Thomas Randall - The Waking

The one who’d spoken first, a short, doughy-faced guy, leered at her and waggled his eyebrows. “Why? Did you want to visit one of us, bonsai?”

Kara frowned. The piggish behavior bothered her, but not as much as the nickname. “Why did you call me that?” she asked, thinking of the soccer girls, and Ume, who’d been so bitchy at first and then tried to be nice.

“Everyone’s calling you that,” muttered the one she’d startled. “Bonsai. I wouldn’t complain. It’s not nearly as bad as some of the things they could be calling you.”

“I’ll try to keep that in mind. I’m sorry I bothered you,” Kara said, half-scowling. She started to walk away.

“Bonsai!” one of the boys called. When she didn’t turn, he tried again. “Kara.”

She froze. They all knew her, didn’t they? Everyone at the school, whether or not they’d ever even seen her face. She’d only spoken to a handful of her schoolmates, but every single one of them knew who she was. It creeped her out, more than a little.

“What?” she asked, turning to face the three boys again.

“No visitors are allowed in the dorm after eight o’clock, except for other non-resident students. That’s you. If you’re part of a club or study group, you can stay until ten, and sometimes, if you get special permission, they allow non-resident students to sleep over with friends on weekends. But you’d only be allowed in the girls’ wing. We have shared common areas, but you wouldn’t be allowed into the boys’ wing.”

I’m heartbroken, Kara thought. But the guy didn’t deserve sarcasm. His friend had been obnoxious, but this one had at least been polite.

“Thank you,” she said.

His friends had already started tentatively up the steps, looking back impatiently. They behaved like she wasn’t even there. Kara returned the favor, turning to stroll away from the school. She had gotten the answer she’d wanted. Living with her father would give her the best of both worlds. When all she desired was a quiet, safe place of her own in which to curl up, she’d find that at their little house. But if she made any real friends among the boarding students, they could hang out in the dorm as well.

She wasn’t sure how it would work with local kids who attended Monju-no-Chie School. Walking around downtown or hanging out by the bay might work on the weekends, but she had a feeling she wouldn’t be getting a lot of invitations for movie night. Study groups might be the only social life available during the week.

Maybe Miho and Sakura would end up being her friends, or Hachiro, but it was only the first day. Anything could happen. For now, Kara was on her own.

Strolling across the grounds, she found herself walking once again along the path that led around the side of the school, near the woods. The dark, recessed doorway where Sakura had been hiding to smoke a cigarette before class seemed much darker now, and forbidding. But she’d come this way to take a look at the ancient prayer shrine at night.

She’d explored the area several times since they had moved to Japan, and she’d taken plenty of pictures. But at night, the whole world seemed different. The lights across the bay might be firelight or oil lamps; she could be seeing back across time. History always seemed to linger in the air. No matter how many computers the school had, what advances in technology the country might achieve, Japan always seemed an enigma to her. All of the engineering advances crafted by modern Japan seemed little more than a quaint mask of progress, and it seemed like the country’s rich, textured history and traditions would always hide behind it.

She stopped to look at the shadows of the old shrine, moonlight filtering down through the branches above. Though part of it had been built from stone, the shrine had a wooden frame, and she knew the wood itself could not truly be ancient. Time and weather would have ruined it many times over the centuries, but someone-monks, maybe-had rebuilt it just as frequently. Even now, candles burned inside lanterns, and their ghostly light flickered with every gust of wind.

Kara took a deep breath. Somehow the shrine eased her mind. The monks who’d first built it, and the people who prayed here, worshipped very differently than she did, but she believed that they probably prayed for the same things she would. Peace and love, patience and courage. Those were things everyone needed, no matter what god they believed in.

A ripple of laughter came from behind her and she turned to see a quartet of figures hurrying up the walkway toward the front of the school. More students returning from cram school.

A tiny sound came from the shrine-out of the corner of her eye she saw something moving-and Kara spun, breath hitching, heart racing. But the small thing that moved out from the shadows and flowers of the shrine was only a cat.

“Oh my God,” Kara said, lapsing into English. “You scared the crap out of me.”

The cat arched its back and gazed up at her, eyes glinting in the light of the moon and the flickering candles. Kara smiled and knelt down, reaching out for it. She preferred dogs. Cats always had that imperious attitude, like they were the rulers of the world, and occasionally allowed humans to open a can of tuna for them and change their litter. She half-expected it to hiss or scratch, so she moved her hand slowly and was surprised when it allowed her to stroke its red and copper fur.

“What are you doing out here, pretty?” she whispered.

But already the cat seemed bored. It slid toward her, brushed against her legs, and then started down the path that led to the bay. To the right there were woods, and to the left, the neighborhood around the school and the road that led to Miyazu City. The school stood silently behind her, and down the gentle slope ahead, the water lapped against the shore.

The cat trotted toward the water and Kara followed, mainly for the serenity the bay provided. She needed to get back before her father started worrying about her, but first she wanted to enjoy the spring night and the moonlit bay for a few minutes. The cat seemed to have the same idea.

But Kara had another reason for coming down here. One that did nothing to soothe her. She’d been pretending to herself that this was only a stroll, to check out the grounds and figure out if anyone else liked to wander after dark. Though parents and teachers discouraged kids her age from dating-it got in the way of school-Kara knew that wouldn’t stop teenagers. They might not be hooking up at parties, but there had to be at least some action going on with all the hormones swirling around.

But she’d known all along it wasn’t just a stroll. And she didn’t really expect to find anyone stealing kisses by the bay.

Not with the other shrine that had been put together on the shore of the bay, at the edge of the woods. Photos and stuffed animals and cards written in kanji. Bits of calligraphy. Flowers for a dead girl.

Did Akane come down here with a guy? Kara wondered. Did whoever did it mean to kill her, or just bully her somehow, and she ended up dead? Her father had warned her, even given her articles to read about the bullying that had become such a problem in many Japanese schools.

She’d wanted to think that anyone could have discovered Akane on the shore, maybe tried to rape her or something, and then killed her. A group of college students from the city. A fisherman. Anyone. And she supposed that was possible, but glancing around, it seemed unlikely. Who would come down to this spot except for students?

The question echoed in her mind, frightening her. Had Akane been murdered by her own schoolmates, and if so, had they graduated… or were there still killers at Monju-no-Chie School?

The cat shook her from her thoughts, brushing against her legs again before gliding down to the water’s edge. The wind caused tiny waves that slapped the shore, and the cat darted away in surprise. As though annoyed, it cast a glance at the bay over its shoulder, then walked over to investigate the shrine Akane’s friends had built in her memory.