Ch.29Chapter 5. What It Means to Like Someone (1)

Japanese high schools have swimming classes in summer.

Actually, I’m not sure if all real Japanese high schools have swimming classes. I’ve never actually lived in Japan.

I am living there now, but who knows if what works in this world’s Japan would work in the Japan of the world I came from? At least as far as I know, there were no yokai or ghosts in the world I lived in.

Even if things are different, there’s no way to check now. Well, I don’t have any complaints about that fact. How long have I wanted to live in a fantasy novel rather than in that cesspool of reality?

…Though, I suppose this world also has its fair share of cesspool-like aspects, but that can’t be helped.

Getting back to the point, this school had swimming classes.

After missing school on the 17th while sprawled out in a hospital bed eating Häagen-Dazs, and then the next day.

Starting with a one-hour swimming class during Friday’s PE period, there would be a total of 10 hours of swimming curriculum scheduled twice a week until July.

I had already prepared my swimsuit, but I had completely forgotten about the swimming class itself until I saw what I had noted down, and my heart sank.

Have I changed clothes in front of other girls in my class during PE? Of course I have.

I changed alone, turning my back to face my locker. It didn’t take long though. I didn’t need to take off my underwear.

But… with a swimsuit, you can’t wear underwear.

They say school swimsuits in the 2020s changed to short-sleeved, shorts-style swimsuits, but this is the early 21st century. It’s not explicitly the “school mizugi” style, but in this era, when you say “student swimsuit,” what comes to mind is still the one-piece type.

That’s right.

I was going to wear a swimsuit that I rarely wore even when I was a man, and now in a woman’s body wearing a woman’s swimsuit.

After being bitten by a yokai and before I could mentally prepare!

No, no.

That’s not such a big problem. Right?

I just need to change like I do for PE clothes. The only difference is not wearing underwear underneath. It might be embarrassing in many ways.

The real problem is the magic circle on my left wrist.

It’s basically a tattoo.

I’m not sure what tattoos mean in Japan, but I’m certain no one would look kindly on a teenage girl having such an unidentifiable tattoo.

Until now, except for Teacher Suzuki, everyone who has clearly seen my tattoo knows what role it plays. So there’s no one who would blame me—

…But what about the other kids?

Wearing a hair tie on my left arm while in a swimsuit would look a bit strange, wouldn’t it?

Putting on something like a bandage also felt a bit off. No, wouldn’t anyone see that I was obviously trying to hide an injury? Wouldn’t that be seen as much more serious than revealing a tattoo? Was the term “land mine girl” used in this era too?

“…”

It would have been better if it were on my stomach.

While I was thinking that—

“Kurosawa, are you worried about something?”

Miura asked me.

She was always good at reading the mood of those around her.

Pretty, nice personality, good figure, good grades, but strangely no boyfriend.

“…No.”

I answered that way, but since my expression probably didn’t change much, Miura still seemed concerned about me.

Miura also… probably saw the tattoo on my wrist.

She was with me when I was first hospitalized in this world.

Well, Miura didn’t seem like the type to have prejudices about such things.

PE class was fifth period.

That meant in about five hours, I would have to change into a swimsuit in front of the other kids.

Could I come up with some solution in that time?

Well, it doesn’t seem very hopeful.

*

“Tattoo? …Ah.”

Like Miura, Yuka also immediately noticed my gloominess.

It was still raining outside, so we couldn’t use the rooftop. As always these days, Yuka and I were sitting side by side in the literature club room eating bread.

“I see. Because you have a tattoo on your wrist.”

Yuka said with a rather serious expression.

“I hate to say this, but the kids will probably look at you… a bit strangely. It’s not common to see someone our age with a tattoo. Plus…”

I wonder if the view of people with tattoos is unfavorable in Japan too.

Plus, this is 2004. It’s 20 years before the time I lived in, so people are probably 20 years’ worth more conservative.

