Book Girl and the Corrupted Angel (3 page)

If you upset your stomach before an exam, you’ll be in a real jam, so you should lay off the special platters of ghosts for a while.

I dropped off the new snack I’d put together during class and headed to the music room.

The angel brought me a fir tree.

Last night I was so depressed about my job, he probably wanted to cheer me up. My angel knows everything about me. And I can tell my angel anything.

Things I can’t even tell Nanase—ugly things, dirty things, everything.

It’s still early for Christmas, but the angel and I dug a hole in the ground and planted the fir tree. Our precious Christmas tree.

Tomorrow I promised I would decorate it with angel wings, crystal churches, gold bells, and stars, and then we would have to put up lights.

The angel doesn’t believe in God, so he says that he hates Christmas and hymns. Whenever I sing them, he covers his ears and screams for me to stop. I can’t believe in God, either, but I like Christmas. I could stare at the lights on the tree all night long. When I do, it feels very pure and holy, even though I don’t believe in God. It’s like my spirit is being sucked up into the light.

I wish I could have lived in the tree. If I had, I’m positive my ugliness would melt away into the white light.

I’m spending Christmas Eve this year with my boyfriend.

I’m spending Christmas with Nanase.

I wonder if things are going well with Nanase and Inoue? Although yesterday on the phone, she was depressed because she said, “I glared at him
again
” and “I said something mean
again
.”

Nanase is supercute and nice, so if she was just a little more proactive, I’m sure Inoue would fall for her.

When I told her I thought it would be nice to be able to go on a double date—her and Inoue and me and my boyfriend—I felt like an awful person for lying. My heart hurt, and I felt like crying. I didn’t know what to do.

“You’re really close with Mr. Mariya, huh, Kotobuki?”

“Wh-what?! How can you say that?! Of course, I’m not.”

One hour later I was working with Kotobuki in the music room, which was warmed by the light of the sun.

Mr. Mariya had something to do in the teachers’ office and had left, so Kotobuki and I were all alone in the room. Kotobuki was next to me, rummaging through papers, and she growled, “You sure there’s nothing wrong with your eyes, Inoue?”

“Maybe. When you’re with him, you seem more talkative than usual.”

“W-well…”

She started to say something else, then turned sharply away with an “Am not” and fell silent.

She continued her work with tremendous energy in silence.

And now I remembered that there was something I wanted to ask her. How could I do it? I just had to commit and ask right now, I guess.

“Hey, Kotobuki.”

“Wh-what?!”

“Where was it that you and I met in middle school? I’ve been thinking about it, but I can’t remember.”

Well, I’d said it.

But I wanted to take this opportunity to clear things up—the things Kotobuki had rambled tearfully about at our play rehearsal for the culture fair—

“I’m sure you don’t remember, but it meant a lot to me.”

“The girl who was always with you was the author Miu Inoue, wasn’t she?!”

Why had Kotobuki mistaken Miu for Miu Inoue?

Why didn’t I remember meeting Kotobuki?

Maybe the reason for her unnatural stubbornness lay there…

Her head hanging down, Kotobuki was as still as a stone. She bit down on her lip and paled.

Maybe I shouldn’t have asked…

Just as I was beginning to regret it, she forced out a pained response.

“…the school emblem.”

“Huh?”

“School emblem…still doesn’t help you remember?”

“Um, you mean the school emblem that’s a patch you stick on your uniform, right?”

Kotobuki’s shoulders twitched.

“Hold on, I’m remembering right now. The emblem…hmm…hmmm…”

My middle school’s emblem was in the shape of a maple. The color changed depending on the class year, and Kotobuki had met me in the…winter of my second year? In that case, the emblem was blue, so…

“God, just forget it.”

Her agitated voice interrupted my thoughts.

Kotobuki’s hands were balled up fiercely, and she was shaking.

“Y-you don’t need to force yourself to remember,” she said.

The air was frigid. I was bewildered.

Just then, Mr. Mariya returned.

“Sorry about that. I swiped a salty rice cake from the teachers’ office, so let’s have some tea. Oh—Nanase, what’s the matter?”

Mr. Mariya’s face closed in on hers to the point he was almost kissing her, and Kotobuki jerked away in a panic.

“I—it’s nothing!”

“Oh, were you sad that I wasn’t here?”

He laughed brightly, but she wailed, red faced, “I hate you! You pervert! No!”

She seemed slightly better, but Kotobuki didn’t meet my gaze after that.

When the school building was tinted an angry red by the sun, the three of us left the music room together.

“Tomorrow and the day after, I’ll be out on business, so we’ll see each other next on Thursday. I know you can handle things.”

