[one]


Spring flowered in fresh crisp mornings and floating tufts of pollen. It was this pollen that caused Ito Asumi to sneeze and trip at the bottom of the staircase to school. Her satchel fell.

Books scattered. Papers billowed.

Before she had fallen, I had been reading a detective novel, lying on my back on the grassy slope beside the staircase, legs crossed, a shoe idly bobbing.

As soon as I saw what happened to Asumi, the book fell from my hands and I hopped over the metal railing of the staircase to check on her.

Once I was close enough, I spotted the tell-tale sign of her shoulders shuddering. I stooped beside her and rested a hand on her arm.

"Are you okay?"

Tears had left her cheeks ruddy and hot.

She said, "I think it might be fractured."

"Can I take a look?"

There was a strange sort of suspicion in her eyes. But it soon cleared.

"You're in my chemistry class. Janvier Juniper. Right?"

"Juno."

"Juno…Do you have training or something?"

"Yeah. Learned some stuff at my last school."

Confusion had pinched her brow. Now it smoothed.

"Oh, that's right. You transferred."

Gently, I took hold of her wrist. Asumi could not see what happened next: golden tendrils of light bloomed in my hands and slowly wrapped around hers, rising along her wrists.

Asumi was speaking but I couldn't hear much apart from the gentle hum in my eardrums, as if a fat bumblebee sat on the edge of my ear and buzzed to its heart's content.

The world bled into that golden light, too, which was so warm and soft. If I tipped forward, I would fall into it and never emerge.

Asumi had a fracture. It was like a blindfolded person brushing their fingertips across a damaged porcelain vase and feeling out the small cracks on its sides. The golden light sought out those cracks and filled them, as if they'd never been there at all.

Soon enough, the fracture was gone.

Asumi had fallen silent. Her gaze was locked on my hands.

"It feels better," she said slowly. "How -..."

"It wasn't fractured," I lied. "Just a little tender."

"Do you think he saw everything?"

I blinked twice. "Huh?"

Following her eyes, I looked along the length of the staircase. At its summit, a tall figure stood, shrouded in the shade of the trees above.

On such a warm morning, he still wore a long black trench-like coat which covered his green vest. Around his waist sat two belts, loose and colourful. From his collar, a long chain dangled, glinting wetly in the sunlight, like it melted. But it was only the wavering lines of heat.

Despite the dipped bill of his hat covering most of his face, I was sure that he was looking at us - at my hands. There was no doubt about it. He had seen the light.

Because he was surrounded by a light of his own. I saw it. It mesmerised me. I had never met anyone else like me before.

"Don't look!" Asumi hissed. "He'll know I was talking about him!"

"Huh? Who is he anyway?"

Surprise seeped through her features, finishing in her mouth falling apart.

"You've been in our school a whole semester and you don't know who that is?"

"I missed a couple of classes."

"He's Kujo Jotaro. Only the most handsome, most intelligent, most caring -..."

"He's walking away."

Asumi pressed her lips together. "I'm sure he saw you were with me," she grit out, "and figured I was safe."

"Oh, right. But you're gonna be late, you know."

Alarm flashed through her eyes. She scrambled from the ground, rushing around to collect the books and papers that had fallen from her satchel. She had only barely stuffed them into place before snapping shut the buckle and turning for the school.

Then she paused. "Aren't you coming?"

"Got other plans."

She lifted an eyebrow. "You'll get in trouble."

"I'm never out of it."

Apprehension slowed her first couple of steps. But then she was gone. It was like the fall had never happened, just like the fracture.

The soft quiet of the morning had been spoiled. Rather than pull dandelions or read my book, I walked along the cobbled path at a languid pace. Missing one more day of school mattered very little to me, even though my father had promised I would be carted off to a boarding school in the south of France.

I wandered until the first signs of noon, then settled on the side of a canal, idly kicking my legs as I looked out at the ducks.

Some drifted toward me in the hopes of seed or bread. But I had nothing.

The ducks quacked. Somehow, the sound seemed bitter. Their tails bobbed. They turned, flicking little droplets of water at me. I had disappointed them.

But I was thinking about Kujo Jotaro.

x

What happened that day was mostly forgotten in the following weeks, especially because Kujo Jotaro had not approached me or brought up what he had seen. I even convinced myself that he had not seen anything at all, and the purplish glow around him had been a trick of the light.

So I focused on what had become more and more of a problem for me: avoiding boarding school.

