Chapter 15: Nozomi’s ☆ Secret 3

“Nozomi-chaaan~~.”

It was a few days later.

I had started my day with a sigh before walking toward school, when I heard someone shouting from behind me.

Startled, I turned around and saw Tama hurtling at me with the speed of a cannonball.

“Waah-”

I unconsciously took a quick jump a few steps to the side and evaded her, but Tama couldn’t stop herself from going forwards and smacking right into a telephone pole.

A painful sounding thud rang through the air.

“A-Are you okay?”

I called out to her, getting a bit worried, but she stood right back up and gave me a peace sign.

“Yup. Tama is okay.”

Did she just feel no pain? I guess it’s true what they say about idiots…

While I was thinking those rude thoughts, Tama gripped me by the hand.

“Hey hey Nozomi-chan, let’s go to school together.”

She sounded strangely earnest when she offered that, so I c.o.c.ked my head to the side.

“It’s fine, but…”

The path we took to school was the same, so we’d already gone to school together a few times.

“Why?”

It wasn’t like I was friends with Tama-chan or anything.

If I said that to her though, she’d probably start crying, so I kept that line inside my head.

“Well, Nozomi-chan… it was Tama’s fault… also, n.o.body else at school notices that Tama is strange. So Nozomi-chan is the only one at school Tama can be real friends with, like Mamarin and Kagami-nee… okay?”

As usual, I had no idea what she was talking about.

“Also, if Tama is here, then Tama can protect Nozomi-chan.”

She was giving off a bright smile, and I honestly had no idea why.

“So you better not come any closer! If you bully Nozomi-chan, Tama will take care of you!”

Tama-chan screamed at her surroundings for some reason. I couldn’t understand this either, but I could tell that she wasn’t doing it out of any ill will.

My peaceful, quiet days continued for a few days after that.

Your father is coming back.

Cram school had started again, and on the way back home one day, I received that depressing message.

He’ll be staying for a week starting tonight. So make sure you’re a good girl.

Right, right.

If I wasn’t a good girl, mom would be embarra.s.sed.

She wanted to go and show that dirty creature I called “dad” that she had raised me right, and then she was going to cling all over him and fish for compliments.

(I really don’t want to go back…)

Sometimes I wished I never had a cell phone.

There were still quite a few people in our cla.s.s who weren’t allowed by their parents to have a cell phone yet, but this thing honestly isn’t interesting at all.

All it did was allow your parents to keep constant watch over you and to mail you whenever anything happened.

Each one of those mails ended up throwing my life for a loop.

(I don’t want to see dad, and I don’t want to see mom. I don’t want to keep pretending to be a good girl, to keep pretending to smile when I don’t feel like it… I’m just tired. It’d be better to just lie down and die. I don’t want to go home…)

But if I got home late, I’d just be scolded.

As an act of protest though, I ended up taking a roundabout way home, and I eventually found myself hobbling along the road under the light of the street lamps after the sun had already set.

I soon came upon one of the many streams that ran through Ame-no-Nuboko City.

There was a gentle rivulet of water flowing a short distance from the paved road, almost as if it had been separated from civilization.

The air was thick with the smell of earth. I never really walked toward this stream, but today I found Tama-chan there.

She was plopped down onto the bare earth, looking as beautiful as a G.o.ddess underneath the moonlight.

It was unusual for this season, but there were also a bunch of frogs bouncing around her, croaking.

Tama-chan had a huge smile on her face. She looked like she was having lots of fun with a frog on her head and in her open palm.

Hey, Tama-chan.

You’re not only an idiot, but a bad girl who sneaks out at night to play like this.

But… you seem like you have so much fun every day, you’re liked by everyone, and… that’s just a bit unfair.

How can you be this happy?

“Ah, it’s Nozomi-chan.”

Tama-chan seemed to have noticed me, and beckoned to me like this was the most natural thing in the world.

But I got frightened, and not wanting to become conscious of my own jealousy, I ran away.

