Lost in Translation
-- 20th Century Boys © Urasawa Naoki, et al.
At one point during early middle school she ran into Kenji. The transistor radio that used to go with him everywhere was now more than halfway to being battered. Not feeling particularly annoyed with the thing, which crackled with random bursts of static when the earplug was off, she somehow suspected that she ought to be.
"No time for a visit to the Hanging Hill now, I guess," she said.
"Hanging Hill?" He was absently surprised. "Oh, that. Well, it's just an empty house anyway. Did you ever go in?"
"Some of the girls did, I think. They said there were too many shadows to tell for sure if Kanda Haru was still around."
"Yeah."
She shrugged, feeling just the slightest bit inane. She could see that for him the haunted house had taken the cast of an obsolete myth, whereas rock 'n roll had become the vital, pounding reality.
"Uh, I gotta run and help my folks at the store. See you later, okay?"
"Sure," she said, but he was already hurrying away. It seemed to her that the older children grew, the more parents needed them to help with their business. Her grandfather, a dear old thing that never cracked jokes about her sending him patients, also shared this pseudo-creed. It made one think that children were on some sort of unsupervised probation until the age of twelve or so.
She raised her head slightly, looking at the general direction of the Hanging Hill. In her mind's eye she saw a shadow leaning out of the window, watching curious children file past the front door in a tight, whispering line; grimly amused and at the same time, perhaps, wishing they would stay and explore more rooms more thoroughly.
Children, after all, were human, and there had always been so many of them.