Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [39]
Wataru’s stomach shrank to the size of a clenched fist, then sank down, down, down, finally coming to a rest somewhere near his kneecaps. He suddenly lost his appetite for cake.
Wataru hadn’t quite hit puberty yet but was close enough to see it on the road ahead. He had a pretty good idea of what lay in store and already knew twice as much about things as his parents suspected.
He was able to make a decent guess, then, at just what Kaori Daimatsu might have been through to leave her so broken, and what that must have been like for a young girl. Of course, this was all speculation. No doubt the details were a little different—well, very different—but he had an intuitive sense that the whole thing was frightening, detestable, and foul beyond words.
It was almost time for him to leave for cram school. He would have to take his plate back to the kitchen and say goodbye to his mother before he could do that, but he wasn’t sure if he could pull it off. Mom, I know that girl! I know Kaori! I haven’t been able to think about anything else since the day I met her. She was so cute, Mom…like the fairy, Neena.
Just thinking about it brought tears to his eyes.
Wataru tore himself away from the whispered conversation, crept out of the room like a ninja, and dashed straight to cram school with an unexpected energy, the wild look in his eyes raising more than a few eyebrows on the street as he passed.
The entire time that he was in class, sitting motionless in his seat, listening to the teacher explain the mistakes he had made on his arithmetic homework, and watching the rest of the class stare in awe of Yutaro’s academic abilities, Wataru still felt like he was running…alone. He didn’t know where he was going, or why he was running in the first place. He just ran—like a hero on a mission. He didn’t have to ask directions, he didn’t wonder whom he was supposed to save, or what evil monster he was supposed to vanquish—he just ran.
But the reality of it was that he didn’t know where to go, or what to do when he got there. And he was very, very alone.
Class didn’t finish until after eight o’clock in the evening. Normally Wataru would be starving, but today he had no appetite at all. He just felt a hollow emptiness in his gut. He hurriedly put away his textbook and his notes, and started home.
As he walked, he felt a desperate need to go back to the Daimatsu building. Something told him that if he went there he would see Kaori again. But it had been much later at night when he first met her there. Midnight, even. There was no way they’d have taken her there for her walk this early. He wasn’t even sure if the place was on her normal route. Mr. Daimatsu may have dropped by for a look at the state of his abandoned project on a whim.
Even as he listed all the reasons why it was pointless to go there, he nonetheless found his feet taking him in the direction of the building. This time there was no chance encounter with his father at the entrance to the apartment complex. Wataru walked straight toward the haunted building as if he were on some important errand. Luckily, it wasn’t raining that night.
It had already been about two weeks since Katchan had run into Mr. Daimatsu and the man in the gray workman’s outfit, but the building showed no signs of any new construction since then. The tarps were draped, as always, over the building’s thin steel skeleton, making it look as if it had taken a chill despite summer’s imminent arrival.
Nobody was around at this time of the evening. There were always people on the streets when he passed by on the way to and from school, but this was a quiet residential area—the quiet shrine on one side of the building, and houses everywhere else—with no shops or convenience stores. After the sun went down, the area settled into silence.
Wataru stood under a streetlight and looked up at the building. The thick ropes that tied