Maria-sama ga Miteru:Volume6 Chapter5 2

The Crimson Card. Part 2.

Sachiko-san's existence was just as conspicuous in kindergarten as it is now.

For starters, even the way she arrived at school was different.

In the morning, a black car would pull up at the western gate, near the kindergarten. A beautiful little girl wearing a kindergarten uniform would emerge from the back seat. It wasn't her father or an older brother in the driver's seat. Nor was there anyone else in the back seat.

"I'll take my leave now."

She would seem displeased while saying this, and step away from the car. She would walk from the gate to the kindergarten in silence, without looking back. Eventually, the car would drive off. At the faint sound of the tires on the bitumen, she would take a single glance back over her shoulder. She would then sweep her gaze from side to side, before she once more resumed walking. It was as though she was surveying a battlefield. – That was Sachiko-san.

I saw that scene played out time and time again as I commuted to kindergarten.

Perhaps going to kindergarten itself was painful for her. There were plenty of children who wouldn't go to their classroom, and instead cling to their mothers when they first arrived at kindergarten.

As for my blessed self, since my earliest days my mother had been planting only a good image of school, so I looked forward to entering into kindergarten and adapted to it quickly.

You could say that kindergarten is when you first take part in society. You spend long periods of time separated from your parents, and there's probably an equivalent amount of stress. On top of that, it gathers together various children of the same age that each have their own personality. Even if you're not shy or meek, it's an environment that's hard to adapt to initially.

I was interested in Sachiko-san.

At first my interest was, naturally enough, in her overly conspicuous appearance. You could say that it was her innate ability, and it certainly was, but there was something about it that seemed to defy that phrase.

Something that made her difficult to get close to.

We learned about her family situation later, but I doubt more than a handful of kids truly understood. Back then I thought being driven to school was simply a matter of distance, like whether you walked to school or caught the bus. – Sachiko-san's house actually was a fair distance from the bus route, so that thought wasn't completely wrong.

It would be too far even for flattery to say that Sachiko-san fit in at kindergarten. Children can sense when others are different to themselves. In the beginning there were a lot of classmates who treated her as a curiosity and would watch her from a safe distance. Because Sachiko-san was Sachiko-san, she was able to sense this and her face, that looked displeased at the best of times, would scrunch up even further as she actively ignored them.

Sachiko-san was silently fighting.

Even if the kindergarten wasn't a happy place for her, she wasn't the type of child to scream and cry that she wanted to go home. Despite being such a young child, she probably had her own sense of pride.

Whether it was painting or handicrafts, Sachiko-san never lost to anyone. Particularly impressive was the time we were shown some basic dance steps by the teacher during playtime. As we all awkwardly followed the teacher's directions, she alone was extraordinary.

It was like the difference between heaven and hell. She was a jewel in the dunghill.

As we writhed on the ground like a squirming caterpillar, she danced like a graceful butterfly.

It was so beautiful, it was as though an angel had descended from heaven.

"I heard she takes ballet lessons."

Somebody muttered those words as some consolation, but it was just making excuses. Sachiko-san wasn't the only one in our class to take ballet lessons.

Then one day, because of a thoughtless remark from one of our classmates, she stopped coming to school by car.

It was a petty affront. Not something worth taking notice of.

Instead, she switched to catching the bus to school. She wasn't going to lose. Perhaps she had been thinking about it beforehand, but there's no doubt that the taunt had been the impetus to change. She would get driven, in the same black car, to the school bus stop closest to her house, and from there catch the bus the rest of the way to school. Because her house wasn't within walking distance of the bus stop, she had no choice but to get dropped off by car. But even then, she would get dropped off around the corner before the bus stop and walk the rest of the way.

My eyes were continuously drawn to the minutia of Sachiko-san's everyday life. But my happiness wouldn't last long. My father's transfer had been decided.

My father and mother spent several days discussing matters related to the transfer, such as relocating and so forth, and I spent that time at kindergarten in somewhat of a daze.

Very soon, I would no longer be able to see Sachiko-san.

My feelings back then were somewhat strange; the nuance wasn't so much that it would be painful to part with Sachiko-san, more that it was a shame that I wouldn't be able to watch her. Right. My wish wasn't to play or chat with Sachiko-san.

On that day, during recess, I made a mistake and had a spectacular fall from the swings. At that time, the fad was to jump off the swing as it was still moving. The teachers had forbidden us from doing this, but we didn't pay them any heed. We younger children were trying to imitate our older sisters, and when the teacher wasn't looking we would practice jumping off the swing when it was swinging low.

I had been absent-minded all day, and when my friends called me over I joined them in line until, eventually, my turn arrived and I sat down on the swing. I was good at jumping off the swing because I practiced often at the park in my neighborhood.

Swish, swish.

I thought of the wind.

Perhaps I too would soon be gone from this place, just like the wind. What would it be like after I had left? I couldn't picture it in my mind, so I couldn't see whether it would be lonely or not.