Considering that Kaneko’s junior was bullied, it wouldn’t be strange if I were ostracized because of this tattoo.

As I ate my bread bit by bit with a gloomy expression, Yuka also seemed to recognize the seriousness of the situation and chewed her bread with a stiff expression before finally opening her mouth.

“Then… how about talking to the teacher?”

After saying that, Yuka immediately shook her head.

“Ah, no. That’s a bit…”

“…No.”

I shook my head.

“Maybe Teacher Suzuki would take it seriously.”

Yuka seemed to be thinking about “violating school rules,” but Teacher Suzuki was a bit different.

She knew my situation well.

“Hmm… but that’s the only solution I can think of. Well, at least your homeroom teacher isn’t Goto.”

Goto was Yuka’s homeroom teacher. He was about ten years older than Teacher Suzuki, and as much as he was older, he was also that much stricter.

“…I’ll go after eating this.”

“Want me to come with you?”

I shook my head.

Yuka is ultimately just a student like me. Even if people higher up in the school might view Yuka differently, in the eyes of an ordinary school teacher, she would just look like a regular high school girl.

Looking at the clock, I put bread in my mouth a little faster than usual.

*

“Ah… I see.”

Teacher Suzuki immediately showed a serious expression after hearing what I had to say.

“By any chance… how did you get that tattoo?”

The teacher asked in a lowered voice, and after thinking for a moment, I said:

“My mother…”

“…”

At my words, Teacher Suzuki’s eyes widened.

“…Is she still not coming home these days?”

Ah, right.

Teacher Suzuki hadn’t heard about me being chased by a stalker. The encounter with Kagami that day was just shown to the police and that was it.

“…”

Not wanting to cause more worry, I shook my head.

Teacher Suzuki covered her mouth with her hand and wore a serious expression.

“Would you like to lie down in the infirmary? I can say you’re not feeling well.”

For a moment I really considered doing that, but then I shook my head.

“…I can’t miss all the swimming classes that way.”

“I suppose not?”

Teacher Suzuki responded to my answer with eyes that seemed to be looking at a commendable child.

How do I appear in this person’s eyes?

A child from a severely neglectful home who studied hard to get into a high school with high deviation scores, and who, despite having memories of being abused by her mother, somehow manages to live on her own. Wow, even tragic heroines are rarely like this.

If I had to find something similar, maybe a Korean morning drama heroine?

Teacher Suzuki, who had been biting her lower lip slightly while thinking, looked down at my left wrist where the hair tie was still tied and said:

“Ah, wait a moment. Could you wait here?”

Teacher Suzuki quickly got up as if she had thought of something.

And leaving me seated at the adjacent teacher’s desk, she went somewhere.

“…”

As I watched her retreating figure with my mouth slightly open, Teacher Suzuki spoke to the male teacher in workout clothes I had seen before.

The male teacher, who was surprised to see Teacher Suzuki and for some reason blushed slightly, listened intently to Teacher Suzuki’s story while nodding his head, then took something out of his desk drawer and gave it to her.

Teacher Suzuki took it and came back to me.

It was… flesh-colored tape. The surface felt a bit rough, like a bandage.

Ah, I’ve seen people use this. It’s sports tape used to minimize injuries by fitting it to the shape of muscles.

Teacher Suzuki cut it to an appropriate size, removed the hair tie from my left wrist, and applied the tape.

It couldn’t be called neat. It was obvious that it was put there to hide something.

To be honest, it didn’t look much different from putting on a bandage… but at least this wasn’t white.

“For now, this is all I can think of. I’m sorry.”

“…No. Thank you.”

Still, she had thought hard and put this on for me.

I bowed my head slightly in thanks, and Teacher Suzuki nodded back.

Her face was still full of worry.

…Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything?

*

But… well.

I’m not really a noticeable kid in class anyway. The number of people I’ve talked to in class can be counted on one hand.

