Chapter Text
The first day of my second year of high school. The sun shone brightly over the light blue sky. I, Nanase Matsuzaki, along with all the other students, were moving toward a large room in the building, filled with seats lined up in rows and a stage at the very front, layed with wooden floorboards and white concrete walls, the auditorium. There’s an entrance ceremony held there on the first day of every semester there. The principal, a light-skinned, middle-aged man with patches of grey hair on his head, wearing a brown suit, walked to the stage and stood behind the lectern, speaking into a microphone.
“Good day. On behalf of the board of directors, to all students who have returned for another year at this wonderful institution, welcome back. And to all first years who have made it here, congratulations and welcome,” he said. “The student council will now come up to give an opening address.”
The principal steps back from the lectern and two students make their way to the stage, a boy and a girl, both third years. The boy, Kazuya Amano, the student council president who had a rather serious look on his face, and the girl, Aria Shirasakura, the student council vice president who walked slowly behind him, looking down nonchalantly. The president walked up to the lectern to give his address to the students.
“Good morning everyone. We at the student council are overjoyed to have you all back for another year here–,”
“The president’s so cute,” squeals one girl.
“You think he has a girlfriend?” asks another.
I couldn’t care less, about either the student council president’s speech or the voices I was subjected to. I couldn’t even fully recognise the guy on stage at the time. Everyone’s a black and white figure, only with a few, sometimes no defining features at all in my eyes so I couldn’t really give an accurate profile for anybody beyond generic descriptions. Voices from behind me echoed through my ears, all while I forcefully plastered a fake smile on my face. I didn’t care for the situation. In fact, whatever high hopes I had for the day, if I ever had any, were immediately dragged through the mud.
With how my day started, I had no expectations for the year. It was just like that up until homeroom. When I first saw him.
The morning bell rings throughout the school. All the students who had been walking around and talking with their mates and friends immediately rushed to their seats as our homeroom teacher, Miss Tomioka, a young-looking woman with long brown hair and brown eyes , walked into the class.
“All rise,” announced the class representative. “Bow; Sit.”
Miss Tomioka took up a piece of chalk from the table and wrote a name on the chalkboard.
“Before we begin homeroom, I’d like to introduce a new transfer student,” she said as she placed the chalk back on the table. “Come in.”
On cue, a new figure entered the classroom. His appearance alone was enough to get everyone in the classroom, even me. Smoke-white hair and crimson red eyes with a pair of blue headphones around his neck. His hairstyle left his right eye hidden from the gaze of those whose attention he managed to drag.
“This is Naoto Kurogane, sixteen years old,” she said to the class.
“Please introduce yourself to the class,” she said to the boy.
The boy nods to the teacher and then turns to the class.
“Hello. My name is Naoto Kurugane,” he said, a smile bright enough to light up any room plastered across his face. “I just moved here from Shinshu. It’s nice to meet you all. I do hope we will be able to get along”
He lifted his hand in a friendly manner, completely revealing the white bandages that covered his hands all the way up both his arms. He somehow managed to raise even more eyebrows.
“Ok, Kurogane, your seat is at the back, right next to Matsuzaki,” she said to him.
“Thank you,” he replied to the teacher.
As he walked to his seat, all the heads in the class turned to watch him. The class filled with murmurs and gossip about him within thirty seconds of him walking in. When he took the seat next to mine, he turned to me, his smile still wide and blinding.
“I certainly hope we’ll be able to get along,” he said to me.
I ignored him, pretending he didn’t even exist. I wasn’t interested in him in the least bit. Luckily, he took the hint and looked forward, leaving me alone.
I say I wasn’t interested but for some reason, my eyes seemed to be glued to him the whole day. I watched him as he continued to smile, as he sneezed lightly, as he took notes in class, even seeing him out of class each time he left to use the bathroom.
It seemed weird to me and yet, I couldn’t avert my gaze. It was a welcome departure from staring out the window, looking at the same old scene of pink cherry blossom trees swaying in the wind, their leaves slowly getting carried away by the breeze. Somehow, the thing that drew me to his face wasn’t any of the peculiar things about him. It wasn’t his white hair or red eyes which would liken him to a demon born from one of the novels I read to pass the time, it wasn’t even his bandaged arms. No, the one thing that drew my gaze was probably the most mundane thing possible – his smile.
