This is a story I heard from my master. It was the spring of my first year in university. Two weeks had passed since enrollment, and I was just starting to get used to the confusing rhythm of college life. All around the campus, recruitment signs for cultural and athletic clubs stood like bamboo shoots after the rain. While the aggressive tactics once seen from downtown touts had quieted down, you could still feel the desperate heat of various clubs trying not to let any freshmen slip away. Feeling somewhat out of place in that atmosphere, I was walking near the university hall with its cafeteria during a weekday lunch break when a tabby cat meowed and tried to cross in front of me. Immediately, a group of female students surrounded it, chanting how cute it was. With so many students around, someone must have been feeding them; there seemed to be a few such stray cats on campus. I turned my toes to leave before the university co-op staff member, who was always in a huff about something, came out to chase them away. That was when I thought I caught a glimpse of something black at the edge of my vision and looked over. The campus health center, located right next to the university hall, came into view. The black thing seemed to slip smoothly into the shadow of that building. If it had just been a person’s shadow, I wouldn’t have cared. But the receptor inside me that perceived things not of this world gave a faint twitch, and I realized it. The health center was a small, single-story building. I walked over quietly and went around to the back, but no one was there. No one was walking away, either. The black shadow had vanished. "It was just my imagination." I couldn't bring myself to believe that. In truth, ever since entering this university, I had experienced such black things flashing at the edge of my vision countless times. But whenever I looked toward them, they would vanish as if escaping behind a building or into a doorway. It was too unreliable to be certain that something was definitely there, yet it had a strange presence that made it impossible to dismiss as an illusion. I didn't feel scared. I just felt a sense of foreboding. Standing alone in front of the deserted health center amidst the commotion centered around the cat, an indescribable sense of alienation welled up inside me. "You see strange, invisible things. You always will. And it will surely confuse your life. Even so, please don't close your eyes." The words someone had once said to me wrapped around my body like briars, freezing my feet in place. Those words must have once held warmth, but now they were painful. They bound me like a curse.
That afternoon, after my fourth-period class ended, I left the department building. As I headed toward the bicycle parking lot, I wondered if I should drop by a club today. A male friend I’d made in my major had invited me to join the literature club together, but he had quickly lost interest and switched to a more laid-back club. Meanwhile, I was too lazy to do even that and simply stayed in the literature club out of sheer habit. As long as it met the conditions of having a moderate connection with people without overly interfering with my personal time, anything was fine—even if it had been the "Ant Observation Club." Without any rush, pushing my bicycle rather than riding it, I sluggishly made my way down the path toward the club building. That area was always dusty because of the athletic field where the rugby team ran around. Around me were other people heading to their clubs after classes, many of them carrying convenience store plastic bags. The vending machine at the club building was the type where a cup dropped down and a beverage was poured into it, but this machine was a habitual coin-swallower. You’d put in a hundred-yen coin, the "Please Press" lamp wouldn’t light up, and pressing the return button did nothing. If you told the co-op, they’d probably refund you, but if they asked for proof you put the money in, you’d be stuck. Above all, the thought of walking all the way out to the edge of the campus to the club building only to have to walk back to the university hall made you think, "Ah, a hundred yen is fine," and in the end, you just swallowed your losses. Having learned this, everyone bought their drinks beforehand. I realized I was getting a little hungry and thought about going to the convenience store. That was when I saw something strange right in front of me. No, rather than in front of me, I should say overhead. There was a tall lighting pole along the path, and someone was sitting right on top of it. It was high enough that falling would mean serious injury or, worse, death, yet that person was sitting there calmly, gazing off into the distance. It was a woman dressed in a black shirt, a black hat, and hot pants. What on earth is that? I involuntarily stopped and looked up. There was a wind, so her shirt was flapping violently. People around us noticed, too, pointing and whispering as they looked up. Since coming to college, I’d realized there were incomparably more weird people here than in high school, but I’d never seen anyone put their body on the line like this. A pair of girls walking ahead of me called out to the top of the pole and waved. The woman on top, who hadn't seemed to notice at first, turned around as if snapping out of a trance, smiled faintly, and waved back. The two girls let out squeals of delight and walked away. The woman, skillfully wrapping her legs around the pole, narrowed her eyes against the wind and shifted her gaze back into the distance. Feeling uneasy, I walked past the side of the pole. Her profile, looking off into the distance, had an aloof atmosphere, and I felt like I had seen that face somewhere before. Catching up to the two girls walking ahead, I asked them, "Do you know her?" "Not at all," came the reply.
So there are weird people around. Thinking that, even after entering the club building, I couldn't get her out of my mind. When I gestured and asked a senior in the club room about the person I had just seen, he nodded and said, "Ah, the fairy." Another senior chimed in. Apparently, she was a famous person around the university. Every now and then, such eccentric behavior was witnessed on campus. Hence, the nickname "Fairy." "I heard she's a graduate student in the literature department." "You see her in the science department, too." "Eh, isn't she from the agriculture department?" ...It seemed she haunted everywhere. Suddenly much more interested in this bizarre figure, I left the club room to catch another glimpse of the campus fairy. The club room was on the third floor, so I stepped out onto the terrace of the outdoor staircase we usually used and looked down toward the lighting pole. However, her figure was no longer on top of the pole.
