Zero Sum Game (9 page)

Fujiya led Amano back into the office, and Shimizu told him what to do and say about the incident. After a little time with the security tapes, Shimizu would make sure no trace of Fujiya and the rebel remained. As he prepared a cover story for Amano to give his employees, the dead Noigel faded from his mind.

CHAPTER 9

Trust
by SMAP woke Hina up. She slid her finger over her phone and turned off the alarm's song. It was time for school. She sighed. Looking down at herself, she realized she still wore her gym clothes from yesterday. Instead of the little rest she had planned on, she had went out like a light.

She gathered new underclothes and headed for the shower. She passed her father's open door and saw him still asleep, his limbs akimbo. He must have been exhausted from his double shift.

The shower's hot water felt good on her skin and relaxed her. She dried off and dressed, wrapping her towel around her hair as she walked back to her room.

She slid the door closed, heading towards the balcony and the hangers holding her clean gym clothes, when she saw something on the wall hook by her closet. A school uniform hung as clean and neat as if in a store display. She smiled and let out a small squeal of happiness—she didn't want to wake her father—and put it on. Her father must have bought it yesterday after work; instead of waking her, he had hung it up. He was so thoughtful when it came to little things like that. She didn't bother to think about how he had found time to buy it. She had a new uniform, and that was all that mattered. She wouldn't be standing out like a tall nail in class, she would be dressed like everyone else.

— — —

Sitting in class during second period, she glanced around at her classmates, glad to be in her pale blue shirt and blue skirt. She scratched her forearm. Ever since this morning, she had been feeling itchy everywhere—a light feeling like thousands of ants crawling over her skin. She wondered if her uniform hadn't been washed or cleaned. Was there something on it she was allergic to? But the feeling extended to every part of her body as well: her ears, her hair, even her eyes.

The bell rang, and the teacher reminded the class that their homework was due tomorrow. They stood up, bowed, said, "thank you," then prepared for the next class. Hina went to her small locker outside her homeroom of 2A and exchanged her science texts and notebook for the ones needed in English class. She talked with Ami and Rena and a couple of other friends. Ozaki-sensei passed by her and entered the room, carrying a CD player. Hina took her seat, and soon class began.

English was Hina's least favorite class. She didn't hate English, she liked it, but the language was so hard to understand. There were so many different rules and exceptions to rules, and the grammar was difficult, very different from Japanese. She wished she could speak as well as her friend Ami. Although she studied hard, she couldn't grasp it.

Two native speakers performed a dialogue about visiting Kyoto, and the class followed the script in their textbook. After listening to the CD, Ozaki had individual students read one paragraph each from the dialogue. Ami read the first paragraph in a smooth manner, she was the best English speaker in the class. Hina slid down in her chair to make herself smaller, hoping Ozaki would skip past her.

The plan didn't work. Her teacher's gaze fell on her. "Read the next paragraph, Takamachi-san."

She stood, glad that most students were following along in their own books and not looking at her. Her throat tightened, she let out a small cough and picked up her book, holding it in both hands. She took a deep breath and read out loud. "
I bought many souvenirs for my friends. My host family took me to a nice restaurant. The food was delicious but I ate too much.
"

The class erupted in catcalls of astonishment and disbelief. Hina couldn't believe what had happened: she had read the passage without a trace of accent. She had sounded like a native English speaker, not a junior high student. She heard some of the students say, "Awesome," "Isn't that great? I want to talk like that," and "You've been studying."

Ozaki had a slack-jawed expression on his face. Hina bent to sit down when he said, "Continue reading, Takamachi-san. I want you to read the rest of the page."

"What?" said Hina, embarrassed. She stood back up and continued reading. She had to focus her attention on the words but it seemed her mouth, tongue, and throat were moving as if they were adjusting to the new sounds and pronunciations on their own accord. Her flawless initial reading hadn't been a trick; as she read out loud, she detected no accent in her voice. When she finished, Ozaki started clapping, and the rest of the class joined in.