I never understood how people are able to smile sincerely. Are they always thinking of something that makes them happy, or do they just feel the urge to smile and let it happen. It’s not a topic that’s easy to bring up in discussion, and searching online, all I get are biological explanations and the systems behind it. What I really wanted to know was how it felt to smile sincerely.
Being an outsider on the matter, I’ve always been able to tell if people are smiling earnestly or just trying to save face. However, with him, I couldn’t tell. If I had to give words for what I saw in his eyes, it was something like ‘I’m smiling because I want to, but I don’t want to want to’.
…
The school day was bland and completely uneventful. During breaks between periods, everyone in the class seemed to swarm Naoto, bombarding him with questions. “What was it like living in Shinshu?” one would ask. “Why did you move to Tokyo? What’s with the bandages?” another would ask.
He simply sent each of them away with the same old answer each time someone new came to make the same inquiry. “It was nice. My dad got transferred for work.”
During the last period, I suddenly got a text. It was from my mom. ‘Please come home on time today’, it read. I paid the message no mind and carried on. As the last bell rang, everyone in the class was moving about, getting their things together, leaving the classroom, some in groups, some on their own until it was just me and Naoto in the room.
Naoto turned to me again. He must have thought I was sleeping, seeing as my head was down on my desk.
“Miss, class is over. Wake up,” he said to me in a gentle voice.
I let out a loud sigh, obviously portraying my irritation. I took my bag and left the classroom, leaving him alone in the room. I don’t know what got into me. He hadn’t done anything that would give me a bad impression on him. I didn’t know at the time what it was about him that I found so off-putting.
Students flooded out of the open school gates. The dynamics of the people who walked out of the gates were as numerous as the people themselves. Friends walked off while talking and laughing, couples walked hand in hand, even the loners who moved sluggishly, as though lacking a sense of purpose to drive them forward.
I made my way through the school’s intricate system of hallways. While doing so, I ran into a familiar face, Mr. Takeshita, a third year social studies teacher.
“Oh, there you are Nanase,” he said with a wide smile on his face. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“Good afternoon Mr. Takeshita,” I said, bowing my head.
He inched closer to me and placed his hand on my shoulder, moving his face closer to mine.
“I told you, you can call me Izaya,” he said.
I looked straight, making sure to avoid looking him in the eye.
“How about you come with me to the faculty lounge? Last semester, I was so busy with the third year students that I barely got to see you. I want to know more about you,” he said as the hand on my shoulder began to move up my collarbone, inching closer to my chest.
I didn’t move from the spot. He tried to coerce me to follow him, but he was cut short by the sudden interruption.
“Good afternoon sir. I was hoping you could help me,” Naoto said as he suddenly appeared from around the corner.
Mr. Takeshita abruptly let go of me.
“I’m new so this school still seems like a maze to me. I’m looking for the faculty office. Could you help me?” he asked, his face gleaming with a bright smile.
“Oh, of course,”he answered.
Naoto and Mr. Takeshita disappeared at a corner. Just before losing sight of them, Naoto turned to me and flashed me a thumbs up. I just took my bag and continued walking.
As I walked out the school gate, I stopped in my tracks. I didn’t have a set direction I wanted to walk in. I just chose one randomly and went on from there. I walked past homes and hotels, shops and businesses, cafes and restaurants, not really paying any attention to where I was going. I can’t say my mind was somewhere else at the time. It’s more like I somehow managed to turn it off completely
On my path, something managed to catch my attention. Along the store window, several small televisions were lined up. They all showed the same 24-hour news channel. The anchorwoman seemed to be standing in front of a burnt down building. In the background, there was police tape and several police officers around the building. I stopped in front of the store to see the report.
