Brave Story

  So what if somebody had stopped the car there, he thought. As he approached the front of the haunted building one of the blue tarps lifted and he saw a figure standing inside.

  Almost immediately, another tarp lifted and someone from inside the building looked out, right at them. They were spotted. “Who’s there?” a voice called out languidly. “What are you boys doing?”

  The voice belonged to a young man. Wataru guessed he was about twenty years old. With some effort, the man worked his way out from beneath the tarp, and came out to the road. Up close, Wataru realized he was quite tall. He had on a slightly grubby T-shirt and jeans. His hair was cut short, and he was wearing glasses. In his right hand, he carried a flashlight.

  From the direction where Katchan had seen a car came the sound of a large sliding door, like that on a van, opening. They heard another voice. “What is it, Noriyuki?”

  This new voice belonged to a middle-aged man. Soon, its owner appeared from the direction of the van, a stout, blocky figure beneath the street lamps.

  Wataru’s mind was racing, though his body was frozen to the spot. Who were these people? Burglars? Night patrolman? Were they searching for something? Were they burying something? Were they trying to set fire to the place?

  “Hey, it’s just some kids. What are you doing out at this hour?” asked the older man. From his voice, he sounded like he was about the same age as Wataru’s father. The younger man called Noriyuki walked over to the boys and looked them over. Then he glanced at his wristwatch.

  “You’re not going to tell me you’re lost, are you?” Noriyuki said, his face breaking into a smile. “And don’t try to tell me you’re on your way home from cram school, either.”

  “Urk,” said Katchan loudly. It was a familiar sound to Wataru. He had always imagined that if you looked “urk” up in the dictionary, it would read something like “urk: 1. A sound Katsumi Komura makes when he’s caught doing something he shouldn’t be doing.”

  Still, at least he had managed to say something. Wataru was so flustered he simply opened his mouth and stood there, gaping like a fish. Finally, one thought among the storm of thoughts swirling around his head happened to stray near his tongue, and out it came, launching from his lips like a freshly popped kernel of popcorn.

  “I-I’ll call the police!”

  The two men jerked back. They looked at each other, then turned their gaze back on Wataru. Next to him, Katchan was standing with his mouth wide open. “Why?” he asked after a beat.

  The two men burst out laughing.

  “Dad, keep it down,” said Noriyuki, slapping the older man on the shoulder and laughing. “You’ll wake the whole neighborhood.”

  “My little sir,” said the father, waving his arm in Wataru’s direction. “There’s no need to fear. We’re not burglars.”

  Katchan grabbed Wataru’s arm by the elbow. “Really, it’s okay. I’m pretty sure they’re okay.”

  Wataru’s eyes opened wide and he looked at Katchan. His friend’s face gradually broke into a smile. Unable to contain himself, he started to laugh. That was when Wataru realized that it was no longer two versus two, it was three versus one: three people laughing, and one person being laughed at. His face reddened.

  “Ah, whoops,” Noriyuki said, suddenly turning to run in the direction his father had come from. “We left Kaori by herself.” There was the sound of a sliding door around the corner again, and moments later, a light brown van came rolling up. It stopped right before the haunted building.

  Katchan nodded appreciatively at the sleek paint job. “Cool, new car. Sure is big!” He sounded impressed. “Must’ve cost a fortune!”

  Wataru noticed something different about the van. Stenciled on the side in large letters was a sign that read: Daimatsu Properties, Inc. He blinked and looked up at the older man. “You…you’re Saburo Daimatsu!”

  The stern man had been wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. Now his mouth tightened, and he looked down at Wataru. From that one look, Wataru knew in an instant that he was right. Here stood none other than the unlucky owner of the haunted building, the man behind Daimatsu Properties, and his son.

  The van door opened. There was a faint mechanical noise, and something like a metal arm extended from within the van. Sliding out along the arm came a wheelchair. The wheelchair slid until it was hanging off the side of the car, and then the arm lowered it to the ground.

  In the wheelchair sat a girl with slender arms and a slender neck, her hair tied in a ponytail. Her head swayed with the wheelchair’s rocking descent.

