From the Depths of Despair…

Takeda and Endo left for their after-school sports activities. Erika gave me a cheerful wave as she ran off to volleyball practice. I was left alone with the granite-faced Hayami. She made a gesture for me to follow her, then turned on her heel.

Satchel in hand, I fell in behind Hayami as she led me back to the main campus. “What’s this all about, anyway?”

She didn’t answer, or even look behind her. I guess she just assumed that I was following obediently.

I’d have a better conversation with a stone Buddha, I thought as we passed out of sight behind the gym. So I tried to provoke her into talking.

“Why do you hate me so much, Hayami?” I knew she only tolerated me, and then only because Takeda and I were close friends. But she had grown even less friendly ever since --

Oh. It finally dawned on me. She’d grown more hostile ever since Takeda told her about my part-time job.

“Is it because of my work? Because you think that I’m a thief? Or is it because you’re just an arrogant --”

Hayami stopped so suddenly I almost bumped into her. Off-balance, I took a step back.

Without warning, she stepped to one side and brought her bamboo shinai down and around in a vicious stroke that swept my feet out from under me.

I grunted as I fell on my back. All the wind had been driven out of my lungs.

As I tried to rise, she poked the white-capped tip of her weapon into my forehead, forcing me back down. “Ow! What are you doing, Hayami?”

“There is a thief in the school, Nakata.” Uh-oh, she was addressing me by my surname. Not a good sign. “I think it’s you.”

I sat up on my elbows, but she never lowered her shinai.

I spoke through gritted teeth. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you I’ve never stolen anything from anyone here at the academy. Would you?”

She continued as if I hadn’t said a word. “Your friends Erika and Takeda speak highly of your character, otherwise…”

“Otherwise, you’d do what?”

“I would shout out loud that I’d discovered a thief. The students nearby would listen to me, not you, and beat you within an inch of your life. Then you’d be expelled for stealing. My father still sits on the board of this school, even after --”

She cut herself off. For a second, I thought I saw anger flicker across her usually emotionless face. “But I will give you a chance to redeem yourself.”

“Redeem myself?” I felt my anger rising. “Redeem myself? From what? Your baseless accusations? There’s no way you can prove I did anything, because I haven’t stolen anything!”

“Oh really?” She lowered her shinai. “Then you prove it. Discover the identity of the real thief.”

“And how am I supposed to do that?” I demanded. “I’m not a magician or a detective, I’m a --”

“‘Security consultant,’ yes, I know.” She snorted. “But there have been several incidents of theft at our school. As the student council president, I have listened to every victim, gone over every incident. The items stolen are often not noticed until days later, but they have one factor in common.”

She made a curt gesture with her hand. “Stand up.”

“Yes, I think I will,” I said as I rose to my feet and dusted myself off. I’d been tempted to show my defiance and just lay there, until I’d felt the tickle of ants crawling across my arm. “So, what’s this common factor?”

“The thefts always occur in the girl’s locker room, between the end of the school day and the end of sports practice.”

I felt a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. “The girl’s locker room?”

“Yes. It’s where we’re going now. The scene of the crime, so to speak.” She spun on her heel and marched off. Once again I followed, making sure I was out of range of her shinai.

------------------------------------------------

The girl’s locker room is the most dangerous area in the school. Any male found in this most sacred of temples would be subject to immediate, horrible death, and his remains scraped off the floor and mailed to the next-of-kin in an envelope. A small envelope.

I gulped and followed Hayami in, hoping that being with the student council president gave me some measure of safety. She spoke to me while scanning the numbered sports lockers.

“The thief can only avoid detection when the teams are out practicing. We’ll use this one.” She tapped a bottom locker, then twirled a code into the combination lock before popping the door open.

“What’s special about ‘this one?’” I asked. “And how does this thief steal anything from a locked container?”

The skirt of her hakama belled out like a parachute as she whirled to face me. “Do you see now why I suspect you, Nakata? I doubt that very many people in our school of elites are skilled in the art of burglary.”

She held her arms out, indicating the entire room. “This locker is ideal for seeing every corner of the room. You’ll hide in here until the thief makes his presence known, then take a photo of him committing his crime.”

“Right, okay. But, why me? Anyone could do this -- Endo, Takeda, even Erika or,” I gave her a pointed look, “the student council president.”

