Free Another, Vol. 1 by Yukito Ayatsuji Page B

suspended last year. But starting in April this year, the “lovely Ms. Mikami” had become the sponsor…
    “What about you?”
    Then, for the first time, Mochizuki looked at me. He cocked his head to one side like a puppy.
    “Are you gonna join?”
    “Wh-why would I do that?”
    “Well…”
    “Sure, I’m kind of interested in it…but I don’t know. I’m not that good at drawing.”
    “It doesn’t really matter how good you are,” Mochizuki told me in an extremely serious tone. “You draw pictures by seeing with the eyes in your heart. That’s what makes it fun.”
    “The eyes in your heart?”
    “Yeah.”
    “That’s what this is?”
    I glanced at his “scream in lemon,” and Mochizuki nodded saying, “Sure,” without a hint of guilt, rubbing a finger under his nose.
    I guess he was petrified of strangers; still, once I started talking to him, he seemed pretty interesting. That thought helped me relax a lot, but at the same time—
    Something flashed through my mind at the mention of the art club.
    When we’d talked on the roof of Building C during gym class yesterday, she—Mei Misaki—had carried a sketchbook. Could she be in the art club, too?
    The art room in Building Zero was twice as big as a normal classroom. The construction and equipment in the room was getting old, and the amount of light it got left the place somehow dreary, but thanks to the high ceiling, the room didn’t feel too oppressive. It made it feel even bigger than it already was.
    My eyes wandered around the room, as if for the first time. However—
    I didn’t see Mei Misaki anywhere, after all.
    But she was in morning classes… I couldn’t help feeling suspicious.
    There hadn’t been time for a leisurely chat, but I’d succeeded in catching her during one of the breaks between classes and shared a few words with her. I mentioned how she’d gone home alone in the rain yesterday, and other trifling things.
    “I don’t hate the rain.”
    That’s what she’d told me then.
    “My favorite is the cold rain in the middle of winter. The moment it changes to snow.”
    I wanted to catch her at lunch and talk some more, but just like yesterday, she had disappeared from the classroom before I’d noticed. And even now that fifth period had begun, she had yet to appear.
    “Hey, Sakakibara.”
    Mochizuki was the one trying to start conversations now. I put my thoughts about Mei on hold. “What?”
    “What do you think…about Ms. Mikami?”
    “Out of the blue, I mean, I don’t know.”
    “Oh, I see. Yeah, okay…” Mochizuki nodded several times, murmuring in a low voice, and his cheeks tinted slightly red again.
    What’s with this guy? Secretly, he’d knocked me off balance a little.
    Does he have a crush on his art teacher? This kid? How does that work? She’s more than ten years older than you, dude.
      
    2
    “Munch made four copies of The Scream in all.”
    “I’d heard that.”
    “I like the one at the Oslo National Museum of Art. The red color of the sky is the most intimidating. It looks like blood is going to come pouring out of it any second.”
    “Huh. But doesn’t that start to scare you, the more you look at it? Or make you feel incredibly uneasy? How can you like that?”
    You could say it’s an easy painting to understand. The visual impact is so intense, the underlying subject matter gets ignored and funny or interesting parodies are everywhere you look. So I suppose in that sense it’s a popular work. But of course, when Mochizuki said he liked it, he didn’t seem to be talking on that level.
    “Uneasy…I suppose so. It’s a picture that drags those feelings out for me, that there’s anxiety in everything and that’s just the way it is. That’s why I like it.”
    “You like it because it makes you uneasy?”
    “It’s not like it goes away if you pretend you don’t feel it. You’re the same way, aren’t you, Sakakibara? I’m positive it’s the same for everyone.”
    “Even