Time, Terrors, and a "Romantic" Rooftop Scene

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Three days had passed since the girl-outside-my-window incident, and I did what any rational person would do: pretend it never happened. 

After all, it never did happen again. 

No further apparitions, just the mundane persistence of my daily routine, shoving me forward with about the same cosmic indifference as a malfunctioning escalator packed with salarymen.

“Somebody’s got a psycho stalker!” Yashiro teased in a mocking voice. “Congrats, man. You’re only two episodes away from getting stabbed… or married!”

I really started to wish I didn't tell him these things.

The idea of a stalker did creep me out, especially since I had no idea who it could have been. I wondered if it was a girl who attended our school. Sitting in this very class, even. The very thought sent a shiver down my spine.

I rested my head on my desk and closed my eyes. The workload had been ramping up fast, and so had the sleepless nights.

Today, I felt especially exhausted. 

Maybe it just was the realization that every single thing I had ever procrastinated was now piling up and I was crashing head-first into it, or maybe it was the fact that I hadn’t gotten more than three hours of sleep the night before. Either way, I felt like a zombie trudging through a dream world... except it wasn’t one of those whimsical, fun dreams. No, the kind where you’re trapped in an interminable loop, where everything’s just a little too bright, a little too lou—

SLAM.

The door flew open, making me jump what seemed like two stories. Every sleep-deprived student in the room seemed to do the same. 

Mr. Sakamoto stormed into the room with a dusty box under one arm and some unrecognizable trinkets in the other. 

“Good morning, sleepwalkers!”

He must have been in a good mood today.

He dropped the box onto his desk, revealing its contents. Circuit boards, coils a Polaroid camera duct taped to what might have been a blender.

“Today, we will observe the interference of parallel signals across shared temporal frequencies.”

A few of the students exchanged looks. Some were still half-asleep. This was going to be a long class. I could already feel it.

Minutes dragged. Sakamoto’s lecture went on and on. Yashiro had quietly dozed off in a sitting position at his desk… something he had mastered over the years. My attention turned to a clock on the classroom wall.

I blinked. Was it just me, or was time crawling today?

10:15 AM.

I tried to focus on the lesson, hoping it would help past the time. Sakamoto’s voice choked in and out like a radio station with poor reception.

“…when external frequencies overlap, there’s an interference... a distortion...”

Tick. Tick. Tick.

My eyes drifted back to the clock.

10:15 AM.

How was that possible?! 

The second hand had barely moved. My mind was too tired to make sense of it.

“…signals... distort... our perception of them... It’s like when two waves crash into each other, creating ripples…”

I peeked at the rest of the class from the corners of my eyes, but everyone seemed to either be jotting down notes or dozing off like Yashiro. I picked up my pen and decided to scribble to pass the time.

A swirl turned into a crooked star, then a cat with sunglasses, then a vending machine with legs...and then, without any particular reason, I sketched a girl standing in front of a window. 

My window.

Then I scribbled over that too. 

“...the waves of reality crashing into each other. We experience it as distortion, but is it the reality that’s bending, or our perception?”

Tick. Tick. Tick.

I checked the clock again.

10:16 PM.

“Huh...?”

I rubbed my eyes.

10:15 AM.

The clock was mocking me.

“…observe the signals... see how they react... when multiple frequencies... intersect...”

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Was this how being stuck in time feels like? Forever trapped in the nightmare that was Sakamoto’s mind-numbing lecture? Every second stretching… every minute becoming longer and longer and more unbearab—

DING-DING-DING

The shrill sound of the bell cut into my skull like a tantō blade.

Huh. I guess that clock was broken.

⊹ ▬ ▬ ⊹ ⊹ ▬ ▬ ▬ ⊹

As students shuffled out of the classroom, I lingered behind to gather my things.

Apparently, there was some fundraiser being held at the cafeteria today that happened to have a "maid café" theme. Yashiro was ready to bolt the moment the bell rang.

“They’re serving omurice… and they’ve got maid girls serving it! You comin’, or what?”

