“MOM, WERE THERE TENGU BY YOUR SIDE when you were little?” This was another question I asked without really expecting anything to come of it.

“In my case, it was a fox instead of the tengu,” my mother replied with a smile.

“How long has it been since it’s been gone?”

“That’s a secret.”

I liked having the tengu around, but there were times when I felt depressed. It was fine when the two of them were chattering to each other, but when they sat still and just stared at me I wanted to tell them to get lost. Even if I didn’t actually ever say that to them.

“HOW BIG WERE THE TENGU?” SENSEI asked.

“They must have been a little bigger than I was.”

“This was around when you were in third grade, wasn’t it, Tsukiko? If they were about your size, those were small tengu.”

“I guess you’re right. Now that you mention it, they must have been tengu kids.”

Sensei turned to lie on his back with his hands folded behind his head. The palm of my hand felt lonesome, now that Sensei had taken his away. We continued our conversation across the low table as we looked up at the ceiling.

IT MUST HAVE BEEN DURING THE SECOND school term when the one with the pale red face seemed to fall ill. She looked thin, and even lost all interest in licking the margarine. She wasn’t drinking any flower nectar either. Both of the tengu liked nectar. When the azaleas by the side of the road were in bloom, the tengu would cling to the base of the shrubs, slurping up the nectar from the flowers greedily. They wouldn’t pluck a flower to taste the nectar, the way you and I might—they knew how to extract it deftly while leaving the blossoms intact on the branches.

DESPITE BEING SICK, THE ONE WITH THE pale red face still followed me to school. She would lie on the floor of the classroom, not moving, even if someone stepped on her. Most of the students didn’t know she was there in the first place, so this was to be expected, but it still pained me whenever it happened.

It was probably after that whole thing started—that’s when the tengu fell ill.

BY “THAT WHOLE THING,” I MEAN WHEN Yuko was ostracized.

At some point, a group of girls had decided to stop talking to her. Before long, a few of the boys went along with it too. The more ordinary students—like Nishida and me—we pretended not to notice what they were doing.

EVEN AS THE SHUNNING GOT WORSE AND worse, Yuko never once cried. During class, she would look straight at the teacher, and raise her hand often. Whenever Yuko answered a question, half of the students in class would coldly turn their heads away. Sometimes one of the girls even murmured, “Jerk,” under her breath. Her voice sounded terribly nasty. Whenever I imagined someone speaking to me in that tone, it made shivers run up and down my spine.