  “Someone in the neighborhood tell you about me?” asked Mr. Daimatsu. Then, before Wataru could reply, he added, “That’s right, I’m the owner of this building. This is my son, Noriyuki.”

  Noriyuki came toward them, pushing the wheelchair. The girl’s head lolled to the side. She didn’t look at Wataru and Katchan, or even her father. Her eyes were open, but they seemed to see nothing.

  “And this is my daughter, Kaori,” Mr. Daimatsu said, walking over to the wheelchair and gently patting the shawl covering the girl’s legs. Her hands were hidden beneath the light pink shawl that hid everything from her waist down. If she had reacted to her father’s gesture, none of them saw it.

  “So you see, we’re not burglars. Really,” Noriyuki Daimatsu said with a broad smile. From the tone of his voice, Wataru could sense that he was trying to calm them down. He suddenly saw how he must’ve looked from their perspective: a frightened little kid. Wataru clenched his teeth. He wanted to die, he was so embarrassed.

  “We were taking my sister out for walk, and thought we’d stop by and see how the building was doing. As you can see, there’s a lot of garbage and strays here. It’s quite a mess.”

  “Oh, I see…” Wataru said, looking down at the ground so he wouldn’t have to meet the looks of Mr. Daimatsu, or Noriyuki, or even Katchan. He wanted to swivel around in place, head still facing downward, and run straight for home.

  “A walk at this time of night?” Katchan asked, blissfully unaware of his friend’s mortification. Before Wataru could jab him in the ribs, Mr. Daimatsu spoke.

  “Yes, as you can see, my daughter’s not well. She doesn’t like it when there’re lots of people around.”

  “So you go out when it’s quiet at night,” Katchan said, nodding as though it all made perfect sense. When Wataru glanced up at the men, he saw Mr. Daimatsu and his son exchanging nervous looks.

  Kaori Daimatsu was a pretty girl. No, she was beautiful. When people around her pointed and said “beautiful,” the little fairy herself would have blushed and said something along the lines of “No really, you’re too kind”—that’s how pretty she was.

  In Wataru’s eleven years, he had never met someone so beautiful. He had never met a girl so doll-like. Maybe, he thought with sudden horror, she was a doll. After all, she didn’t speak. She didn’t smile. She didn’t react at all to the outside world. Her gaze was a blank. The only motion she made was to occasionally blink her eyes. They say that eyes are the windows to the soul, but her eyes were windows to a dollhouse.

  “Kaori is in junior high,” Noriyuki said, glancing sideways at his sister in the wheelchair. “That makes her only a little older than you. What grade are you in?”

  Wataru was on the verge of saying “sixth.” Both he and Katchan were short for their age, so they couldn’t hope to lie and say they were in junior high. But there was little harm in making themselves one year older.

  Katchan dashed his hopes by replying first. “Fifth. Over at Joto Elementary.”

  “Joto Elementary School? Ah, then let me guess: you must be the paranormal investigators,” Noriyuki said, smiling. Next to him, his father laughed so hard his belly shook, and his hand on the arm of the wheelchair shook its occupant. Kaori’s head lolled to the other side.

  “Paranormal…how…” Wataru sputtered.

  “There’s a rumor going around that this building is haunted, right? Apparently, kids have been coming out h
ere at night, trying to sneak inside. The Joto Elementary PTA even lodged a complaint with our company.”

  “When was this?”

  Mr. Daimatsu scratched his head. His son answered. “I’d say about two weeks ago.”

  Wataru was devastated. Someone had gotten the jump on them.

  “The earlier paranormal investigators, they came to take photos,” Mr. Daimatsu explained. “Like those photos of ghosts people are always showing on TV these days?”

  Noriyuki nodded. “They had a Polaroid camera.”

  “Well, we’re not ghost hunters. We didn’t come here to play pranks,” Wataru insisted. “We came here to find out the truth.”

  “Wait, I know,” Katchan said, clapping his hands together in sudden enlightenment. “Those earlier paranormal investigators, they were from sixth grade, right? Weren’t they talking about sending pictures of the ghost to the local television station?”

