School Pool of Summer Night, Hyoshi Kuratake [best novels to read for beginners txt] 📗

School Pool of Summer Night

  This is a story in Japan.

 

 

  In the night during the season of "O-Bon(Japan's observance nearly like Halloween. August 13 to the 15th, souls of ancestors come back from heaven)", three friends of university on summer vacation, who had no plan to go back to each hometown, gathered in one's room of apartment and drank beers.

  In the daytime the temperature exceeded 38°C, even after the evening the temperature didn't fall much, the shabby air conditioner didn't work well, the room was too small for three men to breathe.

  When one opened the window, hot air rushed in and made them sick.

  The borrower of the room said;

  "There is a junior high school in the neighborhood. How about sneaking into there and swimming in the pool?"

  Other two welcomed his suggestion.

  Though two guests didn't have swimwear, "It's OK with underwear", so they got out from the apartment.

 

  After several minutes walk they arrived at the school.

  It's lucky for them, the pool was away from the street beyond two tennis courts; cypress trees around the pool became blinds, so nobody would notice if they didn't get noisy.

  They climbed the fence of the ground to the inside, walked through the tennis courts enjoying the thrill of invaders, again climbed the fence of the pool.

 

  "How about security equipment?"

  "Apart from the buildings, it's OK about the pool, isn't it?"

  "I think so. Nowadays night-watching of school is a job of security company, isn't it?"

 

  They took it easy, took off their clothes, kept only a pair of underpants and entered into the water.

  Each of them began to swim freely; for caring not to make water sound, all they swan the breaststroke.

  It was funny to imagine that in the darkness three men swan in frog-style silently.

 

  Cool water is comfortable! ___they should want to say, but,

 

  "It is lukewarm, isn't it?"

  "It is. Different from river or sea."

  "It's impossible to swim in river or sea in midnight! It's terrible!"

  "It's also a standard situation of ghost story: "a midnight school pool"."

  "Don't say that! You really call it! It's 'O-Bon' season!"

  "If the ghost appears and catches you, I will run away without a glance."

  "Yes, you will. You are such a wretched man."

  "Wait for us to bring a curse on you!"

 

  They joked each other and swam the breaststroke silently around the pool.

  They talked but they couldn't see the face each other. The sky was covered with heavy gray clouds and the moon didn't seem to rise. The face was seen each other as just only rounded silhouette which rose from the oily black surface of water.

 

  And after about ten minutes swimming;

 

  "Hey. Don't you feel slimy?"

  "Yes, I do. It seems that the piled rubbish is rising up from the bottom."

  "It should be. Swimming club is now holiday for 'O-Bon', so no one put chlorine pills for three or four days."

  "I want to use the shower."

  "Stand it till going back to the apartment."

  "Hey! Shut up!"

 

  One warned the others and said in a low voice;

 

  "Footsteps. Somebody is coming up."

 

  When they listened carefully, certainly the sticky sound of steps was coming through the ground toward this side.

  Footsteps which seemed to wear sandals came straight toward the pool.

  The three got upset, gathered at the far side from the entrance and watched what happened next; the owner of the footsteps unlocked the padlock of the door of the fence and came in.

  They thought they had been seen, the silhouette was coming up the steps to the poolside, they nodded each other and sank into the water silently.

  They looked up the light of a flashlight lighting up the surface of the water.

  'Will he go away before we are suffocated?'; the round shaped light moved from place to place in the surface while changing it's length.

  'If we jump up from the water, won't he tumble down for the shock?'; a bad idea nearly burst them out laughing, they shut the mouth desperately; __while they looked up the surface, they noticed the water had gotten dirty to see the slimy matters were floating everywhere.

  The light vanished, the sticky footsteps went down the steps, the door was shut with noisy  metallic sound and locked; the three pushed up the face from the water and breathed rapidly.

  The sticky footsteps went away through the ground.

 

  "It was dangerous."

  "My life had shrunk for at least three years and four months."

  "How did you calculate the number?"

 

  They laughed like buddies of a crime.

 

  "Now, go back?"

  "Sure."

 

  They got up from the water.

  Luckily, they had put their clothes behind the watering equipment so the man couldn't see them, and, if they had risen on the poolside only once, he should notice the wet mark: they were really lucky.

  One complained while putting on the clothes;

 

  "Who said the janitor isn't in the school on night duty?"

 

  Though it was not certain that the man was the janitor of the school, but he was, maybe.

 

  "Nobody said. But, it is just like old days unexpectedly."

  "Maybe public schools don't have enough money for securities."

 

  Anyway, they thanked their lucky not to be seen and scolded; they got a little cool and walked the way back to the apartment.

 

 

 

  The next day.

  There happened a serious roaring around the pool of the junior high school.

  A call from the neighborhood urged the police, the police called the school, the police officers and the school staff and the staffs from the security company for the school came to the pool and checked it.

  A terrible bad smell was floating from the pool, and at the bottom of the water a lot of light brown matters were floating.

  In the floatings, white bones of human were seen.

  The staffs from the Criminal Identification Section came at once, soon the around was filled with a crowd of onlookers.

 

  The body was pulled up from the pool carefully with net, which seemed to belong to a teenage girl.

  From the situation: the swimming club did club activities three days ago, the body should be thrown after that, but, for that, the body was too much damaged for high temperature of these days; too much damaged just like that the being soft skin was stirred up with streams of water.

  Whether an accident or a murder? ___A murder it was maybe; then___

  The murderer sank the body of dead girl, came back at the timing the body gat soft and stirred the water for damaging the body for hiding her identity and the evidence of murder?

  If the murderer thought so, it was useless just to advance detection of the case as like as seen; the police staffs were puzzled by the act.

 

 

  To hear the uproar of the neighborhood, to watch the news on TV, the three college students became blue and thought;

  This murderer is that janitor, maybe.

  I won't report, sorry.

  While they wished the murderer to be caught soon, wished the dead girl's soul to go heaven, they remembered the touch of the slimy water and shivered with strange ecstasy.

 

 

 END

Imprint

Publication Date: 07-17-2015

All Rights Reserved