DURING RECESS, YUKO WAS ALWAYS READING a book. Nishida’s sand-throwing hag hadn’t been feeling well either. Still, she wasn’t in as bad shape as my pale red tengu. Meanwhile, the badger and the rokurokubi woman with the very long neck would wander around the room during class. Everyone seemed restless.

Yuko and I went to the same abacus school after regular school. It was one station away by train, so Yuko and I were the only ones from our class who went there. At the abacus school, Yuko chatted with all the other students. She laughed and smiled too—she wasn’t always just reading a book. One time, she even did an impersonation of the comedian Hitoshi Ueki and his catchphrase, “Look at that—I did it again!” She didn’t really sound much like him, though.

THE TENGU WITH THE PALE RED FACE wasn’t well when we were at abacus school either. In class, I would sit in a corner, trying to avoid making eye contact with Yuko. As for Yuko, there were several times when it seemed like she might have wanted to say something to me, but I guess I was unconsciously avoiding her. I didn’t know what to do. And, for some reason, I was scared.

ON THE TRAIN HOME, YUKO WOULD ALWAYS stand in the same spot by the door, and I normally boarded from a different place on the platform. But one day I had jumped onto the train just before it left the station, and practically bumped into Yuko. I hadn’t noticed that she was right there. Yuko uttered a small sound of surprise. I kept my eyes lowered. We rode in awkward silence until we got off at our stop.

I kept my head down even while we walked beside each other from the station. I was panicking about what would happen if one of the girls from our class saw me walking with Yuko. My heart was really pounding in my chest—it was terrible. I felt like cringing, all the way down to the tips of my fingers.

“You don’t have to walk next to me, Omachi,” Yuko murmured after a while. “What?” I replied idiotically. I can still remember the tremendous relief I felt then. In that same instant of relief, I was overcome with intense self-loathing. But really I was relieved.

When I looked up at Yuko, she was smiling. And yet her smiling face reminded me of the face of my grandmother, who had died the year before, and what she had looked like when she was laid out in her coffin.

I REALIZED SOMETHING IN THAT MOMENT. Yuko had somehow resigned herself to the situation. She had given up being sad or being disappointed. Just like my grandmother when she had taken her last breath, Yuko had purposely stopped feeling things.

Was it even possible to do that? I wondered. But the expression on Yuko’s face right before my eyes seemed to suggest that it most certainly was.