  “Yes, those are the ones,” Noriyuki said with a rueful smile. “Their leader—what was his name?—some foul-mouthed kid.”

  “Ishioka, right? Kenji Ishioka?”

  “That’s the one! You friends?”

  “Not at all. But my old man and Ishioka’s dad are fishing buddies. See, he told me that Ishioka’s dad was saying something about his son appearing on TV with some sort of ghost photos…if you follow.”

  Kenji Ishioka and his gang of miscreants were the reigning punks of sixth grade. In fact, they were a terror to the entire student population of Joto Elementary School.

  Most students, if asked, would reluctantly agree that the purpose of going to school was to learn. Ishioka’s gang hadn’t the faintest idea what that meant. They paid no attention in class. They entered and left the classroom as they pleased. They came late, left early, or simply didn’t show up—all as a matter of course. They stole other kids’ school supplies. They broke things. They bullied their classmates. They took lunch money. They were still in elementary school, but their antics were easily on par with the worst of the high schoollevel troublemakers.

  The sad truth was that, these days, it wasn’t unusual to have one or two problem students of this caliber in every class. But Ishioka’s gang wasn’t confined to a single grade. They had “gone national” during a school festival last summer. Stealing the principal’s car, they drove recklessly through the school yard, chasing after younger students. By the end of their five-minute rampage, the festival was in chaos, and three students had been injured.

  An emergency PTA conference was called the following day, and the principal explained what had happened. He ended up apologizing for his thoughtlessness in leaving his car unattended. The story went that the principal had broken his reading glasses at home, and had come to fetch a replacement pair from his desk in the teacher’s office. He was in a rush, ironically, to attend a teacher’s committee meeting on reducing misbehavior in school.

  Though the kids actually driving the car had been in the grade above, one of the injured students was in Wataru’s class. That’s why Kuniko had attended the emergency conference. When she got home she was seething.

  “Why was he apologizing? Doesn’t anyone find that odd?” she said with a scowl to no one in particular. “I can’t believe the principal has the gall to claim it was his fault for parking the car where he did. Parking a car isn’t the problem! It’s the kids who stole it and drove around the schoolyard that are the problem!”

  Apparently, even at the conference, the majority of the parents had looked to the principal to take responsibility for what happened.

  “They say that kids are mischievous by nature, and so it falls to adults to watch out for them. Insanity! I even heard someone saying how impressed they were that sixth-grade kids could drive so well! I swear, what is the world coming to?”

  Ultimately, the three students’ injuries were little more than bumps and scrapes, and so the whole affair didn’t get any larger than that. No police were informed, the newspapers didn’t pick up the story, and the principal didn’t resign. In the end, the net result of the incident was that Ishioka’s ranks swelled, and their power over the rest of the school grew.

  Still, Ishioka leading an expedition to take pictures of a ghost? It didn’t make much sense. Wataru couldn’t see the connection.

  “Maybe all those sixth-graders wanted was to get on TV?” he wondered out loud.

  “Probably so,” Noriyuki agreed, glancing sideways at the building. “I even overheard one of them say that if they didn’t get good pictures, they would just fake it with a computer.” He chuckled.

  “No way,” Katchan shook his head. “So, did you run into them here too?”

  “Sure did. But that time it wasn’t just kids. There were two adults with them.”

  “Reporters, no doubt,” Mr. Daimatsu said, his arms folded across his chest.

  Noriyuki nodded. “When they saw us, they pretended to be parents, but they had that sort of hungry look you see with people in television.”

  Wataru looked over at Katchan. “You hear anything more about that from your dad?”

  Katchan shook his head. “Last I heard was that Ishioka’s father was boasting they were scheduled to appear.”

  “Did any of you see the program?” Noriyuki asked, an eyebrow raised.

  “Nope,” Katchan shook his head. “Ishioka’s dad doesn’t come to the bar anymore—oh, and by the way, my parents run a bar,” he said, giving them his best bartender’s grin. “Maybe the show got canceled. My dad hasn’t said anything about it.”

  “Or maybe it just hasn’t aired yet.”