It was nighttime of the same day.

Luckily, my dad didn’t end up coming home until quite late.

He was, after all, an undisciplined man who had a hard time keeping promises.

My mom should’ve known that from the beginning, but of course despite that she was in a pretty bad mood now.

She was sitting in front of the dinner table with a splendid feast laid out in front of her, but she was just watching TV while grumbling about something or other. I really didn’t want to get close to her, so I shut myself in my room.

I laid out all my cram school homework and began dealing with them one by one, feeling myself wearing down.

(It’d be better if dad just didn’t come home.)

If I really had some kind of power that n.o.body else had… then it’d be nice if my wish could be granted.

My mom and dad were twenty years apart in age.

My mom was the older one, and originally she was my dad’s boss at a company. After a huge love affair, she ended up getting married and quitting her job.

My dad filled the role that my mom had left open at the company and worked hard, but he was less skilled and had less experience compared to my mom, so he failed quite a lot.

He was always compared with my mom at work, and my mom also knew that he was doing a bad job. So, sometimes she ended up scolding him for it.

Their relationship grew more and more tense, and eventually, my dad stopped coming home very often.

And my mom… well, she began to get quite suspicious.

When they couldn’t see each other’s faces much anymore, she felt distrust start to well up within her.

Each time my dad came home, my mom would lay out all the alleged evidence that he had been cheating on her, saying that she couldn’t help being worried about it. She would raise a ruckus about it, acting like a child.

Then, she would act all arrogant, telling him he would never find anybody on earth better than her. She would also force me to join in on her little act. The atmosphere was truly stifling, and my dad began to distance himself more and more from home.

(They’re so ridiculous…)

My dad seemed to have finally come home. I heard voices echo up from below.

There was my mom’s shrill voice, spouting out some strange, incoherent things that I honestly didn’t understand.

And there was my dad’s resigned mumbling in response.

I covered my ears.

Shut up, shut up…!

“Nozomi, Nozomi! You’re dad’s home! Come show your face downstairs!”

There was a pounding at my door.

I didn’t want to hear my mom’s happy voice anymore.

I didn’t want to be paraded in front of my dad so I could put on the good girl act that had been engraved into me with blood and tears.

I honestly knew what was going on.

I could see things that other people couldn’t because I always looked away from what was happening in reality around me.

I didn’t want to see this ugly, dull reality.

When I averted my gaze from everyone around me, I instead ended up seeing things squirming about that didn’t belong to this world.

It was an escape from reality.

I could see ghosts. That was my one secret, my one trait that differentiated me from everyone else. It was my only reminder of who I really was, of what I was really like.

It was the one line I could draw myself on this painting of me that was otherwise crafted to be a perfect representation of a “good girl.”

I knew this wasn’t a good thing.

But, if I didn’t draw that line, then I would cease to be myself.

The I that I knew would vanish.

Instead, I would just become like wet clay, allowing my mom to mold me into whatever false shape she wanted.

And to me, death was a better fate than that.

–

“Nozomi-chan.”

–

Suddenly, I realized something.

My window was open.

I saw the full moon floating in the sky above.

I saw the curtains waving in the breeze.

A silent chill crept into my room raising gooseb.u.mps all over my skin.

And there, right on my windowsill under the moonlight, sat Tama-chan in her inhuman beauty.

I had many questions immediately float up in my head. How had she gotten up here? What was she doing here?

“Nozomi-chan, do you want to go far away?”

When Tama-chan looked serious, she was surprisingly beautiful.

“Tama is a G.o.d, although she’s not very powerful yet, but someday she will be… so if you wish for it, Tama will know. Nozomi-chan is a friend, so Tama wants to help Nozomi-chan. Is that… not good? Does Nozomi-chan not want to be Tama’s friend?”

My strange cla.s.smate mumbled out those words, almost sounding like she was talking to herself.

“Let’s go in a big adventure. Tama will take you to a place so far away that none of the adults can go there. Tama will grant Nozomi-chan’s wish.”