by Unknown
“Liar,” she said. “It’s because you like that girl Mana Shinya in your class right? Everybody knows that you engraved her name into your desk.”
“No,” I protested. “That has nothing to do with it!”
“If my name was Mana Shinya would you date me?”
“No.”
“How about that girl in third year? All the girls in your class said that you have a thing for older women.”
“How do you even know that?”
“So it is true!”
“No, I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Do you think I’m ugly?”
“You’re not that ugly!”
“So you do think I’m ugly!”
“No, no, you’re very beautiful,” I said while desperately trying to save myself from the small angry girl. “Look, I have intimacy issues!”
“You didn’t seem to have intimacy issues a few months ago when you were hitting on girls in your class!”
“Things have changed!” I yelled. I didn’t intend to get angry, but all the stress from the past few days made it impossible to hold back.
“Yeah you tell her!” Said a voice from behind me. I turned around to see that we had gained a crowd of thirty onlookers (and Kiyori and Souta) who were standing in a semi-circle watching us fight. One of them was happily filming everything on his phone. I was certain that it would all be on the Internet by the end of the day.
“Hey, you shouldn’t let a guy talk to you like that,” said one second year girl with her hands on her hips.
“Yeah, what she said,” said Kiyori who was standing there watching with a half eaten apple in his hand. “This could be your last chance to tell him how you really feel.”
"Aww, maybe we should do something," said Souta anxiously.
"We could, but it's way funnier this way," said Kiyori.
The small girl seemed like she was going to take their advice seriously. I could see her begin to turn red before my very eyes and I was certain that she was going to explode.
Maybe it was a good thing that I had decided to befriend Keira at the start of the year, because he was the only one to push through the crowd and save me from my horrible situation.
"Excuse my friend," he said to the angry girl with a smile before he grabbed my arm and yanked me away.
“Dude what was that?” Asked Keira as we power walked towards our classroom. “That’s gotta be like the tenth best looking girl at school. Weren't you always talking about how much you wanted a girlfriend?"
“I changed my mind,” I snapped.
“What’s with you?” Asked Keira. “You seem kind of dark and moodier than usual.”
“You know, I slept in, and then I burnt my toast, and then my favorite cartoon wasn't on TV," I said while trying to make up a legitimate excuse which was unrelated to being a man eating monster.
“What do you mean you slept in? This is the earliest I’ve seen you at school all year?”
“I ran,” I snapped.
“But I could have sworn I just saw you get off the b-”
“Look,” I said in an attempt to quickly change the conversation. “I just need some time to find myself, and discover who I am before I can start any serious relationships.”
"Okay, whatever you say," He muttered. I didn't know Keira that well, but even I could see that he doubted me. We reached our classroom and took a seat at our desks. There was still a few minutes before the start of class, so I pulled out my textbook and pretended to study to avoid talking to anyone. I got so involved with faking it that I even began to read the book. I had no idea that the answers to all the tests had been written there all along.
“Hey Daisuke,” said Yuto as he gave me a friendly nudge on the shoulder when he walked past. “Heard you turned down a girl today?”
“Shut up Yuto,” I muttered.
I looked over my shoulder to see Itsuki enter the room and sit down. He pulled out his homework and began checking his answers without paying any attention to me. I was relieved that the harrassment had stopped, but Mana was nowhere to be seen which was a concern. I tapped the shoulder of the girl sitting in front of me.
“Hey, have you seen Mana Shinya?” I asked.
“Beats me,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders. “I haven’t seen her in days.”
“What do you mean you haven’t seen her in days?”
“Well, you guys in the community service club are always absent,” she said. “So shouldn’t you know where she is?”
I sat there stunned for a moment while trying to think of an answer, but my mind went blank, so I instead picked up my textbook and returned to pretending to study with a passion.
In the past Mana had always been a good student and attended most classes, but her attendance had gone downhill ever since she got out of the hospital. Her health seemed fine now and there were few monster sightings around town, so I had no idea why she wasn’t in class. I had a feeling that something was up, and it must have been something related to what Kurumi told me about her face. I may have decided to stop pursuing Mana, but it was difficult to let go of my feelings towards her. Just the thought of something terrible happening to her made it difficult to breathe.
My history teacher entered the room and began the lesson. Class was a great distraction from my inner turmoil, and I even started taking notes for the first time all year. I even went one step further and began to color code them with highlighters.
“Can anyone tell me the year of the Russian revolution?” Asked my history teacher as he walked around the room with a textbook in his hands.
“Me, me!” I said as I waved my arm enthusiastically in the air. “Pick me.”
“Okay, Dai-su-ke,” said my teacher hesitantly as he read my name off my pencil case. It was the first time I had volunteered in class so he probably didn't know who I was.
“Just wait a moment,” I said as I flipped through my textbook and scanned the pages. “1920,” I said proudly.
“Close,” said my teacher hesitantly.
“1945?” I guessed. I was certain that if I kept saying numbers I had to be right eventually.
“Anyone other than Daisuke?” Asked my exasperated teacher as he looked around the room.
