“Takeshita from Class D asked to see me the other day,” said Asako.
Yuuki squinted suspiciously and replied, “Huh? For real?”
But it was indeed for real. Asako confirmed as much, nodding enthusiastically as she gripped a bottle of soda that had begun to sweat with moisture the moment she’d stepped out of the convenience store.
“Takeshita… He’s that popular guy?” said Yuuki.
“Yep! I was all like, ‘What?! No way!’”
“Don’t tell me he…”
Asako had wondered the same, and as she went to see Takeshita, she couldn’t deny the nervous excitement that had bubbled up inside her.
“He challenged me to an arm wrestlin’ match in front of all the boys in his class! Felt like one of them underground fights I saw in a movie one time,” Asako explained.
As if she somehow expected that result, Yuuki burst out laughing with a look on her face that said, “Of course that’s what happened!”
“And I whooped his ass! Now I’m gonna end up famous for bein’ an arm wrestlin’ champ!”
“You oughtta be a legend!”
“Ugh, no!”
As they finished their playful banter with laughter, like the gently loosening knot on a bow, their conversation naturally came to an end.
“Anyway, I best get goin’,” Yuuki said, and the two girls waved goodbye to each other.
This was how their farewells went on days when Asako walked home from school with Yuuki.
“Right. See ya tomorrow!” Asako called.
The sound of the railway crossing signal echoed, and Asako paused in the middle of waving to Yuuki.
Yuuki’s house was in Kibogayama Town’s urban district, so she lived closer to the school than Asako. It was just a short walk past the convenience store and beyond the railway crossing.
The barrier came down at the same railway crossing that Asako had walked across countless times.
Its red lights flashed.
There shouldn’t have been anything out of the ordinary about the signal, but today, it gave Asako a very bad feeling. It carried something that felt eerie and unpleasant—as if someone was blowing their damp breath by her ears.
“Ya might wanna avoid that crossin’ today,” Asako cautioned.
Yuuki stopped and looked back at Asako. “Again?”
The setting sun shined upon her pure-white summer sailor uniform, causing the area around her shoulder to take on a soft, golden hue.
“Well, yer instincts have never been wrong. All right, then,” Yuuki said, fully trusting Asako’s advice. “See ya.”
She waved once more and made a turn at the intersection right before the railway crossing.
After confirming that Yuuki was out of view, Asako put in her earbuds and fiddled with her smartphone to play some music. This time, she made the volume a little louder than usual.
She could still hear the crossing signal. Its high-pitched clanging gradually transformed into a voice.
“It’s coming,” the voice said. “It’s coming. It’s coming. It’s coming.”
She neither knew what was coming nor why the voice was calling to her.
Before long, a train passed by, and the railway crossing opened up, but she didn’t even want to imagine what would have happened if someone had crossed.
It reminded her of the other day when Maki got everyone to walk through the forest path to Ashidori with him. There had been something there as well. She’d heard it. Not just her—Yuuki, Hikaru, and Yoshiki also heard the sound it made.
Hikaru had said it was a blank from a hunting rifle or deer scarer, but Asako knew it couldn’t have been that. They’d managed to come out of that unscathed, but Asako wondered what might have happened if they hadn’t been so lucky.
Today, Hikaru, Yoshiki, and Maki said they were all going to the arcade in Mion Mall, and they’d left the classroom together in a good mood. Asako could only hope that nothing happened to them. However, there remained an oddly foreboding feeling that she couldn’t shake—she could just sense that something bad was going to happen.
As Asako left the parking lot in front of the convenience store, she passed a woman and stopped in her tracks. It was a stout lady who wore a T-shirt with “Dance Club Life” printed on it, and had her hair tied back into a simple ponytail.
The woman seemed to have deliberately parked her car in front of the convenience store and walked briskly toward the railway crossing.
Asako wanted to call out to her and warn her not to go in that direction, but while she hesitated, the woman reached her destination and stood in front of the crossing. Less than a moment later, the train rushed past, and the railway crossing opened without incident.
The crossing signal stopped—as did the voices and the bad feeling in the air. It had all disappeared.
Asako hastily removed her earbuds. “Huh…?” she muttered.
The woman turned back toward her, and Asako hurried away.
It was only natural for Asako to run off, given the mixture of relief that nothing bad had happened and the eerie, uncanny feeling that had washed over her.
And no matter how hard she strained her ears, she could no longer hear the voice that had said, “It’s coming.”