"Bungaku Shoujo" to Uekawaku Ghost 3

*for use by Rimashiro*

p1:
Kayano! / Kayano! / Come back to me, Kayano! / I’ll turn back time, / I’ll bring you back to life, / I’ll do whatever it takes to meet you again!

He swung his hatchet at the grave where she rested. / With famished eyes he continued to dig at the grave like a man possessed. / She betrayed him, trampled his beautiful miniature garden and crushed it into a million pieces. / She sneered at his ambitions. / And she never once expressed remorse.

She never knew what it meant, how much despair and hatred he felt, when she tore away half of his soul.
Wake up, Kayano! / Your other half is calling you from above the grave! / Open your coffin and crawl out!

p2:
You owe me your body, / your soul, / every part of you as atonement!
Chapter 3: Salome is the Girl I Like

p3:
Maki: I’ve heard some interesting things, Tooko. / Apparently you’ve been staying really late at school lately.

Konoha: Himekura Maki. / The granddaughter of the chairman of the school board, she became a member of the prestigious orchestra club and is currently its president and conductor. / Her hobby is drawing / and Tooko caught her eye. She keeps begging her to model nude for her.

Konoha: Though I’m not sure why she wants to draw such a flat chest.

p4:
Maki: Amemiya Hataru? / So you’re interested in the occult now, Tooko.

Tooko: What do you mean? / Maki, do you know Amemiya-san?

Maki: She was my junior in the art club back in middle school.

Maki: There was a strange rumor about her:

Maki: That anyone who got close to her would be cursed.

p5:
Maki: Lots of strange things happen around that one. / Everyone she gets involved with has had something horrible happen to them, / and finds their life at risk. / You two should be careful, too. / Or have you been cursed already?

Maki: And it’s possible that the person behind the memos / is a ghost after all.

Maki: There’s an old story of a ghost who wanders the halls of the school at night, / writing numbers wherever she goes.

Maki: The alumnae told me about it.

p6:
Konoha: That just sounds like a run-of-the-mill school ghost story.
Tooko: This isn’t a joke!

Tooko: Only an elementary school kid / would be scared of something like a ghost, or curses, or other unscientific things!

Tooko: What is a curse?! / I am a Literature Girl / who has read the folklore collection Toono Monogatari by the great Yanagida Kunio!

p7:
Maki: How brave!

Konoha: At this rate…
SFX: Hah

Tooko: I’ll keep watch tonight, too! / I’ll catch Kujou Kayano, and solve this mystery once and for all!
Konoha: Hah-----

Tooko: Got that, Konoha-ku… / Huh?

Tooko: …Hey! Where do you think you’re going!
Konoha: The bathroom.

p8:
Tooko: And you’re taking your bag? / Who takes his bag to the bathroom? / Kyah!

Tooko: Hey, Konoha-kun! / Konoha-kuuuuuun!

Konoha: Sorry, but I don’t have time to get wrapped up in this. / Finals are drawing closer even as we speak.

Konoha: Tooko-sempai should just give up soon and head on home, too.

p9:
Ryuuto: Hey! / Thanks for last night.

Konoha: You’re / the guy Tooko-sempai—

Ryuuto: The name’s Sakurai Ryuuto. / Nice to meet ya’, Konoha-san.

p10:
Konoha: Why are you here, uh…

Ryuuto: Just call me Ryuuto. / Yer older than me, after all.

Konoha: I’m older? / You’re a high school freshman?!
Ryuuto: Yep! / Just graduated this spring!

Konoha: A high school freshman with three girlfriends? / Who has a lovers’ quarrel with all three at night in the middle of the street? / Who is this guy?!

Konoha: So, what business do you have with me? / And why do you know my name?
Ryuuto: Tooko-nee talks ‘bout you at home.

p11:
Ryuuto: Today, Konoha-sempai wrote me this, or that, / and it was sweet, / or spicy, / or sour, / or salty.
Konoha: You know that Tooko-sempai eats stories?!

Ryuuto: Yeah, I know. / We do live in the same house.

Konoha: It’s not like I care / if other people know Tooko-sempai’s secret, but… / but listening to him speak…
Ryuuto: Each day for breakfast she’ll eat one of the Guri and Gura books or one from The Children of Noisy Village. / She looks so happy when she dives into her books and eats each crisp page.

Konoha: <aside: Gulp > / just pisses me off.

p12:
Konoha: So? What’d you want to talk about? / Something about Tooko-sempai?

Ryuuto: No, it has nothin' to do with her… / Actually, I’d rather you not tell her anythin' 'bout this.

Ryuuto: There’s a girl I like who attends your school! / Could you help me get closer to her?
Konoha (aside): *sigh*
Konoha (thought): You want to date another girl?

p13:
Konoha: So? Who’s the girl?

Ryuuto: Her name’s / Amemiya Hataru.

p14:
Ryuuto: Do you know her, Konoha-san?

Konoha: I wouldn’t say I know her, but…

Konoha: That’s the same girl Maki-sempai was just talking about, and the one we brought to the nurse’s office yesterday.

Ryuuto: We went out a while back, / but things never clicked between us, or somethin', / and everything went south.

p15:
Konoha: You were going out with her?! / But don’t you already have girlfriends? / And three, at that!
SFX: Clack (chair moving backwards)
Ryuuto: Yeah, I’m going out with them, too.

Ryuuto: There’s two or three more— / Or was it four or five? / I keep swapping 'em in and out so frequently, it’s hard to keep track.

Konoha: If you have that many girlfriends, / why are you so worked up over the one that got away? / I mean, do you actually even like Amemiya-san?

