Eventually, Miori and her gang seemed to grow tired of the game and she heard them call their goodbyes to each other. ‘See you tomorrow!’

Kokoro stayed glued to the spot, fearful it was a trap.

The sound of her mother’s key in the front door quietly reverberated in the darkness.

‘Kokoro?’ she called out, sounding uncertain. Kokoro felt a slight pain in her jaw, and tears came to her eyes.

Mum, Mum, Mum.

She wanted to cry out, leap into her mother’s arms and sob her heart out, but she didn’t move. Her mother walked into the sitting room and switched on the light.

Kokoro looked up for the first time.

‘Kokoro.’

Her mother was standing there in her grey work suit.

‘Mum,’ she said, her voice husky.

‘Why is the light off?’ her mother asked. ‘You startled me. I thought you hadn’t come home yet, and I was worried.’

‘Um.’

I was worried – the words struck a chord deep inside her.

Why, she didn’t know.

‘I just fell asleep,’ Kokoro said.

KOKORO TRIED TO CONVINCE HERSELF she hadn’t been at home that day.

Miori and the others had simply pounded on the door of an empty house, trampled over the patio, gone round and round the outside of the house.

But nothing actually happened.

Nothing at all.

She never was about to be killed.

And yet the next day, she said, ‘I have a stomach ache.’

And she really did. It was no lie.

And her mother chimed in: ‘You do look pale. Are you OK?’

And that’s when Kokoro stopped going to school.

A LONG TIME LATER, KOKORO realized she was holding out a faint hope.

Wouldn’t her parents notice that the garden had been trampled on?

Even if Kokoro didn’t say anything, wouldn’t some neighbour tell her parents about the Anzais’ house being surrounded by a mob of unruly kids? And maybe they’d even reported it to the police?

But none of that happened.

It might have had more impact if she’d told her parents about the incident immediately, but if she brought it up now – this event that changed Kokoro’s middle school life for ever – they might not even listen.

And now she deeply regretted not having instantly leapt into her mother’s arms, in tears.

Kokoro hopelessly realized now that if she put the incident into words, it would boil down to something so lame. They might have come all the way here to pick a fight with her, but in the end, they didn’t. That’s how adults would react. And with that, they’d put it out of their minds.

Those girls didn’t wreck anything, or physically hurt her.

But Kokoro’s experience of the incident went way beyond that; it was something far more decisive and intense. What if she went to school again, defenceless?

Would she be able to protect herself?