Ami leaned over from her desk and said, "You've been practicing, haven't you?"

Hina shook her head "no" and tried to make herself small again, hunching her shoulders and sinking into her chair. Ozaki turned the class back on track, but Hina kept wondering what had happened.

English may have been Hina's least favorite class, but math was her worse subject. Unlike languages, the good thing about math was that there was one answer, one way to solve a problem. But she was terrible at math. She didn't understand the formulas any more than she understood English grammar. She wondered how most of these abstract computations would help her in real life. Hayama-sensei was a difficult teacher; he wrote formulas and problems on the board as he explained then erased them. He left it to the students to copy the problems into their notebooks fast enough. If a student asked for him to wait, he wouldn't; he'd erase the board and continue.

Hayama handed out a mock quiz and gave the class ten minutes to finish it. Everyone was to be quiet and not ask their friends for help. After all the papers were passed out to the students, he said, "Start."

Hina stared at her paper, her mind drawing blanks. The questions looked like they were written in another language.
Like
alienese
, she thought. She twirled her mechanical pencil in her right hand, flicking it with her finger so it spun on the top of her thumb like a small propeller. She glanced over and saw Ami struggling as well, she scrunched her face in concentration. She looked at the student behind her: unlike Ami and herself, his pencil scribbled out answers, pausing only long enough to read the question. She envied him.

She turned back to her paper. She moved her hand over the sixth question, but no answer popped in her mind. But that didn't stop her hand, which put the pencil tip to the paper and wrote an answer. Like her vocal cords earlier, she experienced a brief sensation that her hand moved of its own volition. She willed her hand to stop and it did, resting on the desktop. She read the seventh problem, and her hand moved again. She didn't stop it, and it went to the next problem after it had written the answer. Soon her hand flew across the paper, barely pausing between questions. Her head didn't know the answers, but it seemed her right hand did. Before she realized it, she had finished the worksheet. She let out a small squeak and slammed her pencil down on the desk harder than she had intended.

Hayama glared at her from under his thick eyebrows. "Quiet, Takamachi-san," he said.

"Sorry," Hina replied. "I saw a bee." Hayama acted like he hadn't heard her and walked down the far aisle, gazing over shoulders as he passed.

She sat there until Hayama said, "Time's up. Get out a red pen and trade papers with the person next to you."

As the students took out their red pens, Hayama passed out the answer sheet. Hina checked Maki's answers, the girl sitting to Hina's left, circling the correct answers and marking the incorrect ones with an X. Maki returned Hina's paper, and she checked it over.

Out of the first five problems, Hina had answered three wrong. But starting with problem number six, when her hand had taken on a life of its own, every answer was correct. Hina raised her hand to her face. It looked the same as it had during first period. She set it down on the desk and stared at it. It didn't move. She willed her fingers to flex, and they did. She opened and closed her fingers several times. Her hand belonged to her again. She wondered what was happening to her.

Lunch time did little to relieve her tension. She didn't speak as she and the others assigned to lunch duty donned their hair caps, smocks, and plastic gloves.
What happened to me?
she wondered as she went downstairs and retrieved the heavy container of food. She had been given the largest, heaviest metal box. Its weight didn't bother her.

Back in the classroom, she dished out her food into the bowls with machine-like monotony. She wondered if she had a brain disease that somehow affected her hand too.

After every student had their tray of food on their desk and sat, they said "thank you for the food" in unison and ate. Hina didn't tell anyone what had happened during math class. She sat with her lunch group, as always, but her mind always turned back to the last two classes and the strangeness that had occurred. She wondered if what had happened today had anything to do with yesterday.
Did the dying man do something to me?
She couldn't even talk to Ami about the situation.

After lunch followed free time, and many students went outside to play sports for a few minutes while some stayed inside and chatted with friends and their homeroom teacher. Hina did none of these. Thankfully, Ami spent most of the free time talking to Rena.