The kids in class weren’t particularly afraid of me. At the beginning of the semester, I had the image of a delinquent student who missed an entire week, but after seeing me hanging out with Miura, Fukuda, and Yamashita, the kids didn’t particularly fear or feel awkward about talking to me. Even if it was just light greetings.

In that sense, Teacher Suzuki’s judgment was very accurate. After all, she was the one who assigned Miura to me.

At least until it was time to change clothes, no one showed interest in my left wrist.

I stared intently at my locker while changing clothes and waited quietly until I could no longer hear the sounds of other kids changing.

There were no major problems until we reached the indoor pool.

In this school, swimming classes are taken separately by boys and girls. Probably considering that these are kids with a lot of sexual curiosity but still immature, they separated them.

Is that… fortunate?

The PE teacher didn’t bother to line us up by number and just let us mix appropriately.

Actually, swimming class doesn’t seem to be conducted that rigorously. It’s more like they’re teaching it because “they have to teach it” rather than including it in the grades.

Maybe it’s for flood prevention measures or something like that. Judging by the teacher’s attitude, it seemed closer to teaching CPR than teaching something related to grades.

Well, characters who can’t swim despite being teenagers often appear in Japanese manga. That can’t be completely fictional.

If swimming classes were graded based on swimming ability, such kids would be extremely rare.

That was… fortunate.

Plus—

“Kurosawa, over here.”

Miura really took care of me attentively. At first, she seemed not to understand why I was a bit intimidated, but after seeing the tape on my wrist, she seemed to have a moment of realization and immediately included me in her group.

Thanks to that, I was able to safely hide among the three taller people and pass the time.

“Haha! You look like a middle schooler!”

Fukuda laughed loudly at me and patted my head several times. Even though I was wearing a swim cap, so it would just feel like rubber.

“I want to take you home and raise you.”

…Don’t suddenly say scary things.

Well, it was probably just one of Fukuda’s meaningless remarks, but with Fukuda being quite a bit taller than me and placing her hand on top of my head while saying that, it felt a bit intimidating.

“If you pet too much, the hair falls out from stress.”

What am I, a cat?

Yamashita, who said such things indifferently, had the talent of giving off the vibe of using a phone even without one in hand. Looking at her expression that seemed to find everything in the world bothersome made me feel languid too.

Well, while the atmosphere was somewhat free like that, swimming “class” was still a “class.”

Kids who couldn’t swim practiced splashing around or overcoming their fear of water.

Kids who knew how to swim were already swimming across the pool according to the teacher’s instructions.

“Kurosawa, do you know how to swim?”

“Yes.”

I nodded in response to Miura’s question.

“Oh, really?”

Fukuda asked as if it was really unexpected. Even Yamashita felt the same way.

“I can only imagine you floating around on a pink tube.”

Fukuda said something blatantly rude. Damn, but when I imagined myself with a swan tube, it matched so well that I couldn’t refute.

Despite how I look, I was someone who had to know how to swim for my job. Just because you know how to put out fires doesn’t mean that’s all you do. In fact, considering all the incidents and accidents that happen in a city, the proportion of fire-related dispatches is relatively small.

The proportion is small, but that doesn’t mean the absolute number is small.

“…I’ll show you.”

“Ooh. Go for it.”

Miura slapped Fukuda’s arm as she said that, but Fukuda didn’t even blink.

Well, fine. Then I have no choice but to prove it directly.

Standing in line with the kids who knew how to swim, I jumped into the pool as soon as the teacher blew the whistle.

Even though my body had become smaller, the parts that remained in my memory as skills worked excellently.

After swimming to the end of the pool with a textbook crawl stroke and getting out, the teacher looked at me with wide eyes.

Other kids also looked at me with somewhat surprised expressions.

A bit worried that someone might have seen my left wrist, I quickly walked over to Miura and hid among the three of them.

“You’re shy in the strangest places.”

Fukuda said while vigorously patting my head again.

Even though it would just feel like touching wet rubber because of the swim cap.

