Chapter Four
"I can take the box if you want to head back to club."
She was nervous. He could sense it in the pitch of her voice and the tension in her shoulders. Hanamura was smiling, but her eyes were fixed to the floor. Typical underclassman behavior, he supposed. This was to be expected. They didn't really know each other, and here he was – urged non-so-gently by the school nurse to aid her with this simple task. It probably didn't help that he was fresh from practice too, his hair windswept and shirt dark with sweat. He always looked a little wild after volleyball.
"You heard Nurse Hino – no more practice. At least for today," he said, swishing the box away from her outstretched hands. He was at least a foot taller which gave him the advantage.
"But your hand."
"It's fine." He flashed her a reassuring smile. Then, more purposefully he added, "besides I'm curious to see where you store all of your treasures, Magpie Girl."
He took his chance, going straight for the proverbial jugular. Hanamura didn't seem like the frail type. If she were more delicate, then perhaps he would have circumvented the matter of her reputation, but he had a hunch that there was a compelling-enough reason behind her agenda to give her clout.
Her responding look was shrewd.
"Treasures?"
"All your bits and bobbles," he said with a gentle shake of the box. "Are you building a collection of some kind? The whole school is dying to know."
This was an exaggeration, of course, but he didn't want to reveal how much be had been observing her strange antics as of late. If anything, it was easier to blame his insatiable curiosity on the school and play the part as the messenger.
Her gaze lingered on the box, her face gradually filling with wry humor.
"Now that you mention it, I have been getting a lot of looks recently." As they walked, she reached out and brushed her fingers against the bulletin board. The flyers shifted askew, fanning out like little pinwheels. "I suppose going through the trash was a bit much. But people never go out of their way to ask, so I never explain," she said, sounding slightly morose. "Magpie Girl…that could make a good moniker."
It was his turn to frown.
Tendou was all about owning a nickname for the sake of oppositional defiance, but even he was slightly taken aback by her casual acceptance of being labeled a misfit. The moment a nickname entered circulation at Shiratorizawa, it was difficult to undo. There were worse things than to be called a scavenger bird, sure. And the students at Shiratorizawa weren't completely heartless. But nicknames had a way of forcing a person inside a box, and more times than most, that box was difficult to escape. Operating as the resident Guess Monster had become a thing of pride since he joined the volleyball team, but he was well-aware it affected how others treated him.
Hanamura scrutinized him as if gauging his sincerity.
He feigned innocence.
"Come on," she said, "I'll show you what I do with all my treasures."
Tendou smirked.
She was quite different from the version he had conjured in his head over the past few weeks. Instead of the eccentric, madcap character that starred in his short story, this version was sardonic and charming. A bit mysterious too. There was a cerebral glow to her smile that intrigued him.
As he followed her down the hall, he admired the dark gloss of her hair, the strong set of her shoulders. There was a wildness to her too, something raw and unkempt.
"Here we are," she said, prying a classroom door ajar.
Tendou faced darkness, the light inside shadowy and gray. He peered at her, uncertain.
"Oh. The power must have tripped again," said Hanamura. "Don't worry, Fukuhara knows how to fix the breaker box. Follow me." She took the lead, waving him inside as she stepped into the dark.
Tendou entered the room, his eyes adjusting slowly to the confusion of shapes and voices inside. This was no classroom. It lacked the white-tiled floor, the neat rows of desks, even the overpowering smell of chalk dust. Instead, the floor was waxy under his feet, the ceiling twice as high and cavernous above his head. There were windows on the west-facing wall, but the sun cast a harsh blade of light against the back cabinets, illuminating a disturbing sight.
Tendou gripped the box.
A skull, bleached and severed from the rest of its body, watched him with a menacing hollow eye. It sat nestled in papery snake skins atop a jagged piece of hide. There were jars of floating appendages in formaldehyde, a marble bust with a frozen look of terror, and diagrams of human anatomy rendered with glaring detail.
He stared at a person's entrails, his stomach rolling with nerves.
"Erm…Hanamura, where are we?"
A hand clamped on his shoulder, making him jump.
"Careful," said a male student holding a pair of pliers. "There are metal shavings on the floor."
Tendou curled his toes inside his slippers.
Was this really Shiratorizawa? Since when did the school have a post-apocalyptic portal installed on the fourth floor? Tendou was baffled. Was this where all the outcasts gathered after school, plotting out their revenge? The other students in the room were dressed in strange lab coats, some wearing safety goggles, and gloves. The one working the breaker box at the front of the room was prying it open with an iron chisel.
It was at that moment that a disembodied voice filled the air.
It was on the eve of a full moon that she finally abandoned her senses, reaching for the kitchen knife, freshly sharpened and waiting…
As she crept up the stairs, the floorboards creaked under her feet, sending her shadow flitting across the room…
Heart pounding, she brandished the knife, the edge gleaming silvery bright in the darkness…
She raised it high, padding swiftly to the side of the bed where a figure slept…
"This way," said Hanamura much to his growing trepidation.
Tendou's heart began to pound in tune with the eerie music building up inside the room.
"Is this the horror club?" He asked.
Hanamura glanced over her shoulder, quirking a brow. "Why? Are you afraid?"
He scowled.
Cheeky. She was rather cheeky for a first year.
"Suzume, there you are!" A female student exclaimed, motioning urgently. "You better hurry."
"Right," said Hanamura, heading straight to the utility closet in the corner of the room.
Tendou froze, noticing that the curtains hanging over the doorway were covered in dark stains. Large viscous splatters of what looked like chocolate...or blood. Hanamura's classmate was guarding something on the floor, her hands clutching a squirt bottle, her expression deeply grave. Why was she so grave? Had someone been brutally maimed? Had Shirabu been right? Was Magpie Girl really preparing to hide a body?