That night, I woke up gasping from a nightmare. In the dim gloom before dawn, I let out a deep breath and sat up in bed. I remembered. That profile. That pale face I had seen in the downtown area, walking at the head of things not of this world. The person who had glanced at me without a second look when I spoke to her, telling me to "line up in the back." I want to see her again. Staring intently at the curtain where the twilight was seeping through, I found myself thinking this intensely. Why? I want to see that person again. ◆
"That's what I told you," said a friend from the same department, walking ahead of me while acting all familiar, leaning against another friend. It was a long hallway in the general education building. I smiled and started to approach the two of them to make an appropriate witty remark, when I suddenly stopped. I thought I caught a glimpse of something black at the edge of my vision. Not again. Not that. I darted my eyes around, but the black thing vanished as if escaping into the doorway of an open classroom. "What's wrong?" My friend turned around and asked. "No, nothing." In their gaze, there was a faint hint of something looking at a foreign object. As I started walking again, I felt a sharp realization that while I was pretending to be a friendly student, I was fundamentally, completely different from the two people walking ahead of me. Something like heavy lead slowly settled in the pit of my stomach. The lead accumulating in my daily life like this would surely one day drag me deep down into the earth. As we left the education building, I told them I had a place to be and parted ways with the two. Thinking I might go to a second-hand bookstore, I headed toward the bicycle parking lot when I saw the black thing move just on the other side of a protruding part of the wall right in front of me. I glared sharply in that direction. Give me a break. I shouted inside my head. That shout vanished without leaving an echo in my mind. A woman in a black hat stood right in front of me. She wore a striped T-shirt that showed off her body line, and the same hot pants as before. The fairy. I held my breath. The fairy was facing me, looking at the exact same spot. At a part of the plain wall. The black thing was no longer visible. "Um—" When I spoke to her, she turned her gaze quietly toward me. She had a sharp, glaring look in her eyes and had a cigarette in her mouth. White smoke slowly curled upward. She plucked the cigarette with her fingertips and said, "What?" "Did you... see that just now?" "..." She didn't answer immediately, bringing the cigarette back to her mouth. *We met once before, didn't we? In the night town.* Just as I was about to ask that, the sound of sudden rain made me look up at the sky. *Patter, patter...* In an instant, small raindrops enveloped the surroundings like a veil. She and I stood facing each other in the rain. The surrounding students avoided us as if we were in their way, walking past without breaking into a run and without even looking up at the sky. "What is this?" Before I could think whether I should ask her that, my mouth moved on its own. It wasn't raining. No. I should say that raindrops as physical matter weren't falling. Not a single drop of rain fell on my hair or forehead, and amidst the continuous rain, my body didn't get wet at all. When I opened my palms in front of me, it was the exact same. Not a single person around us noticed the rain. Yet, the thin streams of flowing rain were certainly reflected in my eyes, and my ears certainly picked up the delicate sound of rain. "This is what I'm seeing," she opened her mouth. It wasn't the cold, dismissive tone she had used in the night town when she told me to "line up in the back," but it was a voice lacking any warmth. "I'm not doing well. I'm scattering a bit." She gently touched beneath her left eye. "You shouldn't get close. Someone like you who 'sees'." With that, she glanced over at the wall. The place where the black thing had disappeared. "Is this... an illusion of the rain?" "We're having a dream." She took the cigarette from her mouth and looked up at the sky. In the corners of her eyes, I thought I caught a flicker of the brightness a child has when looking at a toy. "The campus is... dreaming of rain." With those words, she started walking. She averted her gaze from me and tried to leave. I had something to ask her. At that moment, the only thing floating in my mind was that urgent feeling. I hadn't figured out what to ask. I just knew that she knew the answer to my question. "Please wait." As I tried to chase after her, she turned around and said, "You asked if I could see what just happened, right?" Did she mean the black thing on the wall? I nodded. "What did you see?" "Something black. Though it disappeared right away." She pointed the finger holding the cigarette at me and made a provocative face. It was the first youthful expression she had shown. "You didn't see it. People like you are the most dangerous. Even if you notice, pretend you don't see anything." Throwing those words at me in a thoroughly dismissive tone, she walked away without even looking at my reaction. I should have had the energy to push back. Even against this. Yet my feet wouldn't move. "I didn't see it," I muttered, watching her back as she walked away. That black something that always seemed to flash at the edge of my vision, only to vanish as if running away the moment I looked toward it. It wasn't my imagination. And I knew it wasn't of this world. Nobody else noticed. A foreign object in everyday life that only reflected in my abnormal eyes. She... "She sees it." Not just "something black." She knows what it is. Even after her back vanished into the crowd of students, I kept staring. Is there really a path beyond the dead end I thought it was? Before I knew it, without even dampening the asphalt, the rain had stopped.
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