“Hey Matsumoto,” said the guy next to me as he nudged me with his elbow. “This is for you.” He passed me a small piece of paper which had been folded up multiple times and sealed with tape. My name was written on the outside with red ink, and there were also several love hearts drawn around my name. It looked like a love letter, but I had already fallen for this trick before. I wasn’t going to allow Itsuki to send me anymore threatening messages, so I tossed it into the waste paper basket across the classroom. I heard what sounded like a girl sigh behind me, but it could have just been my imagination.
The day passed more quickly than I could have imagined (possibly because I took a nap through math) and the school bell rang at three before I knew it.
I despised studying and I was usually overjoyed to go home, but on that day fear coursed through me as I watched my classmates pack up their belongings and leave to go home. School was the only place left where no one treated me like a monster and I was reluctant to leave it. The idea of going back to headquarters filled me with dread.
I spent an hour chilling in the library after class, and I then started wandering the halls after the librarian kicked me out. My homeroom teacher Mr. Yamada found me and tried to send me home, but luckily for me he had a tone of stuff that I could help him with.
“Are you sure you don’t need help with anything else?” I asked him after I finished sweeping my classroom floor and organising the textbooks.
“You’ve already helped me enough Daisuke,” said my teacher as he marked notebooks at his desk. “Don’t you want to go home?”
“No way,” I said. I noticed how dirty some of the windows looked so I picked up a cloth and began polishing them straight away. “I love school, I want to stay here forever.�
�
“But you wrote that essay titled School is a Prison.”
“Yeah, but that was ages ago,” I replied.
“The gray brick building resembles a jail from medieval times,” recited my teacher. “The teachers are like prison guards who lock in poor unsuspecting youth and force them to conform.”
“But that was before I realised how great school is,” I said. “You get to learn new stuff, hang out with friends, talk about what you want to be when you grow up. It’s the greatest place in the world!”
“Go home Daisuke,” said Mr. Yamada. “It’s already five and the rest of us will be leaving soon.”
“Fine,” I said. I hesitantly stopped cleaning and picked up my stuff. I couldn’t help but feel jealous that all the teachers were allowed to stay as long as they liked.
I sat on the school oval and watched the soccer team practice for another hour until they finished and went home. I knew that I couldn’t avoid my life forever, so I sighed and made the long journey back to headquarters as the sun began to set.
Luckily it wasn’t as bad as I had imagined and no one seemed to notice when I returned. Only Nina’s brother looked up when I entered and began writing notes like he was still observing my every move.
I spent the evening in the library looking through books and scriptures for something which could give me any clues to my past identity. I knew it was a long shot, but there was a chance that I could find a picture of myself on one of the pages. I almost had a panic attack when I found a sketch of an Obake which kind of looked like me, until I realised that it was a girl. It would have been easier to concentrate if Taisei and Kurumi hadn’t kept distracting me by making out in the attic space above the library.
“Tell me that we’ll be together forever,” said the muffled voice of Kurumi from above me.
“Forever baby,” said Taisei in a strange deep voice which sounded like he was trying to imitate a romance movie.
“Say it again,” said Kurumi.
“Forever and ever and ever” said Taisei before I couldn’t take listening to them anymore and I left the room.
I was a little glad that at least things were going well for some people.
Chapter 14
Forever and ever turned out to be a pretty short time because Kurumi dumped Taisei a week later.
Their break-up took me completely by surprise. Other than Kurumi looking irritated about his phone obsession and giving him the silent treatment for three days, I thought the two of them had been getting along great. Kurumi told Mana she’d made the decision because they didn’t like the same music, so obviously she couldn’t see any future together.
“And it wasn’t just that,” I heard her say to Mana from the room down the hall. “He also accidently erased one of his monster pictures off his phone and spent over an hour sulking in his room, can you believe that?”
“If you think that’s bad, you should have seen the time he accidentally dropped his phone in the toilet,” said Mana. “You couldn’t talk to him for a week.”
Taisei didn’t take the break-up well. He spent most of his free time alone in his room listening to heavy metal music, and he only came out once to exchange failed love stories with Hugo in the living room.
I walked into his room after school one day to find him lifelessly lying on his mattress with the lights turned off and the curtains shut.
“It’s so dark in here,” I said.
“Dark. Dark just like her heart,” moaned Taisei.
"Come on, you can't just lie here forever, Akito needs you," I said as I grabbed his arm and attempted to pull him out of his bed, but Taisei grabbed onto the mattress and refused to budge.
"What do you know about pain? You've never had anyone break your heart into a thousand pieces and then stomp on it in their high heels," he said like he had no idea about my unrequited love for his sister.
"Well there was this one tim-" I began to say before Taisei cut me off.
"Nobody understands what I'm going through!" Wailed Taisei. He then pulled his blanket over his head and hid inside.
Taisei spent a long time telling us that we couldn't possibly understand his pain, and that he didn't have the will to leave his room, but I was pretty certain that he just went straight back to playing on his phone whenever he thought no one was watching.
