If I recalled correctly, we’d gone to see the dolphin show right after that. Karen and I had sat right in the front row (a.k.a. “the splash zone”) and were thus soaking wet by the end of the show—but still laughing our butts off, mind you. The dolphins had just been such wacky and playful creatures, we had been unable to contain ourselves. That was far from the only pleasant memory I had from those times too—when Karen was with us, pretty much every day had been full of wonder. If only she were still alive, maybe things would have remained that way to this day.
I got out of bed and headed into the hallway. After making sure my father wasn’t lurking in the kitchen, I stepped out the side door to the backyard, which had fallen into a state of utter neglect after my mother disappeared on us. I squatted below the bathroom window and reached my hand into the crawl space beneath the house; I quickly found what I was looking for and pulled it out.
It was a large rectangular tin that had originally held rice crackers or something, but which Karen and I had repurposed as a secret hiding place to store all our greatest treasures—a four-leaf clover, some marbles from ramune bottles—that sort of thing. Now it also housed some of the things that Karen had cherished most in her life, like her favorite comb and stuffed animal, as well as some of my favorite pictures of her. It was sort of a time capsule-slash-memento box dedicated to her memory.
Upon opening the lid, however, the first thing that jumped out at me were her old pair of red sandals. With the one I’d found recently in the Urashima Tunnel, they were once more a complete pair. Just looking at them like this set my heart at ease; it gave me hope that Karen might really be out there, somewhere in this world. Don’t worry, Karen. I’ll find you. Just wait for me a little bit longer.
With that silent, prayer-like promise, I closed the lid and put the treasure box back under the house where it had always been, ever since we were kids. The secret hiding spot Karen and I had decided upon together. I would have loved to get the box out of the elements and move it into my room or something, but I knew my father would probably throw it out if he ever found it, so I’d left it there to be safe. The memory of him going off the deep end and getting rid of every last thing from Karen’s room after my mother left was still fresh in my mind. It was the main reason I had so few mementos of her. I did resent my father for that, obviously, but I knew taking my anger out on him wouldn’t do either of us any good. If anything, it’d fracture our relationship even further.
I bounced back up to my feet and checked the time on my phone. It had just turned 7 a.m. I headed back to my room to get ready for school.
It was approaching mid-July, and the midsummer heat was only getting more brutal. As I walked through the main gate onto campus, a couple of girls ran past, holding their book bags up like makeshift umbrellas to shade themselves from the sun. I changed into my indoor shoes, then headed through the hallway and into Classroom 2-A. Before I could get to my desk, I noticed there was yet another new girl in class. She had bobbed black hair and thick-rimmed glasses, and she looked like any other average girl—yet for whatever reason, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d seen her somewhere before.
Then it hit me: it was Koharu. She’d dyed her hair back to its natural color, and her skirt now stretched all the way down to her knees. It was a complete and total one-eighty from her previous bad girl aesthetic.
“Uh, Koharu? What happened to you? Please tell me that’s not your new look,” one of the girls from her old posse said mockingly, wasting no time in making fun of her for it. Koharu gave a simple noncommittal answer, neither confirming nor denying, and tried to shrug it off. Seeing her smile sheepishly and stumble over her words was such a drastic change from her usual haughty demeanor that I genuinely wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t had the context of the events of the day prior.
“Dude, you think she lost a bet or something?” Shohei whispered in my ear. I hadn’t even noticed him walk up to my desk.
“Guessing it’s more like she decided to turn over a new leaf.”
“A narcissist like her turning over a new leaf? Never thought I’d see the day.”
“Yeah, well. She has been through a lot lately.”
“I’ll say, especially after the new girl humiliated her. Speaking of which, where did you run off to with her after school yesterday, anyhow?”
“H-how do you know about that?” I sputtered, totally caught off guard.
“Wow, so you guys did hang out, huh? One of the guys from calligraphy club mentioned he saw her sitting next to some dude on the bus yesterday. She’s kinda the talk of the school right now, y’see. Anyway, I asked him to describe the guy she was with for me, and it sounded an awful lot like you, so I figured I’d open with a bit of a leading question to see if you took the bait.”
Ah. Welp. It seemed I’d walked right into his trap.
“So? What’s goin’ on between you two?” Shohei asked, his voice oozing with intrigue.
“Nothing as scandalous as you’re hoping for,” I said, rolling my eyes. “We’re not dating or anything. Hell, we’re not even technically friends yet.”
“Then where the hell were you going on the bus with her, huh? Last time I checked, you ride the train home, buddy.”
“We just had to go to Kawasaki’s place to drop off her summer homework.”
“You both had to? How in the hell did that turn of events come about?”
“It’s a long story, man. Would take years for me to even summarize. So out of respect for your time and mine, let’s not and say we did, shall we…?”
“No need to be a dick about it, dude,” Shohei scoffed. Clearly he realized that I was merely too lazy to explain. “But hey, can’t say I’m too surprised. You guys have a lot in common, after all.”
“What? Yeah, right. Just what exactly do she and I have in common?”
“Well, for one thing, you never open up to other people whatsoever. And from what I can tell, she’s the same way. Feels like you’re both kinda on the same wavelength in terms of wanting as little to do with other people as possible.”
“…Are you my therapist now?”
“Nah, I just like watching people and trying to analyze the psychology behind their behavior. It’s kind of a hobby of mine.”
“First I’ve heard of it.”