At dawn, I roused myself and showered before breakfast. I dressed myself in the plum-coloured uniform of the school; its skirt brushed an inch or so below the knee, chaste and dull. I braided my hair. Finally, I found a satchel and stuffed it with papers. I didn't feel like carrying books.

It was strange to wear the hard, shiny shoes that my father had bought for me. I felt an awful lot like a foal stumbling out of the neighbourhood.

In front of the school were a handful of small groups, chatting loudly or playing a game.

Ito Asumi stood with some other girls. I hovered nearby. She glanced my way, but quickly turned her head again.

Sometimes, it felt like I had been dipping my hand into the warm, gooey honey of a beehive for a long time now and I was purposefully hurting myself.

It stung. But I had gotten used to it, and stomped out the momentary pain.

The bell rang out to signal the start of classes. I hated that harsh shrill sound, and all the sounds that followed it; shoes squeaking against bland tiles, chairs squealing, chalk against board and the dull thudding tick-tock of the clock in a classroom.

Most of all I hated that silence which followed the call of my name in a class.

"Janvier, Juniper?"

"Here."

Heads swivelled. Whispers rose.

Then the list mercifully continued.

x

Throughout an English lesson, I hid one of my favourite detective novels beneath my desk. I had read it before, twice, but held a soft spot for Detective Cadot and his adventures.

I had read three chapters before I even noticed that the lesson had suddenly fallen quiet

My eyes flit up to the teacher first, wondering if I had been called to answer a question and hadn't heard. But the teacher and students were looking to the doorway.

I followed their gaze to find Kujo Jotaro entering the classroom.

Without the staircase to lengthen the distance between us, I could observe him a lot more easily. He was tall, so tall that he had to duck his head at the door to protect his hat.

His face was angular, his nose aquiline and topped with two black, furrowed brows, pinched in a permanent expression of disdain. His uniform was black, darker than I had realised the first day that I had seen him. He took his seat.

He offered no excuses. None were asked of him.

x

Once the clock struck eleven, my hand shot up. I excused myself to the bathroom and hurried out into the hall. It was wonderfully empty. I much preferred that to the hurried bustle of students, the loud creak of lockers, the shouts carried overhead.

I walked past the girls' bathroom, favouring the reception a couple of metres away. It was unmanned and would be for another twenty minutes while the receptionist had her break.

It was her routine. I had learned it the first day that I arrived, and I had had to wait for her to return so I could fill out some paperwork.

Behind her desk was a row of cabinets, stuffed to the brim with documents about each student. I picked open the drawer pasted with a thin label that read: 'G-K'. After that, it was a matter of sifting through surnames.

Janvier, Juniper.

I pulled out the file and scrubbed out the number listed for my father, replacing it with the number for a local pizza joint. For a couple of weeks, at least, it was unlikely that the school could reach him. It pained my father to answer phone calls, let alone any letters that might be sent to him.

I would know.

A note slipped out from my file and fluttered to the ground. I crouched, reaching out to pick it up.

"Good grief. For a girl who reads detective novels so much, you sure make a lousy criminal."

Standing abruptly, I bashed my head against the edge of the cabinet. I cursed and spun around, convinced that the receptionist had caught me. Excuses were about to tumble from my tongue. But it was not the receptionist, like I had feared.

It was Kujo.

Pink stained my cheeks.

I said, "I'm not reading them to learn how to be a criminal."

"Well, if you're hoping to be the detective, I've got bad news for you."

Heat flared all the more around my throat and chest.

Drily, I asked, "Is that right?"

"Yeah. 'Cause a good detective would know they make copies of the originals."

I rubbed the tender spot at the back of my skull where the cabinet had hit me.

"Huh. And are you willing to tell me where those might be?"

Because of how he stood, and the shadows of the hall, his face was hidden by his hat. He pointed at a door a few paces from where we stood.

It had no signs. I would have considered it at a storage-room for cleaning supplies. I wiggled its silver handle and let out a frustrated huff when I found it locked. I settled on picking it like the cabinet, crouching in front of it.

"Look," I mumbled distractedly, "if my father finds out I'm skipping again, he's gonna ship me off to this boarding school in France, and -..."

From the corner of my eye, I spotted a faint, purple-coloured mist sweep by me. It seeped through the wood of the door. Metal springs clicked and popped. With a soft tick the door parted.

All this time I had been telling myself that I had been mistaken, and there had been no strange cloud around Kujo that day on the staircase.

It frightened me to know that he was like me. It comforted me, too.