I, on the other hand, preferred not to eat lunch with elbows in my ribs.

“I’ll pass.”

“Alrighty then, your loss.”

And just like that, he was off, sprinting to the cafeteria.

I leaned down to stuff my textbook into my bag, but as I did, my foot brushed something on the floor next to Yashiro’s desk. I bent down and picked it up.

It was a small purple notebook. No name. Probably Yashiro’s. He must’ve dropped it in his rush to get to the maid girls first. 

I shoved it into my bag, figuring I'd give it to him later.

Hoping to escape the chaos in the cafeteria, I decided to head up to the roof to enjoy my meal.

Normally, it was mostly female students who chose to eat up on the roof, but no way was I sticking around to watch a bunch of desperate high school boys drool over poor, overworked waitresses in Victorian-style maid costumes.

I opened the door and looked around.

Maybe it was because of the fundraiser today, but the roof was completely empty.

I stretched for a moment, then picked a random spot and sat down, taking out the homemade sandwich I’d brought for lunch.

As I enjoyed my leftover soba and onigiri, I remembered the notebook I’d picked up earlier. 

Curiosity got the better of me. I took out the purple notebook from my bag and opened it up to a random page, wondering if Yashiro had scribbled down some homework in there I could "borrow".

The first page I landed on was composed of what seemed like a diary entry, with a heading written in matching purple pen and neat handwriting:

"HOW TO TELL IF YOUR TEACHER IS POSSESSED BY A DEMON"

• Never blinks during lectures.
• Appears in your dreams holding a cursed ruler.
• Makes you forget the homework on purpose using dark magic.

The hell was this?

I flipped the page.

This one had crude little doodles in the margins. A yōkai and a saucer-style UFO you'd see in old American movies.

“I tried summoning Kuchisake-onna today. If you leave three empty cans on the roof at midnight and chant ‘Kuchisake' three times, you can make contact. I didn’t see anything… but maybe I just didn’t do it right. Maybe she was too busy chasing someone else tonight. I’ll try again tomorrow.”

I turned another page. 

Something about burying a dog tooth under a cherry tree during a full moon to summon a kitsune guardian spirit.

I quickly flipped through the pages and found that it was entirely entries like this. It had the energy of a middle schooler who read far too much fanfiction for their own good.

There was no way this was Yashiro’s. Even he wasn’t this far gone. This had to belong to some weirdo girl from the occult club. The kind who thought ghosts could be exorcised with melon soda and a CD of Gregorian chants.

Honestly? It was kind of cute, in a ridiculous, delusional kind of way.

Just then, a sound made me jerk to my feet, instinctively clutching the book behind my back like contraband.

SLAM!

The rooftop door erupted open like it'd been kicked off its hinges, scaring some birds away.

From the shadowy doorway, a figure stepped forward.

A girl in a dark hoodie over her school uniform. The wind caught the hem of her skirt, and sunlight hit just enough to catch the glint of her sharp, violet eyes.

Minase.

Minase?!

She moved toward me... not walked, moved... with unblinking pace. My body went rigid. My brain, too.

I knew her. Everyone did. One of the most put-together girls in school. Elegant, clever, always poised like she’d stepped out of a shoujo manga. So what the hell was she doing dressed like that?... and walking towards me?!

Finally, I managed to mutter something.

“...h-heyy... Minase-san, right?”

She didn’t respond, just kept coming. Those normally calm and composed eyes now blazed with something primal, locked in on me like a tiger ready to pounce on hopeless prey.

Then she stopped about five feet from where I stood and inhaled as if trying to regain her presidential composure.

"So where is it?"

“Where is what, Minase-san?” I asked, as nicely as I could manage. 

“Don’t play dumb with me. You were the last one to leave. I dropped… something in class and I know you have it!”

“Oh... You mean this?”

Before I could fully pull the notebook from behind my back, she snatched it from my hands.

“Sorry, I thought it was a friend’s—”

“It's mine.”

Minase’s voice cracked at the edges, and her usually graceful composure started to fray. Her eyes narrowed.

