Status: ナイーブ = Naibu = Naive

ナイーブ

ナイーブ

Naibu knew he wasn’t supposed to be awake so late, but the ticking of the clock in the hallway kept him up at night. He could hear the pendulum of the grandfather clock swing back and forth as he lay in bed, and with each second tick, tick, tick. He looked around his room; the dim light on his dresser cast oblong shadows across the room. The posters that decorated his wall depicting superheroes and cartoons seemed to lift from the paint, and the imprint of his action figure on the floor seemed almost monstrous in the night.

Tick, tick, tick… the clock droned on and Naibu still couldn’t find sleep. Between ticks he heard a faint sound—like a pin dropping on metal—from the hall outside his door. A sound he hadn’t heard before tonight.

Naibu slowly climbed out of bed and set his feet on the hard wood of the floor, sure to step with caution as to not make a sound. He wouldn’t want to wake his oya so late. Surely, they would be upset if he knew he was out of bed on a school night.

He moved quickly across the floor to the doorway of his room. Peeking out of his doorway, he scanned the hall for any sign of life. The only movement was the pendulum of the grandfather clock. Tick, tick, tick. He heard the pin drop again.

Timidly, he stepped one foot outside of his bedroom as if stepping into another dimension. A forbidden land. He crept on the balls of his feet down the hall, past his parent’s closed door, into the living room. The light from his doorway bled in and lit up the familiar space just enough to see; two small sofas sat on either side of a square, white coffee table. At the front door, shoes littered the way of the genkan. He heard the grandfather clock and again, the drop of the pin. This time it came from behind the couch.

He crept down and peeked in the dark space between the wall and the couch. A pair of dark eyes stared back at him.

Naibu didn’t know better. “Konnichiwa,” he said as quietly as he could manage. His parents had always told him to be nice to strangers. “I’m Naibu.”

It was the voice of a girl who replied, almost hoarse. “Konnichiwa, Naibu,” she said. “Do you want to play a game?”

“Nani?”

“Kakurenbo. Hide and seek.” She blinked; her eyes blending into the blackness then reappearing. Naibu shivered as a sudden cold closed in.

“Hai,” he told her. “I’ll count. You hide.”

Without a word, her eyes closed, and she was gone again. He was left alone in the dark with only the sound of the grandfather clock to accompany him. He turned around and lay back against the sofa, where he began to count. “Ichi… ni… san… shi… go… roku… shichi… hachi… ku… ju!”

He spun back around and looked into the gap between the wall and the sofa, searching for her pair of eyes. He eased into the couch and slid it apart from the wall, but she was no longer there. With a huff, he turned around. Where could she be?

He listened quietly for a pin drop, but between the tick, tick, tick of the grandfather clock, there were no other sounds that filled the silence. He stood up and again, walking only on the balls of his feet, crossed the room to the other sofa. Moving it, he checked between it and the wall, only to find nothing.

Then came the pin drop. This time from the kitchen.

He almost ran across the living room and through the doorway, where wood turned to cold tile and the light from his bedroom did not reach. He flipped on the light switch that filled the room with a bright, white light. He had to squint for his eyes to adjust.

The pin drop came again.

He ran to the oven and crouched to peek down the gap between it and the counter. No eyes looked back on either side.

He heard the pin drop behind him, accompanied by cold hands on the back of his neck. A startled jolt went through him and he spun around to see who it was, but he was alone in the kitchen. His heartbeat marked the seconds that passed, and after a few, he heard the pin drop again. He rose and crept cautiously down the hall to its source, past the grandfather clock. Tick, tick, tick, it went. Then the sound of the pin again, coming from his bedroom. He made his way back inside the dim ambler light, and all felt still. Even the tick of the clock seemed to stop.

On the other side of his bed, a pale hand rose from the gap and clutched the sheets. He’d found her. As quietly as he could manage, he tip-toed across the wood floor to the foot of his bed, where he leaned over. Here, he found the eyes staring back at him from between the gap in the wall. “Got you!” he tried to shout, but no words came out. The eyes blinked—disappeared and reappeared. He felt cold fingers wrap around his ankles and he couldn’t move. Then the pale hand released the sheets and rose to palm his face.

“Got you,” the girl’s hoarse voice replied as her hand came to cover Naibu’s mouth. He couldn’t scream, couldn’t kick, couldn’t run. Another hand rose from the blackness to cover his eyes and his world was engulfed in darkness. The eyes of the girl from the gap became forever engraved in his mind.