Hina floated through the day, her mind stuck on the morning and the weirdness happening to her body. She wondered if she should stay home sick tomorrow; tell her father she wasn't feeling good, the heat was getting to her, and see if anything else strange happened. She pushed the thought aside after a moment, she still had weightlifting training, and next week everyone would be practicing for the sports festival that was less than two weeks away. She couldn't afford to slack off now.

She had one more class, then cleaning time and homeroom. She hoped nothing else weird happened.

CHAPTER 10

Ryuhei Ozaki sat at his desk grading worksheets from yesterday. He was getting an idea of the level of his students in English class: who needed help, who could be good enough to enter a speech contest, and who were so-so.

The teacher's room was large and open, and to Ozaki, always messy. The principal, vice-principal, and head teacher had their three desks side-by-side at the far end of the room in front of the schedule board. The rest of the desks were split into three groups dedicated to each grade. Metal cabinets lined the walls, atop of which were piles of notebooks, textbooks, maps, signs, and various teaching materials. They were stacked into haphazard piles and threatened to fall to the floor at any time.

Most of the teachers' desks resembled the metal cabinets: piled high with papers, books, and other classroom materials. Each desk had a laptop computer that took up even more space; a teacher could barely put his arms or even a coffee mug on the desk.

Ozaki kept his desk much more immaculate than the rest of the teachers'. His first day at work had been a week before school started, and after school on that first day he had spent over two hours cleaning and reorganizing his desk. He had a place for everything and everything in its place; that's how he liked his environment.

He finished grading the papers. He put them in a pile, tapping them on the desk to make sure they were as aligned with each other as possible. He put a paper clip on the stack and put it in a folder in his bottom right hand drawer. On his laptop, he reviewed a report, then sent it to the printer.

On his way back to his desk, two female teachers, Bando-sensei and Uchitomi-sensei, whispered to each other as he passed. Bando sat diagonally across from him to his left and Uchitomi sat next to her. Ozaki knew they were the school gossips. They talked all the time. He suspected they ate fast during lunch in order to give themselves more time to chat.

Both teachers watched him as he took his seat. "You're very cool," said Bando.

"That's right," said Uchitomi. "You walk stiffly but your movements are…" She trailed off and swung her arms like a dancer's. "You have a…" she paused, "stiff gracefulness."

"You're like a butler," said Bando.

Uchitomi nodded at the Japanese language teacher. "That's it. Exactly. Like a butler."

Ozaki chuckled, a deep short sound. "When I was in college, I worked part-time at a butler cafe in Tokyo."

There were sounds of amazement from the two teachers. "You're lying," said Uchitomi.

Ozaki stood and walked to her desk. She swiveled her chair around and leaned back, unsure what he had in mind. He stood straight for a moment, looking down at her. He crossed his arms over his chest, using the middle finger and thumb of his right hand to push his glasses higher up onto his nose. "Mistress," he said in a melodic voice, then took a smooth step to the side, lowered his right arm to his side and swept out his left arm in polished motions, with no wasted movements. His eyes on Uchitomi he said, "Your chariot awaits."

Uchitomi put her hand over her heart and leaned back against her desk. "Unbelievable. So cool, that was great," she said. Beside her, Bando jumped up and down in her chair in excitement. Ozaki smiled, letting them know the performance had finished.

Vice-principal Seiki called out from his desk, "Ozaki-sensei. Don't do that too much or they'll be expecting the same thing from us." He and a few other male teachers chuckled.

Uchitomi made a dismissive sound. "He's jealous," she said.

Ozaki sat back down at his desk. He had another stack of worksheets to grade and grabbed the first one off the top of the pile.

It belonged to Hina Takamachi. He marked it with a red pen then calculated her score. It fell in the mid-range. This surprised him, she had spoken perfectly in class today. He leaned back in his chair. Why would a girl so gifted with language get such a mediocre score?

Bando and Uchitomi were engaged in a hushed conversation. "What do you know of Hina Takamachi from 2A?" he asked.