The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (9 page)

“Okay,” said Bunichi, laughing, “so we’ve got a brother and sister and both of them are cowards.”

Noticing that he was the only one laughing, Bunichi cleared his throat and spoke in a more serious voice.

“Actually,” he continued, “my uncle is a psychologist, and he once told me that when people find out the cause of their fear, then that fear usually goes away. So maybe that’s the key to Yoshio stopping his bed-wetting.”

Encouraged by Bunichi’s words, Masako decided to get to work on doing something about her little brother’s fears as well as her own. Maybe then the other boys her brother’s age would stop teasing him and let him join in with their games. Then he wouldn’t always have to play indoor games with the girls nearby, such as Atsuko, who lived across the street, or Hisako, who lived two houses down the road. Masako’s mother would be happy too. She was quite a tough woman, and was a little embarrassed about her little crybaby son.

Later that day, Masako and her mother were sitting in the living room – with Masako reading a book and her mother busy with her craftwork – when all of a sudden Yoshio came running in with tears trickling down his cheeks.

“Oh Yoshio!” said their mother. “Have you been bullied again?”

“I was playing with Hisako and Atsuko, and Hiro called me a sissy!” said Yoshio between sobs.

Hiro was a first-grader and the biggest bully in their neighbourhood. But their mother was sick of hearing this kind of thing and was in no mood to cheer her son up.

“Oh come on now, Yoshio! I hope you didn’t just come running home without saying anything back to him!”

Yoshio stopped rubbing his eyes and dropped his hands to his sides.

“I
did
say something! I said I’m
not a sissy!”

“And?”

“And then he kicked my book.” And with that, little Yoshio started to sob again.

“That’s awful!” said Masako, standing up. “I’m going to go have a word with Hiro!”

“No, Masako,” said their mother. “You stay here.”

“You’re a boy, Yoshio!” said his mother. “You need to start acting like one. You can’t keep crying and running home like this. You know they pick on you because you’re always playing with girls. Why don’t you join in with the boys and play their games?”

Masako watched as her mother started to rant. Once she started, there was no telling how long she would go on for, and Yoshio had already started to sob again.

“Boys need to have the courage to fight back!” their mother continued. “If you want to keep on playing with girls all the time, I’m going to have to snip off your weenie!”

“Oh!” gasped Masako.

“What’s the matter?” said her mother, slightly annoyed at having her lecture interrupted.

“I know why Yoshio is afraid of going to the bathroom, and why he always wets his bed! It’s because of what you say when you tell him off for playing with the girls!”

“What?” said their mother, looking first to Masako, then to Yoshio.

“The scary woman Yoshio sees in the bathroom at night – it’s you, Mum! And the reason she’s always holding scissors is because, well you know, the scissors are for...”

Masako watched her mother’s face change as she slowly put the pieces together.

“Oh, so what you’re saying is that the scissors are for cutting off Yoshio’s weenie?”

Yoshio, who had since stopped sobbing, looked up at his mother, while Masako and her mother looked back at him. For a moment there was silence, then both Masako and her mother burst out laughing at Yoshio’s quizzical expression.

“You know what that means, don’t you Yoshio?” said Masako, pulling herself together. “It means you just made that woman up in your mind because of what Mum said to you. Do you see? That means there’s not really a woman there at all, so there’s no need for you to be scared any more!”

“Oh, I see,” said Yoshio, though it wasn’t clear if he really understood or not.

Yoshio’s mother didn’t say anything, but she seemed to be feeling bad about the careless choice of words that had scared her son so much. And though Yoshio didn’t entirely understand what had just happened, he did at least understand that there was no woman in the bathroom to be afraid of. So from that day on, he was always able to go to the toilet all by himself, even in the middle of the night, and he never wet his bed again. As for Masako, she was surprised at how well she’d been able to help Yoshio overcome his fear. Now she felt even more determined to conquer her own.

