in sync with the curves of the rails, soaking each person by turns. The moment the light reached my feet, I suddenly remembered my first day of high school. That day, I’d ridden the Yamanote Line so that Saya and I could go to school together. I remembered how proud I’d felt in my new uniform, and the cheerful conversation we’d had. It could’ve been yesterday. What’s high school gonna be like? You think everyone’s gonna be so much more mature? Will the teachers be mean? I hope the older kids are nice. I wonder if I’ll meet somebody I like. I hope I find a nice boyfriend. I’ve never seen that first-year boy before, but as soon as he comes into the classroom, I know. In fact, I knew even before I saw him, the moment I heard his faint footsteps in the corridor. Out of nowhere, I was reminded of that feeling from long, long ago. I wish somebody would take me away from here. I was killing time in the classroom after school with a few of my friends, bitching about our boyfriends and girlfriends and other pointless crap. The bright-red sunset was the kind that comes after the end of a typhoon, and even now that it’s below the horizon, the dark-red afterglow is still hanging in the classroom. When that boy sees us, he pushes the desks out of the way to walk right up to me. His expression is dead serious, and his eyes are resolute. He’s here for justice. Finally, I think. I want to scream at this quiet-looking boy, What the hell took you so long?! He’s here, but what’s the point now? “What’s up, freshmeat?” one of my guy friends asks suspiciously. The boy ignores him. “Aizawa-senpai…?” he says, walking over in front of me. “Who’re you?” I respond. Yes, I’m the one you want, I tell him silently. The boy sucks in a deep breath, then quietly says, “I hear Ms. Yukino is quitting.” “Huh?” I’m furious inside. This guy knows nothing. We lost our chance to stop this a long time ago. “Who cares about that slutty old hag?” The moment the words are out of my mouth, he slaps me across the face. This is what I deserve.