"Kei, there's a first year boy asking for you," my classmate Mishima said.
I looked up from my book and asked, "Who?"
"Don't know. But he's cute. Tch, the discipline committee president, eating all the younger boys..." she cackled.
I gave her a pained smile, stood up, and went into the hall.
When he saw me, he bowed his head politely. "Niitoki-senpai? I'm Tanaka Shiro, 1-D. You were on the gate this morning, weren't you?"
One of the duties of the discipline committee members, which we all took turns doing, was to stand at the gate and monitor the students coming in and out.
"Yeah. What about it?"
"Did you see 3-F's Kamikishiro-san arrive?"
"Naoko-san? I know her, but no, she didn't come today. But she's nearly always late..."
"She's not in class either," he said gravely.
"Really? Must be skipping."
"No," he said, quite sure of himself. "Recently, she had some sort of reason why she had to come to school everyday."
(Is this kid in love with her...)
Seemed like it. Maybe he was going to ask her out today.
"Huh? I don't know. If she's not here, ask her tomorrow."
"That might be too late!" he exclaimed anxiously. "You really don't know anything?!"
"You call her house?"
"There's never anyone there."
"Eh?"
"Her parents are in the middle of an ugly divorce. Her mother's going to her parents' house, and her father never comes home."
"Really?"
"Everyone in the apartment building's talking about it. Everybody I asked told me about it."
"Huh..." I said.
Suddenly, a voice came out from the side. "You should ask Kirima Nagi."
Both of us swung around in surprise. My kouhai on the discipline committee, Saotome-kun, was standing there.
"Saotome? What do you...?" Tanaka-kun said, wide-eyed.
Later, I found out these two were in the same class.
"I was just passing by; happened to overhear. Thought you might like to know."
"Know what?"
"I don't know any details, but Kamikishiro Naoko-senpai and Kirima Nagi have been friends since Junior High. She's just off suspension, so she might know something about Kamikishiro-senpai."
I blinked.
It was the first I'd heard of Naoko-san being friends with the legendary Kirima Nagi from the class next floor. And here I thought I knew about most people in the school.
"How do you know that?" I asked Saotome.
"Oh, I asked Kirima Nagi out once. Picked up a few things back then."
"You asked her out?!"
It took guts to even talk to the Fire Witch.
I'll give him that.
"She said no," he admitted.
"What class is this Kirima person in?" Tanaka-kun asked forcibly. Somehow, he'd never heard of her.
"Second year, class D. Right next door."
"Okay!"
"W-whoa, hold on there! No telling what will happen if you just burst into her!" I said as if she was some sort of lion. But it was true. She had punched out one boy's front teeth before.
I couldn't let them go alone, so I followed them to class D.
I asked a girl I knew near the door. "Ah, Suema-san. Is Kirima-san here? I've got a first year boy who wants to talk to her..."
"She's not here today."
"Really? She came in the gate." I knew my words to be true. I was on the gate. I'd seen her arrive.
"So, she is here? I haven't seen her come to class, though," Suema-san said, shrugging.
We looked at each other.
"What... What's going on?" Saotome-kun asked.
"Sounds like she is involved," Tanaka-kun said in a shrill voice.
"Hmmm..." I was seriously worried myself now. Naoko-san and Kirima Nagi... What were they upto?
As we stood there in front of the door, someone asked, "Could I get in here?" We turned around to find Yurihara Minako, the best student in the school, standing right before us.
"Oh, sorry," Saotome-kun said, moving aside.
She nodded, and strode regally into the room like some sort of queen.
The bell rang, so we all split up and headed back to our respective rooms.
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"Kamikishiro is vanished. I can't find her anywhere," Kirima Nagi said in a place steeped in shadows.
The man with her said nothing. His expressions never wavered. Kirima grew irritated at his lack of reaction and shook her head violently.
"I called her cell, but she didn't answer. You don't know anything?" she pressed on.
The man was unable to talk, so he simply shook his head slowly.
"She might have gotten caught in its net. That thing Kamikishiro said was your sibling."
"..." The man did not respond.
Kirima scowled at him. Finally, she spat, "We should never have listened to you. We should have just called the cops, or the Self-Defense Force. If the world knew about it, it would've just washed its hands of the whole business and vanished to some place where we couldn't follow. But if Kamikishiro is dead, then we're already too late..."
She buried her hands in her face, her nail digging into her cheeks and forehead.
"..."
The man didn't move.
"Say something! You talked to Kamikishiro, didn't you?! Try and let me know what you're thinking!" Kirima shouted, grabbing his collar.
It was a Brooks Brothers cotton shirt that Kamikishiro had bought for him.
Even when she shook him roughly, he did nothing but stare back at her in silence.
"God damn it! I will find you, Manticore!" she howled, uncharacteristically angry. "And you're going to help, Echoes!"
He nodded. But yes, there was something remote about that motion. It was as if he was monitoring Kirima's reactions.
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It bugged the hell out of me, so I took gate duty again that day after school.
In the morning, we had to check the cards as they went through, but on the way home, the job was simply boring.
"You're nosy," laughed the first year kid who should have been on duty. He gave up his place happily.
Nosy? I guess so.
There's a part of me that can't stand to see something unclear, something uncertain. That part of me wants to fix those things. Once when I was at a friend's house, they left me alone in their room with a half-done jigsaw puzzle, and when they came back, I had already finished it. They were pretty angry too.
The reason that I was on the unpopular discipline committee, and the president of it, no less, was simply because of this "clarity impulse" of mine.
"Anyone?" "Who wants to do it?" they'd all ask, but nobody ever raised their hand. They just sat there in silence. And before I knew it, my hand was up.
It's like a disease, I know.