When I finally plucked up the courage to face him, I found he was already gone.

x

Even though I was skipping school, I woke at dawn and ate breakfast and dressed myself. Instead of the uniform, though, I wore a lilac-coloured dress. As soon as I left the house, the world brightened.

The staircase came into sight ahead of me, halving the horizon. I saw the crest of sunrise, the beautiful potential of morning swelling in that orange light. Its first step loomed. I almost wanted to skid along the railing, I was that happy to be free, a bag of breadcrumbs swinging in my hand for the ducks.

The sole of my tennis shoe hit the first step.

Beside me, Kujo appeared.

Surprise made me still entirely, sole balancing over the second step. I pulled back and turned my head, looking up at him.

He stood in his usual pose, shoulders loose, hands shoved in his pockets. He neither looked at me nor spoke to me.

On purpose, I stood in place to see if he might move forward. But he made no movements.

Slowly I dropped onto the next step and the next.

So did Kujo, matching me until we reached the bottom.

There we stood, neither of us facing the other.

From the corner of my eye, I studied him. I could not help but find the difference in our heights funny. He was more than six foot and I stood two inches past five.

At this angle, I could take in the features of his face even more clearly than in the classroom.

But I could not understand him, and that was what frustrated me most.

What was he doing? What did he want? Were there others like us in the world? Could he do what I could? Why had he not talked to me about it directly?

I was more like Detective Cadot than I had ever been, chalking up Kujo by height and size and slapping questions on him right afterward.

He was a puzzle. I liked puzzles.

Even those that frustrated me.

"I'm gonna feed the ducks," I said. "You can come with me if you want."

Kujo left me unanswered. He merely tipped his head back and stared up at the clouds. I heaved a sigh, turning on my heel and heading for the canal. I had made it four steps before he fell into place beside me; the faintest smile crossed my lips.

Because it occurred to me that I was not the only one with questions.

x

Beside the canal, I sat.

Kujo stood.

The bag of breadcrumbs lay in my lap. I had offered it to him so he could scoop a handful of breadcrumbs if he wanted, but he had shook his head. It was for me, then, to take clumps of breadcrumbs and scatter them over the water for the ducks and their ducklings who swam serenely toward me, so small and delicate with their yellow-white tufts for feathers.

Dandelions shed white wisps which bobbed and weaved over the lush, shivering grass. Children laughed from the playground nearby.

Surely Kujo was melting in his uniform. There were no beads of sweat on his skin. He pulled out a cigarette. It burned a flickering orange at its tip.

Smoke slipped from his lips in a greyish plume that he inhaled into his nostrils again, before it could flee into the morning air.

Finally, he sat, taking the bench behind me.

"Cadot smokes," I told him. "The detective, I mean, in the novel that I was reading in class. Smokes all the time. He can blow smoke rings. Can you do that? Well, Cadot started when he was only sixteen, which is pretty young. But then again he's French, and in French movies and books and shows, everyone smokes. At least the stuff I've seen. Do you watch French stuff a lot?"

Because the morning was so beautiful, and the sunlight so warm on my bare legs, and the ducks chattering softly on the water, I talked and talked.

Perhaps he hated it, and perhaps he had already left, like he had the other day. But I talked.

It was one of those beautifully soft days, remembered like old Polaroids, bleached by the flash and steeped in a strange sort of nostalgia, stored lovingly, tucked away someplace until it was drawn out again at time when nostalgia was most needed.

"I was born in Paris. I visit, now and then. My mother still lives there, you see, so it means I have to visit. But summertime is awful in Paris. So sticky and crowded and full of pigeons," I continued. "One of the best Cadot novels is set in Paris, actually, the third one -..."

"Shut up!"

So he was still there after all. He had finished his cigarette. He ground it beneath his boot. His eyes were cold and mean as I turned to look at him. Smoke still billowed from his lips as he spoke, in a tone so dry and hostile.

"Quit yapping. It's annoying. Anyone ever tell you that before?"

The ducks nipped at the last of the breadcrumbs.

Laughter still rang out from the playground.

"Oi, Juniper," he snapped. "Are you listening to me?"

"Juno," I said. "You can call me Juno. No-one calls me Juniper. Not even my father, and my mother - well, she likes to call me Jay. I hate it. Never answer to it. But she has this stubbornness about her that makes her think she can make it stick if she keeps trying. Not that Jay is an ugly name or anything, but I never felt much like a Jay. How are - …"

Kujo rose from the bench. "You're annoying," he intoned flatly. "No-one gives a rat's ass about this crap. Least of all me."

