Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [4]
“It’s a bound spirit,” she explained with utmost seriousness. “It’s what happens when somebody dies in a car accident or something. They’re bound to the place where they died, haunting it.”
Of course, that didn’t make any sense either. The building stood on old temple grounds. There couldn’t have been a car accident there. Wataru told the girl as much.
“Then maybe somebody snuck onto the grounds and committed suicide,” she retorted. “There, their spirit wanders, as lost in death as it was in life.”
The other girls around her ooohed and aaahed in approval.
“You know,” one of her friends said, “whenever I walk by that shrine I get a weird tingling feeling down my back. Once my knees started knocking together—like I was cold, right? Even though it was warm outside.”
“Totally! I get that too,” another chimed in.
“Well, did you think to check whether there really was someone who committed suicide on the shrine grounds?” Wataru asked. “Did you ask the priest or something?”
Their faces went red.
“Don’t be stupid!”
“You can’t just ask something like that!”
“I don’t even want to go near the place.”
Wataru continued, doggedly. “But then you’ll never know the facts, will you?”
The first girl pursed her lips in a pout. “Look, the place is haunted, all right? And that means there’s a bound spirit there. Those should be facts enough for you. You know, this is why everyone says you’re so lame, Mitani! Why do you always have to argue about everything?”
“Yeah! Make fun of ghosts, and one of them will end up cursing you!”
“You deserve it too, creep!”
Satisfied, the girls went back to their desks, laughing as they went. Wataru sat quietly in his chair. He was in shock. He was right, he knew he was. What they were saying made no sense. But how could he hope to win when his mind went blank whenever they called him things like “lame” and “creep.” The words stuck into him like sharp knives.
On the walk home, Katchan couldn’t stop talking about how the Japanese soccer team had given the Iranian team a run for their money the night before. Wataru didn’t feel like talking. The trouble at recess was still fresh in his mind. Blissfully unaware, Katchan waxed poetic about his favorite players and gave a blow-by-blow description, waving his fist in the air to mark every kick, pass, and goal. Even if Wataru hadn’t seen the match, Katchan’s reenactments were always vivid enough to make him feel like he had been there, on the field, watching every moment of the action.
They neared the haunted building. Usually, Katchan would turn right at the corner just before and say goodbye, but today he was so wrapped up in his soccer replay that he seemed to have entirely forgotten about going home.
“Hey, Katchan.”
Katchan paused, one leg raised high in mid-reenactment of a critical kick thirty-two minutes into the first half. He looked back over his shoulder at Wataru. “You say something?”
“We’re here…”
Wataru stood and looked up at the building. It was a tall, empty box of steel and looked pitiful dressed in its shoddy blue tarps. It was a clear day in May, and the pure blue of the afternoon sky made the grimy plastic tarps look even more miserable. The building was abandoned, lonely.
“What’s with the serious face?” Katchan brought down his foot and straightened up, looking at his friend.
“I want to find out. I want to see if there really is a ghost. And, if one shows up, I wanna see whose ghost it is.”
Katchan blinked. “How?”
“I’ll sneak in at night,” Wataru replied, beginning to walk faster. “You’ve got a big flashlight at your house, right? Lend it to me.”
Katchan stood silent for a moment, then came to his senses and ran to catch up to his friend. “Hey! Sure, no problem, but it’s kind of hard to get that thing out of the house. Dad says it’s for emergencies, and he gets mad when we use it for playing.”
Katchan’s father had been born in Kobe,