“My mom’s always felt like his mom’s her rival. She tells my dad, ‘Oh, she’s in a magazine. She thinks she’s so special, but I never liked her.’ Now my mom’s obsessed with talking to Niko’s mom and repeating all of the same insults to her. She’s on the phone all the time.”
“I hate it when moms do that,” Sota offered. He wasn’t sure what he could give in reply to Toranosuke, but the way his mother talked with other women on the way home from the grocery store seemed like a common annoyance they could bond over.
However, Toranosuke seemed taken aback by this. Sota had only meant that he understood the feeling, yet Toranosuke responded, “No, it’s not just my mom.”
“Huh?”
“My dad does, too. My dad talks to Niko’s dad about all kinds of stuff, like his useless employees at work, and sometimes he says the same stuff as Mom, about how much he hates the dad who designed Sawatari Apartments. On and on and on.”
His dad, too? Sota had nothing to add there. He was at a loss.
Toranosuke grew weary as he explained. “He said someone should die at that apartment complex. Then there would be all kinds of bad rumors, and the real estate value would drop.”
Sota didn’t know what “real estate value” meant, and he assumed Toranosuke didn’t, either. When adults used strange words, it made you curious, and you wanted to use them in front of your classmates, even if you had only a vague idea of their meaning.
But what about Niko?
The way Niko spoke, it didn’t sound like he was mimicking someone else. He chose every word carefully. What kind of childhood did he have to have turned out that way?
“…Want to hang out the next day off school?” Sota asked before he realized what he was doing. Toranosuke seemed surprised, and he regarded Sota in a way he hadn’t before.
Sota grinned a little. “I still can’t do a handstand. You could do that in first grade, right? Can you teach me how?”
“…Okay.”
Toranosuke’s reply almost sounded like he was asking, “Is that okay?” He’d been behaving himself ever since that class meeting, but no one played with him anymore. Even Yuichiro and Go, his best buddies, acted like they’d never been friends with him.
Sota recalled Toranosuke’s paper once again.
“I’ve heard that people who stop bullying get targeted by the evil bullies. But I want to be the one who stops the bullying. I want to help my classmates.”
Toranosuke was a real jerk, and Sota hated him—but he agreed with that.
They were supposed to play together on the next day off school.
However, Sota and Toranosuke never got to fulfill that promise.
The following morning, Toranosuke’s mom jumped from Sawatari Apartments.
The apartment complex that her rival, the mother of the student chairman, had designed. Toranosuke’s mom didn’t live there, but the stairwell was accessible to anyone, so she climbed to a high floor, jumped off, and died.
Toranosuke was pulled out of school by the vice principal that day, and he didn’t come back.
The homeroom teacher followed him, so Sota’s class was tasked with self-study for the rest of the period.
Normally, kids descended into chaos and mischief without adults around, yet they all sensed the wrongness in the air, and no one misbehaved. They worked on the printouts they were given in obedient silence.
Even without what had happened with Toranosuke, no one in the class was likely to get into trouble anyway.
Niko was there.
Not a single student did anything childish or unworthy of a flower-circle sticker anymore.
After that, many things happened in Class 5-2. Almost too many to count.
Toranosuke was dead.
From what the moms were saying, after his mother’s suicide, Toranosuke went to be with his grandma. Then, suddenly, his dad went to get him. It was difficult for Sota to understand what this meant, but the police had questioned Toranosuke’s father about what had happened to his mother. Supposedly there was possible “foul play” involved in her death.
After picking up Toranosuke from his grandma’s house, his dad drove back to this area and got into a traffic accident. He went straight through the red light, as though he were trying to hit the other car.
Toranosuke and his dad both perished.
The police investigated the accident, too, but nothing was confirmed yet, so the teacher told everyone not to talk about it with anyone.
Nobody in the class could speak up. The only exception was a group of girls who asked if there would be a funeral, but the teacher only replied, “I don’t know.” Her voice was frail. Perhaps this experience had weakened her spirit.
Toranosuke was gone.
He’d never come back.
It sounded like a story from some far-off place Sota would never visit. He couldn’t believe it was real.
Niko’s suggestions continued. He said kids should take turns going to Kana’s house to “help” her stop being so forgetful.
Sota thought they were done doing that sort of thing, so he was shocked when Niko asked him, “Aren’t you going?”
“Um, but after what happened to Toranosuke…,” he protested weakly.
Niko looked nonplussed. His expression suggested he didn’t understand what Sota was getting at.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
Sota couldn’t muster any further comment.
The same thing happened in the other groups in the class.
Ryohei, who slacked off on his cleaning duties.
Akane, who was suspected of cheating on her tests.
Keito, who faked being sick to get out of school.