And he left.

That old beehive-sting flared up in my chest. It flared and flared and cooled. It was gone. I looked back at the ducks.

They had left, too, frightened off by his outburst.

x

The morning dripped into noon. I stood from the canal, stretching stiff limbs. The walk into town was slow and pleasant.

For a while, I found myself drifting from shop to shop, without a destination in mind. Eventually, I dipped into an arcade, stuffing a slot machine with coins.

The ground was tacky. The seat turned with a loud squeak.

Between the hard smack of a silver ball against the flashing obstacles in a pinball machine, I thought about what Kujo had said. What did it matter? He was not my friend.

All I knew about him was his name, and that he had an aura around him like I did. But he was no different, otherwise.

He was not my friend, I told myself again. He was an asshole.

The silver ball struck the pins and shot up to the top of the machine.

Suddenly, I lost the will to play.

Night had fallen outside.

The world was alight in neon-signs and streetlights. Each sight flickered in front of me like the reel of a film, but I was an extra on the sidelines, looking through wide windows to see families eating together in restaurants, or lovers cuddling beneath an arch. I had no lines.

But I had bought some candy from the arcade, and the taste was sweet, so sweet that it pooled in my mouth and made me smile to myself.

Screw Kujo.

x

The house creaked and moaned in its emptiness. I fell onto my bed and opened my novel, slipping right back into the story of a detective on adventures much more exciting than mine.

x

The following morning, I rose and ate breakfast and dressed. I had dreamed of an arcade, smothered in dulled lights, full of malformed shapes which seemed to slither closer each time the silver ball cracked against the pins of the pinball machine.

From the strangeness of this dream, I felt unsettled, like I had not fully left it and even then as I braided my hair, the shadows pooled and whipped beneath me. I found another bag of breadcrumbs and set off.

The street was quiet. There were no cars around.

Because the dreams had left me foggy, I had woken up ten minutes later than usual and it had knocked into the minutes that followed.

So I approached the staircase later than I had yesterday, yawning, and so sleep-addled that I hardly noticed the figure stepping into place beside me.

Kujo loomed, a buttress of force and sullenness.

Had he been waiting?

At the bottom of the staircase, I turned to the canal.

As soon as I heard the scrape of his boot in the same direction, I whirled around.

He was following.

But there were no apologies for his attitude, no acknowledgement that he had been an ass. It almost seemed like he had forgotten about it. Even if he had, I had not, and I took the three short steps forward to stand in front of him, glaring up at him.

Like always, Kujo's hat was tipped to hide his face. Without his eyes or expression to hint at what he was thinking, I stood closer and jabbed his chest twice, glaring up at the dark shadows beneath the rim of his hat.

"Let's get one thing straight, Kujo. I'll talk as much as I like, about whatever I want, and if you don't like it - well, then, get your own damn breadcrumbs!"

The bag swung in my outstretched hand, bumping his arm. He looked down at it, his face still shrouded and mysterious. I turned on my heel and walked off.

Soon, his footfall sounded behind me. He followed, two paces behind, although I could tell his stride was long. He could have matched me if he had wanted.

I sat at the edge of the canal.

Kujo sat on the bench.

Ducks darted over. I had brought more breadcrumbs. I sprinkled the crumbs with the sunlight oozing warm over my nape and shoulders.

Kujo scuffed his shoe against the path. The sound made me glance at him, which had been his purpose, for he was looking right at me for the first time. All the other times, he had been staring off into some unknown place, like I was not even there. But now he was looking right at me.

He was smoking a cigarette. His eyes were green.

It slipped over me, this fleeting realisation, of no consequence whatsoever.

Through pursed lips, Kujo blew a clean smoke ring - and then another, and another, enclosing each other.

Once the smallest ring had left him, and he had no smoke left, he said, "Jotaro."

"What?"

"Jotaro," he said again. "Not Kujo."

I rolled my eyes. "Fine. Whatever."

Seconds passed. Then, he muttered, "Cadot, huh?"

Trepidation bubbled in my chest. Was he offering an olive branch? I eyed him warily. Would he blow up again?

Well, it didn't matter to me if he did or not.

He was not a friend. He was an asshole.

"Yeah. He's the protagonist," I said slowly. "Chasing this villain called Malin."

Jotaro said nothing.

I hesitated. Then I continued, "The whole story starts out in Paris. There's this Russian princess, and she's staying in a hotel and -..."

Jotaro pulled out another cigarette, lit it, and leaned back against the bench with a long sigh.

x