Hikaru took a direct hit to the face from one of Asako’s powerful spikes during fifth-period gym.
“I seriously suck at all ball sports ’cept for soccer…,” he grumbled.
Seated on a round stool in the nurse’s office and holding a tissue to his nose, Hikaru slumped his shoulders in disappointment. Yoshiki sat down with him.
“Asako’s still servin’ up some mean kills with the ball,” Hikaru said. “That thing warped space-time itself—like the space around it was all squashed up.”
Asako had apologized to Hikaru over and over after he collapsed, but the sharp, heavy whump sound that echoed through the gym was something Yoshiki wouldn’t forget anytime soon.
“Ya got pretty scraped up there…,” he noted.
Hikaru’s right arm was bright red from his elbow to his wrist, almost as if he’d been burned, and spots of blood seeped out in places around his forearm. Hikaru’s gym clothes, embroidered with his surname Indou, were similarly stained from his bleeding nose.
“Oh, for real?” Hikaru said to Yoshiki.
“It doesn’t hurt?”
“Is it…s’posed to? I hardly feel any pain at all.”
Hikaru suddenly came out with that statement, taking advantage of the fact that there was no one else in the nurse’s office. Yoshiki felt a chill run through him, as if his heart was in a vise.
“Then you ain’t no perfect copy at all, are ya?” Yoshiki blurted out while applying a large bandage to Hikaru’s scrape.
He had become frustratingly aware of the fact that Hikaru wasn’t human, but he was still surprised to learn that the boy didn’t even feel pain.
“Huh?” Hikaru tilted his head in confusion, a tissue still stuffed in his nostril.
Yoshiki averted his gaze. “…But yer nose sure does bleed a bunch.”
“Oh, yeah. Back at the forest path…”
The loud pop and the sight of Hikaru falling back with blood spraying from his nose came back to Yoshiki’s mind. The memory was all too vivid, causing his throat to tighten and making it hard for him to breathe.
“What happened back there? I still don’t get it.”
“I told you already. I put it inside…”
Hikaru trailed off, seeming uncomfortable as he adjusted the tissues stuffed in his nostril.
Then he suddenly looked up with a smile on his face.
“Oh, I know,” he said as if he’d thought of a new game for them to play. “I’ll show ya what’s inside me!”
Yoshiki couldn’t really give him a yes or no, and he couldn’t even tell if Hikaru was being serious. But before he could respond, the school nurse returned. She was a down-to-earth and friendly middle-aged woman who smiled at Hikaru.
“How are you feeling? Did your nose stop bleeding?” she asked.
Hikaru’s nosebleed had mostly stopped. When they returned to their classroom in time for the ringing of the bell that signaled the end of fifth period, Asako apologized profusely with her hands pressed together to plead for forgiveness.
“Sorry! Are ya okay? I’m super sorryyy!”
Hikaru laughed. “That was a powerful spike…”
His voice was slightly muffled because of the tissue still stuffed in his nose. Yoshiki couldn’t bring himself to ask Hikaru what he had meant earlier.
However, after school, Hikaru led Yoshiki to the gym and, with an air of perfect innocence, opened the heavy doors to the storage room. He then grabbed Yoshiki’s arm with his bandaged right hand and pulled him inside.
“This situation…feels kinda pervy, huh?” said Hikaru.
As Hikaru unbuttoned his short-sleeved shirt, one button after another, he kept his eyes trained on the door of the storage room.
He and Yoshiki could hear the basketball and volleyball teams practicing in the gym—the high-pitched squeaks of shoes scraping against the gym floor, the sound of a whistle, people calling out to each other, balls hitting the floor, and laughter. It was all so busy and noisy.
The storage room was quiet, and the air was stuffy. There was a musty smell—a mix of mildew, dust, and sweat; the basket stuffed with basketballs; the scoreboard; the vaulting boxes. The same stale odor hung throughout the room and on every object within.
Yoshiki was sitting down on a pile of folded-up gym mats and had his face turned away from Hikaru. Small flecks of dust floating throughout the storage room shined gold from the light of the window.
“Man, what the heck? I don’t know what’s goin’ on,” Yoshiki said.
He furrowed his brows and exhaled through his nose, sending the dust particles drifting toward Hikaru. Yoshiki followed their path with his eyes and was left speechless.
“…What the hell is that?”
With Hikaru’s shirt fully unbuttoned, Yoshiki could see that there was a thin slit running from Hikaru’s chest down to his stomach. His skin was split open as if someone had tried to rip him in half vertically, but not a drop of blood was flowing out.
There was only a gaping black opening.
“Why don’cha try stickin’ yer hand in?”
Wearing a slight smirk, Hikaru grabbed Yoshiki’s arm. Before Yoshiki could even utter a surprised “Huh?,” Hikaru guided his hand toward the black opening.
Yoshiki’s left hand was easily swallowed up by the paper-thin slit running down Hikaru’s torso. He felt a sensation like his fingertips were being licked by a moist tongue, and a muted scream came up from the back of his throat.
“Wagh…?!”
Yoshiki instinctively wanted to pull his hand out, but something inside Hikaru wouldn’t allow it. He felt each finger on his hand being gently squeezed—similar to how it felt putting your feet into a flooded rice paddy. It was almost as if he was being slowly dragged in and being robbed of air.
“Feels…real weird,” he muttered.
But that wasn’t all.
Yoshiki could sense something seeping into him. Hikaru’s insides were squirming and writhing as they examined Yoshiki.
It was cold and showed no signs of life, but it was moving. It felt so slimy that Yoshiki could almost hear the squelch. His shoulders tensed.
“Like what?” Hikaru asked.
Yoshiki noticed that his own neck was covered in goosebumps. A cold sweat trickled down his nape.