When she would return from the past sometime later, she would say she didn’t recall. But Caroline Burner did indeed step foot into the halls of Hokuto High that morning with butterflies. Actual butterflies she had gathered at the neighbouring park. To those students present in that corridor, they remembered the prideful smile she wore, as well as the black gloves as slim fitting as latex. They also described her at odds to the rest of the cohort, with her short bob amber hair, uneven at the fringe that brushed above her brow. What was mentioned foremost was that they had never seen her before that day. Though that was not such an oddity at Hokuto High.
Caroline bounced a course to the teacher’s room. While it was in fact her first day, she navigated into the bowels of the school without misstep. Or misskip, as she went with the sprightly movements befitting one much younger than her current sixteen years. She stopped in a panel of warmth to admire the scene outside the window opposite the teacher’s room. More butterflies fluttered about the branches of a zelkova tree that reached nearly as tall as the three storey building. The scene almost pulled her away and back outside, before the door to the teacher’s room opened and a student lumbered out. He took her in, all aglow in refracted light, without nary a reaction registering on his face. He’d seen the hair and gloves and the butterflies, but all he did was move to interrupt the sliding door to keep it ajar.
‘Ms. Tomokawa is over there,’ he said, motioning to the far right of the room with a jerk of his head.
‘How did you—‘
He had ushered her inside the room before she could finish her question. The door slid close behind her as she rushed a thank you that she wasn’t sure the student heard.
The room was blockade after blockade of desk islands, topped with print and projections and some of the very earliest models of software she’d ever known. She found who she figured must be Ms. Tomokawa, drinking from a bottle of barley tea. She announced her presence with a wave of her hand as if she were flagging down a plane for rescue. Ms. Tomokawa dribbled some tea down her blouse as she stifled a cough.
‘Ms. Burner, you’re here,’ she said, wiping up the spot on her blouse and pulling up a chair for Caroline to sit. ‘And you have butterflies.’
‘No, I’m not nervous at all,’ said Caroline, responding in Japanese. She sat kicking her legs like a child does when they can’t reach the ground. Though she most certainly could. She panned her attention over the walls covered in ancient pin up boards with dates and times and then over the rather subdued atmosphere the clutter appeared to paradox.
‘Your Japanese is very good,’ said Ms. Tomokawa, converting to Japanese. She fit into her chair like an overpacked suitcase.
‘Thank you,’ said Caroline, returning her attention to the teacher. ‘I’d hope so; I’ve been speaking it all my life.’
That earned a smile from Ms. Tomokawa, which sparked the look on Caroline’s bright face to burn even brighter.
‘You have a beautiful energy,’ said Ms. Tomokawa.
‘Thank you again,’ said Caroline. ‘So do you, Tomokawa Sensei. I’m sure we’re going to get along so very well.’
She didn’t detect the slow dissipation of the smile on the teacher’s face as she continued to kick her legs and wander her eye. Another teacher passed by wearing an almost cagey look behind his glasses and masked face. Caroline’s smile didn’t waver and her eyes followed him until he lowered into his seat and out of her eye-line.
‘…it can be a lot to take in, I hope you can keep up,’ said Ms. Tomokawa, talking as she busied herself with some pages on her desk. ‘I’m sure you will do your best. I have your class schedule here somewhere.’ She dug deeper and deeper into the disorder of documents that splayed out on her desk like the action paintings of Kazuo Shiraga. Caroline monitored the movements of the butterflies in her bug box, drawing parallels to the movements of the teacher. Ms. Tomokawa emerged with a paper in hand; at the same time knocking over her bottle of barley tea, the rescued document catching stray splashes.
Caroline sprung into action at once, like an experienced lifesaver spotting a drowning body in the water. She doffed the glove of her right hand and concentrated her hand where the spill pooled, looking not too out of place on the action painting of papers on the desk. She still held her butterfly display case under the crook of her left arm. The spill immediately dried out, evaporating before their eyes, as if being watched on fast forward replay.
Ms. Tomokawa bottled her curses toward her own clumsiness and said, ‘Aren’t you a special one?’
‘Not really,’ said Caroline, still clearing the damp that wet the edges of an assortment of papers. ‘I know this one kid back in the home that could freeze any liquid or gas by just blowing on it.’
‘Oh, really? What was his name?’
