Brave Story by Miyuki Miyabe

He knew how it worked. The chances of the new kid being as incredible as everyone said at first were roughly equivalent to the chances of being struck on the head and killed by a meteorite while walking down the street. It was certainly nothing to get worked up over. Wataru, for his part, was far more interested in rumors of the haunted building. He hadn’t even properly committed to memory the name of the transfer student in the next class.
    This was why it took him so long to figure out what they were talking about.
    “They say that Mitsuru got a picture of the ghost!”
    “Did you see it? Did he show you?”
    “I didn’t see it myself, but they say it’s totally clear!”
    It had been a week since his run-in with the Daimatsu family. He shuffled into class that morning, stifling a yawn, to find five or six of his classmates huddled in the back of the classroom, buzzing with excitement. It didn’t take long for Wataru to join them. Since that night, when the indelible image of Kaori had been burned into his mind’s eye, his ears would tingle the moment he heard anyone say anything that sounded even remotely like “haunted,” or “ghost.”
    “Really? Someone got a picture?” Wataru wedged into the conversation. “When?”
    “In the afternoon, two days ago!” one of the girls replied.
    “During the day?”
    “Yeah, he went there to sketch something for art class.”
    Art class often had the students tromping all over town looking for flowers and trees to sketch.
    “He went to draw the azaleas at Mihashi Shrine,” she added.
    Wataru looked confused. “But our class didn’t go there.”
    “Like I said, it was Ashikawa who took the picture.”
    This was when Wataru realized that the subject of conversation was the transfer student from the next class.
    “The new kid?”
    “Yep. Mitsuru Ashikawa. He grew up overseas, you know,” one of the boys said self-importantly. He pronounced the name with all the vowels stretched out, so it sounded like “Meetsooroo Asheekawa.”
    The girls giggled. “Just pronouncing his name like an American doesn’t make him one!”
    Wataru couldn’t have cared less about the transfer student. He wanted to know more about this picture of the ghost. “You think he’d show me the picture if I asked?”
    One of the girls shook her head. “Mitsuru said it wasn’t good to cause a fuss over such a thing, so he took it home. They say he hasn’t shown the picture to anyone since then.”
    Wataru secretly rejoiced. Maybe he and this Mitsuru guy would get along. After all, that sounded suspiciously like something Wataru himself would say. In fact, if he had said something of the sort during that argument with those girls, maybe he would have come out looking better in the end. It was something to bear in mind.
    “Did anyone in his class see it before he took it home? How about the people that went with him for art class?”
    His classmates offered up the names of several people in the other class. Five had gone sketching to the shrine that day: three boys and two girls. One of the boys was the class president, Yutaro Miyahara. A stroke of luck—Wataru knew him.
    “I hear the camera belonged to Yutaro. They were taking pictures so they could work on the sketch details after they went home.”
    Apparently, Yutaro had brought a Polaroid, thinking that each of them could take one photo of the scene they wanted to sketch, so they could work on it at home. Mitsuru had chosen a shot from the shrine that took in the trees lining the grounds, looking out at the haunted building next door. Just as he was about to take a picture, something like a human face appeared above one of the azaleas.
    That was how it happened.
    “He noticed something weird, and that’s when the excitement started,” Wataru’s informant explained. “Everyone thought it was cool at first, but soon one of the girls started crying, and they all got scared and went home. I wonder what happened to the sketch