“What’s the matter?” asked Masako, surprised.
“At the corner of the hallway, there’s a man’s head on the floor,” sobbed Yoshio.
“What?” said Masako, sitting upright. “That’s impossible. You must have just dreamt it!”
“No, it’s really there… covered in blood, and rolling around on the floor.”
Overwhelmed with fear, Yoshio threw himself into Masako’s arms, trembling. Masako tried to be brave, but she was so scared by Yoshio’s story that she had to make an effort to stop her teeth from chattering.
FATHER’S SECRET
“But it really can’t be true,” said Masako, trying to convince herself as well as Yoshio. “A man’s head in the hallway. I mean, it just can’t be true.”
But Yoshio seemed genuinely terrified. He wasn’t playing.
For a moment, Masako considered going to the bathroom with Yoshio again. But what would she do if there really was a man’s head on the floor? She even considered waking her parents, who were asleep in the next room, and asking them to come along as well. But if she did that, then Yoshio would know she was scared as well, and she didn’t want that. She needed to be strong for his sake, so she could set a good example — no matter how scared she really was inside.
“I’ll show you how ridiculous it is,” she said, hopping out of bed.
“You’re not really going, are you?” said Yoshio with his eyes wide-open. “You’re not really going to go to the bathroom?”
“Yes I am.”
With that, Masako took hold of Yoshio’s wrists and tried to make him stand. But Yoshio wouldn’t move. In fact, he was so scared that his body was frozen still, so he couldn’t get out of bed even if he’d wanted to.
After reassuring Yoshio that everything would be fine, Masako stepped out into the hallway with Yoshio in tow. There was no light out there, and in the dark, for just a second, she felt as if there might actually be something there. But she’d never been scared to go to the bathroom before, so she was determined not to be frightened this time either.
“Things look scary only because you think they’re scary,” she whispered to Yoshio.
Together, they peered around the corner of the hallway and along to the bathroom.
“See!” said Masako. “There’s nothing there.”
Yoshio blinked his eyes and grabbed hold of his sister’s body, then took a good long look along the hallway.
“That’s so strange,” he said. “I swear it was there earlier.”
Masako wondered why on earth Yoshio might have imagined a man’s head lying in the hallway. Surely there had to be a reason. But she knew there’d be no point in asking Yoshio, who most likely didn’t know the answer himself.
When the next morning came, Masako left the house together with her father, just like she did every day. The train station was on her way to school, so she could walk and chat with him every morning. Masako really enjoyed those chats, and she felt particularly close to her father. So she figured it would be all right to tell him about what had happened the night before. She thought he might even know how to help Yoshio overcome his fears. But unfortunately, her father knew more about engineering than he did about heads on hallway floors, so he was unable to suggest anything.
When they reached the station, Masako said goodbye to her father and carried on walking over the level crossing. For no particular reason, she turned to look back at the station, and when she did she got a bit of a surprise — she could see her father standing on the platform just like every other morning, but this time he was on the wrong platform waiting for a train going in the opposite direction. Masako wondered if he’d been deep in thought and gone there accidentally, but that seemed unlikely.
What’s going on? thought Masako. Maybe he just needs to stop by somewhere before work. But then, if that was the case, surely he would have left the house earlier than normal.
Masako couldn’t help but wonder whether she’d just seen something she wasn’t supposed to, so she quickly turned around before her father could see her looking. And when she got to school, the thought still bothered her. All day long she kept wondering why her father wasn’t going to work and why he was hiding something. In fact, she wondered so much, it was almost impossible to concentrate on her classes.
“Hey Masako!” said Bunichi a little later on. “Are you all right? You don’t look well.”
“Oh, I’m fine,” said Masako, but Bunichi wasn’t convinced.
VOICES IN THE NIGHT
All day long, Masako had wondered whether she should tell her mother about the incident at the station. And by the time she arrived home, she’d decided it was the right thing to do. Funnily enough, though, her mother didn’t seem in the least bit surprised.
“Well Masako, there’s something I didn’t tell you about before, because I didn’t want you to worry,” she said with a frown on her face.
“What is it?”
“Well, it’s not such a big deal as it might sound, but your father quit his job.”
“He did? Why?”
“Well, his company didn’t have as much work to do as they had before, so they needed to let some of the workers go.”
“Let them go? But that means he didn’t quit, right? He was fired!”
“I guess so. But there’s really nothing to worry about. Your father is lucky. He’s a skilled engineer. So he’ll have no trouble at all finding a new job. In fact, he’s already received an offer from another company.”
“Oh, I see.”
Masako couldn’t help but think it might have been better for her parents to tell her what was going on.
I’m an adult, too, she thought to herself, so I’m old enough to be told things as important as that. She felt especially frustrated with her father, and wished he would stop seeing her as just a child. So she decided to confront him about this on the way to the station the next day.
“So, dad, have you already decided on your next job?”
she said, out of the blue.
Her father’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Oh, so you know about that?” he said, then laughed out loud. “I guess you must have overheard me when I came home the other night, did you? I came home a little drunk and was probably talking louder than I should have, and complaining about how the company was going to ‘give me the chop’. I probably woke you up.”
Suddenly, Masako understood where Yoshio’s night vision might have come from.
“Did you say ‘give me the chop’?” she asked in a voice that was also a little too loud.
“I did,” answered her father. “But there’s no need to shout!”
“But I figured it out! The head Yoshio saw — it was yours!”
