Hideki stared at the empty desk in front of his own.  Though Nara-sensei had made an announcement asking for any students to come forward if they knew where Suu was, the day’s classes still had to continue on.  He went through the motions, through social studies, science, English, and PE, though he couldn’t keep his mind focused on anything he did.  When he returned to his classroom after lunch, he noticed that not only was Suu not at her desk, but none of her friends had come to visit her.

Instead of sitting down to dig into his lunch, Hideki turned and walked right back out into the hallway, nearly bowling down Kazuo and Minoru.

“What’s the big deal?” Kazuo asked, shoving Hideki back by his shoulder.   Though Hideki could cast a large shadow over Kazuo, it was clear that the scrawnier boy was more than ready to prove that the size of the dog in the fight mattered less than the size of the fight in the dog.  Hideki, however, was too distracted to even notice the shove.

“Have you seen those girls?” Hideki asked, “Suu-chan’s friends.”

“Suu-chan’s?” Kazuo asked, surprised by Hideki’s familiarity.

“I believe they’re down at the end of the hall by the stairwell, next to the soda vending machine,” Minoru said with a small smile.

Hideki pushed past them and hurried down the hall, turning his shoulders to the side to slip between other students moving from class to class.

As Hideki neared the corner, he heard the sounds of girls chatting and giggling.

“There’s no way!”

“Why else would she be missing?”

“Yeah, you were all ‘Suu-chan, I’m too scared! Can you try it for me?’... You know she called it!”

“So what, we’re supposed to think a ghost ate her?”

“She could’ve gotten grabbed by some creep, y’know, if she was going to visit a payphone at midnight!”

“Like anybody could pick her up to throw her in a van…”

“Maybe they lured her in with a double-cheeseburger.”

Hideki rounded the corner and slammed his hand against the side of the vending machine there, hard enough to rattle the case and knock a can of soda loose inside, that clattered against the metal.  All three girls startled and let out yelps of surprise, looking up from their seats on the stairwell.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” one of the girls asked.

“She was your friend!” Hideki barked, glaring at them.

The three girls stared at him, then looked at each other, before a second girl looked back to Hideki and said, “Don’t get so dramatic, acting like we’re the villains.  Onishi was just happy someone talked to her at all.  Besides, she’s probably just crying in a milkshake somewhere, she’ll come back if her parents leave some food out.”

Hideki’s hands balled into fists.  His shoulders stiffened and he took a step toward the girls.  There was something so honest about the way Suu talked or smiled, or blushed when he embarrassed her.

“I’m kind of shy,” Suu said quietly, “But they still eat lunch with me anyway, so… It’s really nice to feel included.”

“A-Are… Are you threatening us?” one of the girls asked, “We’ll call a teacher…”

Hideki froze in his steps, but he continued to seethe.  He stared at the girls and said, “I know you can’t see past the end of your own stuck up noses, but Suu-chan deserves better friends than any of you could be.   If anything happens to her, it’s on your heads.”

Hideki turned and stormed down the hallway.  He didn’t have to tilt to weave between students, as they quickly moved out of his warpath.

The two remaining classes of the day were practically non-events for Hideki, he barely acknowledged that they came and went.  Though he was angry, he calmed himself enough to not be a distraction to others, and with that calm, a sense of dread began to set in.

‘What if she really did call one of those payphones?’ he wondered, ‘Could shehave gotten pulled into that place like I did?  Why didn’t she come back?  Will she come back?  Did those women… do something to her?’

When the final class dismissed, all of the students hurried to get out of their chairs and move on to their classes, or hang out with friends.  Hideki remained in his chair, and he watched Fumi, who still remained in her seat, going over paperwork.  He had mulled over the pros and cons of approaching her, but once the classroom had almost fully cleared out, he finally made his decision.

“Class rep?” Hideki asked, as he approached her desk.

Fumi shifted her gaze up at him, her darkly outlined eyes peering from under her thick, blunt black bangs.   She looked at him quietly for a moment, before asking, “Yes?”

Hideki was surprised by her standoffish reaction, and asked, “...what?”

“You’re clenching your fists,” she said.

He hadn’t even realized. Hideki looked down at his hands as he consciously opened them, and he began to rub them together to massage away the tense ache.   He winced a bit, before looking at Fumi and asking, “Can we talk? Somewhere private?”

Fumi eyed him suspiciously.

“It’s…” he muttered quietly, “It’s about Suu-chan.”