Well, thanks to the three of them, I was able to get through that day’s swimming class.

*

Come to think of it, it probably wasn’t something to worry about that much.

It’s not the first PE class since June began. This school’s summer PE uniform was the bloomer type that was popular in these kinds of novels at that time, with short sleeves on top.

Since it wouldn’t get wet, I always wore a hair tie on my left wrist, but no one ever paid much attention to it. If anything, I was the one more anxious about whether the tattoo would be visible.

So who would pay much attention to a flesh-colored tape?

With my worries gone, I climbed the stairs with a relatively light heart.

News of my hospitalization had reached the cafe owner through Shii’s mouth, and the owner told me to rest well until the weekend. He said he wouldn’t cut my pay.

He’s a good person in the strangest ways. It would be nice if he could fix the parts where he’s lazy.

Well, not everyone can be perfect. It’s something that he doesn’t ask me to get permission from my parents.

As I was climbing the stairs thinking that, I… spotted a hot dog in the hallway.

“…”

Ha.

This person is at it again.

With my heart lightened, I followed that hot dog with a carefree mind.

To be honest, it was more like a game between Kaneko and me rather than me really wanting to eat it. Though of course I intended to eat it if I caught it.

Even if it’s a factory-made hot dog, it still has proper bread and sausage. It would fill my stomach if I ate it.

As always, I repeated the pattern of almost catching the bread and then missing it as I passed by the literature club room.

And at the moment I lunged forward and caught the bread, I suddenly realized.

Wait.

But everyone in the literature club knows that I work part-time.

Friday, today, was naturally a day when I wouldn’t come to the literature club. The club president Ikeda, Ikeda’s friend Kaneko, and my friend Yuka all knew this fact.

So Kaneko wouldn’t play such a prank on a Friday.

“Hey, it really got caught.”

As I crouched down holding the bread and looked up, I saw three female students looking down at me.

One of them was someone I had seen before.

The person who had badmouthed Kaneko when Ikeda ran to the track and field club to protest.

Probably a senior two years above me.

And judging by the healthy bodies of the two people next to her, they seemed to be from the track and field club as well.

“It was good that I heard that guy talking to that goody-two-shoes.”

The female student with hair cut even shorter than Kaneko’s, who would have been mistaken for a male student if she were wearing a gakuran instead of a sailor uniform, said that.

“Good job, good job.”

The captain praised her junior like that.

I immediately stood up and tried to run to the side, but,

“Where do you think you’re going!”

The track and field club captain immediately caught me and covered my mouth.

No.

How can a person be this ignorant? Shouldn’t you be more careful as a third-year? If you’re seriously in the track and field club, couldn’t you fail to get into university because of your conduct?

“Damn, of all things.”

The captain said while firmly holding me and dragging me into an empty classroom.

“The girl who I hoped had died nicely woke up. Dad got a call last night. So, if you want to mess with me, mess with me all you want later. I have nothing to hold back now.”

I see, so that’s it.

So she’s showing her action immediately because she thinks that path has disappeared. Seeing her act like this when not even three days have passed, I could at least praise her drive as being bulldozer-level.

…I’m in trouble.

*

But thinking about it, it doesn’t seem like such a serious matter.

It’s not like I’m being ostracized by the kids in my class. In terms of numbers, it’s just three people, right?

So it’s no different from being targeted by a few bullies, and what they can do to me is nothing compared to what I suffered from the silkworm.

They probably won’t stab my heart with an awl, at least.

When they dragged a person to a deserted bathroom, shoved me into the end stall, all came in together and closed the door, I was a bit scared,

Drrrk.

When they made that sound and took out a box cutter, I was a bit frightened,

“Shall we decorate your uniform a bit more?”

When they said that and held the knife against my uniform, the first thing I felt was a moment of clarity.

How many times would this make if it gets torn?

If this were a game, I’d probably be earning an achievement and a title like [Uniform Slayer] by now.

“Oh, this one suddenly went limp.”

