Brave Story (9 page)

The woman was a sales lady for a cosmetics retailer. She had been in the same class as his mother in college and this was a social call—an opportunity to gossip and push some cosmetics. She was pretty enough, but she smelled too strongly of perfume, and it made Wataru’s nose wrinkle just to be in the same room. He had made some perfunctory greeting and then shut himself in his room to play video games.

His father had called that day while his mother and the sales lady were talking away. His mother had ended the phone call with her usual words of encouragement, and the sales lady had been astonished. Wataru heard her loud voice clearly through the door.

“I just don’t believe it. That
was
your husband, was it not? Heavens! You shouldn’t act so obsequious. We aren’t living in the Middle Ages, dear.”

“Obsequious”?
Wataru had leafed through his dictionary. “Full of or exhibiting servile compliance; fawning,” it said. Now he was only slightly less confused. He heard the sales lady go on, trying to persuade his mother of this and that. He listened closely, hoping he would figure out what she had meant with her opening remarks.

“Oh, it’s good to be traditional,” she was saying, “but you can’t pamper your husband too much, or he’ll just take advantage of you. Once he’s married, it’s his duty to work and support his wife and children while you run a household. It’s a fifty-fifty partnership. There’s no need for you to act like an underling.”

His mother had laughed and said she wasn’t pampering anyone and she was pretty sure she wasn’t being taken advantage of.

“Well, you never know what he’s doing once he’s out that front door,” the sales lady replied, chuckling deep in her throat. “My husband and I, we’re
very
laissez-faire. I don’t interfere with his goings-on and he doesn’t interfere with mine. Why, if we didn’t have children, I’m sure we’d have split up long ago. The bonds that tie, the gags that choke, am I right?”

Wataru had the strange feeling that the more the woman spoke, the dirtier the air in the room became. It was as though her words themselves clung to the walls and the floor and the furniture that his mother had spent years polishing and made them all somehow
unclean
. This woman had barged in, declared the Mitani household to be a mess, and, quite uninvited, begun buffing things with her own filthy rag.

The sales lady never came back. Wataru was relieved that, apparently, his mother hadn’t liked her either.

He finished dinner and called Katchan back. This time he could hear the sound of a television blaring in the background.

“Think you could turn that down?”

“Oops, sorry.” The sound of the television faded.

“So, what’s up?”

It turned out that Katchan had run into none other than Mr. Daimatsu on his way home from school that day.

Wataru couldn’t contain his excitement. “How? Where?”

“Right in front of the haunted building. He was with some construction-type guy in a gray uniform.”

Maybe he’d found a new contractor. “Was it just Mr. Daimatsu? His son wasn’t there?”

“Nope, just him. Why?”

“Why…” Wataru paused. “No reason.”

Katchan had this annoying habit of answering most questions with “Why?” He just assumed there was a
why
to everything. Wataru had always thought it was kind of a simple and refreshing attitude, but today for some reason, it irked him.

“Mr. Daimatsu looked pretty happy. He said they’re going to resume construction.”

So he did find a new contractor.

“Well, once they finish that building, it’ll put an end to those rumors,” Wataru said. “It’s probably for the best. The longer it sits there, the more people like Mitsuru will go there and take ghost pictures to show off to their friends.”

Now that wasn’t a nice thing to say.
Nor had it been entirely truthful. In fact, Wataru was pretty sure it was a lie. Mitsuru certainly hadn’t been boasting to anyone, and Wataru had just heard firsthand testimony that the picture probably wasn’t a ghost at all. Still, he knew the shock it would cause on the other end of the line, and it made his tongue tingle with excitement. The sensation was like an exotic spice. Once he got the idea, he couldn’t stop. He would probably lie more often if he wasn’t so afraid of it becoming a habit.

But this time nothing stopped him. As predicted, Katchan gobbled it up. “What’s that? He actually got a picture of a ghost?”

Wataru explained, piling lie upon lie. Katchan hadn’t heard about this latest development at all, and every twist and turn of the story elicited fresh squeals of excitement.

“Cool! I gotta see it!”

“I wouldn’t,” Wataru advised. “The more people that get all excited about it, the bigger that Mitsuru’s head is going to swell.”

“Yeah, but my old lady says if you don’t see a ghost by the time you’re twenty, you’ll never see one at all.”

“Then you’re in luck. You can avoid the whole thing if you just hang on for a few more years.”

“No way! I
wanna
see a ghost before I’m twenty! Man, how boring would that be to go through your whole life without seeing one.”

This was classic Katchan-style logic. One, you only have until twenty to see a ghost. Two, to avoid leading a boring life, you must see a ghost. Ergo, time was short. Wataru felt like telling him that seeing a ghost wasn’t exactly a requirement for living the good life, but he swallowed his words. Saying that would just incite Katchan to wax even more poetic about the ghost, and for some reason everything was getting under Wataru’s skin tonight.

“Look, I gotta take a bath and get to bed.”

Katchan was still talking when Wataru hung up the phone. Kuniko asked him what the call had been about, and Wataru made something up. He went back to his room and closed the door, breathing a deep sigh of relief.

“Liar.”

The girl’s voice echoed through the room. In his chair, Wataru froze.

Chapter 4
The Invisible Girl

Wataru was hearing voices again.

It was the same phenomenon he had experienced the night he met Mr. Daimatsu. His mouth felt strangely dry.

“So you’re a liar.”

Sure, it
sounded
like a girl’s voice, but Wataru knew it was an echo or something, probably coming from the neighbor’s TV. That was it. His neighbors were watching some television show with the volume cranked too loud. His father had complained when they moved in that the walls in this building were thinner than had been advertised.

