Beginning IV

Ka ka ka. The blackboard produced a scratching sound as the teacher wrote something that looked like a tanka. [a type of short classical Japanese poem]

Ta so kare to (Who is he?)

Ware wo na tohi so (Do not ask me that question)

Nagatsuki no (September’s)

Tsuyu ni nuretsutsu (Dew dampens me)

Kimi matsu ware so (As I wait for my beloved)

“Tasokare. This is where the word tasogaredoki comes from. You know what that

means, right?” Yuki-chan-sensei asked in her clear voice, then wrote ‘tasokare’ in big letters on the blackboard. “Dusk. A time which is neither day nor night. A time when silhouettes begin to blur, and you can’t tell who’s who anymore. A time when you may meet things which are not of this world, such as demons or the dead. That’s where the word ‘oumagatoki’ comes from. Even further back, they also used the words

‘karetasodoki’ and ‘kawataredoki’.”

[All of these words are either current or archaic ways to refer to dusk. 'Oumagatoki' means a time when you meet demons. ‘Kawataredoki’ and all the ones that sound similar to it mean a time when you ask ‘who is he?’. ‘Toki’ or ‘doki’ means time, ‘tare’ means who, and ‘kare’ or ‘ka’ means he.]

Yuki-chan-sensei now scribbled ‘karetaso’ and ‘kawatare’ on the board. What is that, some kind of pun?

"Sensei, question. Isn’t it supposed to be ‘katawaredoki’? " someone asked, and I agreed

silently in my head.

Of course I knew ‘tasogaredoki’, but the other word for dusk that we learned as kids was 'katawaredoki'. Hearing the question, Yuki-chan-sensei laughed softly. This classics teacher seemed too pretty to be working at this high school in the middle of nowhere.

"That’s just the dialect around here. You know, sometimes the elderly of Itomori still talk

like the guys that wrote these poems."

Someone followed the teacher’s answer with a joke about how we’re in the middle of nowhere, and the class started laughing. It’s true that sometimes when I listen to Grandma talk it’s like ‘is that even Japanese?’. Like, she uses ‘washi’ [pronoun for ‘I’ typically used by elderly

males] to refer to herself. I flipped through the pages of my notebook as I pondered this point and discovered a message written in big letters on a page that should have still been blank.

Who are you?

…. Huh? What is this? The sounds around me suddenly grew quiet, as if they had been sucked up by the unfamiliar handwriting in front of my eyes. This was not my handwriting. I haven’t lent my notebook to anyone. What does this mean?

“... san. Miyamizu-san!”

“Ah, yes?” I panicked and stood up.

“Please read from page 98,” Yuki-chan-sensei said, then, looking at my face, she added "Miyamizu-san. Glad to see you remember your own name today."

The class burst into laughter. Huuuh? What? What is she talking about?

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***