‘Denzo Maibara.’ She fit her glove back on her hand and sat back down in her seat. ‘He was always doing that to impress people, but I heard after it wasn’t such a rare thing from the time and place he was of. Some place in northern Hokkaido, I imagine. Still was special for me to see.’
Ms. Tomokawa brokered a smile in response and handed Caroline her schedule, squeezing back into her chair. ‘You’ll be in Classroom 3B. I’ve partnered you up with Naiko Tanihara—he was just here moments ago. Anyway, I’ve let him know. He’s experienced. He knows what to expect. Not to spoil your first lesson, it might not be the most exciting, but it’s definitely important. Modern History.’
‘My first lesson,’ said Caroline, beaming as she gripped the paper tight in her hand. It didn’t matter it was stained and spotted with tea. It was her schedule and on it showed the time for her first lesson. ‘I’ve never had an actual lesson before.’
‘You’ll be fine. Follow Mr. Tanihara’s lead and everything will happen as it should.’
She dismissed Caroline with a curt nod and finished off the dregs of tea in the bottle.
With her schedule in one hand and butterfly catcher in the other, Caroline exited the teacher’s room and walked through the halls, the sunlight bathing her fully. She didn’t walk far, inattentive as she was to where she was going while she stayed glued to the sheet in her hand. A voice halted her in her tracks and she noticed that she’d only traveled a few steps from the teacher’s room.
‘If we’re to be partnered up, you’ll need to drop that smile,’ said the student from before, who managed to locate the lone spot in the hall out of direct sunlight.
‘Am I smiling?’ Caroline said, lowering the schedule. ‘It’s just my face.’ The sunlight caught her flush in the face.
The student looked as if he was trying to bore into her behind his tinted blue lenses.
‘You will soon enough anyway.’
Caroline didn’t respond, not really catching his meaning. She maintained her smile but cocked her head to one side. The student’s expression remained dark but all together not uncaring. He had soft features, shaded darker; whether applied or not, she didn’t know.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said the student, speaking in English. ‘I can talk English. My English is very best. Pleased to make my acquaintance.’
His poor English took the edge out of his manner. The light slowly infiltrating the dark space he occupied.
‘I’m Japanese,’ said Caroline in Japanese and laughing.
‘Japanese here don’t look like you do,’ he said, switching back to Japanese and regaining the sharpness of his tone.
‘Caroline Burner, please look after me,’ Caroline said, bowing. She radiated her youthful smile, it might have appeared plastered on to anyone else of similar age.
‘Naiko Tanihara,’ said the boy, sufficing with a mere nod. ‘I’ll do my best.’
Naiko stepped out into the sunlight pouring in through the window, but not before brushing his unkempt mop of hair so that it created a visor of sorts that shielded his eyes.
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‘Our lesson will take place in classroom 3B,’ said Naiko, balancing his dark features with an accented warmth to his voice. Even Caroline could tell it was forced but she appreciated it nonetheless. ‘I’m aware it’s your first. Don’t worry, we’ll be in and out.’
She followed him up the stairs and past a handful of students congregating near the stairwell. They lowered the volume of their conversation until the two of them were out of earshot. Caroline turned back as she continued, surmising they weren’t being offensive but taken to gossiping about difference. It was the same back at home, whenever more kids joined the family, so she thought nothing deeper into it.
‘Ignore them,’ said Naiko, not stopping or peeling his eyes from the straight path he forged. ‘You’ll likely never see them again anyway. This school is a large place. If you get what I mean. Attachments to things won’t do you any good. Just keep up with me, we’re nearly there.’
She didn’t really get it but she didn’t admit as much. The school as far as she could tell was comparable in size to what she’d seen before about schools of this period. She’d never stepped inside another one to truly know, but the off white colour of the building and the gritty, sandy grounds, paired with sterile insides, seemed as normal and magical a place as she hoped.
‘Here we are,’ he said, coming to a halt and causing a rear end collision. Caroline fell to the floor and the lid to the case of the butterfly cage sprung open and released the butterflies into the hall. A bell chimed to signal the beginning of classes.
‘We better go in,’ he said, pulling Caroline to her feet as she flailed her arms in a futile attempt to recover the butterflies. He pulled her into the classroom before she could protest.
