“Everything will be fine! I just need to disappear for a while.”
It had been half an hour since Mashiro strapped on her backpack and walked out her front door. Now she was gazing down at her hometown from an observation platform at the top of a nearby mountain. No one ever went up there. It had no cafés or vending machines; you’d probably starve if you got stranded there without any supplies. It was the perfect place to hide out for a few days.
Mashiro’s plan was simple. If she “went missing” for a while—two or three days, no more than that—her parents would be worried sick. So worried that they would forget all about…the test.
“If only I’d hidden it better… I should’ve known they’d find it just sitting there in my desk drawer.”
A few days ago, she’d gotten back her latest cram school test. The sight of it had filled her with dread. The red X marks all over that sheet of white paper added up to a score that was about as close to zero as anyone could get. And when her parents had found it, they’d just stood there, stunned into silence. Once Mashiro had seen their reaction, she’d known what she had to do.
“I’d better get out of here before they have a chance to get mad at me…”
With a heavy sigh, she’d grabbed her stuff and sneaked out, eventually finding her way to the observation platform.
There was a pair of binoculars mounted to a pole that looked as if it was growing right out of the ground. The paint was faded and flaking, but the binoculars still worked, and they weren’t the coin-operated type, either.
“Nice. These’ll help me kill some time.”
Mashiro looked through the binoculars and began to survey the town. There was her house, her friends’ houses, her school, the supermarket—all places she saw every day, but looking at them from this high up felt different. It was kind of refreshing.
The little mountain she was on wasn’t far from the center of town. From here, she could make out a lot of details and see what people were doing. The more she looked, the more fun it became.
Then, all of a sudden, her eyes fixed on a splash of color: neon pink.
This one pink dot in the gray townscape stood out like a plastic bead in the middle of countless grains of sand in a desert. More specifically, this splash of pink was a hoodie worn by a girl standing between two buildings.
“What’s she doing there…?” Mashiro wondered.
Next to the girl was a large, boxy bag. Maybe a suitcase or an old-fashioned trunk. And…there was a door on the front of it.
Kind of a weird design, thought Mashiro.
That was when the girl made a move. She squatted down in front of the suitcase, opened the door…and jumped inside. The next moment, she was gone, and the door was closing. When it finally shut, the entire suitcase disappeared as well.
“…Huh? What just happened?”
Mashiro stood dumbfounded for a moment. She didn’t stay still for long, though, and soon dashed down the mountain path.
✦ ✦ ✦
She arrived at the gap between the two buildings she’d seen through the binoculars. The strange girl and her suitcase were gone, but something lay on the ground where they had been: a plain black book and a small cardboard box. Mashiro hesitated, then picked them up. She opened the book to see what was written in it.