The music trilled in alarm.
She plunged the knife into the blankets, cutting through silk and sinew with a devil's shriek!
"Eep!"
Tendou quickly retracted his earlier assessment. Hanamura was every bit the eccentric, madcap character he had concocted in his mind and she had just revealed herself to be the murderer!
"Reiko, this is Satori Tendou," Hanamura introduced him to her classmate. "He offered to help me bring supplies."
Oh no! That makes me an accomplice! Tendou fretted, gritting his teeth.
"Tendou, this is Reiko Asano, our fibers specialist."
"H-Hullo," said Tendou, waving his bandaged bear claw.
Asano stared at him with wide eyes, her greeting coming out mumbled and unintelligible.
"Y-Y-You brought a volleyball player here?" Another student piped up, a boy with ash-blond hair. He peered at Tendou through his glasses, aghast.
"That's Takashi Izakaya," said Hanamura, "our resident pessimist."
"You mean ceramist."
Tendou recognized him immediately. "You! You're afraid of spiders!"
Izakaya regarded him with open astonishment, going so far as to clutch his chest with hands covered in muck. "I beg your pardon?"
Tendou glanced wildly across the room. He needed to know if the entire club was complicit in this murder. There were several other students; an adequate mixture of first, second, and third years. But no one seemed agitated or culpable. Instead, he witnessed a wide range of endeavors – everything from wire contraptions to hellish masks. The walls were a profusion of fruit, flowers, and human anatomy. His eyes lingered on a frame of insect specimens, transfixed.
"Here, let me take that from you," said Hanamura, lifting the box from his hands and setting it down on the floor. She quickly rummaged for one of the bottles and beckoned him closer.
"This is what I do with all my bits and bobbles," she said, grinning in a way that did nothing to dispel his increasing horror. She whipped the curtains open just as the lights came back on, gesturing with an elegant flourish of her hands.
Tendou came face-to-face with brightly colored canvas. The utility closet was an homage to splatters and drips, lines and shapes of vibrant color. Paintings hung from the ceiling like decorative rugs in a furniture store, and on the floor lay a giant red canvas.
"It hasn't dried yet," said Asano, drawing back with the squirt bottle in hand. She shut off her phone, silencing the climatic dirge of someone being murdered in their sleep.
Tendou frowned at her. What on earth had she been listening to?
Hanamura moved.
"Perfect! We made it back just in time." There was a seriousness to her now as she assessed the painting. She grabbed the smock that was hanging on a nearby hook and quickly threw it over her school uniform. Tendou thought it made her look like Nurse Hino, or at least, it would have if it were not decorated in rivulets of paint. Hanamura hastily buttoned it up before taking the bottle of rubbing alcohol. She flipped the lid and poured a heavy amount into her palm.
"Right – on the count of three. One…Two…Three!" She tossed the liquid high into the air. Tendou instinctively stepped back with Asano as the airborne droplets fell onto the canvas, staining it in mesmerizing splatters. The alcohol caused a chemical reaction that forced the paint to pull away, revealing iridescent white gold underneath.
Hanamura moved quickly, flinging more palmfuls of alcohol. As she worked, the painting transformed, writhing liquidly from crimson to marbled granite. Underneath the red, different shades of gold and black emerged so as the alcohol worked it magic, the surface evolved right before their very eyes.
"Whoa," he and Asano murmured together in awe.
Izakaya craned his neck to get a better view from his turntable. "Well? Did it work?"
Hanamura squatted low, flicking her fingers, and creating several more galaxies in the paint. Her head tilted as she assessed the experiment. When she turned, she was beaming with satisfaction.
"I'm a painter," she explained to Tendou at last. "All my 'treasures' are used for this." She waved at the tapestries hanging behind her, a collection of contemporary artwork.
Tendou was slack-jawed.
"She claims to never use a paintbrush," said Izakaya, sounding annoyed.
"I think it's cool," Asano said to Tendou as if to reassure him that it was perfectly alright.
Tendou took a moment to gather himself. He had just stepped off a psychological roller coaster – one that climbed a hundred stories in the span of a second before depositing him sharply back to earth.
He relaxed his shoulders, a bead of sweat slipping down his neck. As the reality of the situation sunk in, he inched closer and peeled back the drapes to get a better look at the paintings Hanamura had hung up to dry. They were all large, expressive abstracts. The colors were vivid, but it was the sheer size and volume Tendou found most impressive. Some of the paintings had bold, calligraphic lines, others were caked in paint as thick as brownie batter, and as he flipped through them all he stopped and smiled at one in particular.
"I wondered what you had planned with the pitchfork!" He snickered, realizing that the hatching had the same equal-spaced tines as the tool used in the stable barn.
Hanamura rubbed her neck.
"They were going to throw it out, so...I asked if I could have it. I call this one Fork."
"So clever, Suzume," said Izakaya dourly. "What will you think of next?"
Tendou broke into genuine laughter, the kind of laughter that put a stitch in his side as he folded over his knees. To go from a seedy crime scene to an art experiment – the whiplash had tickled his funny bone, causing him to revel in his own wild imagination. He had been so curious these past few days, so riddled with suspense, he was thrilled that she had not disappointed him.
So this is her modus operandi, he thought.
She was an artist and a very strange one at that.
A/N: Did you catch on faster than Tendou? :D
"Follow" - Crystal Fighters
"Toccata and Fugue in D Minor Harp" - Amy Turk
Thank you for reading!
lavendermoonmilk