Real World by Natsuo Kirino Read Free Book Online Page A

get rid of it anytime you like. Otherwise people will find out I helped him.

I was thinking I’d phone Worm, and glanced at my watch. It was past ten fifteen p.m. I had to get back home or Dad would have a fit. Ever since that incident last summer, he’s started to meddle in everything I do. I keep telling myself just to hang in there until I graduate from high school. I figured I’d call Worm after I got home, so for the time being I sent him a text message.

I gave the phone and bike back to Toshi. Call her to apologize, okay? Take care of yourself.

I stared at the message. I was helping a guy escape—a guy who had killed his mother. I have no idea what made him do it, but I wanted him to run away and never get caught. I don’t really know how to put it, but it was like I didn’t want him to come back to stupid, boring reality, but instead create a new reality all his own.

I heard this sticky sound of footsteps like something being crushed underfoot, and I shoved my cell phone into my pocket. The tip of a cigarette glowed in the dark like a firefly. I was a little tense but then saw that it was just a young office-type girl in mule sandals. The weird sound as she walked came from her bare feet sticking, then unpeeling, from the sandals. As the girl passed by me, she flicked her cigarette butt aside. My nose was hit by the strong stink of nicotine.

“Don’t throw your butt away like that!”

I said this without thinking and the woman turned around and glared at me. She was a hefty girl, about five-seven. She had on green phosphorescent eye shadow, and a blue camisole that barely fit her broad shoulders. One of your sulky, penniless Office Ladies. She looked like an unpopular, down-on-his luck transvestite. I suddenly remembered the shock I felt last year when a transvestite in the Shinjuku 2-chome entertainment district roughed me up, and I held my breath.

“Don’t preach to me, you bitch,” the woman said in a shrill voice and briskly walked off. I stood stock-still under the streetlight and remembered that night last summer in Shinjuku, when I was in my second year of high school.

In the 2-chome district there are several small bars that cater to only women.

I’d heard that the Bettina was the most radical, the one that turned away anyone who’s straight.

I’d found it on the Internet and went to check out the place during summer vacation. I had a pretty good idea before I went what the bar would be like, but I just wanted to find out what sort of people went there. I guess I wanted to make sure I wasn’t the only one who was like me.

The place was what I expected, a tiny, cheap bar that could seat barely ten people. The owner was a middle-aged woman who looked like a sushi chef—white shirt with the collar turned up, short neatly combed coarse hair with a sprinkling of gray. Most of the customers were disagreeable career hags on the lookout for young girls to snag. There were a couple of people like me who were curiously, nervously looking around. We all sported short haircuts, T-shirts, shorts, day packs, and sneakers—girls dressed just like your typical high school boy. They were junior and senior high school girls who had also found the bar on the Internet and had come to check it out during their summer break. The bar was well aware that summer vacation meant more junior and senior high school girls coming by, and they were nice enough to allow them to hang out till morning, like it was a onetime summer experience for them, for the price of a can of beer.

I got to know two girls there. One, named Boku-chan, had come to Tokyo from Kochi and was planning to stay as long as she could. The other, named Dahmer, was from Saitama, where she was a top student in an elite high school. All of us went by our pseudonyms, so it took a while before I learned their real names and where they came from.

Boku-chan was trying her best to become a guy. She was a dummy who thought that as long as she acted