Because suddenly, Yoji Kaneda came wading into the circle of girls, shouting, “What’s going on in here?” I wasn’t at my best, but here he was anyway—in the girls’ room. He ignored the screams for him to get out and pushed through to find me covered in blood—Maki’s blood—in the middle of the crowd. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Shut up!” Kan shouted, trying to drown him out.
“No, you shut up! What were you going to do to her? No, don’t tell me: you were going to crucify her because of Sano. But do you know how crazy that sounds? Did you know that somebody sent a toe to Sano’s house?”
A shock ran through the room.
Through me too.
A toe?
You mean somebody cut off his toe?
And sent it to his house?
But I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t known. “No!” someone gasped, and then everybody started to scream all at once.
“You didn’t know?” Yoji said, a puzzled look on his face. “Maybe I wasn’t supposed to mention it. Forget I said anything! I’ll be in trouble for sure.” He sounded like an idiot, but he had managed to deflect attention from me. The girls started pressing him for details, but he just laughed. “No, no. Forget I said anything. Ask the cops. But no more bullying people like this. You’re finished here.” So saying, he grabbed me by the arm and dragged me out of the bathroom. In the confusion, they couldn’t stop him. Bye, Kan. Bye, Miyon. Narucchi. Nakajima, Shima. They had all been such good friends…
Yoji pulled me down the hall. When he finally let go of my hand, I realized where we were. The nurse’s office. Why? Then I remembered the blood on my knee.
“You should let them look at that,” he said. I felt my face go red, but there was nothing to do but tell the truth.
“That’s not my blood, Yoji.”
“It’s not? Whose is it?”
“Maki’s.”
“Maki? Maki Saito? How? Why?”
“It’s a long story…”
“Was she in the bathroom?”
“I think she’s still there.” A lot of girls had wandered in and out, and I wasn’t exactly sure.
“Then I’m going back to see if she’s okay. But what did you do to her, Katsura?”
“I guess I hurt her.”
“You stupid—You stay here and think about what you’ve done,” he said, laying the palm of his hand on my forehead for a moment, as if miming a slap. Then he turned and ran off down the hall. I could hear him bounding up the stairs two at a time.
And then I didn’t know how to feel.
Happy? Sad? Both at once?
He had saved me, which was a good thing…
I would just leave it at that.
I guess.
But there I was, abandoned outside the nurse’s office, and as I was standing there thinking about what to do next, this teacher—I didn’t know his name—came bolting down the hall. Not good! I was sure he’d say something to me, but then he passed right by, ignoring me. He pounded on the door to the nurse’s office and then opened it. And as he did, I caught sight of Maki inside. She had made it out of the bathroom ahead of me and come straight here. There she sat with a big patch of gauze taped to her nose—at least it looked really big compared to her tiny face. The tape was still white, but the gauze was already bright red. From either side, her eyes were looking out—right at me. It was like they were shooting some invisible laser, and when it hit me, my heart stopped.
In the two terrifying seconds before my life ended, I knew with complete certainty that Maki and her shattered nose would follow me into the next life and spend eternity devising the proper punishment for my crime.
But what was the appropriate punishment for destroying an absolutely perfect nose—a nose a model would kill to have?
Would I get to pick it myself?
4
A lot of other stuff happened, and when it was all over, and night had come and I was in bed, curled up there in the dark, I suddenly realized that someone was standing at the foot of my bed—Sano! But not exactly. A pale, white Sano face was floating silently above me, bending low, reaching out for my bare feet. He took hold of my left ankle with an iron grip, but his hand was icy cold, and I realized he must be dead. I wanted to cry out, but I couldn’t. What was he doing? But almost as soon as this question occurred to me, I realized he was pulling a single white thread from the arch of my left foot, a thick piece of cotton thread that somehow seemed to be coming from my body. It seemed to come from somewhere inside my chest, through my body, to my left foot. And Sano seemed to be pulling it out of me, monyomonyomonyosui! It felt as though the thread were wound around my guts, and as he pulled, my insides dissolved into mush. First my stomach. My belly seemed to be getting hot and slowly melting. As my lungs unraveled and shrank, my breathing grew shallow. My organs seemed to be dissolving one after the other, and my body shriveled wherever one disappeared. Then I realized my heart was melting, and I panicked. Sano’s blank face made me feel sick with fear. I wanted to tell him to stop, to get out of my room, but my body had gone limp. Then the thread began to empty out my neck, and I couldn’t even turn to look at him. I lay on my back, staring up at the dark ceiling. I would die. Sano would empty me and I would die. My body would unravel into a single strand, and I would die. A single, long, white thread.
What would become of me? I had no idea.
I had no idea, but I was suddenly really sad and I began to cry. I wanted to