Hideki and Fumi left the classroom, and went up the stairs to the roof.  The roof was surrounded by a waist-high chain-link fence, and it was a popular place for students to eat lunch or hang out.  A few students were scattered here and there, playing games on their cell phones or chatting with one another, but Hideki and Fumi had no difficulty finding a quiet corner of the roof where their conversation wouldn’t carry far over the wind.

“What do you have to say about Onishi-kun that couldn’t be said in public?” Fumi asked as she sat on a wooden bench next to the fence, a hand on top of her head, obviously annoyed as her perfectly combed black hair was tousled by the breeze.

“I heard some so-called ‘friends’ of hers the other day, asking her to try to call that haunted payphone,” Hideki said, gripping the chain link fence as he looked over the schoolyard below, “I think she might’ve done it.”

“You can’t actually believe that,” Fumi sneered, “It’s a rumor, and one no one can even keep straight.  Whether you call demons or ghosts or dead family members, if they’ll help you or haunt you or drag you to hell… None of the phones are even hooked up to anything, much less to time-travelling ghosts.”

“They connect to something,” Hideki said, looking at Fumi. He took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled, and said, “I called it the other day, by accident.”

Fumi looked at him, with an obvious air of skepticism, asking, “You called it ‘by accident’?”

Hideki moved to sit on the bench next to her, and said quietly, “You know those two students that they found dead the other night?”

“Sanada-san and Mitsuyama-san, yes,” she said with a small nod.

Hideki took a deep breath as he mulled over his words, before he said, “When I was walking home, the day before yesterday, I heard Mitsuyama-san calling for help.  When I found her, she was sitting in the middle of the street holding Sanada-san, and he was covered in blood.  She was screaming for help.”

“You saw her alive?” Fumi asked, her eyes narrow.

“Yeah, alive, breathing, looking right at me and screaming for me to help him,” Hideki said, “My cellphone was acting up, it wouldn’t let me dial out when I tried to call an ambulance, so I panicked and picked up one of those old payphones.   I dialed 119, and the next thing I knew, I was somewhere else.”

“What do you mean ‘you were somewhere else’?” Fumi asked, watching him closely now; “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Nothing about it makes sense!” Hideki groaned, leaning back against the fence behind the bench.  His head thudded back on the chain links as he looked to the sky, and said, “My head was killing me, and there was this loud ringing, but… then I came around in this dark place.   There were women there, they looked like old-fashioned telephone switchboard operators, from maybe a hundred years ago.  There was also this woman in a red suit, nothing she said made any sense… I don’t know, I know it all sounds strange, but when they sent me back to the real world, I was standing at that payphone bank, but six hours had passed.”

“Six hours?” Fumi asked, “How could you have been standing there for six hours?”

“Six hours without anyone seeing me,” he said, looking at her, “When I came to, the police had cordoned off the area and were interviewing neighbors.   I ran off before anyone saw me there, and by the time I got home, it was 12:30am.”

“Don’t make up stories, Sorato,” Fumi said, glaring sharply at him.

“I’m not making up anything,” Hideki snipped, “Suu-chan was a nice girl who could be trapped somewhere, maybe hurt, who knows what else, all because some people she called her friends decided to play a prank.”

Fumi stared at him evenly for a moment, before asking, “What do you presume we do about this, then?   It’s a miracle I even heard you out to the end, do you think any teacher or police officer is going to give you that much of their time?”

“I know they won’t,” said Hideki, “They’re going to think I’m pulling a prank at best, or crazy at worst.  That’s why you’re the only person I’ve talked to.”

“What do you expect me to do about it, then?” Fumi asked.

Hideki looked at her for a moment, then looked up at the sky and said, “I’m going to try calling tonight.  Not 119, but I want to do what the rumor talks about… what Suu probably did, last night.  I’m going to wait until midnight and then I’m going to dial zero.”

“This is foolishness,” Fumi said with a huff.

Hideki smirked at her and said, “If it’s stupid and fake, then I’ll just be a moron standing there with a payphone, breaking curfew.”

She could find no flaw to his argument; he had at least admitted he’d be breaking curfew, and that he would be a moron.   Fumi sighed and asked, “What is my part in this, then?”

“Well, in case I don’t come to school tomorrow, I want someone to know why,” he said with a weak smirk, “I’m going to use the payphone nearest to my house, the one across the street from the FamilyMart.”

Fumi stared at him a moment, before asking, “You don’t think you’ll be back at school?”

“I dunno,” Hideki said, standing and picking up his book bag, “But I have to try something.”