She couldn’t make sense of it that first time, but entering that classroom had her feeling funny. Like how one’s stomach drops on a roller coaster—though she’d never ridden one—or how it feels to get deja vu and you’re trapped in those fleeting seconds where your brain is trying to catch up to your reality and you’re kind of just stuck helpless to your lack of understanding. That was how Caroline felt. She experienced a lot of strain behind her eyes too, not too dissimilar to that pain when you adjust to harsh light.
‘Tanihara, Burner, take your seats.’
A voice carried from the front of the room and Caroline, after coming to, recognised the person who had spoken was the same masked teacher she’d seen in the teacher’s room. That was funny. She’d never seen him leave the room or overtake them in the hall. She brushed it off, crediting her preoccupied absorption in her schedule, and took a seat near the door. The seats were a quarter filled and she blossomed a smile under the concentrated energy of looks she received. She caught Naiko beside her rest his head in his arms.
‘That’s all of us,’ the masked teacher continued after passing his gaze over Naiko’s insolent manner and drawing his attention away. ‘We have a new student with us, Ms. Burner—‘
Caroline pushed back her chair, poised to stand and introduce herself before the teacher cut her off.
‘I’m Mr. Yoshitaka, but you can call me Sensei,’ he said, turning to the board behind him. ‘We have four case studies to tackle. Please pay particular attention when we get to your field of study. After I’m done you can then get to work. Any questions? Good.’
Caroline had a million questions and she no longer had her schedule to consult. Maybe she could ask to be excused for a moment to go and get it out of the hall. She calculated her options. She could raise her hand and ask to go get it, tap and wake up Naiko to fill her in, or sit quietly. She was ready to choose the first option when she noticed something that made her confusion about the class and her dropped schedule less important.
‘It’s snowing,’ she said, causing the class to power their stares back on her. She took no notice, her attention instead fixed to what was happening out the window with the snow falling in such quick succession, and at such an angle to conceal any other sight outside.
‘That’s not a question, Ms. Burner,’ said Mr. Yoshitaka.
‘But how?’
‘Perhaps you can save that one for another lesson, but today our first case study is—‘
‘It’s cold in here,’ said Caroline, brushing the goosebumps on her arm.
Naiko stirred, and while still positioned with his head in the pillow of his arms, gave her a look that read, ‘deal with it.’
‘As it seems I’m unable to secure Ms. Burner’s attention for long, let’s begin with yours and Mr. Tanihara’s case study, shall we?’
Caroline straightened up in her chair, posturing rapt attention but unable to truly commit as she wrestled with the reality of the summer producing intemperate weather at the drop of a butterfly case.
‘Hiro Itoshi, a hikikomori in the port town of Shiogama. Current age is thirty
-three according to the record we currently hold, though the veracity of this particular historical document cannot be verified as bulletproof accurate.’ Mr. Yoshitaka scribbled abbreviated notes on the blackboard of what he was saying. He appeared to be going off the top of his head. The other students viewed him, unmoving and stoic in their seats. Caroline couldn’t help but cock her head, while Naiko still lay slumped, head propped up in his hand.
‘Mr. Yo—Sensei, are we supposed to be writing this down?’ Caroline kept her hand up even after blurting the question out.
He fixed her a colder look than even the weather outside.
‘If it helps you, Ms. Burner.’ He returned to scribbling on the blackboard.
Blackboard? This must be one old classroom. Caroline committed to a sweep of her surroundings when she noticed Naiko pick his head up out of his hand and faced her.
‘Be quiet,’ he said, barely above a whisper, ‘this’ll go faster and we can get out of here.’
He brought his head back down, settling it into the nook of his arm before sitting up and turning to her, this time minus the irritated look he’d been wearing since they came into the classroom. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve studied this.’
Appeased somewhat, she dropped her hand and looked around the room at the other students. They all looked so earnest about learning; inspired she mimicked their manner. She fixed her eyes on the bald spot at the crown of Mr. Yoshitaka’s head.
‘Now Hiro Itoshi, for but one day of the year, remained holed up in his room of his parent’s house. Now at this point they had been deceased for twelve years, but that has been covered in another lesson—or will be covered at a later time, Ms. Burner.’
Mr. Yoshitaka turned to eye the pair of them, slipping out of his mask to register his surprise at their focus. It was only a moment and he quickly corrected himself with a tired look before turning back to the board.
