Free Another, Vol. 1 by Yukito Ayatsuji

inside my bag. I had set it on silent. It was a call from my grandmother.
    “I’m leaving right now to come get you. I want you to wait for me at the front gate.”
    It was a welcome message, but my reply was instantly “It’s okay, Grandma. It’ll probably just be sprinkling by the time you get here.”
    “That’s no way for a recovering boy to talk. And what if you got soaked and caught a cold?”
    “But…”
    “No buts, Koichi. All right? You wait until I get there.”
    She hung up then, and I looked around me blankly and sighed.
    “Hey, Sakakibara! You’ve got a cell phone, huh?”
    Right then, someone spoke to me. It was Teshigawara. He rummaged in the inside pocket of his uniform and then pulled out a white phone with a flashy strap tied to it.
    “We’ll be phone buddies. What’s your number?”
    It was still a small selection of middle school students who had their own cell phones. Even at schools in Tokyo, they were about as common as PHS phones. Maybe one in three kids at the most.
    As we traded numbers, I glanced over at the bank of windows. There, all the way at the back, Mei Misaki had already gone.
    I waited till Teshigawara put his phone back in his pocket, then said, “You mind if I ask you something?”
    “Hm?”
    “About that girl Misaki who sits at that desk.”
    “Hm-m-m?”
    “She’s pretty weird. What’s her deal?”
    “You feeling all right, Sakakibara?”
    Teshigawara angled his head with an expression that looked completely serious.
    “Get it together, man.”
    He slapped me on the back heavily and then quickly departed the scene.
    I left the classroom and, as I was heading toward Building A and the front gate, I ran into Ms. Mikami, the assistant teacher, in the hall.
    “How did it go today, Sakakibara? What do you think of your new school?”
    Her questions came with a natural smile. Utterly discombobulated, I replied, “Uh, I think I’ll manage.”
    Ms. Mikami nodded mechanically. “Do you have an umbrella? It’s raining.”
    “Um, Grandma’s—I mean, my grandmother said she’s coming to get me with the car. She called me on my cell phone a minute ago.”
    “You’ll be all right, then. Take care.”
    It was only fifteen minutes later that my grandmother’s black Cedric pulled up to the driveway by the entrance, coming through the rain, the ferocity of which had slackened somewhat.
    There were a couple of students near the entrance who hadn’t been able to leave yet because of the unexpected rain. I quickly climbed into the passenger seat of the car, as if fleeing from their looks.
    “Sorry to keep you waiting, Koichi,” my grandmother greeted me, adjusting her hands on the wheel. “You don’t feel any worse, do you?”
    “Oh, no, I’m fine.”
    “Do you think you’ll get along with your classmates?”
    “I guess…”
    We drove away from the school building and headed slowly over the slick road to the front gate. And on our way out—
    I was leaning against the door, gazing outside, when my eyes fell on her . The rain had slacked off a lot, but it was still more than a drizzle, and she was walking through it without an umbrella, alone.
    Mei Misaki.
    “What’s wrong?” my grandmother asked, just before pulling the car onto the road outside. Something in my reaction must have tipped her off. I hadn’t even made a noise or opened the window or anything.
    “…Nothing. Don’t worry about it,” I answered, then twisted my body around to look back. And yet…
    Mei was already gone. As if she had melted away into the falling rain. That’s how it seemed to me that day.

May II
    1
    “What’s this?”
    I heard Ms. Mikami’s voice. She had posed the question to a boy to my left named Mochizuki. Yuya Mochizuki.
    He was on the small side, pale, and though plain, he was fine-featured. If he really went for it and walked around Shibuya dressed in drag, he could get mistaken for a pretty young thing and get picked up by someone. However, I had yet to speak a