“Nakata, none of us have the capability to bypass the lock. You do. After photographing the thief, we wouldn’t be able to get out before the athletes returned from practice.” Something like humor passed across her face. “And that’s something you’d better be sure to do, or you will get caught and your pulped remains hung from the school gates. ”

She looked down her nose at me. “Not to mention, you’re small enough to fit into one of these with the least amount of discomfort.”

I had to admit she had a point. But I was also detecting a setup. Once I concealed myself in a locker, I could just see Hayami sneaking off to grab a teacher, claiming that she’d found out where the “thief” had been hiding.

But I knew I could easily bypass the locks on these things, no matter which side of the door I was on. I would be long gone by the time Hayami returned with a witness.

“Hurry, Nakata.” She tapped the locker again. “I have business to attend to, and the thief could come at any moment.”

“Okay, okay, don’t get bent out of shape,” I grumbled. “Hey, there’s stuff in here!”

She was getting impatient. “All of the lockers have their owner’s things in them, you idiot! They’re sports lockers! Enough stalling!” Hayami gave me a hard smack with the shinai. I climbed in before she could hit me again, and she slammed the door behind me.

As sports lockers went, this one smelled really nice. It had a sweet, familiar fragrance. I wondered if all the girl’s lockers had perfumed sachets. Mine always had a smell that could drive out or kill small rodents with a single whiff.

And though it was a snug fit, I could actually see fairly well through the locker’s vents.

Well enough to see the sinister smile appearing on Hayami’s face.

“The door has a combination lock, Nakata. Are you certain you can bypass the lock and make your escape?”

“Wait, did you just trick me?” I demanded.

“All these doors will lock automatically upon being shut. I just want to see if you’re as good as your friend says you are.” She shrugged. “If you’re incapable, just tell me and I’ll open the door. Then I’ll explain to everyone how the great ‘security consultant’ who breached the defenses of one of Japan’s largest corporations was unable to get past the door of a girl’s locker.”

I squirmed around until I could face the lock, and activated my cell phone light. The lock mechanism was open and vulnerable.

I snorted in disgust. “Pah. This is child’s play.” I pulled out a steel probe and went to work, then stopped and squinted at Hayami through the vent. “Didn’t you say you had something to attend to?”

I saw her bend over to pick something up off the floor. “Yes, but I can afford to be late if I have an important task.” She straightened up and fixed me with an unfriendly stare. “Like catching a thief.”

In her hands was my satchel.

I started to get a really bad feeling. “Won’t you scare the thief away by being here?”

Hayami responded with a peal of laughter. “How can I scare him away when I’ve already trapped him?”

She abruptly stopped laughing, her face going back to its usual stony look. But this time, there was an almost feral look of anger there as well. “You asked me if I hated you for being a thief. No, I hate you for what you took from me. From my family.”

“What?” I was completely confused, and becoming more concerned by the second. Things had taken a sudden turn for the surreal. “I never took anything from you! Or your family!”

Hayami sat on the wooden bench in front of me and leaned forward. Through the slits in the door, it appeared as if two dark, wrathful eyes floated toward me. The effect was unnerving, and I involuntarily shrank back as far as I could.

“Tell me something, Nakata. When you were showing off at YHI, whose safe did you pilfer?”

“The CEO’s safe! But it was all for show, and everything I took was returned!”

“Not everything.” She hadn’t blinked once. “Did you bother to see whose name was on the door of the office? The name of the CEO? The CEO of Yoshida Heavy Industries?” she shouted.

Once again, I felt my stomach churning. “The -- the name on the door. Yoshida Hiroto. Don’t tell me, that was --”

“My father.”

I processed this in silence. In the distance I could hear the sounds of volleyball practice echoing in the gym.

“Corporate security recovered the items you’d stolen from his safe. Among those items were details of a top secret defense contract that were required to remain in the main vault, information that you and your uncle planted in my father’s safe!”

“No! Uncle and I never --”

“Father was forced to resign from his position! And now he’s under investigation by the government for a theft he never committed!” In a blind rage, Hayami kicked the locker door, leaving a dent and making my ears ring. “While the real thief goes free and unpunished!”

Without another word, she upended my satchel, pouring the contents onto the tiled floor.