The only person who look mildly happy about the split was Nina. Her feelings for Taisei were no secret from anyone (except maybe Taisei who hadn’t noticed yet) and she was the happiest I’d seen her in months. If I hadn't already decided to stop chasing girls (to save them from the dark and awful truth) my chances of dating her suddenly looked like zero.
After much internal debate, I decided that the best way to keep my secret and not expose myself to Shuro would be to limit my contact with him to as little as possible. I also felt uneasy co-existing with my sister and her family. Despite my sister’s constant encouragement (sometimes hourly) that things could easily go back to the way they were before, I still felt it was best to keep my distance. Sis had done so much for me over the years, and I didn’t want to burden her more. This didn't go down well with Kanako Matsumoto, but I managed to convince her that I needed to be at headquarters for further research, so I began sleeping over a few times a week. I started sharing a cramped room with Taisei, Kiyori and Souta.
It was worth enduring Kiyori's snoring (and Taisei moaning about Kurumi) just to know that Shuro and Hikaru would be safe from the terrible truth, but I almost cracked when Kiyori pushed me out of my futon in his sleep. I awoke to find myself out in the hallway on the floor while Kiyori was happily spread out over my mattress and his own like a starfish. It was bad enough that Kiyori bullied me in the daylight, but I wasn't even safe when he was unconscious.
Instead of waking him I grabbed my pillow and went to find somewhere else to sleep. Hugo and Nina's brother had taken the living room, and I had no desire to bunk with Akito, so I headed for the kitchen. I placed my pillow on top of the table and laid down on the cold wooden surface. I closed my eyes and tried my best to get back to sleep, but my new bed was far too hard and uncomfortable.
I finally began to drift off to dreamland when I started hearing voices. I assumed they were part of my dream, but they sounded like they were coming from the garden.
"Are you sure this is it?" Asked a strange guy's voice.
"Positive," said the voice of a second guy. "I'm like a human GPS!"
"But you said that about the last three shrines we went to,” said the first guy. “And one of them was missing a door.”
"Relax,” said the second guy. “Didn't I say that I would get us there eventually."
"I need to use the bathroom!" Said a third guy in a high pitched voice which almost hurt my ears.
“You've got to be kidding,” said the second guy. “You already went three times in the last hour, why don't you just go behind that bush over there!”
“But it's all dark and scary,” said the third guy.
“We can send Toni over to guard you,” said the first guy.
“There's no way that I can go in front of her again,” said the third guy. “She spent the whole time staring last time.”
"Hairi went pee pee," said a girl's voice.
“I guess there might be a bathroom in there, why don't you try that door,” said the second guy.
I heard rapid footsteps on the grass outside as someone rushed towards the kitchen door. I was still completely calm (and dozing off to sleep) until something grabbed the metal doorknob across the room and shook it frantically.
“It's locked!” The voice screeched. “I don’t think I can hold it much longer!”
I jumped up from the table in shock and fell to the floor with a bang. There was no way that it was a dream. I lay there in terror as something banged on the door and then started throwing all their weight against it.
“I can’t get in!” The high pitched voice screamed.
Akito was supposed to have a barrier up and run
ning at night, but the fox monster tore through the last one like tissue paper, so there was no telling what sort of terrifying beasts with small bladders were out there trying to get in.
I bit my lip and slowly picked myself up from the floor. I silently crept across the kitchen floor like a ninja and opened the cutlery draw. I picked up Akito's meat knife and carefully drew back the kitchen curtains. There were four dark shadows moving around, but it was difficult to tell what they were. I moved closer to the window to get a better look, when suddenly one of the shadows jumped up out of nowhere and pressed his face to the glass. His distorted cheeks were flat like pancakes and his face was mostly hidden by his giant curly black hair. His eyes widened in horror as he stared at the knife in my hand, and he let out a scream which sounded like a banshee wailing in pain.
It was absolutely terrifying, and I could do nothing but scream in terror as well. The two of us stood there screaming at each other until the door behind me sprung open, and in dashed another strange man who made me cry even louder. I couldn't believe that they already had me surrounded.
"What is it?!" Yelled the strange man in the kitchen in a familiar voice and I quickly realized that it was just Nina's brother without his glasses.
"Look, the window!" I yelled while jumping up and down and pointing outside, but the strange creature had already vanished.
"There's nothing there," said Nina's brother.
"What's going on?" Yawned Taisei as he wandered into the kitchen.
“We heard screaming!” Said Nina as she dashed in behind him followed by Kurumi, Mana, Kiyori and Itsuki in their pyjamas. I could also see Souta hesitantly peering around the corner.
“Outside!” I cried. “They're outside, all four of them!”
“Four of what?” Asked Nina’s brother.
“Some.....things,” I said hesitantly while trying to think of the right way to describe what I saw.
Everyone stared at me blankly, and I could see that they thought I’d gone insane. With a sigh, Nina's brother hesitantly unlocked the back door and slowly pushed it open. I wondered what sort of incredible exorcist move Nina's brother was going to use, but he just flicked on the outside light switch.