4:46 PM. The school bell had rung 46 minutes ago, and a steady stream of students in black stand-collar uniforms poured out of the gate, like ink spilled from an overturned ink bottle, spreading in all directions along the sidewalks.
Tomorrow was Saturday… that realization made everyone’s steps a little lighter than usual.
Some headed in groups toward the station, discussing plans to check out the new dessert shop in the Sunshine Town commercial district.
Others paused at the convenience store, slinging their backpacks over their shoulders and using their freshly received allowance to buy a bottle of ice-cold ramune soda.
Kurose Sumire was one of those students. But he didn’t head for the station, nor did he step into the convenience store.
He turned a corner and slipped into an alley.
The alley was narrow, flanked by the concrete walls of old apartment buildings. The walls were covered in ivy that had wilted under the early summer sun, its leaves dark green and listlessly turning their backs in the afternoon breeze.
He carried his backpack and walked north along the alley for about fifteen minutes, then emerged from the alley and crossed an old road with almost no traffic, finally stopping at the entrance to an abandoned park.
The park had no gate. Or rather, the gate had been removed many years ago, leaving only two rusted iron gateposts standing alone in place.
The green paint had long since peeled away, revealing the dark brown rust beneath, repeatedly eroded by rain.
On the ground between the gateposts, weeds pushed up through the gaps in the paving stones, growing in clumps as high as his knees.
Sumire stepped over the weeds and entered the park.
Many of the paving stones underfoot were broken, making loose ones wobble and thud dully under his shoes.
The air smelled of sun-baked earth mixed with rust—not unpleasant, but old… the kind of old that comes from no one having been there for a long time, everything aging alone.
In the center of the park was a slide shaped like an octopus.
It was only barely recognizable as an octopus now. The red paint had faded to an ambiguous pinkish-gray after years of wind and sun.
Two of the original tentacle-shaped slides had broken off from the main body, leaving the remaining few hanging crookedly in the air. The plastic surface of the slides was covered in dense cracks from UV exposure.
The octopus’s head bulged into a hollow circular space, with a two-way opening at the bottom… this was probably the only place in the entire park that could still offer some shelter from wind and rain.
Sumire bent down and crawled into the two-way opening.
The air inside the octopus was a few degrees cooler than outside, carrying a damp concrete smell and a faint hint of rusty metallic tang.
The floor was concrete. In the corner was a pile of cardboard sheets left by some homeless person, now deformed from rain.
The space was small, about two tatami mats in size, and the highest point of the ceiling was just enough for an adult to stand straight.
He put his backpack on the ground and unzipped it.
Inside, besides his textbooks, there was a cloth bag that had been carefully folded.
He opened the bag and took out the contents one by one, laying them neatly on the cardboard… a pure white dress, a matching lace-trimmed collar, a white hairband, a pair of white over-the-knee socks, and a pair of black leather shoes.
There was also a small case for colored contacts, with the words “Amber” printed on the bottle. The solution inside emitted a faint blue gleam in the dim light.
Sumire began to change clothes.
His movements were practiced. First, he took off the black stand-collar summer uniform, folded it, and set it aside. Then his pants.
His body still retained the slender lines of a twelve-year-old boy… narrow shoulders, thin arms, collarbones faintly protruding under his skin, ribs faintly visible as he breathed.
His skin was very white—not a sickly white, but the tender, smooth whiteness unique to a child before puberty hormones have messed with it, smooth and almost poreless.
He was very careful about sun protection; in this, he took after his older sister Hisaki.
He didn’t wear makeup. He didn’t need to. At twelve, his skin didn’t need foundation to create the illusion of “pale whiteness”—his whiteness was real.
His eyes were naturally big, and his lashes were not short. Even without makeup, he had an ambiguous cuteness that made it hard to determine whether he was a boy or a girl.
He slowly put on the amber contact lenses.
He checked in a small mirror and confirmed that, compared to Sister Shirase’s natural eye color, they might lack a bit of luster, but if you didn’t look too closely, they could pass for real.
‘No traces.’
He had heard from the family driver that his sister had gone to the Sunshine Town commercial district today.
He knew his sister was there. After he finished getting ready, he planned to go directly there… shopping, after all, anyone could go shopping.
Could he run into his sister in the plaza? If he was lucky, maybe he could even let his sister see him wearing this white dress.
Last time when his sister said, “It’s very pretty and cute,”
he had been happy for a long time.
Even though she had immediately added, “But go back to your room and change clothes,”
he selectively forgot the second half.
He just wanted his sister to look at him a few more times. Even just a few times.
He put on the white dress, tied the bow at the back, and securely placed the white wig on his short hair, which was already in a wig cap, then adjusted it.
Then he meticulously began to clean up the scattered items… folding the uniform and putting it in the cloth bag, picking up the packaging from the hair clips, ‘leaving no traces. No one can discover that the eldest son of the Kurose clan is changing into women’s clothing here.’
Just as he was stuffing the last pack of tissues into his backpack’s side pocket, he heard footsteps.
Not the footsteps of a child. They were the heavy, dull footsteps of an adult man stepping on loose paving stones, accompanied by the wobbling of bricks. The steps were hurried, the breathing heavy, as if running—or as if hiding from something.
Sumire paused. He zipped up his backpack, slung it over his shoulder, and then casually crawled out from under the octopus slide.
He still had things to do; he didn’t have time to pay attention to some random passing man.
He stood up, the hem of the white dress swaying gently at his knees, and turned to leave.
But that man happened to come around from the side of the slide. The two almost collided.
Sumire looked up. The man in front of him was around thirty, wearing a light-colored summer shirt jacket over a white T-shirt, casual pants with the crease lines stuck to his thighs with sweat, and a few light red scratches on his wrists as if scraped by something.
His hair was messy, his forehead covered in sweat, his breathing rapid and irregular, as if he had just undergone some intense physical activity… or intense fear.
This man was exactly the leader who had fled, abandoning his subordinates, after being attacked by Hisaki in the blind spot on the second floor of the Sunshine Town commercial district.
When he fled here, he had already replayed the events countless times in his mind.
Over a hundred people, all taken down by a single high school girl wielding a steel pipe… that was enough to make him never dare to return to Sunshine Town for the rest of his life.
The young lady of the Kurose clan, Kurose Hisaki. That name had transformed in his mind from “an obstacle near the target” to “someone I must never appear in front of again.”
But he couldn’t accept it.