When I went through the gate, the school seemed quieter than usual.
I’d gone into town and headed for the school. It wasn’t a place I particularly liked. I hadn’t been since Dr. Hashigami’s murder, for one thing. So why had I come here now? I didn’t know.
I looked into the teachers’ office, a little nervous, and even though it was Saturday almost all the teachers were there. They were talking about something with serious looks on their faces. The air in the room felt depressing.
“Excuse me.” I went into the room, but nobody noticed me.
Yeah, that’s just what I’d expected. But that didn’t prove I was dead, you know. It would feel a lot more realistic if it turned out that I was just invisible. So no matter how much the teachers ignored me, it didn’t bother me.
I looked around the room and saw a whiteboard behind the head teacher’s desk. It had a list of over ten names of students and their classes.
“Were you able to get a hold of Akanishi’s family?”
“No, not yet...”
“Where are they, and what the hell are they doing?”
“Sir, the parents of the new students are asking when school’s going to begin!”
“Hello, this is Seimei Academy High School.”
The phones were ringing, and the teachers were running around and shouting. There was a lot of chaos. That would explain why nobody was paying any attention to me.
I decided to try talking to Mr. Abekawa, my language teacher, who was right by me. “Um, Mr. Abekawa?”
His shoulders were slumped, and he was staring at a list of student names and addresses. His hands were shaking as he held it.
“Hello? Sir?”
He didn’t seem to hear me. Well, he was getting a little old. Maybe he was getting deaf.
I looked back at the whiteboard. There were dozens of names on the list. One of them was mine.
Yeah, saw that coming... I wasn’t going to let it surprise me, though!
“Oh...”
Miyuu Aikawa.
Myu-Pom’s name... was there, too. Hmm... Then what about Ryotasu?
I looked at each name on the whiteboard. “It’s not there...”
Ryotasu’s name wasn’t there. What did that mean?
“Hahaha! It means nothing! It doesn’t matter! I’m gonna have a great time with this ghost thing—oh, invisible-man thing—or maybe out-of-body-experience thing? Whatever it is, I’m off to have a great time!” I forced myself to laugh and left the room.
I decided to head to the AV room next.
This was where Myu-Pom used to do her fortune-telling, but now there was no one here. I looked in my classroom too, but of course nobody was there.
Man, this was boring. It was so boring I had to yawn. School was really boring, so I decided not to use it for my affiliate blog.
I left the school and headed towards the station, but suddenly noticed something strange.
“Why’s everything so empty?”
I hadn’t noticed this morning, but today the shopping street in front of Kichijoji Station was surprisingly empty.
This was... because of the 256 incident, right? Or maybe it was just everything that had been happening in Kichijoji lately.
Nobody who didn’t live in this neighborhood would want come here, unless they were some kind of weirdo or seriously into the occult.
I thought about this as I walked, and then a middle-aged man almost ran right into me.
“Hey!” I quickly dodged before I slammed into him, but he didn’t even try to move away.
He was totally going to slam into me. Was this some new type of scam? But he just looked like an ordinary old man, and he didn’t come try to shake me down after he almost hit me. He just ignored me as he walked right by.
It was like he didn’t even see me.
“Maybe I really am an invisible man.”
The same thing happened two or three times. There were barely any people, even in front of the station, so if you were watching where you were going—or even if you were buried in your phone—there was no way you could collide with someone. But people kept doing it anyway.
The first was a serious-looking middle school student; the second, a woman in her twenties in a pretty dress. I thought it might be okay to slam into the girl, but when we got close I dodged out of reflex. She didn’t apologize at all.
I got a little annoyed and stood where the most people were—though it was still far emptier than usual. Before even a minute had passed, one of a pair of young men almost rammed into me. After dodging at the last second, I chased after the man.
“H-Hey! A-A-Apolo...”
“What?”
“I’m sorry.”
He glared at me so angrily that I apologized. But the way he was acting was weird. His look quickly turned to one of surprise as he looked around him. He didn’t look at me.
“Something wrong?”
“Oh, no... Huh?”
He turned back to the other man he was with in confusion, and then they both went down Harmonica Alley as if I wasn’t even there.
He was the fourth person to respond to my voice. The number of people who’d ignored me was over three times that. Even when people did respond, they’d treat me like I was the invisible man.
“Come on, why are you all pretending you can’t see me? I’m right here! I can get run over by cars!”
I ran out into the road and smacked right into the side mirror of a passing car. An awful pain ran down my arm. It was so bad I dropped to my knees right there on the street.
“S-See? I can hit things! I’m not a ghost! Oww... that hurt.”
I wasn’t sure if I was happy or in pain, but I was crying either way.
Man, this really hurt. Maybe I broke my arm. The car had kept going after it hit me. That was totally a hit and run.
A crime.
I was right in front of the station, so a bunch of people should’ve seen me, but nobody came running up or said anything. What was going on?
What was going on here? Was Japan just done for as a nation?
“Somebody call the cops! There was a hit and run! Call an ambulance!”
I cried, but...
Nobody near the station responded.
I started to cry. It felt like the whole world was bullying me.
“Oh, so that’s how it is? Everybody’s ignoring me, huh? Yeah, ’cause I’m dead! Sorry!”
I went to roll on the ground... but doing it in the street was a little too scary, so I moved over towards the station’s turnstiles and lay out on the ground.
Nobody would notice me here. Nobody would say anything. So I was going to just do whatever I felt like.
The pain in my arm got a little better. I was glad to see it wasn’t broken.
“Haha... Nobody can see me... lol.”
And then...
“Huh?”
A woman in a skirt walked right over me.
I gasped.
I-I saw it.
I saw what was up her skirt.
“I saw it! It was pink!”
Oh no! I was going to be arrested for peeping! I quickly stood up and tried to think of an excuse, but...
She ignored me and quickly walked into the station.
The people around me ignored me as well. Nobody even looked at me.
“...Hahah. This is great. I-I think I’ve finally found the greatest possible story for my blog!”
The internet was all about sex and violence, and the more sensational the story, the better. It didn’t matter who died or who said what, as long as you got the page views. That meant I had to use the situation I was in to the best of my advantage!
I looked around. There were three teenage girls standing in front of the bus stop. It was still March, and still cold, but their bare legs were exposed under their short skirts.
I walked over to the three of them and crouched down to look under their skirts.
“Right! White! Black shorts! Blue!”
Nobody said anything. The girls didn’t even notice me.
“Hahaha, this is great! This is great! Being a ghost is awesome! It’s so simple that it doesn’t make me feel anything, though. Also, Girl B! In the black shorts! You’re blaspheming the very idea of being a teenage girl! You’ve shortened your skirt, but you’re still wearing shorts to keep anybody from seeing anything? Don’t you have any pride?”
The three girls didn’t respond.
They say that the greater the effort something requires, the greater the payoff. In that sense, seeing their panties did nothing for me at all. It felt like looking at the panties on an anime figure. Sure, it felt a little immoral, but it wasn’t sexually exciting at all. But still, it was kind of fun to be able to see something you didn’t normally get to see.