“I stand here in front of a family home in Shinpoincho that was burnt to the ground last night; one of five such incidents that occurred in residential areas that night.. The police have connected this case to several others that have occurred in the past few months. They all seem to be leading to the same person whom the media has dubbed the Tokyo Arsonist. From the lacerated and decapitated remains of the bodies that were discovered, the detectives on this case have also said that they believe that the arsonist has some relation to the infamous serial killer that appeared last year– the Tokyo Slasher. Neither of the two have been caught yet and all the police appear to have are narrow leads that mostly lead nowhere but—”
I turned away from the shop and carried on with my walk. On my phone, I updated my feed to read ‘The Tokyo Arsonist hit again. He’s so cool.’ As I updated it, I got another message from my mother.
‘Come home right now, please’, it read.
I ignored the message again and just continued walking. The sun began to set on the horizon as I reached a river. I sat down by the bank of the river, taking in the fresh air. The serene sound was regularly disturbed by the sound of the horns of one or two cars driving across the bridge nearby. I watched the sunset. The bright star struggled to maintain its dominance over the sky, inevitably losing ground. After a long while, I began my journey back home.
Before too long, I was standing in front of my house. ‘Matsuzaki’, it read on the wooden sign hanging from the small gate.
…
Crack! Whoosh! Snap! Strange sounds aren’t they? The next thing to wonder about would be why those sounds would come up. Well, that’s the sound that I’ve been forced to listen to everyday since I turned eight – my father mercilessly beating me up with his belt. It’s not just me either. Well, it was mostly me, but he sometimes beats my mother up as well, though only on the days that he gets home before I do. My dad’s the kind of maniac who gets a kick out of causing untold grief for his family. I curled up there on the floor, his intimidating shadow standing over me, my mother who appears to be covered in fresh bruises, cowering in the corner.
That whole thing about my mother asking, well, more like begging me to return home early was just so she could save her own skin. Not only that, but she doesn’t hide it either.
“You stupid, stupid child! You devil born! If you’re going to get beaten up by your father, you could at least not drag your own mother into it!” That’s what she said to me that night.
I’m not really bothered by the beatings or the abuses. No, the thing that ticks me off is how every night at the dinner table, they both decide to act as if everything that happened earlier didn’t happen. My father, typing on his phone or reading an old newspaper, my mother, her face gleaming with a fake-ass smile, and me, sitting there, trying to think of a reason to continue living, coming up short each time.
Suicide is an option I’ve considered before, on several occasions actually. That’s how my trips to the river started out. Me standing at its bank, psyching myself up, preparing to end my own life, but each time, I stopped just short. It didn’t even start from the river. Jumping off tall apartment buildings, hanging myself from a tree branch, I’ve tried several methods. But, each time, I couldn’t bring myself to finish what I had started. I guess I was waiting for someone to save me. To stop me from ending it all and instead, show me the happiness that life holds. But, each time, no one came. No one even seemed to care. Counting accurately, I’d had twenty-three failed suicide attempt, if you can call my half-assed resolve to jump off a building an attempt, before I found my way to that river.
After my twenty-fourth time chickening out, I took some time to look at the scene. It was so serene, so tranquil, I lost myself in the view. In the face of such a scene, all my problems seemed to amount to almost nothing. I took in the fresh breeze, listened to the sounds of chirping birds, bathed in the bright orange light of the setting sun. It all felt like a dream. That scene was probably the one thing that gave me reason to hold on to my sanity. It’s funny how a single experience is enough to either push someone over the edge or keep them hanging off it, though just by a hair’s length.
That night, just before going to sleep, I checked my feed to see if there were any updates. People had replied to my tweet.
Itsashi: The Tokyo Arsonist hit again. He’s so cool.
Alexa: Yeah, he’s awesome.
Jacob: Hey, what’s with that?
The police have no leads.
The arsonist could be female.
Mizuka K.: Nah, the slasher’s still the OG
Ark: Yeah.
The arsonist’s just a copycat
Fujoshi12: Maybe the slasher and arsonist are
doing each other?
Jacob: That’s too disgusting to even think about
Why must you always do this?
Harutora K.: I never got how people are just able to
cause such destruction without any
remorse
Are they inhuman?
Alexa: The arsonist isn’t a serial killer
You just don’t understand him
Ark: And you do?
You’ve never even met him
Alexa: I have too!
The arsonist sits next to me in class
Jacob: Yeah, and I have homeroom with Jack the Ripper
get real