“How much did you read?!”

“I—I didn't read anything,” I lied.

I must have not been too convincing because the next second, she lunged.

Minase grabbed me by my collar with a strength I never could have expected. Her grip was like iron. She pulled me until her face was mere inches from mine. Her eyes looked feral.

Should I be scared, or aroused?

“Do you think this is some joke? That you can just snoop through someone's private stuff and laugh about it later?”

I opened my mouth to respond, but she cut me off.

“You will forget everything you saw.”

She looked as if she were about to throw me off the roof.

“If you even so much as tell a single soul... whoever you are, I will personally make sure the rest of your high school life is spent buried in a disciplinary record so long it’ll need its own filing cabinet. Got it?”

All I could do was vigorously nod.

She released my collar with a small scoff, turned and left.

I stood alone on the rooftop once again, wondering what the actual hell had just happened.

⊹ ▬ ▬ ⊹ ⊹ ▬ ▬ ▬ ⊹

“Y’know, it could’ve been worse,” Yashiro said. “Wait, no, it couldn’t have. She didn’t even know your name, too. Yeowch!”

Shut up.

“She was two inches away from your face. That’s probably the closest you’ll ever get to a kiss from Minase!”

Shut up.

Yashiro laughed. “Hey, I’m headed to the library to study. Care to join me again?”

A second day, a second shock. He was studying again. Well, not really. But it was a step up for him.

“Uh, sure. Let me just grab my stuff.”

And so for the second day in a row, we returned to the library and slid into our usual spot, tucked away between the two towering bookshelves where no one could disturb us.

I pulled out my textbook and stared at the page, pencil hovering over the math problems. My mind was someplace else. Formulas and numbers were quickly overtaken by everything else spiraling in my life. Deadlines, exams, college, and futures that felt more like traps than paths.

What am I even doing?

I could feel that his eyes were on me now.

“Hey, I think your homework is giving you a migraine.”

“I’m fine. Just trying to concentrate.”

Yashiro, the world’s favorite oddball, had this strange way of sensing when things weren’t quite right without saying anything. Maybe it was just all the years of knowing each other.

"Overthinking things again," he said. 

...Or maybe he was psychic.

“You ever think about how much trust people put into a clock? Most people just pretend like they know the time, doesn't mean it's really true. They just check the clock when they need to and pray that it’s accurate.”

I looked up to see him tilting dangerously in his chair, staring at the ceiling again. 

“You’re saying no one has a plan?” I asked. 

He shrugged. “Everyone sets a time. It's all just a guess. Don't matter if it's a digital clock, analog, sundial. People all have their schedules, their routines, their dates, meetings. Planned all the way down to the very second, yet time’s just a way of pretending we’re in control. People cling to it because they’re afraid of what happens if and when the clock breaks.”

Confusion swept me again. Yashiro never spoke like this before, and now suddenly he’s doing it daily. And what was his obsession with analogies lately?

“You're starting to sound like a bad fortune cookie.” I muttered. 

“I’ve been told worse.”

“You’re just a guy who shows up here and does nothing for two hours. How would you know?”

“Because I’ve lived my fair share and I've seen a few broken clocks. Maybe I got tired of pretending I had it figured out. Maybe you should.”

“SHHH,” someone hissed from the other side of the shelf.

Yashiro gave a mock salute, then leaned in a little closer. “Point is, doesn’t matter how well you set your clock, it's always gonna be a second off. Stop worrying so much.”

It was confusing, sure, but there was a surprising amount of depth to his analogy. I almost wanted to admit that Yashiro was right for once, and that maybe there was more to him beneath the idiocy.

Then, of course, he had to ruin it.

“Though if your life gets caught in some time loop or rewritten by cosmic interference, don't ask me for help.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just sayin'.”

He returned to flipping through some crumpled pamphlet he'd found on the floor.

And I went back to my math. Sort of. The numbers still didn’t make any more sense than they did five minutes ago.

Though deep down, his words made the stress lifted a little. Somehow.

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