“Cool, Omachi—you’ve got two critters,” Minami called out as he passed by.

“They’re not critters, they’re people!” I corrected him.

“Oh. Sorry.”

I was amazed not to be the only one who had something following me.

“Nishida, weren’t you surprised when it happened to you?” I asked.

She thought about it for a moment.

“Only at first,” she said. “I got used to her right away.” That was probably true. The fact was, I myself was already growing accustomed to mine.

The tengu sat quietly on either side of me until third period, but after that they went off somewhere. The next thing I knew, the badger, the sand-throwing hag, and the rokurokubi woman with the long neck were also gone.

“They’ll be back, once it gets dark,” Oda whispered in my ear.

“They seem like they’re pretty busy.”

The aroma of our school lunch wafted in from the hallway. A burst of laughter erupted in another classroom. The row of poplar trees in the schoolyard caught the sunlight and glistened.

WHEN I HAPPENED TO LOOK OVER AT Sensei, his eyes were closed. The palm of his hand was still resting in mine. Sensei, I called to him, and he opened his eyes wide. “I’m awake,” he replied in a low growl.

“Continue,” Sensei prompted, sounding just like a schoolteacher.

AFTER A LITTLE WHILE, I BEGAN TO UNDERSTAND some of what the tengu were saying.

“Because you spend a lot of time together, you can relate more to one another,” my mother said. The one with the dark red face was male, and the one with the pale red face was female—that much I could tell.

“It was annoying that the boys skipped out during cleaning time at school today,” I grumbled, and both of the tengu murmured in assent with me. They made a bristling sound, like “iga-iga-iga.”

“What if I don’t show Mom my bad grade on the test?” When I conferred with the tengu about this, the one with the dark red face agreed with me—“gai-i-i”—but the one with the pale red face shook her head—“i-ge-ge-ge.” I kept the test hidden at the back of my desk for a while, but the one with the pale red face kept making such a fuss that eventually I ended up showing it to my mother.

“The tengu depend upon you, Tsuki, dear. You must take great care of your relationship with them,” my mother said. Meanwhile, she wasn’t all that angry about my test marks. I couldn’t help but wonder what it all meant, though I didn’t think too hard about it.

One time I had tried asking Nishida, “Why do you think these types have latched on to us?”

“I’m not really sure. But you know, there are plenty of other things out there that don’t make sense, right?” I was impressed by the lack of concern in Nishida’s response. She was right about that. The truth was, I myself wasn’t all that interested in the reason. I had just felt like asking the question.