When Masako sat down and thought about it, the Prajna mask wasn’t the only thing she was afraid of. She was also pretty scared of heights. To be fair, quite a lot of people are scared of heights. But in Masako’s case, the fear was a bit more extreme. Even if she had a really firm grip on the handrail, she could never bring herself to look down whenever she was standing somewhere high up. She’d certainly tried on many occasions to have a look at the ground far below. But somehow she was scared that if she did, then she might suddenly feel a strange and sudden urge to climb over the rail and step off. And just the thought of that made her want to scream. There were also many cases where she was too afraid to even grab hold of the handrail. After all, what if the part she was holding on to suddenly were to break off and send her plummeting face down to the ground below?

I can’t always act like a child, she thought to herself. I have to overcome this silly fear as soon as possible. What I need to do is to find somewhere really high up, somewhere that doesn’t even have handrails. Then I need to force myself to climb up! But what if I suddenly get dizzy up there? I might fall! Maybe I should ask Bunichi to come with me. Just to be safe.

A couple of days later, on the way home from school, Masako told Bunichi about her idea.

“You’re scared of a lot of things, aren’t you Masako?”
he replied, unhelpfully.

“So what if I am? I can’t help it, can I?” she said. “But at least I can try to do something about it. Or would you prefer I try to do something about your fear, huh? I could drop a few spiders down the back of your shirt and see how you like that!”

Bunichi turned pale at the bare mention of the word “spider”.

“No no, please, anything but that,” he pleaded. “I can’t stand spiders. Just thinking about them makes me sick!”

“See! Even you are afraid of things. So how about it? Will you climb somewhere really high with me?”

“Yeah, I’ll go. So long as you promise me you won’t ever do what you just said. You know, with the... spiders.”

“Okay, I’ll let you off.”

“But where do you have in mind? Do you even know of anywhere high that doesn’t have any handrails?”

Masako actually did know just the place.

“The clock tower, of course!”

“What?! That’s so dangerous,” said Bunichi, clearly taken aback. The clock tower was located on the roof of their school. It was an old tower, with the hands on the clock permanently stuck at 9:15, and it was about three storeys high!

“But that place is off limits!” Bunichi said with a worried look on his face. “Because it’s so dangerous!”

When Masako and Bunichi reached the stairs that led to the machine room at the back of the clock tower, they noticed how very narrow they were. And not only were they narrow, but there were no handrails along the stairs and no walls on either side! Perhaps it had been designed that way to make it easy to build, but it certainly wasn’t designed for being very safe.

“Are you going to go up there?” asked Bunichi.

“Of course. Why, are you scared?”

“Of course I’m not scared! I just don’t want us to be caught and get into trouble, that’s all.”

“Don’t worry. The place is only off-limits because they’re worried about boys like you going up there and being stupid and reckless,” said Masako, determined to convince Bunichi. “But we’re just going to go up there and then come right back down.”

“But off-limits is off-limits!”

“And rules are there to be broken,” said Masako, bringing the conversation to an end. It didn’t matter to her that her argument made no sense at all.

When they reached the roof, the autumn breeze blew a chill through their clothes, and they stood for a moment together, gazing up at the tower.

“Can you climb up that high?” asked Bunichi.

“No problem,” said Masako with false confidence, as she did her best to stop her legs from shaking. Then off she went inside the tower with an air of cheerfulness that was just as false.

“Hey, hold on,” called out Bunichi behind her. “It’s dangerous, let’s go together.”

As they climbed the dusty steps, Masako took in the view. She could see the low green hills on the outskirts of town, all the different shades of foliage under the autumn sky and the long white strip of road that snaked its way into town – past the church, the fire station and the watchtower – and then wound its way to the front door of the school.

“Oh!” Masako let out a gasp as she suddenly felt dizzy and needed to rest on the stairs.

“You shouldn’t look down,” said Bunichi, grabbing her shoulders. “What should we do, Masako?” he asked her. “Should we go back down?”

