Kathunk!
One of the ceiling panels popped out of place.
The pressure from the child genius’s brush had pushed it upwards into the crawl space above─with surprising ease, given that he was in an extremely awkward position and couldn’t possibly have been pressing all that hard.
His brush, which thanks partly to our support had thus far been moving without so much as a moment’s pause, suddenly stopped─though nothing registered on his ever-expressionless face.
“Ooh, he broke it, he broke it! Sosaku wrecked the art room!” Mr. Bare-Legs hooted.
Bad boy.
Anyone could see that the child genius hadn’t broken anything─the panel was clearly made to pop out like that.
Even if they were in the same grade, though, given the power and influence of the guy Mr. Bare-Legs was teasing, I had to admit he was also fearless.
“Did he? But what beautiful timing. Let’s take a break. Come down from the ladder, Sosaku. And Michiru, get the tea and snacks ready.”
The child genius and the delinquent silently obeyed the president’s orders─neither of those unsociable characters seems the type to take orders from anyone, but with the leader they’re both as docile as kittens.
While in physical terms my task may have been much easier than holding a ladder, serving as assistant to a genius artiste was mentally exhausting in its own right, so I was relieved at the chance for a break as well.
I’m not sure if the timing was beautiful per se, but I’ll agree he punched through the ceiling at an opportune moment.
“Sakiguchi, do you think that ceiling panel was already damaged? If so, we’ll need to fix it, which means we probably won’t be able to finish the job today,” I suggested obliquely (which is to say, blatantly), thinking that, since painting an entire ceiling in one afternoon was absurd to begin with, we should probably take this as a sign from above.
“…”
The councilman peered into the gaping hole in the ceiling so intently that he appeared not to hear me.
What was that about?
Was he, as representative of the student body, concerned about damage to school property? Because pretty much anyone (except me) should be able to fix something like that easily enough.
“Oh no, Ms. Dojima, that is not my concern. It’s just─that hole looks very much like the entrance to a secret passage.”
A secret passage?
Once he said it, I could totally see why he might think that─it seemed less like a damaged old ceiling panel had given way, and more like a trapdoor had come open.
“Ya think so? So what does that mean, the art room had a loft?”
At first the delinquent’s comment seemed way off-base, but actually it made a lot of sense─there probably wasn’t anything as fancy as a loft above this classroom, but there could well be a secret room.
“Ha ha ha! I’ve always hoped there might be a door to a parallel world around here somewhere, but who would’ve thought it was right above our heads! To think, it was right under our noses this whole time!”
First of all, Mr. President, if it’s above your head then it’s not under your nose, and second of all, that went way beyond fancy to downright fanciful─though I guess if you’re in fifth grade, searching for a tunnel to a parallel world isn’t that weird?
I wondered what the child genius thought, given that he was the one who had opened the door to the tunnel, but he had sunk deep into the sofa and wasn’t even looking at the hole─since his face is always expressionless, he didn’t show any sign of exhaustion, but painting a mural on the ceiling seemed to be even more draining than watching someone else do it.
The genius’s assistant may get tired, but the genius himself gets even more tired─or is that obvious?
That doesn’t make me any less tired, though!
“Come on, guys, enough nonsense about lofts and parallel worlds. If there’s anything up there, it’s gotta be treasure,” Mr. Bare-Legs said, his eyes sparkling.
Despite being the possessor of supernaturally beautiful legs that are the envy of every girl at Yubiwa Academy, his outlook is surprisingly realistic, so while I figured he was probably joking about the treasure, a hiding place did actually seem more plausible than a hidden room in terms of the way the school was laid out.
“Hmm. What do you think, Dojima?”
“Me?”
The delinquent’s sudden question threw me off balance.
A newbie like me was supposed to give my opinion?
“Um, well… It could be littered with dead bodies, for all I know.”
“Quit trying to scare us… And pick up after yourself when you say something like that. Anyway, a picture is worth a thousand words. Standing around spitballing isn’t getting us anywhere, let’s climb up there and see what’s what.”
The delinquent put his foot on the ladder, and Sakiguchi casually reached out to steady it, so I reflexively ran to brace the other side.
I mean, he was definitely right that we’d find out more about what was up there by going to look than by talking about it─whether it was a loft, a parallel world, some treasure, or a pile of dead bodies.
Unfortunately, the delinquent was turned away at the door.
It wasn’t his usual behavior that was the problem, but a simple question of size─because of the perspective, I hadn’t been able to tell with my glasses on, but the hole-in-the-ceiling-slash-entrance was a bit too small for the delinquent, whose overgrown frame is a lot bigger than your average second-year middle school student’s.
His head made it through, but his shoulders wouldn’t fit.
I figured he’d still be able to get a glimpse of what was up there, but unfortunately it wasn’t to be.
“It’s pitch black. I can’t see a thing.”
“Uh-oh, that is a problem. Whatever can we do? Looks like we’ve hit a dead end. I’m sorry to say I don’t have a flashlight on hand… If only one of us were small enough to fit and could see in the dark, but oh well.”
“Get in there.”
My clever attempt to avoid being given the job of investigating the hole seemed to have backfired, and all too soon I found myself in the delinquent’s place.
If it were only a matter of size, either of the first-years─not to mention the leader, who was still in elementary school─could have fit through, but I suppose this was one of the few times when my eyesight would actually come in handy.
At the very least, it was a far more peaceful use for my eyes than seeing through scams at casinos─so I climbed up the ladder Sakiguchi and the delinquent were steadying for me, and slowly inched my way into the crawl space.
I’d never have managed something so tomboyish in a skirt, even with leggings on, but now that I was doing it, a current of excitement ran through me.
I felt like I’d always wanted to infiltrate the crawl spaces above our classrooms!
But as I took off my glasses in the unexpectedly cramped world above the ceiling, my excitement turned to disappointment.
This crawl space was just an ordinary crawl space.
There wasn’t any hidden room, let alone something as fancy as a loft, and of course it wasn’t connected to any fantastical magical worlds─plus there was no indication whatsoever of a treasure waiting to be discovered. It was just a cramped space not even a foot across, narrower than the entrance itself.
Since I’d rashly taken off my glasses and unleashed the full power of my vision, I saw every last detail of the thick layer of dust on the floor and the spiderwebs covering the walls, which gave me the creeps in addition to my feeling of disappointment.
It would be painful to deliver such a boring report to the denizens of the earthly world waiting so eagerly below, but for my own sake and theirs, I knew I had to get out of there─it seemed like just being in there could make a person sick.
Worrying that I might become the dead body in the crawl space, I somehow managed a one-eighty in that suffocating cranny─at which point the area that had previously been behind my back entered my field of vision.
Or, make that behind my legs.
Even my out-of-control eyesight doesn’t allow me to see behind myself─which is not to say some sprawling world opened up when I turned around; the other side of the crawl space was just as cramped.
But, as if to emphasize just how cramped it was, a whole bunch of wooden boards were piled atop one another and jammed into the space opposite.
I wondered if someone had stuffed some leftover lumber up there when the school was built, which would’ve amounted to one hell of a half-assed construction job, but that didn’t turn out to be the case.
These were no ordinary boards, and they weren’t lumber, either─they were nailed together into rectangular frames, with cloth stretched tightly over them.
In other words.
The crawl space was crammed with dozens of canvases.