A Japanese Schoolgirl by Kajihara Yoko

Author:Kajihara, Yoko
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-01-20T05:00:00+00:00

*

The lunch break has come, but I am still in the dense fog. Out in the schoolyard you can see two boards of targets for Japanese archery. They are facing this way with a mound right behind. Cutting across the schoolyard, I stare at those concentric circles. They are both fading into blurred silhouettes in the fog, like two gigantic eyes of a monster lurking in a nightmare. The top bench of the stand also vanishes. Then soccer goals follow.

As I look around, sniffing like a dog at the swampy smell of the fog, three human silhouettes emerge out of the fog as if they were phantoms and pass by without a word. They are all boys, senior, and seem to be looking for someone.

Stillness has returned again. Then something starts to sting me on the nape of the neck. I stop to look back at the south wing of the school building. Maya and Reiko might have been observing me from the window of the school cafeteria. What has irritated me the most back in the classroom is the fact that they already knew that the Yukio’s family had cut off a relationship with me. Reiko said she felt pity me for my being rejected so completely by the professor emeritus. She said it with an exquisitely icy smile on her lips.

And what Maya was doing at that moment was giggling at my blank look.

Reiko came up to me to whisper in my ear.

‘We are bunnies, you see? We have long ears. And remember that I can prick you anytime I want.’

Having shaken my head, I start for a soccer goal. Although the goal can hardly be seen, there should be a brass chair in a grove of cherry tree near the goal. Yukio used to sit there with several paperbacks by his side until the sky darkens with the sinking sun.

Gradually the brass chair emerges out of the dense fog.

Its frame is sweating in fog and cold to the touch. There is a greenish chewing gum stuck on the back of chair. I wipe the seat with my hand. It is unearthly quiet and I can smell of trees.

I start wheezing as I imagine Maya and Reiko chuckling at each other in the school cafeteria. Takeshi might be seated at the same table with them, laughing at me.

All of a sudden I have cold drops come out on the skin of my back. Quickly looking around, I notice a certain presence approaching from above. It is a creepy presence which seems to swing from branch to branch. The leaves of cherry trees are rustling to the movement of the presence. I follow the alarming sound with my eyes through the fog and then watch a single branch begin to bend under the weight of something hanging down from the tip of it. That something seems like the upper portion of Yukio. I am frozen like a catatonic. He descends on my shoulder quite skillfully from the branch, making good use of his tentacles, no, his slimy intestines.

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