able to go to the toilet all by himself, even in the middle of the night, and he never wet his bed again. As for Masako, she was surprised at how well she’d been able to help Yoshio overcome his fear. Now she felt even more determined to conquer her own.
A FEAR OF HEIGHTS
When Masako sat down and thought about it, the Prajna mask wasn’t the only thing she was afraid of. She was also pretty scared of heights. To be fair, quite a lot of people are scared of heights. But in Masako’s case, the fear was a bit more extreme. Even if she had a really firm grip on the handrail, she could never bring herself to look down whenever she was standing somewhere high up. She’d certainly tried on many occasions to have a look at the ground far below. But somehow she was scared that if she did, then she might suddenly feel a strange and sudden urge to climb over the rail and step off. And just the thought of that made her want to scream. There were also many cases where she was too afraid to even grab hold of the handrail. After all, what if the part she was holding on to suddenly were to break off and send her plummeting face down to the ground below?
A couple of days later, on the way home from school, Masako told Bunichi about her idea.
“You’re scared of a lot of things, aren’t you Masako?”
he replied, unhelpfully.
“So what if I am? I can’t help it, can I?” she said. “But at least I can try to do something about it. Or would you prefer I try to do something about your fear, huh? I could drop a few spiders down the back of your shirt and see how you like that!”
Bunichi turned pale at the bare mention of the word “spider”.
“No no, please, anything but that,” he pleaded. “I can’t stand spiders. Just thinking about them makes me sick!”
“See! Even you are afraid of things. So how about it? Will you climb somewhere really high with me?”
“Yeah, I’ll go. So long as you promise me you won’t ever do what you just said. You know, with the… spiders.”
“Okay, I’ll let you off.”
“But where do you have in mind? Do you even know of anywhere high that doesn’t have any handrails?”
Masako actually did know just the place.
“The clock tower, of course!”
“What?! That’s so dangerous,” said Bunichi, clearly taken aback. The clock tower was located on the roof of their school. It was an old tower, with the hands on the clock permanently stuck at 9:15, and it was about three storeys high!
“But that place is off limits!” Bunichi said with a worried look on his face. “Because it’s so dangerous!”
When Masako and Bunichi reached the stairs that led to the machine room at the back of the clock tower, they noticed how very narrow they were. And not only were they narrow, but there were no handrails along the stairs and no walls on either side! Perhaps it had been designed that way to make it easy to build, but it certainly wasn’t designed for being very safe.
“Are you going to go up there?” asked Bunichi.
“Of course. Why, are you scared?”
“Of course I’m not scared! I just don’t want us to be caught and get into trouble, that’s all.”
“Don’t worry. The place is only off-limits because they’re worried about boys like you going up there and being stupid and reckless,” said Masako, determined to convince Bunichi. “But we’re just going to go up there and then come right back down.”
“But off-limits is off-limits!”
“And rules are there to be broken,” said Masako, bringing the conversation to an end. It didn’t matter to her that her argument made no sense at all.
THE CLOCK TOWER
When they reached the roof, the autumn breeze blew a chill through their clothes, and they stood for a moment together, gazing up at the tower.
“Can you climb up that high?” asked Bunichi.
“No problem,” said Masako with false confidence, as she did her best to stop her legs from shaking. Then off she went inside the tower with an air of cheerfulness that was just as false.
“Hey, hold on,” called out Bunichi behind her. “It’s dangerous, let’s go together.”
As they climbed the dusty steps, Masako took in the view. She could see the low green hills on the outskirts of town, all the different shades of foliage under the autumn sky and the long white strip of road that snaked its way into town — past the church, the fire station and the watchtower — and then wound its way to the front door of the school.
“Oh!” Masako let out a gasp as she suddenly felt dizzy and needed to rest on the stairs.
“You shouldn’t look down,” said Bunichi, grabbing her shoulders. “What should we do, Masako?” he asked her. “Should we go back down?”
But they had already got quite far up. In fact, there was only one floor left until they reached the machine room. Masako decided it would be a shame to turn back, so she shook her head and said, “No, let’s keep going!”
“But you can’t even stand up!”
“Well then, please can you take my hand?”
Bunichi hesitantly reached out to take her hand and helped her to her feet, then slowly they continued their ascent. As they went, there were several landings between flights of stairs, each with an overhang and a concrete divider about forty centimetres high, and when they reached the last one, there were only twenty steps left to the machine room. But right at that moment, Bunichi — who had been walking ahead of Masako — let out a piercing scream, let go of Masako’s hand and started waving his arms around frantically.
“It’s a spi… A spi… spider’s web!” he blurted out pointing to a huge cobweb in the corner of the landing.
“Be careful!” yelled Masako.
But Bunichi was too busy grappling with the spider’s web to even notice how close his feet were getting to the concrete divider. He lost his footing, tripped over the divider, and his body went sailing over the overhang.
“Help,” cried Bunichi.
“Oh no!” screamed Masako, forgetting her fear and scrambling to the edge, where Bunichi’s fingers were clinging on. “Hang on tight, Bunichi!”
Bravely, Masako grabbed hold of both of Bunichi’s hands and tried to pull him up with all her strength. She knew that, if he were to lose his grip, then both of them would end up falling several flights to the ground.
