Book Girl and the Corrupted Angel Read Online Free PDF Page A

“surfer” prompts—essence of fluffy, therapeutic vanilla soufflé that I had crafted through my grumbling—were a long way from fluffy, therapeuticness.
    There was still time before class started. I would rewrite the story in the clubroom.
    I felt the piercing cold of the air on my skin as I passed through the school’s front gate, where I spotted Kotobuki.
     
    Huh?

    Below the thick, bleak clouds, Kotobuki was moving toward the front stairs on unsteady, wobbly legs. There was something strange about the way she acted.
    My heart thrummed, and my steps grew naturally quicker as I went after her.
    Kotobuki stood in front of the shoe lockers, her eyes empty.
    In profile her face was pale and drained of energy.
    “Kotobuki.”
    When I said her name, she started and looked up. “…Inoue.”
    Her voice was a hoarse murmur, and tears started welling up in her strong-willed eyes.
    That caught me off guard.
    “Wh…what’s wrong? If you’re upset about what happened yesterday…”
    “…I’m not. It’s Yuka…”
    Yuka?
    The next instant, Kotobuki had covered her face with both hands and burst out sobbing.
    “Yuka’s disappeared! I don’t know what to do—I—I—”
     
    “C’mon, what’s wrong? What happened? Don’t cry, okay? Can you tell me about it?”
    I soothed Kotobuki as I held her hand and led her into the book club’s room, then made her sit on a fold-up chair. She was bawling like a child.
    Kotobuki curled up into a little quivering ball and soaked the sleeves of her coat and her uniform skirt with tears. She sobbed again and again until at last she told me what had happened.
    That a friend of hers who went to a different school, Yuka Mito, had disappeared.
    She said that after running out of the library yesterday, she’d gone to the Mitos’ house.
    But when she got there, a window was broken and the house was empty and there was no sign that anyone lived there anymore. Spooked, she asked a passing neighbor about it and was told that the Mitos had been unable to pay back a loan and had fled in the night two months ago.
    “… Hic. I’d been texting Yuka every day, and I called her, and we even went shopping together last month. She never said a word about moving. Hic …I can’t believe something like that would happen to Yuka’s family…I tried to call her a bunch of times last night, but it went to voice mail every time. She didn’t answer my text messages, either. Usually she answers right away! Where did she go?”
    Kotobuki was an utter shambles. Her face was a mess, and she sobbed through her sniffling. She looked small and frail, as if she would shatter if someone didn’t help her. Tears fell on her kneecaps peeking out from underneath her skirt.
    The bell had already rung, and it was no longer even homeroom—we were in the middle of first period now.
    Before, I never would have imagined that I would be skipping class to be alone with a girl.
    But I could hardly abandon Kotobuki when she was choking back her tears, without the faintest idea of what to do after the shock of her best friend’s disappearance.
    Maybe I felt it more deeply because of how she’d looked yesterday in the library.
    “Don’t cry, Kotobuki. We’ll look for Mito together. Why don’t we go to her school and ask people about her? I’ll help you, okay?”
    Kotobuki nodded imperceptibly and continued crying.
     
    After getting home, I turned on my computer and did a search.
    The high school Mito attended was a famous school that produced a great many professional musicians and was attached to the Shirafuji Music Academy. The classes were also structured around a focus on music, and there were a lot of students who studied abroad. The building featured on the school’s home page had a luxurious Western-style exterior; I’d seen it used in TV shows before.
    Mito had hoped to be a professional opera singer. An opera concert by the students was coming up at the school’s auditorium, and she had gotten the