Volume 1 - CH 1.3

I bade goodbye to Yuzuki, promising to see her again tomorrow, and headed for Sato Municipal Hospital. I cycled for forty minutes and arrived at five p.m. Dusk dyed the white hospital ghostly orange. I parked my bike, ducked the automatic door. The smell of disinfectant hit me like a wall. After checking in, I went to room 108.

My hands froze as I put them on the door. Someone was talking inside.

I cracked open the door slightly, but I already knew who it was.

The “Shadow” was inside, at ease than ever in the dusking scape.

It was my father, Ryunosuke Saegusa. He divorced Mom when I was five and had become a shadow since then. Tall, lanky, crooked, ever unreliable shadow… 

The fact that he always wore black clothes was one, but the main reason was that I didn’t feel much pain when he disappeared from the house. It was an equivalent of an itch, terribly light despite the disappearance of one person. I like to think that he had been a shadow from the beginning.

A shadow without substance, a forever hazy figure.

Of his entire existence, only the emptiness of his right eye he showed me on the banks of the Abukuma River was real to me.

I hid myself in a corner until night came and Shadow went away. I did not want to see him. I had no words to say to the mysterious Shadow.

6

I was in a stupor for the entire of the next day.

The prospect of Mom’s death loomed over me, yet a part of me was pumped with the thrill of meeting Yuzuki afterschool. Time, on one hand, was draining Mom of life, and drawing me and Yuzuki together on the other. Between these contradicting feelings, it was impossible for me to concentrate on my studies.

During recess, I asked Shimizu behind me.

“Hey, do you know about Yuzuki Igarashi from class three?”

Shimizu looked at me incredulously. 

I wondered if I had asked the wrong person. Shimizu had always been a big, calm, and far from well-informed person. He looked genuinely surprised.

“Yacchan, you don’t know about Igarashi-san? Really?”

Apparently, I was the one who was out of touch with the world. Yuzuki was quite a celebrity. She had started playing the piano at the age of two, and at the age of seven, she had won the first prize in the first-second grade category at the Chopin International Piano Competition in Asia. The following year, she won the first prize in the Concerto category A while being the youngest pianist to get the award. 

In short, a prodigy whom everyone was expecting to be world-class before long.

Of course, this was the information according to research I did later. Shimizu, who couldn’t even remember how many home runs he had hit, said something along the lines of “She won some kind of first prize a lot of times.”

I was surprised, but at the same time, I was also somewhat satisfied. Yuzuki’s performance was overwhelmingly amazing. Even an amateur like me could tell.

In my mind, I had an arbitrary image of Yuzuki. It was that of a closet maiden, living in a chalky Western residence, a grand piano behind a great window, coughing softly at times. I imagined her to be a fragile, elegant young lady.

It was during lunchtime that this stereotypical delusion was shattered.

While playing dodgeball with Shimizu and other boys in the schoolyard, Yuzuki suddenly appeared. She marched proudly across the schoolyard with a gaggle of Class 3 girls trailing behind. Her brow was furrowed and she looked as if she was out for blood.

Yuzuki’s group stopped in front of the boys who were playing soccer. In the center of the group was their athletic leader: Sakamoto.

Without any preamble. “ You, stop picking on Koyo-chan.”

Sakamoto’s eyes shot wide, then looked between Koyo Kobayashi and Yuzuki.

Koyo Kobayashi was a petite girl. She clutched the hem of her skirt and looked down.

Sakamoto’s face scrunched up. “What? Do I have any reason to pick on her?” But his voice came out weak.

“You like her, don’t you!”

“Geh!” Sakamoto took a step back. Kobayashi’s face turned bright red, and her mouth worked wordlessly. The girls were now the center of attention in the schoolyard. 

“W-why would anyone like this ugly woman!” He lashed out desperately.

Kobayashi’s eyes began to water, Yuzuki’s expression darkened.

“Hey, you, apologize to Koyo-chan”

“Huh? Why must I—Ow!”

Yuzuki grabbed Sakamoto’s nose with her right hand and twisted it. I had learned a new lesson, don’t mess with the pianist’s grip. Sakamoto squealed and trashed, prying Yuzuki’s right arm with both hands. From what I saw, it was as if Sakamoto’s feet had left the ground. Yuzuki was just that powerful.

“Aren’t you the boy here?!”

Before anything worse could happen, a teacher heard the commotion and headed her way. He came in, settled the situation, and shooed others away.

“Igarashi-san’s scary…” Even Shimizu shivered.

This incident shattered my image of her as a closet window. At that point onward, I labeled her “genius pianist” and “Amazonian”.

７

After school, at the promised time, I went to the music room.

I could hear the lovely tones drifting. Powerful yet delicate, it felt strange to think that it was produced by the same fingers that had held up Sakamoto’s nose.

Yuzuki didn’t notice me when I entered the room.

I brought a chair next to her and watched her play the piano. Her eyes were almost closed, as if she was deep in a prayer. Her ears, I presumed, were strained to listen to every note. She seemed to be pouring her heart and soul into the performance.

When she finished and I shook out of my stupor, I remembered to clap. 

She jumped sideways. “Don’t drop on me like that!”

“I don’t think I should interrupt.”

“Hmph…” she pouted.

She looked so dainty I wondered which was her true nature, the closet maiden or the Amazonian warrior.

Yuzuki closed the lid of the piano and abruptly rose. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“My house.”

Yuzuki pulled me along without a second thought even as my head was still tilted at a 15-degree angle in confusion, not really understanding development.

Around three minutes from school she finally spoke. “There’s some trouble at school today, so I can’t quite concentrate…”

Replaying the image in my mind, I said, “I don’t think there’s much trouble? You took him on yourself, didn’t you?”

“You saw?!” She made a face, then, as if to excuse herself. “I hate that kind of dorks. They’re nothing but a pain.”

“I think every human’s a pain, one way or another.”

She glared at me, her expression as if to question my sanity. 

Did I say something wrong…?

It was a beautiful day. Sakuranoshita residence district was newly built, yards and houses fairly new and well kept. Violets, azaleas, lilacs, the flowers of spring were blooming everywhere.

Yuzuki said we were close when we heard a dog barking. Yuzuki groaned and switched places with me, taking position on my left. Instinctively, I looked right. A golden retriever was pushed up against the fence, barking, its leash trailed back to a kennel in the yard. It was barking at Yuzuki, tail wagging wildly.

“The dog doesn’t like you?”

“No, he likes me so much he pees on me every time I walk past.”

[TN: What a nightmare fuel]

She pushed close to me when we walked past. Unbeknownst to her, my heart flopped wildly.