0
Prologue
Golden Week was over, and the temperature had gradually been rising of late. Students were getting rowdier during lunch, making it feel even hotter than it actually was. By nature, cool, hard-boiled guys like me don’t do well in the heat, and so I headed somewhere less crowded in search of even the slightest bit of relief. The basal temperature of the human body is approximately thirty-six degrees Celsius. Put in terms of weather, that’s not just a summer day; it’s a sweltering heat wave. Even I couldn’t handle such intense heat and humidity. Cats are the same way. When it’s hot, they seek out places where no one’s around. I, too, head for empty locales to seek refuge from the blistering heat. It’s not because I don’t fit in with the class or because I feel awkward. Not at all.
This behavior is instinctual, and actually, it’s the kids who don’t follow this biological imperative who are, as organisms, flawed. Basically, they’re weak, so they form groups and adopt a herd mentality. Acting as a collective is the sign of a weak-willed life-form. They’re no different from herbivores that move in herds so that, when attacked by a predator, they can offer up someone as a sacrifice. Innocently munching their grass, they turn their backs as friends become food.
Well, you get the idea. Strong beasts don’t flock together. You’ve heard of a “lone wolf”? Cats are cute, and wolves are cool. In other words, loners are cute and cool.
Considering these sublimely trivial matters, I meandered along. I was on the landing that connected to the roof. Unused desks cluttered the area, leaving just enough room for one person to barely squeak through. Usually, the door to the roof was chained with a cheap padlock, and it should have been shut tight. But that day the padlock was undone, dangling from its loop. It was probably just some gaggle of airheads who’d ventured up to the roof to get loud and caterwaul at each other. What they say about those types and high places really is true.
Figuring I might as well just trap them up there, I piled up about three desks and two chairs. True to form, I was an amazing man of action. So masculine. Eek, hold me! But then I noticed that things were awfully quiet on the other side of the door. Odd. So far as I know, these normies fear quiescence like beasts fear flame. They believe silence = boring without realizing they are the boring ones, and so they just chatter, clamor, and frolic away. But then when they’re talking to me, their lacking loquaciousness tells me, You’re kinda boring. The hell is with that, seriously?
No, no, don’t get the wrong idea; I actually like peace and quiet. And that degree of calm meant there wasn’t a clique up there. Maybe no one was there at all. Being a loner means a sudden euphoria when you realize no one’s around. But a loner isn’t just meek in public and a monster at home. Rather, loners are just always considerate and avoid bothering others.
I relaxed the emotional barricade I’d built around myself and put my hand on the door. I was a little bit excited. It was the kind of anticipation you feel the first time you happen to stroll into a soba shop by the station, or the thrill of a deliberate expedition out of Chiba city to buy porn in Yotsukaidou. It’s the characteristic delight you feel precisely because you are alone.
Beyond the door stretched the wide blue sky and the horizon. Now this was my own private roof. Rich people like having private jets and private beaches. Loners, who exist in perpetual private time, are the winners in life. Basically, I’m saying there’s status in being a loner.
The May sky was thoroughly sunny, as if the world were telling me that one day I would escape this sheltered world. If you were to put it in terms of a classic movie, it was like The Shawshank Redemption. Not that I’ve seen it, but based on the title, I think it was like that. Gazing at the distant haze of the sky is rather like taking a good, hard look at your future. That’s why the roof was an appropriate venue to entrust my dreams to the Workplace Tour Application Form in my hands.
The workplace visit was looming right after my next test. I committed ink to paper with the career I wanted and the workplace I wanted to tour. I always have a plan firmly in mind for my future, so there was no hesitation as my pen scratched along, and I had completed the form in under two minutes.
And that’s when it happened. The wind blew. It was a fateful wind and seemed as if it were carrying away the languid air that lingered after school was over. It launched that sheet of paper on which my dreams were written into the future like a paper airplane. I make it sound poetic, but of course, I mean it blew away the form I’d just been filling out. Hey, you stupid wind, don’t give me this crap, seriously! The paper skimmed along the ground, and just when I thought I’d caught it, it flew up high again as if toying with me.
Oh, whatever. I’d get another form and write it over. My motto is “When the going gets tough, give up,” so something like this doesn’t rattle me. Also, “If at first you don’t succeed, give up” works, too. Shrugging my shoulders, I began walking away, when…
“Is this yours?”
I heard a voice. I glanced around, looking for the source of that slightly husky, somehow apathetic tone, but it seemed I was alone. I mean, I’m always alone, but not that way… I mean I didn’t see anyone on the roof besides me.
“Over here, stupid.” The voice originated overhead, scoffing at me derisively. I guess this is exactly what they mean by being talked down to.
By ascending a ladder, one could climb even higher—from the roof up to the water tower. She was leaning against the tower, fiddling with a cheap hundred-yen lighter, as she looked down on me, and when our eyes met, she quietly slipped the lighter into the pocket of her uniform.
Her long, bluish-black hair hung all the way to her waist. She went without the uniform’s ribbon, leaving her blouse open at the chest with her shirttails tied loosely in the front. Her long, supple legs looked capable of a swift kick. What left an impression, though, were her listless eyes, which seemed to be idly gazing into the distance. There was a mole like a teardrop on her cheek, adding to that languorous effect. “This yours?” she repeated, her tone the same as before.
I didn’t know what year she was, so I just nodded silently. ’Cause, you know, if she was older, I’d have to speak respectfully, and it would be pretty embarrassing if I was wrong, right? Silence is always best.
“Hold on a sec,” she said with a sigh, putting her hands on the ladder and swiftly descending.
And then…the wind blew. Blew like it was casting aside some heavy, dangling blackout curtain—that kind of fateful wind. That single strip of cloth and the dreams entrusted to it fluttered in the divine breeze that the sight it revealed might be branded on my eyes forevermore.
I made it sound poetic, but basically, I saw her panties. Hey, you pulled it off, wind! Nice job, seriously!
She released the ladder’s rungs halfway and hopped down. I got my glimpse of them just before she handed me my paper.
“You’re an idiot,” she said, brusquely shoving the form as me, just shy of throwing it. When I took it from her, she spun around on her heel and disappeared into the school.
I’d missed my chance to say Thanks or What do you mean, “retard”? or Sorry for seeing your panties and was left standing there. Holding the paper she’d returned in one hand, I scratched my head. The bell signaling the end of lunch sounded from the speakers on the roof. Taking that as my cue, I stepped toward the door.
“Black lace, huh…?” I muttered with a sigh that was neither blue nor off-color, and that exhalation was blown away on the summer-tinged wind and intermingled with the smell of the sea, eventually to be carried around the world.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login