My Modern Kaidan

Chapter 8

School has a strange air to it now. The halls are filled with a hushed silence that could or could not be my imagination. My mind becomes my own worst enemy, and I find myself wondering if everyone knows that Miyako spent the evening at my house before she disapeared, and that the police questioned my parents. I become fixated on that night, picturing Miyako clutching her bag to her chest, a bag full of my dad's books. I stare blankly at her empty chair in front of me in fifth period, lost in my own thoughts.

"I asked Kenji if he wants to do drills with us," Mikey says to me at the end of the week.

"Huh?" I say, even though his words have registered with me.

Kenji has become a stoic figure in our classroom. I don't know whether he was seeing Miyako or not, but it seems like people have started to treat him the same way they treat me, silencing their words when we come into view, erecting an invisible boundary everyone can feel.

Before I know it, Kenji is making his way over to us. He takes Miyako's empty desk and turns it to sit in a circle with us so we can do study drills until class lets out. I find myself offering him an awkward smile before I turn my eyes away entirely, looking somewhere, anywhere else.

My eyes settle on the floor, at our grouped sneakers, and for some reason, come to rest on Kenji's slumped over backpack, unzipped just enough for me to see what's inide.

I freeze, clutching my pencil in my hand with white knuckles before I try to play it off, the back of my mind humming with electric thought. Inside the backpack are several books, at the front, a copy of Oyuki, the same book Miyako had asked my dad to sign, with the same telltale tear.