“Ignoring me won’t make me go away.”

Now she was sulking.
It must be a soap opera.

“Why did you lie to your friend? Is that the kind of person you are? Was I wrong about you?”

Definitely a soap opera.
Wataru hesitantly looked around the room, but nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. His mother had changed the comforter on his bed. The old one had a blue check pattern, but this one was yellow. The spines of the books were aligned neatly on his bookshelf as usual. The shelf below them held the volumes of the
Children’s Illustrated Encyclopedia
that his grandmother in Chiba had given him as a present for being accepted into his elementary school. He couldn’t believe it when he had heard the set cost something like ¥200,000. If she was going to spend that kind of money, he wished she would have bought him a computer instead! When he pointed this out to her she had snapped and said the set of encyclopedias was just fine for a kid in grade school. He could buy himself a computer when he grew up, she said. Adding insult to injury, the volumes took up a huge amount of space on his bookshelf.

He scanned the familiar scene: calendar on the wall, rug on the floor, eraser shavings on his desktop, light fixture on the ceiling.

Wataru hunched over and peered beneath his desk, the movement accidentally causing his chair to scoot back several inches.
No one hiding under there, of course.

He swung around sharply and took a look under the bed. He felt like a special agent searching a criminal’s hideout. All he needed was a windbreaker with the big FBI logo on the back, a bulletproof vest, and a gun in a shoulder holster.

The only thing he spied under his bed was a lone dust bunny—a guerilla soldier who had somehow evaded his mother’s despotic cleaning tactics, unexpectedly discovered and forced to surrender.

“I’m not hiding,” the girl’s voice giggled from nowhere.

Wataru stood up and slowly moved back to his chair. His heart shrank to the size of a ping-pong ball and ricocheted around his body, leaving a cold hollow in his chest.

“Where are you?” Wataru asked quietly.

It was weird. He couldn’t pinpoint the direction her voice was coming from. It didn’t seem to be coming from the ceiling, or the walls, from in front or behind him, or from the floor. It resonated in his head, right where his own voice should be, but distinctly different.

“I’m not hiding,” the voice said in a sing-song, “but you can’t find me, either. I mean, it doesn’t make any sense to look for something that isn’t hiding. Why do the things people search for
need
to be hidden? Do they search for things because they’re hidden, or are things hidden because they’re searching?”

Wataru scowled and, for lack of a better direction, looked up at the ceiling when he answered. “What are you? What are you talking about?”

“I’m right beside you,” answered the voice.

Wataru’s eyes opened wide. If there was a ghost in the room he wanted to grab his camera and take a picture of it. He sprang from his chair, flung open his door, and sprinted to the living room, the door slamming shut behind him. The family television was happily singing the latest catchy jingle for no one’s benefit. He didn’t see Kuniko anywhere. She had to be taking a bath—she always left the TV on when she was taking a bath.

Wataru knew there was a disposable camera in the drawer next to the couch. His parents had bought it for a family trip to the zoo last month. There were twenty shots on the roll, but, in classic fashion, they had taken only three or four.

Wataru yanked open the drawer. There it was! Camera in hand, he ran back to his room.

Wait. He couldn’t just charge in there and start snapping pictures blindly. He pressed his back to the wall next to the closed door, waiting until his breath returned to normal. He was an FBI man again. And this time, Special Agent Mitani was on his own, without any backup. This would be a solo mission. Gently, he turned the doorknob and began to push. The door opened an inch, then a foot. He slid inside without making a sound.

Holding his right arm with the camera behind his back, Wataru leaned against the door to close it. The fugitive hadn’t noticed—maybe. This vicious criminal was wearing a special invisiwave-emitting suit—or something. That sounded silly, but the point was, she wasn’t visible to the naked eye.
Heck of a time to forget the infrared goggles, Agent Mitani.

Taking a deep breath, Wataru whipped out the camera from behind his back and triggered the shutter, an agent squeezing off a shot from his handgun.

Or not. He had forgotten to wind the film.

That was the problem with disposable cameras. Whoever took the last picture was supposed to wind the film right afterward, and they never did.

Well, the cat was out of the bag now. Wataru wound the film like a madman and pressed the shutter button again. He spun around the room, taking shot after shot. His mind was totally focused. He photographed the ceiling, the space under his bed, the shadow of his desk chair. He took photos behind him and he took them squatting down. Not a corner of the room was missed. No comforter was left unturned.

The camera ran out of film. Wataru wiped off the sweat that had beaded on the tip of his nose and took a seat on the floor. It hadn’t been particularly strenuous, but he found himself breathing hard just the same.

“Even if you didn’t get a good shot, you can always just lie and say you did,” the girl’s voice teasingly suggested. It sounded like she was talking from the right side of the room.

Wataru tensed, the camera falling from his stiff fingers into his lap.

“And if you did get a good shot, you can always just lie and say you didn’t,” the voice said from the left side of the room.

“Saying you have something that you don’t makes it yours. Saying you don’t have something you do makes it go away,” the voice whispered right in Wataru’s ear.

The next time she spoke, the voice came from the ceiling, each word falling like drops of rain.

“You are everything in the world, because you
are
the world.”

Wataru noticed that the tone of the voice seemed to be changing. The sing-song was gone, replaced with a sort of…sadness. Wataru felt trapped and confused. He lifted his head to the ceiling. “Where are you?”

He could feel his heart finally returning to its normal size and place.
Thump.
Thump. Thump.
Wataru counted five beats before the voice answered.

“I think you already know.”

And then she was gone. Wataru couldn’t see her or even figure out where the girl’s voice was coming from, but Wataru knew she wasn’t in his room anymore. It was like…like the connection had been dropped.