I seized upon the solitary figure of a little girl in my shifting field of vision.

Ogasawara Sachiko.

It was then that I realized. Me leaving here would be exactly the same as if everyone other than me left.

Sachiko-san noticed my gaze and suddenly turned to face me. Her eyes seized upon my body and her beautiful face quickly frowned in displeasure. When I realized that I was the cause of the disgust on her face, the shock I felt was like I had been shot in the heart with a pistol. The subsequent shock was that my hands, which I had thought were firmly gripping the chains, had come loose.

It was only for a fraction of a second, but I had become the wind, flying through space. The sky spun around and for a moment I thought things looked different to normal, before I crashed into the ground.

"Mifuyu-chan!"

The friends I had been playing on the swings with hurriedly gathered around, and then when they saw the blood that was slowly trickling from my kneecap they all stepped back.

Luckily, the ground around the swings was covered with sand, so it was soft. It seems that I had flipped over completely and taken the impact with the ground on my hands and knees, preventing it from turning into a tragedy. It was a spectacular crash, but the only place I was bleeding was from my skinned knee.

With time came the pain, and with the blood came the tears.

"I'm going to get the teacher."

One of the braver girls ran off towards the school building, while the timid ones said 'Me too,' 'Me too,' and also ran off until no-one remained. I only learned the phrase 'to scatter like baby spiders' later on, but it applied here. The children who had been playing on the other pieces of playground equipment were too scared to get involved, so they maintained a distance of at least five metres from me.

Out of all these people, only one approached me. It was Sachiko-san.

"Are you okay?"

She chose the most pertinent question to start off with and, when I nodded vigorously while crying, she seemed relieved. Her next question was said in a shocked tone of voice.

"What on earth were you doing?"

Before my eyes, she produced a white handkerchief. I thought it was to wipe away my tears. Because it was of such a fine quality I hesitated to use the thin handkerchief as a gauze.

While I was still wondering what I should do, Sachiko-san squatted down beside me and applied the handkerchief to my knee without a moment's pause.

"Ahh"

"Does it hurt? You're being punished because you didn't listen to the teacher's orders."

I belatedly understood the reason for the look of disgust that had appeared on Sachiko-san's face before I fell from the swing. It wasn't that she hated me, it was just that she was opposed to people breaking the rules.

The teacher appeared, pulled from inside the building by children, and Sachiko-san stood up.

"Ahh, your handkerchief..."

"You can keep it. I have another one."

And with that overly blunt response, Sachiko-san took her leave. I wanted to chase after her, but my knee and my heart were hurting, and I didn't dare call out to tell her to stop.

While the teacher was washing my knee and drying the abrasion with absorbent cotton soaked with an antiseptic solution, I held tight to the lightly blood-stained handkerchief. It was the first time that I had talked one-on-one with Sachiko-san, and also the first time that she had given me something.

From this, I concluded that the reason Sachiko-san was cut off from the rest of the class was because she was more mentally mature than everyone else. Because she was more adult than the rest of the girls her age, they couldn't connect on the same level.

Before long, the day arrived when I had to leave Lillian's Girls Academy. Having finished saying my goodbyes in the classroom, I called out to Sachiko-san as she waited in the garden for the school bus.

There were two routes that the bus took. In order to service these routes with a single bus, they ran at different times. The white route and the red route. Sachiko-san's was the red route, which ran later. Incidentally, getting picked up by your parents was called the yellow route.

Calling out to Sachiko-san took strength that I didn't know I possessed until then, but I firmed my resolve thinking that returning her handkerchief was a just cause and that today was the last opportunity I had to do that.

My mother had washed and ironed it. She had even called my grandmother in Chiba City for advice on how to get rid of the bloodstains and, as reward for all her effort, no trace of the yellow stains from the dried blood remained.

"I said you could keep it, didn't I?"

As I held out the handkerchief, Sachiko-san looked at me with her usual disinterested expression.

"But my mother said I should return it."

Then I held out the small package that my mother had given me.

"What is it?"

"She told me it was chocolates."

"Chocolates?"

"She said it's to show our gratitude."

I was annoyed with myself that I could only express it as though I was acting as a proxy for my mother. But at the time, my young self was unable to convey what was in her heart, and I couldn't say, "I'm grateful to you."

"… I see."

After some thought, Sachiko-san accepted the handkerchief and the small package of chocolates.

"Convey my regards to your mother, Mifuyu-chan."

It was the first time that I heard Sachiko-san call me 'Mifuyu-chan.'

The school bus returned from the first route. Before Sachiko-san boarded the bus, she said 'See you later' to me.

See you later. I repeated it back to her.

See you later, Sachiko-chan.

I could see Sachiko-san smiling and waving through the bus window. Looking like that, she didn't appear any different to the rest of the five year olds.

See you later.

I waved back at her.

I kept facing towards the bus until my mother had completed the various formalities and came to collect me.

Even though Sachiko-san could no longer see me from where she was.

It wasn't goodbye.

Because of that, I thought that one day I would return here.