Once language, math, English, and biology had passed, Hideki was finally free to seek out his lunch.  He returned to his desk with a small pile of various things from the hallway vending machine; two rice balls, a variety of croquettes, and a couple of pieces of fruit.

‘I can’t live off of nothing but carbs and sugar,’ he thought, ‘I’m going to die ifI don’t get some real protein before the day is over.’

As he began to tear into his lunch, he glanced around the room.  Various social cliques were obvious to see; groups gathered here and there, and even students from other classrooms came to eat lunch with their friends, while others left to go eat lunch elsewhere.   He noticed, of course, a few students eating lunch alone.  Fumi was eating by herself from a small, neatly packed bento while going over paperwork.   Sitting ahead of him was Suu, eating lunch with several other girls who’d pulled their chairs around her desk.   While the gaggle of girls chatted and laughed, Suu was quiet, just eating with a shy little smile on her face.

“So did you try calling it yet?” one of the girls asked.

“No way!” replied another, “It’s just too scary for me.”

“Oh my god, you don’t actually believe the payphones are haunted, do you?” asked the first, “They’re just old pieces of junk, and the town is too cheap to tear them down.”

“I don’t mess around when it comes to ghosts,” said the second girl, shaking her head hastily.  She then looked at Suu and asked, “Would you check it out for me, Suu-chan?”

“Me?” Suu asked with a soft yelp, before replying quietly, “N-No, I don’t think I could do that…”

“Don’t be idiots,” said a voice from behind Hideki.  When he turned around, he saw a young man with light brown hair sitting at the desk behind his own.   His uniform shirt was unbuttoned with a red t-shirt under it, and his tie nowhere to be seen. A more properly uniformed young man with thick-framed glasses was sitting on the edge of his desk, grinning at Hideki.  The brown-haired guy continued, “The payphones aren’t haunted.”

“You never know, Kazuo-kun,” said the bespectacled young man, “With that much smoke, there has to be a fire.”

The girls made sour faces at the boys before returning to their lunches, but Hideki remained turned around in his chair.  He took a bite of his rice ball, before asking, “What’s all of this about, then?”

“Some stupid rumors,” said Kazuo.

“I’m Minoru, and that’s Kazuo-kun,” the other boy said with a grin, “Welcome to Midorioka, the city of haunted payphones.”

Kazuo rolled his eyes and resumed munching on his bowl of vending machine noodles.

“Haunted payphones?” Hideki asked, making no efforts to hide his skepticism.

“You know about what happened to Kibitani, right?” asked Minoru, “Our sister-city down the hill?”

“No?” Hideki replied quizzically, raising an eyebrow as if to ask wordlessly, ‘Should I?’

“Once upon a time, Midorioka was the big city and Kibitani was the small town, if you can believe it,” Minoru said with a grin, “But about fifty years ago, there was a terrible flood, and Kibitani was levelled.  So, they rebuilt, bigger and better, and before you knew it, Kibitani became a cutting edge city with all the amenities, leaving us in the dust.”

“And this messed with the payphones, how exactly?” Hideki asked.

Minoru chuckled and said, “Well, the payphones aren’t connected anymore, so if you pick them up you get nothing but silence.  But they say that if you pick up the phone at midnight and dial zero, you’ll be connected to the Kibitani of fifty years ago!  A ghost will answer your call, not knowing that they’re dead or that fifty years have passed.  If they like talking to you, they’ll do something nice for you, like take revenge on someone you hate.  But if you make them angry, the ghost takes your soul instead.”

“That doesn’t sound like a worthwhile risk,” said Hideki.

Minoru laughed and said, “That depends how much you hate someone!”

When lunch ended, two of Suu’s friends and Minoru all left to return to their own classrooms.  The school day resumed with two more classes, and at the end of the day, their home room teacher returned to finish with any announcements and formalities of the day.  Like with any other school, the students spent the next half-hour cleaning their classroom, putting the chairs up on the desks, sweeping, carrying out the trash, and so on.

As Hideki headed out from the classroom, he heard a voice call out from down the hall.

“Sorato-kun,” his home room teacher said as she approached. His home room teacher, Nara Yukina, was a classically pretty sort of woman. With her long black hair, fair skin, and dark eyes, she was the sort of traditional Japanese beauty that he imagined Fumi might be trying to emulate, though with far less makeup.

“Yes, Nara-sensei?” Hideki asked, with a hint of suspicion on his face.

“Relax, you’re not in trouble already,” she replied with a smirk, “I just wanted to talk with you about a few things since you’re joining the school year a few weeks late.”

“The class rep already told me she’d give me a bunch of notes,” he said.

“I’m not surprised,” said Nara, “Yamamoto-kun is a diligent sort.  I actually wanted to speak with you about your extracurricular activities… I hope I’m not assuming too much, but I’m sure you must’ve played sports at your previous schools?”

Hideki smirked a bit. It was nice to hear someone not jump immediately to the conclusion that he wrestled. He nodded and said, “Kendo, actually.”

Nara-sensei’s smile faded a bit, and she said, “I see.  I’m sorry to say our school doesn’t have a kendo team. Our extracurricular options are somewhat limited, especially when it comes to sports… The boys’ basketball team and the girls’ swim teams are the only ones that get any real attention or funding.”