He resumed, ‘But tomorrow being the first of January, we know he—‘
‘What?’ Caroline couldn’t help breaking character at this revelation. The first? But—
What added to her shock was that nobody else in the room was the least bit staggered by this announced change of date. Did she really just catch butterflies in winter?
‘Mr. Tanihara, you were supposed to get Ms. Burner up to speed,’ Mr. Yoshitaka said, his voice untempered.
‘There was no time.’ Naiko was at least sitting upright now.
‘It’s your job.’
Naiko appeared to be chewing on a retort, until he mustered a bow of his head and an expression of contrition. Caroline didn’t know whether to be shocked by that departure of character or the weather or the date. No. Certainly the date was the most shocking.
‘The year is 2023,’ said Naiko, no longer bearing the sullen face of one in the wrong. ‘We’ve travelled back in time. We will have our lesson and then we will execute it.’
‘Time travel…execute?’ Caroline sounded like a machine that repeats the commands you press into it, except it’s slow and probably soon to be out of order and everything comes out confused.
‘There, she’s caught up now,’ said Naiko, folding his arms and tucking in his chin as if he were about to catch a few winks on the train before his stop.
‘Hiro Itoshi left his house to go to Shiogama Shrine. He left, to our best estimation, at around 4a.m. between the two peak periods of heavy visitation, that being just after midnight—popular with the young adult and teenage crowds—and around sunrise.’
‘I didn’t expect school to be so hard,’ Caroline said to herself, massaging her forehead where she imagined the force of new information coming at her like a projectile, striking and hitting her square, and leaving a massive crater that she was now ironing out. Mid massage she shot her hand up.
‘Wait, you said he left,’ Caroline said, ‘but if today is the day before New Year, then it hasn’t happened yet, so how could it be “left?”’
‘Wrong,’ said Mr. Yoshitaka, pressing against the fabric of his mask that covered the bridge of his nose. ‘For us it happened already. We know it’s happened already or I wouldn’t be teaching you this history lesson. And your asssignment as a student at Hokuto High is to ensure that this history that I’m telling happened happened as I said it did. Do you understand, Ms. Burner?’
No, she thought. ‘Yes,’ she said.
‘A good reminder to you all,’ Mr. Yoshitaka said, spotting every student in the room. ‘We aren’t meant to question or ponder the history but to accept our role in it. History doesn’t accept our bias or perspective. I know to many it helps to see yourself as actors to the movie of civilisation. To me that trivialises the work, but if your small brains comprehend it better that way then think of it in that vein, fine.’
An actor…she remembered the one man plays she performed for her own benefit at the home. She improvised all the lines, manoeuvred the plot forward to her own whimsical fancies. Now she had to utilise her skills and put faith in the script of life. Suppose she could if called upon.
The chalk scratching at the blackboard pulled her back into the classroom.
‘It is within this time period where historians believe Hiro Itoshi vanished,’ continued Mr. Yoshitaka. ‘Of course without witness reports and due to the nature of his lifestyle, it’s hard to pin down exactly when this incident occurred. I’m talking in the public record of course. What is known is that the mail at his parent’s house remained uncollected and untouched from the date of the second. It wouldn’t be much later that a missing persons report would be filed by the police themselves. Those details are not pertinent now to our focus. You understand your role in Hiro Itoshi’s disappearance then?’
A determined look formed on Caroline’s face. What a role to be given on her first day.
‘So we must foil this kidnapping and—‘
‘Ms, Burner!’ Mr. Yoshitaka shot her an icy look. ‘Did you listen to nothing I have been saying so far? We are not to rewrite the history we are learned.’
‘But I don’t understand,’ said Caroline, casting a glance at Naiko and the other students, who betrayed no feelings of shared confusion. ‘Hiro Itoshi is presumed kidnapped and we are the perpetrators?’
‘Sounds like you understand very well.’
Caroline recoiled. ‘Are we…am I playing a bad guy?’
‘History has no good or bad guys,’ Mr. Yoshitaka said, pulling out his chair and dropping into it. ‘We fulfil the duties and roles that the situations call for. Only those who reflect their own biases onto things they have no relation to perceive good and bad to roles. Anyway, it’s not like we don’t know what happened to Hiro Itoshi after his disappearance.’
‘What happened?’
‘Why, he’s a teacher here at Hokuto High.’