But they had already got quite far up. In fact, there was only one floor left until they reached the machine room. Masako decided it would be a shame to turn back, so she shook her head and said, “No, let’s keep going!”

“But you can’t even stand up!”

“Well then, please can you take my hand?”

Bunichi hesitantly reached out to take her hand and helped her to her feet, then slowly they continued their ascent. As they went, there were several landings between flights of stairs, each with an overhang and a concrete divider about forty centimetres high, and when they reached the last one, there were only twenty steps left to the machine room. But right at that moment, Bunichi – who had been walking ahead of Masako – let out a piercing scream, let go of Masako’s hand and started waving his arms around frantically.

“It’s a spi... A spi... spider’s web!” he blurted out pointing to a huge cobweb in the corner of the landing.

“Be careful!” yelled Masako.

But Bunichi was too busy grappling with the spider’s web to even notice how close his feet were getting to the concrete divider. He lost his footing, tripped over the divider, and his body went sailing over the overhang.

“Help,” cried Bunichi.

“Oh no!” screamed Masako, forgetting her fear and scrambling to the edge, where Bunichi’s fingers were clinging on. “Hang on tight, Bunichi!”

Bravely, Masako grabbed hold of both of Bunichi’s hands and tried to pull him up with all her strength. She knew that, if he were to lose his grip, then both of them would end up falling several flights to the ground.

If he falls
, thought Masako,
it will be just awful. I brought him here, so it would be all my fault. And I’ll die as well!

Fortunately, Bunichi managed to swing one of his legs onto the overhang, so Masako was able to grab him by the belt and pull him in.

For several moments they sat on the narrow overhang in silence, looking at each other, listening to their hearts pounding away and waiting for their breathing to return to normal. Both of them were thinking about what might have happened, and both of them felt a chill run down their spine.

It’s weird
, thought Masako,
but I feel that something like this happened once before.

“You know what?” Masako said to Bunichi several days later. “I’m not at all scared of heights any more.”

“Well, my psychologist uncle told me that people can sometimes have fears that come from guilt. So maybe your sense of guilt was replaced by the wonderful fact that you saved my life!”

“A sense of guilt, huh?” Masako wondered out loud.

Masako thought about what Bunichi had said. Could she have done something bad when she was much younger? Something she was too young to remember? Or could it be that she hadn’t done anything wrong, but something bad had happened and left her with a sense of guilt that had remained until that day? Perhaps it was some sort of secret from long ago. Something related to a Prajna mask and high places perhaps? But where could such a place be? And what could have happened? No matter how hard Masako tried to remember, nothing came to mind. Even though she had felt that something similar had happened before when Bunichi almost fell from the clock tower.

Several weeks later, just after the end of the autumn festival, Masako and Bunichi took a walk along the river that ran by the side of the town. The red spider lilies that had bloomed so beautifully in summer were nothing more than a memory now, and the two of them made their way down to the edge of the river to skim stones, before making their way over to the foot of a long bridge.

“Masako?” said Bunichi. “You know, it’s still early. Shall we walk across the bridge and down into the suburbs?”

“Yeah, sure,” said Masako. But then she noticed that the rails on both sides of the bridge were very low. “Actually, I think it might be time to head back,” she added, feeling that indescribable fear coming back.

“Why?”

“Just because.”

“Do you have other plans?”

“No, not particularly.”

“Then why not?” said Bunichi, suddenly noticing the anxious look on her face. “You’re not going to start telling me that you’re scared of crossing the bridge, are you?”

Bunichi had hit the nail on the head – so Masako didn’t even bother to reply. Instead, she glanced at the long white bridge, with its telegraph poles dotted along it at intervals of several metres and the low, wooden rails in between. Masako was now getting quite scared.
Something like this has happened before!
She thought to herself.
And something bad is now about to happen.

“I don’t want to cross the bridge,” Masako suddenly said.