Free Another, Vol. 1 by Yukito Ayatsuji Page A

word to him since transferring in yesterday. I tried to say hi, but he would instantly look away from me. It was hard to tell if he was just shy or if he had a dark, misanthropic personality.
    Ms. Mikami’s question caused Mochizuki’s cheeks to flush slightly, and he fumbled for a response. “Um…I was trying to make a lemon…”
    “A lemon? This?”
    Darting a glance up at the teacher, who was twisting her head to weird angles, Mochizuki replied in a low voice, “Yes. It’s the scream in a lemon.”
    It was Thursday, my second day at school. We were in fifth period, art class.
    The class, on the first floor of that old school building—Building Zero—was split into six groups, each sitting around their own large worktables. A variety of objects were lined up at the center of each table, like an onion, a lemon, a mug, and so on. The purpose of today’s class was to sketch a still life of these things.
    I’d selected a mug set beside an onion and begun drawing in pencil on the drawing paper we’d been given. Apparently Mochizuki had chosen a lemon, but I dunno…
    Craning my neck, I snuck a look at the paper in front of him. I got a glimpse of it and—
    Yeah, I get it now. There was plenty of reason for Ms. Mikami to be asking questions.
    He had drawn some grotesque thing , shaped nothing like any of the subjects on the table.
    When he said it was a lemon, okay, I could just barely make it out. But it was more than twice as stretched out as the lemon in front of me, tall and spindly, plus the outline was all wavy in uneven bumps. On top of that, he’d drawn the same kind of wavy, bumpy lines (they looked like special-effect lines to me) all around it…
    What was this?
    Suddenly, I had the same thought. But then if I extrapolated from “the scream in a lemon” like Mochizuki had said, I realized, It could be…
    When you hear the word “scream,” even a grade school kid knows—that greatest masterpiece by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch. The figure of a man on a bridge covering his ears, drawn with a bizarre composition and palette in fluctuating lines. This wobbly drawing of a lemon seemed to share something with that painting…
    “Do you think this is acceptable, Mochizuki?”
    Stealing another glance up at her, Mochizuki hesitantly replied, “Yes…I mean, this is how the lemon looks to me right now…”
    “I see.”
    Ms. Mikami drew her lips tight and harrumphed. “It isn’t really in the spirit of today’s class, but…I suppose it’s all right.” A rueful smile edged onto her face, as if she had thrown her hands up in defeat, and she said, “I’d prefer it if you only experiment like this in art club, however.”
    “Oh. Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry.”
    “There’s no need to apologize. Go ahead and finish this up the way you have it.”
    With that indifferent admonition, Ms. Mikami moved away from us. Then—
    “Do you like Munch?”
    I peeked again at Mochizuki’s drawing and gingerly tried to engage him.
    “Uh…yeah, I guess,” he replied without looking at me and then picked up his pencil again. But I didn’t sense a strong blockade being thrown up, so I pressed on.
    “But why did the lemon come out like that?”
    He pinched his lips together and harrumphed like Ms. Mikami had just done.
    “That’s how I see it, so that’s how I drew it. That’s all.”
    “You mean objects have screams, too?”
    “That’s not what’s going on. People misinterpret Munch’s painting all the time. It isn’t the man that’s screaming in that painting. It’s the world around him. The scream is making him shudder, so he’s covering his ears.”
    “So then it’s not the lemon screaming, either.”
    “Right.”
    “Is the lemon covering its ears?”
    “I don’t think you’re getting it yet…”
    “Hm-m-m. Well, whatever. So you’re in the art club?”
    “Oh—yeah. I rejoined in third year.”
    Which reminded me of what Teshigawara had told me yesterday, about the art club being