Grotesque Read online

  I began talking to her now and then. I learned that her name was Mitsuru and that she had entered the Q system from middle school.

  And so it was that both the insiders and the outsiders began the school year without striking any compromise in their polarity. The insiders were always together in the classroom, painting their nails and shrieking with laughter. When the lunch break rolled around, they headed off together to restaurants off campus and enjoyed fabulous freedom. When school let out for the day, the boys from Q High School for Young Men would be waiting for them at the gate. Girls with college-age boyfriends would be swept away in BMWs, Porsches, and other expensive foreign automobiles. The boys who met them had an air about them that resembled that of the girls. They were stylish, exuding a confidence backed by wealth. And they were a licentious group.

  One month after I entered the school, we had our first examination. The outsider students were determined not to be outdone in their studies. They’d suffered enough as a result of constant pressure from the insiders. The studious set—who applied themselves nonstop to their schoolwork and aimed to surpass the insiders—was particularly determined, but they were not alone. All the outsiders had applied themselves with special zeal to their exam preparations. Moreover, the determination to succeed was all the more intense because we’d heard that the names of the ten top scorers would be posted. The outsiders saw this as an opportunity to redeem their honor. They would be able to claim for themselves a spot among the smartest of the smart.

  I had decided from the very start that the test would not be worth the effort. Because I was still relishing my newfound freedom from Yuriko, I wasn’t much concerned with what happened at school. As long as I didn’t come in dead last, I didn’t really care about the test and consequently did not study at all. I really didn’t even care if I ended up at the very bottom of the heap, if I was able to stay in school—that was all that mattered. And so I went on with my life as before—just as the insiders did their own—without really noticing the exam.

  On the Sunday before the exam, all the insiders went to a friend’s vacation cottage to compare their class notes, or so the rumors went. Once again, the class was divided into two entirely different groups.

  A week later the results of the exam were printed out and posted for all to see. Most of the students in the top ten were—as the outsiders had imagined—members of their own group. But what was mystifying was that among the top three was a student who had entered the school from junior high. Fifth place went to a girl who’d been with the Q system since elementary school. The highest score belonged to Mitsuru. This pattern made a profound impression on all the outsiders. Even though they generally performed better than the students who had been in the system since elementary school, how was it that they could not surpass those who had entered from junior high? The most urbane, charming, and wealthy bunch were the students who had entered from elementary school. The students who were most adept at melting into the background and were best at their studies were those who entered the system while in junior high. And the ones who were ill prepared for anything were those who had started in high school. But the pattern defied the earlier expectation of this last set of students, and they glanced about with pained expressions.

  “Don’t you play tennis?”

  Mitsuru asked me this during our next gym class. In the month following my matriculation into Q High School for Young Women, a few of the insiders had spoken to me on occasion. When it came to our tennis lessons, those students who were on the tennis team would park themselves out on the center court as if it were their personal property. Students who didn’t enjoy tennis, or those who didn’t want to get sunburned, would lounge about on the benches lost in chatter. And those students who, like me, didn’t want to get lumped in with the benches group would loaf around outside the chain-link fence, making it seem as if we were simply awaiting our turn to play. What about Kazue, you ask? She’d hit the balls back and forth on one of the side courts with other outsiders. She hated losing and would chase after the balls with dogged determination, letting go with strange grunts and groans in the process. The students lolling about on the benches entertained themselves with derisive comments about her.

  “Well, I’m not very good at it,” I answered.

  “Neither am I,” Mitsuru answered. She was slender, but her cheeks were round and because her two front teeth were big it made her face look a bit rodentlike. Her brown hair flowed down in wispy ringlets. Her face, dotted with freckles, was adorable. Mitsuru had lots of friends.

  “What are you good at?”

  “Nothing at all,” I said.

  “Just like me, then.” Mitsuru brushed slender fingers over the strings of her racket.

  “But you’re good at studying. You earned the top score on the exam, didn’t you?”

  “That was nothing,” Mitsuru said indifferently. “It’s just a pastime for me. I plan to become a doctor.” She turned to look at Kazue. She was wearing shorts and navy-blue knee socks.

  “Why’d you lend her the socks?” I asked.

  “I wonder.” Mitsuru cocked her head to the side. “I don’t like bullying.”

  “Was that bullying?” I remembered how calm Kazue looked when she stepped into the classroom the next period. I doubt she had the foggiest idea that Mitsuru had saved her from bullying simply by loaning her a pair of socks. Far from it. Even if everyone had found out those were her socks, she would have looked at them all with deadly seriousness, her face set in challenge. They’re just socks, after all!

  Mitsuru’s soft hair blew gently in the breeze, the sweet scent of shampoo wafting about her. “Of course it was bullying. Everyone has fun at the expense of those students who don’t have much money,” she said.

  “But you have to admit, it was pretty stupid to embroider your own socks,” I said peevishly. I wanted to see how Mitsuru would react.

  “True. But can’t you understand how she felt? No one wants to be made a laughingstock in that way.”

  Not quite sure how to counter my statement, Mitsuru began to dig in the dry ground with the toe of her tennis shoe. The smartest student in the freshman class of Q High School for Young Women revealed a face shaken by my words. I experienced a tiny sliver of happiness. At the same time, I found myself feeling deep affection for Mitsuru.

  “Of course, what you say is correct,” I said, “but I don’t know that she was particularly concerned herself. Besides, what everybody in the changing room was laughing at was the silliness of going so far as to embroider a sock! I don’t think there was any secret evil intention.

  “When a group of people become united by a tacit understanding and decide to act, that’s bullying.”

  “Then why is it that those who have come up through the ranks plot against those who have just entered? Why does everyone ignore it? And aren’t you one of them, after all?”

  Mitsuru let out a deep sigh. “Well, you’re right about that,” she said. “I wonder why everyone just ignores it.” She tapped her big front teeth with the end of her fingers, contemplating the question. I came to realize later that whenever Mitsuru did this, it meant she was secretly pondering whether or not to say something. She raised her head with a look of determination.

  “But that’s not it, you see. It’s because their circumstances are so different. Because they come from such different backgrounds, their attitudes toward the value of things are completely different.”

  “Sure. That’s obvious,” I said, as I watched the tennis-club girls enthusiastically sending the bright yellow tennis ball back and forth across the net. Their rackets, their outfits, their shoes—all had been purchased with their own money and were not the usual school issue. They were more expensive than any item I was likely ever to see.

  “Here we have the class-based society in all its repugnant glory,” Mitsuru continued. “It must be worse here than anywhere else in all Japan. Appearance controls everything. That’s why the people in the inner circle and th