“Okay. Bye, Mr. Mariya. Bye, Kotobuki.”

“…Bye.”

I parted ways with Mr. Mariya, who was going back to the teachers’ office, and Kotobuki, who was heading back to the library. I was just starting to walk when I thought I felt someone watching me.

A gloomy, piercing face looked in my direction, but there was no one there.

Where was it coming from?

Standing in front of the stairs, I scanned the area when overhead I heard someone clucking his tongue and whispering low, as though the moaning of the wind.

“…What a heartwarming scene.”

A shudder ran down my spine, and my skin prickled.

I turned my gaze upward and searched the stairs that circled up to the fourth floor, holding my breath, scouring them with my eyes. But there was no one there.

What…was that voice just now?

Who was it talking to? Me? Mr. Mariya? Or maybe Kotobuki?

I listened closely, but I couldn’t even hear footsteps anymore.

I got a call from my teacher about my customers. He’s worried about me for a lot of reasons.

He is such a kind, wonderful person.

It’s been so long since we’ve been on a date; he was kind of in a bad mood. Even if I touched his hand, he wouldn’t loosen his fingers from around mine. He told me moodily to quit my job.

To cheer myself up, I decorated the entrance to the castle with lots of pictures.

Pictures of Nanase and me. Pictures of my angel and me. In every picture I was smiling happily, and whenever I looked at them, I could think,
Wow, the girl in these pictures is so happy
, and I became happy.

But the pictures with him were the only ones that made me feel like my heart was ripping in half, and I couldn’t put them up.

Instead, I put up photos of blue roses.

It was a lie of a color, a white rose that someone had dyed blue, but it was pretty.

Years ago, a
blue rose
was used to mean
something unusual
or
something impossible
, but now that people have succeeded in making blue roses by altering the genes, I heard that the flower’s meaning had changed as well to mean
miracle
or
God’s blessing
.

But in the pictures I’d seen of the flowers on the Internet, the rose was purplish and didn’t look like an innocent blue at all…

So, maybe a blue rose still means
something unusual
after all.

To myself, I whispered the line that Christine says to Raoul.

“Our love is too tragic for this world. Let us away into the sky…Perhaps there even our love may be easily realized!”

I only hope that Nanase’s love goes well.

How could I make up with Kotobuki?

After class the next day, I walked down the hall stewing.

Kotobuki still seemed to be bothered by what happened yesterday, and she’d avoided me even in class.

Mori had come over to worriedly ask if Kotobuki and I had had a fight, but I couldn’t really answer. Mori seemed frustrated, too, and she said, “Well, Nanase shuts down when she gets stressed out. I dunno what happened, but don’t take it personally, okay?”

Suddenly I felt something poking into the back of my neck and I jumped up.

“Argh!”

I turned and saw a petite girl with fluffy hair hugging a dandelion-colored binder to her chest and grinning up at me. It was Takeda, the first-year.

“Hellooo, Konoha. Heh-heh-heh…I heard about Nanase.”

“Takeda!…Wh-what do you mean? What did you hear?”

“I heard you’re going on dates behind closed doors with Nanase in the music room. Not bad! Or did you choke up already?”

She prodded me in the ribs with her elbow.

“Cut it out, Takeda. Everybody’s staring. They’re not dates. We’re just helping Mr. Mariya, the music teacher. He’s always there, and anyway what do you mean ‘choke up’?”

Just then, the cell phone in my shirt pocket rang with an incoming message.

I apologized, then checked the new message. My heart skipped.

What the—? A text from Kotobuki?!

I hurried to read it.

Wh-what was this?!

As I descended into panic, the smiles dancing and flashing in my brain, Takeda pointed a finger at me and said, “Ah! You’re choking.”

What was going on with Kotobuki?

Even though she’d started talking to me, I cut Takeda off and went to the library in a state of agitation. Kotobuki was working at the counter.

“I…Inoue—”

She looked horribly surprised, her eyes widening in panic. When I saw her face, I was so rattled it was as if my heart had taken over my entire body, and blood rushed into my head with frightening speed.

“Wh-what is it? You returning a book?” she asked.

“Well…I got your text about how there was something you wanted to talk about.”

“Huh? From who?”

“What? From you. You asked if I could come to the library.”

“What?!” she shrieked suddenly. She immediately clapped both hands over her mouth and said in a whisper, “I…didn’t send any texts like that.”

“But it came from your e-mail address a few minutes ago…”

I was confused, too. What was going on?

“No way. You must be wrong. Why would I send you—”

Kotobuki got indignant and glowered at me, when suddenly Mori and the others flocked over to the counter.