The teacher in charge of third-year Class 3 was Mr. Kubodera. He was a middle-aged man whose subject was language arts. You could call him good-natured—he seemed to be—and you could have called him unreliable, since he certainly looked the part.
When I went to the teachers’ office to say hello, Mr. Kubodera glanced over the papers in front of him.
“You did excellently at your last school, I must say, Sakakibara. To get grades like these at K*** Middle School is no small feat.”
Granted it was our first meeting, but why would he speak so deferentially to a student? Plus, he hadn’t looked me in the face the entire time. I felt kind of uncomfortable, but nevertheless, I would be no less polite than he was.
“Thank you very much,” I replied. “That’s kind of you to say.”
“You’re doing all right now, physically?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“I’m sure they did things differently where you come from, but I hope you’ll get along with everyone. We may be a public school, but we don’t have problems with violence or disorderly classroom conduct the way the public imagines. So there’s no need to worry on that score. If you run into any problems, please let me know. Don’t be shy. You can talk to me or my assistant—”
Mr. Kubodera’s eyes turned to the younger woman at his side, who had been watching our conversation.
“—Ms. Mikami, of course.”
“I will,” I said with a nod, feeling enormously nervous. For my school transfer, my dad had bought me a brand-new school uniform (life expectancy: one year), but it wasn’t broken in yet, so naturally, it felt tight.
“I look forward to your class.”
My voice was keyed up with nerves, but I bowed to Ms. Mikami—her subject was art. Ms. Mikami smiled gently. “We’ll have a good year.”
“Um, yes, ma’am.”
The conversation broke off and surrendered to a brittle silence.
The two teachers stole glances back and forth, trying to read each other’s faces, then both of them opened their mouths to say something—or so it seemed. But just then, the warning bell for classes rang. They closed their mouths, as if the opportunity had passed—or so it seemed.
“Well, then, shall we?” Mr. Kubodera picked up his attendance sheet and stood. “Morning homeroom starts at 8:30. Let’s introduce you to everyone.”
✦ ✦ ✦
When they had led me to the door of the classroom for third-year Class 3, the two teachers shot each other another look and opened their mouths once more to say something—or so it seemed, but this time it was the actual bell that rang. Giving a single, deliberate-sounding cough, Mr. Kubodera opened the door to the classroom.
The buzz of all the students talking was like static on the radio. Footsteps, footsteps, the sound of chairs dragging and being sat upon, the sound of bags opening, the sound of bags being closed…
Mr. Kubodera went in ahead of me, then ushered me in with a glance, and I stepped into the classroom. Ms. Mikami came in last and stood beside me.
“Good morning, everyone.”
Mr. Kubodera spread the attendance sheet open on a lectern and then slowly passed his gaze over the room to take attendance.
“I see that Akazawa and Takabayashi are out today.”
Apparently they didn’t do the customary “stand, greet, sit” here. Was this another difference between public and private school? Or a local thing?
“Has everyone recovered from Golden Week yet? Today, we’ll begin by introducing a transfer student.”
The noise gradually died down, and the classroom fell silent. Mr. Kubodera gestured at me from the lectern. “Go on,” Ms. Mikami ordered in a low voice.
I could feel the eyes of the class focusing on me; it was almost painful. I took a quick look out across the room and saw there were about thirty of them…But there was no time to take in more than that as I headed over to the podium. Argh, this tension is making my chest tight. It’s getting harder to breathe, too. I had been prepared for something of the kind, but a situation like this was vicious on the delicate nerves of a boy who had been suffering from a lung condition up until just the previous week.
“Um…hello.”
Then I declared my name to my new classmates, who wore black standing collars or navy blazers. Mr. Kubodera wrote it out for them on the blackboard.
Koichi Sakakibara.
I steadied myself forcibly. I was trembling pathetically (and I’m saying that about myself), searching the mood in the room. But I couldn’t detect any worrisome reactions.
“I came to Yomiyama from Tokyo last month. My dad’s working, so I’ll be living here for a while with my grandparents…”
Mentally, I was rubbing my chest to relax it as I continued my self-introduction.
“I was supposed to start school here on the twentieth last month, but I got kind of sick and was in the hospital…But I was finally able to come today. Um, nice to meet you.”
Maybe I was supposed to talk about my hobbies, or something I was good at, or my favorite actor or something like that. No, that was definitely the point where I should have thanked them for the flowers while I was in the hospital. But while I was stewing these options over—
“All right then. Class—”
Mr. Kubodera picked up where I’d dropped off.
“Starting today, I want you to be nice to Sakakibara and treat him as a new member of Class 3. I’m sure there are a lot of things he’s not used to yet, so I want all of you to help him learn. We’ll all pitch in to help each other and make this last year of middle school a good one. All of us are going to do our parts. So that next year in March every person in this class will graduate in good health…”
Thus went Mr. Kubodera’s speech, which sounded as if we were supposed to recite an “Amen” at the conclusion. As I listened, a nagging itch started up on my back, but every person in the room was listening pretty intently to what he was saying.
Just then, I saw a face I recognized in the very first row of seats. It was one of the class representatives who’d come to visit me, Tomohiko Kazami.
When our eyes met, there was something awkward about the smile Kazami gave me. The memory of the dampness I’d felt when we shook hands in the hospital room came back to me, and unconsciously I buried my right hand in my pocket.
Where was the other one, Yukari Sakuragi? Just as the question occurred to me, Mr. Kubodera said, “Okay, Sakakibara, let’s have you sit over there,” and he pointed at a desk.
It was on the left-hand side from the lectern—the third desk from the back in the row farthest to the edge near the hallway was empty.
“Yes, sir,” I replied with a quick bow, then headed to my designated seat. I dropped my bag next to my desk. As I was sitting down, I surveyed the room again from my new vantage point.
It was then that I was finally able to isolate her. The student at the desk all the way at the back of the row to the right of the lectern—next to the windows facing the schoolyard.
Looking out from the front of the classroom, the sunlight from the windows had created a strange backlighting right in that spot. That was another reason. So that’s why I didn’t see her, I thought. Though I’d moved to my new desk, there was no significant change in the backlighting, but even so, I could see that there was a desk there and someone was sitting at it.
Betraying the image the words imply, the “bright light” seemed somehow menacing to me; I’m not sure why or how. It swallowed up half the student’s body, so I could only make out the figure of the person sitting there as a shadow with an ill-defined outline. Darkness, lurking right in the middle of the light…that thought crossed my mind, too.
Entranced by simultaneous foreboding and hope, which were accompanied by a flash of slight pain, I blinked several times.
Each time, the shadow’s outline came more into focus and deepened. The amount of sunlight was fading slightly at last, and that helped, too, until finally the figure came into stark resolution.
It was her.
The girl with the eye patch whom I’d seen in the elevator at the hospital. The girl who had walked down the dimly lit hallway on the second basement level, her footsteps making no sound at all…
“…Mei.”
I whispered it so that no one could hear me.
“Mei Misaki.”