Free Brave Story by Miyuki Miyabe

She was pretty enough, but she smelled too strongly of perfume, and it made Wataru’s nose wrinkle just to be in the same room. He had made some perfunctory greeting and then shut himself in his room to play video games.
    His father had called that day while his mother and the sales lady were talking away. His mother had ended the phone call with her usual words of encouragement, and the sales lady had been astonished. Wataru heard her loud voice clearly through the door.
    “I just don’t believe it. That was your husband, was it not? Heavens! You shouldn’t act so obsequious. We aren’t living in the Middle Ages, dear.”
    “Obsequious”? Wataru had leafed through his dictionary. “Full of or exhibiting servile compliance; fawning,” it said. Now he was only slightly less confused. He heard the sales lady go on, trying to persuade his mother of this and that. He listened closely, hoping he would figure out what she had meant with her opening remarks.
    “Oh, it’s good to be traditional,” she was saying, “but you can’t pamper your husband too much, or he’ll just take advantage of you. Once he’s married, it’s his duty to work and support his wife and children while you run a household. It’s a fifty-fifty partnership. There’s no need for you to act like an underling.”
    His mother had laughed and said she wasn’t pampering anyone and she was pretty sure she wasn’t being taken advantage of.
    “Well, you never know what he’s doing once he’s out that front door,” the sales lady replied, chuckling deep in her throat. “My husband and I, we’re very laissez-faire. I don’t interfere with his goings-on and he doesn’t interfere with mine. Why, if we didn’t have children, I’m sure we’d have split up long ago. The bonds that tie, the gags that choke, am I right?”
    Wataru had the strange feeling that the more the woman spoke, the dirtier the air in the room became. It was as though her words themselves clung to the walls and the floor and the furniture that his mother had spent years polishing and made them all somehow unclean . This woman had barged in, declared the Mitani household to be a mess, and, quite uninvited, begun buffing things with her own filthy rag.
    The sales lady never came back. Wataru was relieved that, apparently, his mother hadn’t liked her either.
    He finished dinner and called Katchan back. This time he could hear the sound of a television blaring in the background.
    “Think you could turn that down?”
    “Oops, sorry.” The sound of the television faded.
    “So, what’s up?”
    It turned out that Katchan had run into none other than Mr. Daimatsu on his way home from school that day.
    Wataru couldn’t contain his excitement. “How? Where?”
    “Right in front of the haunted building. He was with some construction-type guy in a gray uniform.”
    Maybe he’d found a new contractor. “Was it just Mr. Daimatsu? His son wasn’t there?”
    “Nope, just him. Why?”
    “Why…” Wataru paused. “No reason.”
    Katchan had this annoying habit of answering most questions with “Why?” He just assumed there was a why to everything. Wataru had always thought it was kind of a simple and refreshing attitude, but today for some reason, it irked him.
    “Mr. Daimatsu looked pretty happy. He said they’re going to resume construction.”
    So he did find a new contractor.
    “Well, once they finish that building, it’ll put an end to those rumors,” Wataru said. “It’s probably for the best. The longer it sits there, the more people like Mitsuru will go there and take ghost pictures to show off to their friends.”
    Now that wasn’t a nice thing to say. Nor had it been entirely truthful. In fact, Wataru was pretty sure it was a lie. Mitsuru certainly hadn’t been boasting to anyone, and Wataru had just heard firsthand testimony that the picture probably wasn’t a ghost at all. Still, he knew the shock it would cause on the other end of the line, and it made