With Kamikishiro-san missing, if I hadn't been asked, I'd never have gotten involved, but now that I had been, I wouldn't be able to sleep until I'd cleared things up.
My friends tell me, "You're like a big sister. There's just something reliable about you," which take as a compliment (though, they might have been making fun of me.) But the truth is, it's just my neurosis.
(Talking to the Fire Witch is scary, but if I don't, I can't settle down!)
But even when most of the students had gone home, and the sky was starting to darken, Kirima Nagi had yet to appear. It was well past the time when the gate guard was free to go home, and I was starting to wonder what else I could do, when Tanaka-kun and Saotome-kun came up.
"Ah, senpai! Did Kirima-san go home?" Saotome-kun asked.
"No, not yet."
"Oh," said Tanaka-kun, hanging his head.
"Why don't we look for her together? I'm sure she's still in the school somewhere," I suggested.
"That's what we were going to do," Tanaka-kun nodded.
"We were talking about it in the classroom."
"I'm a little worried about her," Saotome-kun said.
She might have rejected him, but it seemed that he still liked her.
"But where do you think she is?"
"Somewhere where nobody would notice her... On the roof, or maybe under the gym? Oh, or the pool changing rooms." Saotome-kun suggested.
"Why would she be in places like those?" Tanaka-kun said in an irritated voice.
"I don't know. But everyone knows her, so she must be in a place like those or somebody would've noticed."
"Let's check them out," I said, and we headed back into the eerily quiet school.
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While on our way to the roof, I couldn't help but ask, "Tanaka-kun, were you and Kamikishiro-san...?"
"Um," he said, worried.
"Kamikishiro-senpai asked him out," Saotome-kun interjected.
"What?!" I yelped.
"Saotome! That was a secret!"
"Don't worry, senpai won't share."
I was still reeling as they spoke. "You're joking, right?"
"I certainly thought so. I kept asking her if it was a joke, but she kept saying that she was serious."
"Huh..." I stared at his face closely.
"Please don't tell anyone."
"Okay, I won't. But still..."
"It was pretty confusing, but I couldn't think of a reason to say no, so I ended up going out with her."
"But I could swear that Kamikishiro-san had a different boyfriend..."
"Yeah, she does. Second year guy named Kimura Akio. Never really worked up the nerve to ask about that..."
"Kimura? He picked up Kamikishiro-san too? But it can't be too serious with a guy like that..."
Kimura-kun was from the class next to mine and he was an infamous playboy. Legend had it that he'd made a pass at every second year girl in the entire school. He'd even flirted with me - the discipline committee president!
"Maybe, maybe not. Either way, I was never able to figure out what she really wanted."
"Do you like Kamikishiro-san?"
"D-do I?"
"Be clear," my fixation popped right up and out of my mouth.
"If we're going to the roof, the fire escape round back is better," Saotome-kun said, glancing around us.
"Why?"
"The door's locked, isn't it?"
"Oh, right."
As we went round the back, we saw somebody coming down the fire escape.
"Ah...!"
We chased after them, but they were gone before we could get there. But they were tall, probably male, so we didn't chase them any further. Whoever it was had headed towards the gates and was probably going home.
"If he was up there, then Kirima-san probably isn't."
"Yeah. Let's check the gym."
We went to the storage room under the gym.
They were locked. But luckily for us, I was on a gate duty, so I had a master key that would open any door in school.
"Uhh..." Saotome-kun pushed the heavy door open, and went inside.
"It was closed, so she's probably not in here," I said, peeking in. It was dark, so we turned on the lights. There was just one small fluorescent light, though, and it didn't penetrate past the piles of mats, springboards, and other gym equipments."
"But she might be hiding somewhere," Tanaka-kun said, moving to follow Saotome-kun inside.
But Saotome-kun came walking back towards us, waving his hands.
"Nobody's here. And definitely no signs of anyone having been here."
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"-Nothing here," said Saotome. Behind him were the blanket and heater that Echoes had used, and several scattered food wrappers. They were hidden in shadow, and from where they stood at the entrance, Tanaka Shiro and Niitoki Kei weren't able to see them.
"Any cigarette butts?" Niitoki asked.
Saotome made a show of looking behind him, then shook his head.
At his feet was a little bell that Kamikishiro had kept on her school bag.
"Let's try somewhere else."
"Right. Saotome-kun, come on out of there. I'll lock up."
"Mm," Saotome said, leaving the evidence where it was, turning out the lights as he left.
"Where should we look next?" Niitoki asked, locking the door and turning towards the two boys.
"It just ocurred to me, but maybe we should use the PA system to summon Kirima-san," Saotome suggested.
He had confirmed the presence of Echoes, and he knew that Echoes was presumably moving with Kirima Nagi. It was time to move the plan forward to stage two.
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"The PA system?" I asked, blinking at Saotome-kun.
"Yeah. The key can get us in the broadcast room, right?"
"Well, yes, it can... But won't we get in trouble?"
"Probably," Saotome-kun admitted. "But there's no other student around, and the only teacher here is the one on night watch. I'd be more surprised if anyone cares enough to yet at us."
"Mmm, well... It would be faster. Okay. I'll handle the teacher."
"Thank you for this," Tanaka-kun said apologetically.
"Not like I'm doing it for you," I said. "I'm worried about Kamikishiro-san too."
Why was I being so snotty? I was irritating myself. I was only doing this because I couldn't settle down without making things clear. Only my words were impressive. But I was definitely worried about Kamikishiro-san.
If Kirima-san had gotten herself mixed up in something, and if it had gone bad, I had to try and stop it... Sounding very much like the ardent discipline committee president, aren't I? Never meant to turn into something like that.
"C-come on," I said, agitated, and set off, the two boys following me.
Unfortunately, being at the head of the party didn't do anything for my image. It made me look even more stuck up. Dang.