  “That’s a possibility. Television programs take more time to put together than you’d think. That’s probably it.”

  A wind blew, rustling the blue tarps. They all tensed.

  “Look at us!” Noriyuki said with a laugh. “We’re as bad as the ghost hunters.” Everyone’s gaze was turned up at the building. “We of all people should know best that there are no such things as ghosts, and certainly not here. You’re looking a bit pale, too, Dad.”

  Mr. Daimatsu grinned sheepishly and scratched his head. Wataru had seen that gesture so many times this night already that he wondered if it wasn’t the scratching that had given Mr. Daimatsu his big bald spot.

  “That’s right,” he said quietly. “If you’re going to be scared of something you should be scared of people. They’re much worse than ghosts.”

  To Wataru, it sounded like a perfectly rational adult thing one might say to children afraid of ghosts. Still, Mr. Daimatsu and his son Noriyuki seemed embarrassed. They both looked down at the ground, as though they had said something they shouldn’t have.

  “Time to go home.” Noriyuki walked around behind Kaori’s wheelchair, and undid the brakes.

  “You get in,” Mr. Daimatsu said, waving toward the van. “We’ll give you a ride back to your homes.”

  “We’re fine,” Katchan said quickly. “We live right over there.”

  “None of that. It’s our responsibility now that we found you out here. It’s an adult thing, don’t you know,” the man added with a wink. “In you go.”

  Ultimately, Wataru and Katchan were talked into accepting the ride. Wataru got in the van. His seat was right next to where Kaori sat strapped into her wheelchair. He could smell the shampoo scent of her hair. He felt that somehow he was too young by at least five years to be smelling a girl’s shampoo in the close confines of a car, but more than some sort of illicit excitement, he felt a pang in his heart. Kaori couldn’t move, couldn’t smile, couldn’t talk. She merely sat like a doll. And yet her hair smelled wonderful. It made it even more painful to see her pretty face, her skin the pure white of soap, and her delicately long and slender arms.

  Because Bar Komura was closer, they dropped Katchan off first. Then they headed toward the apartment building where Wataru lived.

  “You can just let me off at the corner.”

  From the driver’s seat, Mr. Daimatsu chuckled. “You mean if we drive up in the car, it will
make a noise, and someone might notice you snuck out at night?”

  Wataru winced. “My dad gets home late every night, and I don’t want to run into him at the door.”

  “But what if you get mistaken for a thief?”

  In the end, they let him off on the street in front of his apartment. No one was at the entrance. The entire building was silent. Mr. Daimatsu and his son waited in the van until Wataru had reached the elevator door, then, flashing their headlights once, they drove off.

  “You get caught?”

  The following morning, Katchan came running up as soon as first period was over. “Let me guess: your mom was up when you got back, and she beat you within an inch of your life?”

  Wataru shook his head. He had snuck quietly back into the house to find his mother still sprawled on the kitchen table, and his father not yet home.

  “So you were totally safe! How come you look so sleepy then?”

  “How could you sleep after that?”

  “I zonked out as soon as I got home.”

  “You amaze me, Katchan.”

  Katchan gave his best innocent look. “So why couldn’t you sleep?”

  Wataru had been thinking about Kaori. There was something about Mr. Daimatsu and Noriyuki that made him think they were hiding something. There was more to them, beneath the surface, and it aggravated him to not know what it was. The more he thought about it that night, the more agitated he became, and he couldn’t fall asleep until dawn.

  “I dunno. They seemed pretty nice to me.”

  “Oh, they were nice. Too nice.”

  “How so?”

  “Look, normally, when grown-ups find kids running around at a time and place like that, they get mad, right? But all they did was laugh. They didn’t even scold us a little bit.”

  “Maybe they’re used to it, what with Ishioka and his gang already having been there.”

  “It’s more than that,” Wataru said, staring blankly at his desk. This desk had been his since the beginning of the year. Whatever upperclassmen had used it before had left a present for him etched into the glossy wood finish of the top: the word “EVIL” written in all capital letters. What would possess someone to carve something like that? Wataru didn’t see the point.