“Did she give up?”

The ones holding my arms on both sides said.

“Hey, hey. Snap out of it.”

When the track and field club captain slapped my cheeks and I opened my eyes, only then did she smile.

“Yes, that’s more like it. It feels better to bully someone a bit. Well, you don’t have to resist much. As long as that Kaneko bitch sees it, that’s all that matters.”

“…”

“…Should I cut you a bit? Not the uniform, but your skin.”

Somehow… it’s…

Maybe it’s because I was wielding something much more deadly just a few days ago, or maybe it’s because light wounds heal easily, but anyway, it wasn’t very scary.

I think my sense of reality is starting to go bad.

“Oh, senior. There’s something stuck here.”

The one holding my left wrist said while twisting my arm.

“…Ah.”

That.

The sticker Teacher Suzuki put on me.

“Hmm? What’s this? Have you ever cut your wrist? What are you trying to hide?”

Being from the track and field club, they could easily tell this wasn’t a place that needed such taping.

I tried to quickly twist my arm to pull it out, but the track and field club captain too easily peeled off the sticker.

“…”

The three track and field club members who momentarily lost their words soon laughed loudly, “Puhaha!”

“You, what is this? Someone who attends the literature club carries something like this?”

“It’s pretty, isn’t it?”

I could hear voices openly mocking me.

Even in this situation, I was worried that they would spread rumors about it. That was scarier than the box cutter in their hands.

The school was starting to become a place I liked. I had also made people I liked.

But—

Knock knock.

“…”

Suddenly, I heard such a sound.

The laughter stopped instantly.

…It seems like almost no one uses the bathroom on the first floor of the old school building. There used to be ghost stories associated with it, and for some reason, most of the classrooms on the first floor aren’t used and are used as storage instead. Usually, they were filled with extra desks and chairs covered in dust.

Well, it would be a bit odd to put such heavy things on the upper floors.

While the bathroom was maintained as a public space, that doesn’t mean there were people—

Knock knock.

As I was thinking that, I heard the sound of someone knocking on the partition from the next stall again.

The track and field club captain holding the knife and the two lackeys beside her all froze.

“…”

Did they all recall the ghost stories?

Yuka had said that ghosts wouldn’t appear for a while.

Click.

The sound of the next stall’s bathroom door opening was heard.

Then, after the sound of footsteps, someone knocked on our stall door.

“…What? Won’t you go away?”

The track and field club captain shouted in an excessively cocky voice, but—

After waiting for a moment, the other person,

Bang!

It seemed like they kicked the door.

“Wh-what!?”

Whether the track and field club captain shouted in surprise or not, the other person kicked the bathroom door several times.

Being an old bathroom, the lock wasn’t very sturdy. After a few kicks, the rattling lock eventually broke with a click.

“Ugh!”

Bang, and seeing the door open in a direction it shouldn’t originally open, the track and field club captain kicked the door and went out.

“Who the hell are you!?”

The door opened outward again— and the person standing there was,

“…Yamashita?”

Yamashita was holding a bag in one hand and a phone in the other.

Judging by the white light from the phone screen, she was probably texting someone.

“…”

Yamashita’s eyes turned towards me, towards the two people twisting my arms on both sides, and towards the track and field club captain who had jumped out the door.

Yamashita… had an extremely pissed-off expression.

Probably from before breaking the door.

Yamashita’s pupils drew a semicircle towards the ceiling.

It was a look that seemed to say, ‘What are these things now.’

Those eyes turned down again towards the track and field club captain.

It seemed like an expression saying, ‘As if things weren’t shitty enough.’

Um… it seems the content of the text message was something that made her extremely angry. Maybe she wanted to be alone so much that neither Fukuda nor Miura, who usually hung out with her, were around.

That might be why she chose to be here.

…When coming in, neither I nor these three people noticed that there was someone in one of the stalls.

After a moment of silence—

Yamashita threw her bag at the track and field club captain’s face.