“What are you doing here?” she asked him.
“What?”
“Why! Are! You! At MY house, I said!” Rikoko yelled at him.
To which, he answered, “Ohh.”
He gave some vague response, which didn’t really indicate whether he understood what she was asking or not. Yanagihara had followed Rikoko all the way home, until they arrived at the condominium where Rikoko lived with her family.
He even followed her into her room, as if it was the practical thing to do. Rikoko closed the door and locked it, but that didn’t work against Yanagihara. Well, of course not. He was, after all, a ghost. He was in the room before she even knew it.
So this is how it is. Rikoko thought she must be experiencing some form of “possession”; it was popular these days.
Seriously, give me a break. Why am I the only one who has to go through this?
Yanagihara looked all around the room; it appeared that he was having fun doing it. It made Rikoko wonder if the room of someone of the opposite sex was really that interesting.
Rikoko hadn’t known Yanagihara very well. She couldn’t even recall any rumors about him ever having a love life. Perhaps this was the height of irony, that he was finally able to set foot in a girl’s room only now, after he was dead.
Ha ha ha… That’s not funny at all.
“Hey,” she called out.
“What?” Yanagihara turned and looked at her with a full, beaming smile.
Argh… Why are you so darned happy? You’re dead…
“What was that thing just now?”
“Just now?” Yanagihara asked with a more serious face.
“That white thing.” Rikoko was about to change out of her uniform, but she realized she couldn’t very well do that with Yanagihara there in the room with her. Instead, she sat on the bed with an “oh brother” expression on her face.
Yanagihara replied cheerfully, “White thing? Oh, you mean Momo-chan? Seriously, isn’t she so pretty? So pretty it’s hard to believe she’s a shinigami, right?”
No, no, no. I already can’t believe you’re here. First a ghost, now a shinigami. This is beginning to look like some scene from a manga…
“Look, you—” Rikoko was about to ask Yanagihara if he was planning to watch her change and take a bath when he interrupted her quite abruptly.
“Do you remember the school trip we took in grade school?”
“School trip?”
“Yes,” he said. “You know, the one where one of the guys tried to go into some girl’s room? He climbed to the second-story window and fell.”
Rikoko did remember that incident. In retrospect, it seemed pointless to go through so much trouble just to try and get into a girl’s room.
Poor thing, what a fool.
They had still been in sixth grade, and the trip had inspired certain thoughts. A school trip, no parents, night, insatiable curiosity… Dots that were easily connected to reveal one big, naughty picture.
The boy had looked at the window of the room above, the room occupied by the girl he secretly longed for. He had tried to see if he could climb up. Satisfied with his first attempt, he had been convinced that he could make it all the way to the second story.
At least, that’s what he’d thought. He had climbed up—and had fallen gloriously.
Normally, falling from such a height would have killed him. But the trees underneath had cushioned his fall, and he’d gotten away with just a few scrapes and scratches.
It had been a miracle, but the boy had still cried and cried. He had cried, not from the pain, but from the fear of the fall.
Rikoko had looked down the window and thought, What an idiot!
That’s right; the girl whom the boy had tried to sneak a peek at was none other than Rikoko. Of course, there was no way she’d pay any attention to an idiot like that.
As a precaution, the boy had been taken to the hospital for examination. He’d been able to go home a day after Rikoko and the rest of the class had already left for home.
The class had enjoyed a short school trip for two days and a night. The boy’s school trip had ended in half a day. The rest of his time had been spent in a hospital bed.
Such an idiot, Rikoko thought. She hated that kind of person, as the boy had found out days later. He had confessed his love for her, and she had rejected him, saying that she despised idiots.
But Yanagihara was different.
“I thought that was amazing,” Yanagihara said. “To tell you the truth, I was sharing a room with him that night. He told me to come with him, but I couldn’t do it. I was scared. Scared of a lot of things. I might fall, I might get scolded by the teacher, or you girls might hate me. But he did it. He went that far just for a girl he liked. Honestly, I thought it was amazing. He risked his life for someone he loved, you know?”
“Well…” Rikoko answered. “I don’t think it’s really like that. Don’t you think he was just trying to show off? Trying to look cool in front of the other guys?”
Rikoko was sprawled on her bed, flipping through the pages of a fashion magazine and talking more or less at random. She couldn’t care less about conversing with Yanagihara. If she could have made him disappear, she would have.
If you wanna talk, then talk all you like. But disappear afterwards. Please.
“Don’t you think it’s pretty incredible that someone would risk his life just to look cool?” Yanagihara spoke with an overly serious face. He had no way of knowing what was going on inside Rikoko’s heart.
“Well…”
Now that you mention it, that may be true. There can’t be too many guys who would risk their lives to look cool.
“That’s stupid,” she said aloud. “He’s an idiot. That’s just plain dumb.”
As if exasperated, Rikoko tossed aside the fashion magazine and fell back across the bed, ending up spread-eagled on her back.
…An idiot is an idiot. Nothing more, right? Can an idiot solve my problems? Of course not. There’s no way he can. No way. Nobody can do that. Nobody. Not even me…
“…But…” Yanagihara protested.
“What?” Rikoko asked, raising herself up. For a moment she thought Yanagihara was reacting to her inner thoughts, and it startled her.
But he wasn’t—he was just reminiscing.
“Idiots are cool, y’know,” he said.
“Huh?”
Hey, don’t be so serious. Regardless of whether it was Yanagihara or the white shinigami, Rikoko thought that certain kinds of things shouldn’t be said with a serious look on one’s face.