“We should make them stop,” Niko stated to the others. “Let’s all help them act right.”
After a beat, he added, “For the good of the class.”
Sota didn’t want to go to Kana’s house. He spent time every day practically praying that Kana’s mother would be discharged from the hospital, and he watched with helpless concern as the other kids in the group went to “help” at Kana’s house. Still, he never went himself.
This wasn’t contained to just Sota’s class anymore, either.
The mood at the entire school had become twisted and ugly. Secretly, Sota believed that it all started after Niko showed up. He was too terrified to say it to anyone, though.
But when he thought about why he couldn’t, he realized it was because Niko was right. He was so right that you couldn’t argue back. The moment you did, you outed yourself as the bad guy.
Not long after, the teachers told them that the student chairman had caused an “incident.”
He’d pushed his mother off their apartment’s veranda. Unlike what befell Toranosuke, this occurred at the apartment complex near the school and concerned the student chairman, so there was an assembly to address it. A teacher explained that something very tragic had happened. There was no class for a while, only consecutive days of parent meetings. So much went by in quick succession that Sota had difficulty processing that it was all going on at his school.
There was so much confusion, but there was one thing Sota felt sure of.
He was glad that the school was on a break. It meant no monitoring classmates and going to their houses. That, at the very least, was a good thing.
After the incident the student chairman caused, Niko was the next one to stop attending school.
No one said he transferred or got sick—he just stopped coming. There weren’t even any rumors, like there were with Toranosuke. He had a seat in the classroom, but didn’t show up.
Suddenly, children stopped watching each other, as though waking from a collective dream. It really was like they hadn’t been fully aware; everyone wondered why they had done all that in the first place. Only Toranosuke’s and Niko’s empty seats proved that the events of the past few months were genuine.
What happened to Niko?
One day, Sota was home alone while his mother was out on an errand. The doorbell rang, and, assuming it was a package delivery, Sota opened the front door without much thought.
There was Niko. All alone.
“Hello,” he greeted, in his usual grown-up manner, much to Sota’s shock. Sota blinked rapidly until he could find his voice again.
“What…happened?”
Niko looked leaner than before, and his shirt was absolutely filthy. Sota had so many questions to ask.
“You haven’t been at school. I wondered what happened to you.”
“I’m going now,” Niko stated abruptly. He stared at Sota. “I came to tell you that. You’ve got potential, so I kept my eye on you. It’s a shame. I’ve got to go now.”
“Go where? Are you transferring again?”
“Yes. I’m getting a new mom.”
“Uh…”
Did that mean his parents were divorcing, and his father was remarrying a different woman?
That sounded really tough. Sota stared at Niko, trying to glean something more from his expression. However, the odd boy just shook his head. “It’s nothing, really.”
Maybe Niko had major issues to deal with at home himself. The thought squeezed at Sota’s heart.
“You were showing Kana your homework every morning, weren’t you, Sota?” said Niko.
“Huh?”
“That’s cheating. It won’t do Kana any good.”
Sota felt a pang of guilt, but Niko was grinning.
It was the first time Sota ever saw the boy’s namesake smile.
“Umm…”
Goose bumps formed on his skin, and shivers ran through his limbs. Somewhere in the center of Niko’s smile was a core that instantly chilled the air around him.
“Did you make the class act that way because of Toranosuke?” Sota asked. He’d hated Toranosuke. But now he would never get to see him again. Sota recalled how Toranosuke looked the last time they met—his hunched shoulders while he sat shriveled on the park bench. “Was it because you didn’t like what Toranosuke did?”
“No. Frankly, children like him are everywhere. People like Toranosuke, and the residents of Sawatari Apartments.”
“Huh…?”
“I truly hoped you would take over for me.”
Take over? Sota was confused.
Niko sighed but never let the smile leave his lips. “I see kids like you every now and then,” he said. “I pondered what it was about you. You’re protected by bamboo, aren’t you?”
“Huh…?”
Bamboo? Like, bamboo bamboo? It was a truly puzzling statement.
The only time Sota had anything to do with bamboo was during his family’s yearly trip to his grandma’s house in the countryside every spring. They went digging for new shoots. That was the only bamboo Sota was familiar with…
“It’s always the people around things we need to avoid, like bamboo and dogs, that we’re the most drawn to. It’s one of our downsides.”
What does that mean? Sota wondered idly.
“Good-bye,” Niko announced.
His face looked absolutely white. A frigid, icy shade, the color of frozen air. The smile drained from his features. His face and body—Niko’s entire form—faded away, losing color and melting into space. And at his feet, a long shadow stretched into the distance.
It was the evening, and the sun wasn’t shining anymore. Yet somehow, Niko had disappeared, leaving his shadow behind.