Horror Movie
"Aaaaaaah!"
"Eeeeeeeek!"
I screamed and plastered myself against Haru. Haru screamed and plastered herself right back against me, until the two of us were locked in each other's arms. And what, exactly, had driven us to shriek like that? Haru and I were watching a horror movie.
We sat on the bed, staring at the TV as if it might swallow us whole. Half-eaten popcorn lay scattered across the desk, and I'd been picking the kernels up one by one and popping them into my mouth. Then a terrifying scene burst onto the screen, and I startled so hard I couldn't peel myself off Haru's side.
She'd brought it over claiming there was a fun movie we ought to see. Complete nonsense. The zombies boiling across the screen were so awful that the end of the world looked like it couldn't be far off. How was anyone supposed to survive in a world crawling with the undead?
"That was fun, wasn't it?"
The girl who had been screaming her lungs out a moment ago was nowhere to be found. Haru looked perfectly fine. I was the only one still shaking, as if the movie had left some kind of aftershock in my bones. She seemed to be the type who could shake fear off on the spot.
"Y-yeah..."
She said it with a smile, so I had to summon what dignity I had left as a grown man. If I sat there trembling and broadcasting how scared I was, she would definitely treat me like a little kid. Even so, the image of a zombie tearing into an ordinary person refused to leave my head.
Haru's hobbies, it seemed, ran quietly toward the gory. Watching a horror movie this frightening... Of course, she had asked me at the start whether I was really all right with it. I'd nodded and agreed without a second thought, assuming I would feel the way I used to.
Back then, horror movies were something I watched even while I ate. It was all just a made-up world anyway—nothing to do with the person I was now—so even the scary parts hadn't really scared me.
But after my body changed, a horror movie sent cold sweat pouring down my back. My mind knew perfectly well that it was only a movie. My body, apparently, did not. It took every frame as if it were truly happening, vivid and immediate.
"Let's watch this one next~"
Haru said it in a perfectly calm voice, as if the last movie's aftertaste had already faded. Was that one horror too? I was nowhere near ready for another. Fortunately, what she picked next wasn't a horror movie at all. It was a funny comedy, and I let out a quiet sigh of relief.
If we kept stacking horror movies back to back, sleeping alone tonight might well have been out of the question.
"Mmm..."
It was ten at night, the hour when a good child ought to be in bed and snoring. I used to fall asleep around dawn, but ever since I'd changed into this body, ten o'clock alone was enough to make me desperately sleepy. I closed my heavy eyes, lay down, and tried to drift off.
The moment I shut them, what waited in front of me was the face of a horrifying zombie.
"Hah!"
Keeping them closed only made it worse, so I snapped them open. The pitch-dark room was too frightening. I got up and switched on the light, and the brightness was a comfort—until the glare made it impossible to sleep.
I was stuck. Turn the light off, and I'd be terrified. Leave it on, and the brightness would keep me awake. After turning it over and over, I finally flopped back onto the bed.
Pulling the blanket up over my head dimmed the room a little. I squeezed my eyes shut again and fought to fall asleep. But the light being on didn't erase the scenes from the horror movie. If anything, they played back in my brain even more vividly.
Desperately, I tried to think of the comedy we'd watched afterward. A character in ridiculous makeup was talking to the protagonist.
Good...
Then the ridiculous makeup peeled away, and underneath was a zombie's face, blood streaming down it. It sank its teeth into the protagonist's shoulder without mercy. It bit so hard you could see the muscle.
"Eeek!!!"
I kicked the blanket off and had no choice but to get out of bed. Thinking about the comedy was useless. The funny scenes kept mutating into zombie footage in my head, rewriting themselves however they pleased.
Still in my dinosaur pajamas, I put on my shoes and headed for the door. When I opened it, there was nothing on either side—only a long, empty hallway. It was the kind of scenery where a zombie stepping out mid-walk wouldn't have felt the least bit out of place.
Cold sweat soaked my back. I was alone. I wanted anyone, anyone at all, beside me. That was how bleak and frightening an empty hallway could be.
It felt as if a ghost might come sliding out of the side passage. I swallowed the urge to retreat into my room—honestly, going back in was scary too. There was no retreating now. I squeezed both eyes shut and sprinted down the middle of the hall. The goal was the office. If I could just reach the office, wouldn't someone be there?
Flailing my arms and, through some superhuman feat, managing not to crash into the walls, I arrived at the office and finally let out a breath. Nothing scary left now, right? I caught my breath as best I could in front of the door. This was not, under any circumstances, me fleeing my room because I was scared. I had merely stopped by the office for a moment.
Absolutely not the sort of thing a little kid would do—watching a horror movie and then whining all night because they couldn't sleep! I was not that young. Slipping through the open door like a burglar, I found Haru watching something on her laptop, a bag of shrimp crackers beside her.
It annoyed me, for no good reason, that she was so absorbed she hadn't even noticed me come in. I'd struggled all the way here, and Haru was just munching snacks and staring at a screen!
A sly grin tugged at my mouth as I crept up behind her. The plan was to smack her on the back and give her a scare. I'd been this frightened, and she hadn't understood my feelings at all—this was her punishment. Rising onto my toes and inching closer, I could see the laptop screen she was watching.
A display that had been nothing but a blank background suddenly filled with a person drenched in blood. I yelped in shock.
"Ack!"
I jumped in place, reacting with absolute thoroughness to the ghost that had appeared on the screen. At the sound of the scream, Haru turned around. Our eyes met.
I put on an awkward face and laughed, heh heh.
"Hana, why aren't you asleep?"
She looked at me, puzzled. Fair enough—at this hour I ought to have been snoring. Staying up late was strange. But what was I supposed to do when I was too scared to sleep?
I'd already tried forcing my eyes shut and willing myself under. Sleep hadn't come.
"I-I just...! I wondered what you were up to, so I came by!"
But then Haru grinned.
"You didn't come because you were scared, did you, Hana?"
She'd hit the mark dead center. I went stiff and blank and shook my head. If I admitted it, she would definitely see me as a little kid. Even so, I couldn't hide the way my body was trembling.
Haru smiled as if she had no choice and pulled me into her arms. I decided that, for tonight only, I would be Haru's doll. But once I was sitting on her lap, the laptop screen was far too vivid. I quietly closed the lid. If I watched any more horror, I wouldn't just fail to sleep tonight—I might not even make it back to my room.
I used to like horror movies, so I'd never known. It seemed that when your body changed, your tastes changed with it. Falling asleep after a horror movie had never been a problem before.
I figured I'd be in Haru's debt for tonight. Seeing me like this, she opened the laptop again, turned the horror movie off, and put on a funny variety show.
Then again, was Haru not working at night at all, just watching variety shows and movies on her laptop? Well, there probably wasn't much to do after dark. I'd heard there hadn't even been a night shift before I arrived.
Put simply, the night shift was something like being on duty to check whether anything was wrong with me after dark. Aside from looking after me, of course there was nothing else to do.
In the warmth of Haru's arms, I watched a variety show funny enough to wipe the horror movie from my mind, and I laughed out loud. Being together like this was so much better than being alone in my room.
A perfect performance. Haru would never, ever think of me as a kid who couldn't sleep at night after watching a horror movie.