“I see,” said Hideki. He paused for a moment, then said, “I was actually the captain of my previous team, so… Do you think that it might be the sort of thing the school might want to start up?   Even as a club, instead of a formal team?”

Nara-sensei looked surprised for a moment, before smirking at him.

“Come with me, if you would,” she said.

At the corner of the school yard near the back gate, stood an old-fashioned Japanese-style building.  Hideki and Nara-sensei removed their shoes before stepping up onto the verandah, and Nara-sensei unlocked the latch on a wood-and-paper door before sliding it open.

“A dojo?” Hideki asked as he peered into the dusty space, slowly stepping onto the tatami mats within.

“Once upon a time, yes,” said Nara-sensei as she stepped inside as well, “On occasion, the tea ceremony club has asked to host events here, but as a dojo, it’s gone unused since the judo team disbanded last year.  Still, this dusty old place fills me with nostalgia… When I was a girl, we held kendo, naginatajutsu, and kyudo practices here.”

“Did you practice kendo?” Hideki asked, surprised.

Nara-sensei faintly laughed and said, “Kyudo one year, and naginata for two years.  I’m sorry to say I spent more time yelling at the kendo boys for leaving the place a mess, than actually appreciating the artform at the time.”

“It feels kind of sad to see a place like this going unused,” Hideki said as he walked into the center of the room, “I can’t imagine how many students learned discipline and traditional martial arts here, and now the best it gets is a sweeping and dusting when someone wants to do a tea demo.”

“Don’t let the tea ceremony club hear you talking like that,” Nara-sensei said with a smirk, as she crossed her arms.  She watched Hideki, as his sock-feet began to slide across the tatami, moving into a stance.  He held his arms in front of himself, hands gripping an invisible hilt and lifting above his head.   Without a sword or armor, he was letting his instincts take him as he moved into place.  Nara-sensei faintly smiled and asked, “Kendo means a great deal to you, doesn’t it?”

“It’s meditative,” said Hideki.

“I see,” said Nara-sensei, “Well, I don’t want you to jump on the idea of forming a club immediately… Our school is somewhat more lax about first-year students starting clubs, but that’s still no reason to rush.  It would be a lot of responsibility while you’re still getting used to this school, and I want you to consider other options as well.  Take your time and look at your other possibilities seriously.  But, if you decide that this is where your heart lies, I’d be happy to sponsor your application.”

Hideki was surprised by her offer, but grinned at her.

“I appreciate that,” he said, “and I’ll keep it in mind.”

By the time Hideki was leaving school, the sun was beginning to go down.   Nearly all of the students had left the school, or were still embroiled in their after-school activities, leaving the streets around the school almost eerily quiet.  Hideki pulled his cellphone from his pocket, and opened his map, only to immediately be greeted by the message, ‘GPS signal lost’.  With an aggravated groan, he returned his phone to his pocket and began to walk.

It felt like an hour had passed since leaving school.  He had made his way down the hill, but had become lost in the suburban maze of narrow streets and old houses.

‘I swear I think I’ve passed this same corner already,’ Hideki thought, rubbing his face as he walked.  The whining cries of cicadas filled the evening air, drowning out any of the sounds of the nearby houses or children playing in their yards.  However, one muffled sound cut through the noise, and made Hideki stop in his tracks.  He tilted his head, looking around as he listened for sounds bouncing off of the buildings.   It was a voice, crying out.  A girl’s voice.  It was too muffled for him to tell what it was saying… and then, it vanished.  Hideki stood there in the relative silence, before the voice cried out, more loudly this time, “HELP!”

Hideki burst into a sprint in the direction of the sound.  He ran down the alley between two building, knocking over a trash can before stumbling out onto the road that curved down the hill behind the houses.  He looked one way, and saw only a trash-can lined street, but when he looked the other way, a chill ran down his spine.

A girl from his school was sitting in the middle of the road, holding a boy wearing a uniform just like Hideki’s.  Though the colors of the setting sun had painted everything in tinges of orange and red, it didn’t disguise the fact that the boy was covered in blood.  The sobbing girl lifted her head, looking at Hideki, and shouted, “Help him! You have to help him!”

Hideki panicked, and fished his cell phone from his pocket.   His shaky fingers tapped 119, the medical emergency number, but when he held the phone to his ear, he could hear a pre-recorded voice politely saying, “We’re sorry, but you are outside of cellular range. Please move closer to--”

“HELP HIM!” the girl screamed, hugging the bleeding boy in her arms.

Not knowing what to do, Hideki looked around in a frenzy.  His eyes found another phone, and he took off running.   His book bag and cellphone clattered onto the sidewalk as he nearly ran into the payphone, one hand grabbing the side of the soft pink box and the other hand grabbing the receiver from off the top.  He ignored the 10-yen coin slot on the side, and his shaky fingers turned the rotary dial before he even listened for a dial tone. 1-1-9…

After a moment, he could hear a soft ringing sound coming through the receiver pressed to his ear. It rang and rang, growing louder each time. Soon the sound was deafening, but when he tried to pull the phone from his ear, he realized that his arm would not move.  His muscles had gone rigid, incapable of more than trembling as the piercing sound overcame his senses.   It felt like a hot iron being driven into his skull, and Hideki screamed into the phone before his vision blurred, and the world fell away around him.