Ryuuto: Hmmm… / Well, I suppose I might come to love her eventually.
Konoha: What’s that supposed to mean?

p16:
Ryuuto: She / seems to love danger.

Konoha: You like dangerous girls?

Ryuuto: I can’t stand normal girls.

p17:
Ryuuto: I want the kind of girl who would kill the man she loves to make him her own, / then take his decapitated head and kiss it. / Someone like Salome in the play by Oscar Wilde. / I want to be loved that much, / to be held that close, / to be that hated.

Ryuuto: I’m a masochist. / I want a girl to stare at me with loving eyes / as she abuses me.

p18:
Ryuuto: After all, isn’t hatred the strongest human emotion? / Though love may change and fade with time, / true hatred can’t be forgotten so easily. / It merely grows stronger and stronger still.

Ryuuto: I figure if a girl hates me, she’ll love me for a longer time than she would otherwise. / And then love will prolong the hate, / and hate the love.

Konoha: So you’re dating lots of girls at the same time so that they’ll hate you?

Ryuuto: That’s right.

p19:
Ryuuto: I want them to grow jealous and confine me!
SFX: *shiver shiver*

Ryuuto: But Hataru’s different.

Ryuuto: Even when we were going out, / she never got that close to me, / and always seemed really distant. / I never knew her to be any other way.

Konoha: How did you meet her?

Ryuuto: It was about a month ago.

p20:
Ryuuto: It was a rainy day, / and the wind was fierce,

Ryuuto: when I saw her, / in a park in the dead of night, / standing on a swing.

p21:
SFX: Flash

Ryuuto: Though lightning crashed around her, / and though the rain soaked her hair and clothes, / she stood so fiercely on her swing.

Ryuuto: When I saw that, / I thought, / “Wow, she’s amazing”.

p22:
Ryuuto: What do you call that—inspiration? / Or maybe “meeting your soulmate”? / It felt like / she was strangely special t' me.

Ryuuto: I knew that Hataru was the kind of girl who would do whatever it took / to get whatever it was she truly desired. / If a man got scared and tried to run from her, / she’d chase him down and devour him. / She would force herself on him.

Ryuuto: Ever since I met her, / I knew I’d be satisfied with her alone.

Ryuuto: When I asked her if she wanted to go out with me, / she answered “Yeah”, / so you'd think she wanted to go out with me, too.

p23:
Ryuuto: But it never felt / like she actually liked me.

Ryuuto: We’d go on dates, / and we’d kiss, / but it was weird. / She’d ask me, “Why are we going out”? / I started thinking / that maybe I had done something wrong.

Ryuuto: And from the day I started going out with her, / weird things started to happen.

Konoha: “Weird things”?
(flashback: That anyone who got close to her would be cursed.)

p24:
Ryuuto: We were always followed / by a dangerous-looking man in sunglasses.

Ryuuto: He looked to be in his forties, / wore a suit, and had died his hair a light color. His appearance wasn’t bad, / but things felt grim just being near him. / He seemed like one of the living dead, / or a Grim Reaper.

Ryuuto: Once I started going out with Hataru, / he always seemed to be close by, watching, staring straight into my soul.

p25:
Ryuuto: I’m pretty sure Hataru noticed, too. / Whenever he was nearby, she’d grab onto my arm. / She’d be trembling, and say “Don’t look back” while choking back tears.

Ryuuto: But when I asked her who he was, / she refused to answer.

Ryuuto: And that’s not all. I was accosted by some rough types on the street at night. / They’d beat me up and order me to break up with Hataru. / They’d chase me around town all night. / I was even nearly hit by a car. / A lot of bad things happened to me that month.
Konoha: All that and you still didn’t break up with her?

p26:
Ryuuto: I love thrills like that! / It really pumped me up!

Konoha: wow

Ryuuto: But don’t worry about me / being stalked or beat up.

sfx: *clench*
Ryuuto: I think Hataru herself has much bigger problems.

p27:
Konoha: Problems? / Something about her personality?

Ryuuto: No; that wouldn’t be a problem to me.

Ryuuto: She / never seems to eat anything.

Ryuuto: She’d recommend stuff to me, but she’d never even take a bite. She kept saying she just wasn’t hungry. / And she’d only drink water.

Konoha: The nurse said the same thing, too.

p28:
Ryuuto: And sometimes, / she starts to feel like someone else. / At night, in poorly lit places, / she’d suddenly become cheerful or depressed.

Ryuuto: And she would say / “I am Kujou Kayano!” / from out of nowhere.

Konoha: Are you serious? / Amemiya-san called herself Kujou Kayano? / So that means Amemiya-san and Kujou Kayano are the same person, right?
SFX: Clack (same chair sound)

Ryuuto: Konoha-san, / have you met “Kayano”?

p29:
Konoha: Someone was putting mysterious memos / in the post box the Literature Club set up. / When we staked out the post box in order to find out who did it, / we encountered a girl who called herself Kujou Kayano.

Ryuuto: I think I might have told / Hataru about that post box…

Ryuuto: Konoha-san, / please don’t tell Tooko-nee any of this. / She’d cause a fuss if she thought my life were actually in danger. / And can you try to look up more about Hataru for me?

Konoha: I’ll try asking her classmates.

Ryuuto: I’ll be checking things out on my end, too. / So, I’ll see you again tomorrow, same time?

p30:
Konoha: Amemiya Hataru and Kujou Kayano… / Is she suffering from multiple personality disorder?

Konoha: I would have though the kind of guy who dates half-a-dozen girls at once would be more frivolous, / but he seems genuinely worried about Amemiya-san.

Konoha: That part of him kind of reminds me of Tooko-sempai….