Free Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino Page B

classes. To complete the look, they wore brown loafers and navy-blue Ralph Lauren knee socks. Some students wore a different wristwatch every day. Others let silver bracelets—undoubtedly received from boyfriends—slip out from under the sleeves of their school uniforms.
    Then there were those who stuck little ornamented pins as sharp as needles in their perm-curled hair or wore diamond rings as big and clear as glass beads. Even though students weren’t supposed to acces-4 7
    N A T S U O K I R I NO
    sorize as freely as they do today, these girls managed to compete with one another over who could be the most fashionable.
    But Kazue always carried a black satchel and wore black slip-ons. Her navy-blue knee socks were most definitely standard student issue. Her red train-pass case was extremely childish, and with her black hair clips she was—in a word—uncool. She shuffled through the halls trying to hide the ungainly thin legs jutting out from under her short skirt, along with her standard-issue satchel.
    Her looks were average at best. Her thick black hair hung oppressively over her head like a heavy black helmet. It was cropped so short her ears were exposed, and the coarse hair at the nape of her neck stuck out in a way that made me think of the immature feathers on a newly hatched chick. She didn’t appear to be particularly dull. Her forehead was broad, her face intelligent, and her eyes brimmed with the kind of confidence you would expect from an honor-roll student raised in an affluent home. So when was it, I wondered, that she had developed the habit of glancing timidly at those around her?
    I saw a photograph of Kazue in one of those weekly magazines shortly after she was murdered. It was a picture of her at a love hotel with a man, clearly a photograph with a story behind it. Kazue s skinny naked body was exposed to the viewer s scrutiny, her large mouth opened in a laugh.
    I stared intently at the photograph, trying to find traces of the Kazue I had once known, but all I could find was an image of her lewdness—not the kind of lewdness that erupts from excessive luxury or even from sex.
    It was the licentiousness of a monster.
    When we first began attending Q High School for Young Women, I did not know Kazue s name and I had no interest in finding it out. At the time, all the outsiders huddled together and looked so withered and dull it was impossible to tell one from another. For a student who had worked hard to get into Q High School for Young Women, hoping all the while to be recognized for her intelligence, this must have been particularly deflating. I feel I can now understand how Kazue must have felt. She had come of age amid humiliation. She must have been in turmoil.
    You want to know about my interaction with Kazue? Well, all right then. I learned about Kazue thanks to a certain incident. It was a rainy day in May. We were in gym class at the time. We were supposed to play tennis that day, but because of the rain we had to stay in the gymnasium and practice dance. We were changing clothes in the locker room when 4 8
    G R O T E S Q U E
    one student held up a single sock and called out, “Whose is this? Who lost a sock?”
    It was the kind of navy-blue knee sock most everyone wore. Only this one had a red Ralph Lauren logo on the top.
    Everyone was completely nonchalant. No one seemed to care if they’d lost something because, unlike me, they could always go out and buy another one. That’s why I found it odd that this girl was making such a fuss over a lousy sock. She held it out to show her friends.
    “Well, just look at it! Look!”
    Laughter filled the room. Other girls drew near to see, forming a circle around the sock holder.
    “Why it’s practically been embroidered!”
    “What a masterpiece!”
    The owner of the sock had taken an ordinary navy-blue knee sock and embroidered the upper edge with red thread to make it look like the Ralph Lauren logo.
    The girl who found the sock was not seeking