“Hey! Those are my things! What are you doing?”

“Let’s see how many stolen items are in your possession.” The satchel was kicked to one side, then Hayami poked through the textbooks, pens, pencils, snacks, and other items with the tip of her shinai, her nose wrinkling as if she were going through a garbage can.

She scooped up a fancy plastic bag from an expensive downtown confectionary. “Oh, what’s this?”

“Don’t touch those!” I shouted.

Hayami pulled a box out of the bag. It was covered in gold foil and was in the shape of a heart.

Slowly, she shook her head. Her sinister smirk had reappeared. “Nakata. Surely, even you know that it's girls who give chocolates to boys on Valentine’s Day in Japan. So, what were you planning to do with this?”

She gave a short, cruel bark of a laugh. “I know! You’ve never had a girl give you chocolates before, so you were going to give them to yourself, right?”

I said nothing.

Chuckling, she turned toward me. “Oh, I see now. You were going to give them to Erika. Well, I’ll save you the embarrassment of having your gift turned down and eat them myself.”

I finally spoke up. “Hayami. If you touch those chocolates, I’m going to take pictures of you eating them, then send them to Erika and Takeda. Who’ll be the thief then?”

“Hmm. I wonder,” she said, looking up and tapping her chin with a well-manicured finger, as if she’d never thought of that possibility. “My guess would be that they’d want to know why you were taking pictures of me from a girl’s locker in the first place. But, let’s give you something more interesting to photograph.”

Puzzled, I watched as she reached behind her. She pulled on something…

To my horror, Hayami casually disrobed in front of my eyes, shedding her hakama, gi, and tabi, which lay in a pile surrounding her bare feet.

“What would Erika say now, Nakata? If she saw the photos you took of me as I ate Takeda’s gift of chocolates while wearing only my lingerie?”

I didn’t even want to imagine what Erika would think.

Hayami sat on the bench, casually crossing one leg over the other as she held the box of chocolates, the ones I’d purchased to give to Erika for Valentine’s Day, in her lap. 

Peeling the gold foil off of one, she slowly nibbled on it while sneering at me. “Mmm. Delicious.” She crumpled the wrapper, then tossed the open box behind her. Expensive artisanal chocolates bounced and rolled across the floor.

I knew I had to get out. Even if Hayami screamed and claimed I’d molested her, I couldn’t plead my case if I was discovered.

Then, in the hallway outside I heard the sound of girls running and chattering with excitement, volleyballs bouncing and thudding off the walls and concrete floor.

The volleyball team was returning early from practice.

Frantically, I pushed hard on the locking latch with my probe. It moved slowly.

Too slowly.

Like a human avalanche, the volleyball team piled into the locker room. Shouts of recognition bounced off the walls as the team saw the popular Yoshida Hayami in their midst.

“Hayami!”

“Hey, it’s Hayami!”

“You’re through already, Hayami?” I heard a familiar voice saying. “Oh that’s right, we were both planning to finish early today. Wait a minute, I’ll join you in the shower.”

The figure standing in front of my locker kicked her shoes off, then dropped her jersey and shorts in a pile.

“H-Hey --” I said, but there was too much noise in the background to be heard.

“That’s strange, my locker is unlocked --” The balky latch jerked upward and the door burst open.

I looked up at Erika, standing there in her undergarments. My lips moved, but nothing came out as I stared into her horrified eyes.

She shrieked, immediately stopping all other noise in the vicinity. “Keisuke! What are you doing?”

For a moment, everyone froze. Then the room exploded into mayhem. Screams came from girls in various stages of undress as they fled into the shower, while others shouted in anger and grabbed mops and broom handles.

Erika seemed to choke. “Keisuke, how could you? How --”

I tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come out. What could I say, anyway?

She fixed me with a look of anger and deep betrayal as tears welled up in her eyes. I felt like a dagger had been plunged into my chest.

Without another word, she fled from the room, heedlessly crushing an empty, heart-shaped box of chocolates underfoot on her way out.

Hayami rose to her feet. The commotion died down as everyone waited to hear her speak. “Ladies,” she said in a regal manner, “I believe we’ve found our thief. And a pervert as well.”

She pointed her elegant finger at me. “Don’t let him get away.”