Episode 164: An Uninvited Guest at Midnight
Bzzzzzz—
I snapped my eyes open at the horrible sound, scrambled down off the bed, and slapped the lights on. A mosquito. May was behind us now, and the things were already on the wing—but this was the tenth floor of a building. How had a mosquito even gotten up here? What was it doing, high-altitude flight?
Could mosquitoes really fly that high? Still turning the question over, I scoured the lit room from corner to corner, and found nothing. The place was simply too big; once a bug that small decided to hide, there was no finding it.
"Ugh..."
I climbed back into bed, settled my head on the pillow, and closed my eyes. All that, and a mosquito's whine had dragged me out of sleep. I'd already been struggling to drift off, and the moment I finally managed it, the thing had ruined my precious rest. I started counting sheep again.
Eeeeeeng—
"Aaaah!!!"
I had no choice but to scream and bolt out of the room. The mosquito had won. Tiny as it was, one good clap would have ended it—if I could see it. Turn the lights on and it vanished somewhere I couldn't find. Turn them off again, lie down, and try to sleep, and sooner or later it reappeared to torment me.
"Maru!!!"
I had no choice but to call for Maru in the office. What I needed was a hero to slay this cruel mosquito, and the moment I came in, she lit right up.
"Hana~ You're not asleep?"
She'd been working. I held out the arm the mosquito had bitten. Whatever vicious strain it was, the bite had swollen into an angry, lumpy welt—and, the way anyone back home would, I'd already scratched an X into it with my nail.
"Oh my, oh my. What if it scars that pretty skin of yours! Don't scratch—just wait a second!"
As she said it, she dug through her handbag and pulled something out: the kind of cream you dab on insect bites to kill the itch. She spread it carefully over the spot.
It felt so cool that I held perfectly still. As she worked it in, the itch seemed to ease. A moment ago I'd been dying from it; once the cream was on, most of the misery settled down.
"It's so cool! The itch is almost gone, Maru!"
The stuff worked so miraculously that the praise just burst out of me. The bite that had been itching like it might kill me had finally calmed.
I caught her sleeve.
"Maru, catch the mosquito in my room!"
I couldn't do it alone. This was the moment to ask a grown-up for help. A child's height and strength weren't enough to catch the thing that had been tormenting me.
"Okay, okay. Come on, let's go get that nasty mosquito that's been bothering our Hana!"
She took my hand, and we headed back to my room, where the terrifying mosquito waited. I'd shut the door tight, so it couldn't have escaped. The thought that it was sealed in there with me, hiding somewhere, only made it worse.
The moment I turned the lights off and started to drift, it would crawl back out and torment me again... I hated myself for being completely helpless against something that could fly. Then again, most people didn't even notice when they were being bitten, so maybe that was normal.
In one hand Maru carried an enormous electric fly swatter. I watched from beside her as she swung it with great bravery. Her form was so sloppy I could tell she hadn't done this much, and even now she was just flailing at empty air.
"Maru, you're supposed to swing it when there's actually a mosquito!"
I couldn't stand it anymore; I had to give her advice. She nodded at that.
"Got it, Hana."
She stopped swinging and began slowly searching the places a mosquito might be. I'd heard somewhere that mosquitoes had poor eyesight, so when you turned the lights on they went momentarily blind and stuck to the nearest wall. I wasn't sure it was true, but it seemed to hold up well enough.
Sure enough, I spotted the wretched thing that had drunk my blood clinging to the wall. I grabbed Maru's sleeve and whispered.
"Maru, Maru! There's a mosquito right there!"
"There really is!"
She raised both hands with care and introduced the mosquito stuck to the wall to the taste of humankind's electricity.
Kzzzt!
Sparks leapt, and the air filled with the smell of burning squid. A shock like that should have sent it straight to the next world. Grinning, I looked to the swatter to admire the corpse. There was no corpse.
"Huh?"
I'd definitely seen the sparks, but the mosquito wasn't stuck to the racket. Just in case, I checked the floor. Nothing there either.
No matter how tough a mosquito was, it shouldn't have been able to survive an electric swatter...
"Huh? Where'd the mosquito go?"
Maru must have thought she'd gotten it too; when no body appeared, she looked just as thrown as I was. And then the mosquito was flying right in front of our faces—smug, as if it were mocking us!
I tried to smack it with my palm. It pulled off some zigzag dodge instead, and it wasn't moving at a normal mosquito's speed. If an ordinary one was a family sedan, this one was a sports car.
"Aaah!"
All I could do was groan as it stuck itself to the ceiling. Even if I jumped, I couldn't reach that high. Maru clicked her tongue, as if she'd never seen a mosquito like this either.
"I've never seen a mosquito this quick in my whole life."
But we couldn't let it go. If I failed to catch it tonight, I was going to collapse from sheer rage. That thing had drunk my precious blood. And a mosquito that wouldn't die even when you fried it with an electric swatter! Leave it alive and it would become a great grievance against all humankind—a mosquito that rendered mosquito swatters useless.
Staring at it, Maru muttered.
"Did it turn into a mutant because it drank Hana's blood?"
Fair point. My hair and my teeth were already different from everyone else's; there was no law saying my blood couldn't be special too. Had the mosquito really gotten that strong just from drinking it?
Maru fetched a can of bug spray and blasted the spot where it was clinging, point-blank. The mosquito took a direct hit and was perfectly fine! Well—not perfectly fine. It wasn't zipping around as if nothing had happened. It wobbled through the air like someone who'd had a few drinks.
Maru seized the moment and swung the electric swatter again. This time she didn't kill it with electricity. She killed it physically. The thing was smashed flat against the racket. No matter how much of my blood it had drunk, once you crushed it, even a mosquito ran out of options.
"Maru's the best!"
I shot her a thumbs-up. If she'd told me to catch it myself, I could have stayed up all night and still failed. The thing was unnaturally fast, and it had a tolerance for insecticide besides. I whined at her.
"Maru... what if another mosquito shows up?"
"Hmm... wait just a second, Hana! I bought something for exactly this."
She disappeared somewhere and came right back. What she brought was a mosquito net of fine, expensive-looking material.
"I had everything ready, just for you!"
With that, she carefully set the net up over my bed. I couldn't help cheering at the sight of it. Super-ultra mosquito or not, there was no way it could physically slip through a space that thin.
The holes in the net were smaller than a mosquito. No mosquito in existence could pass in and out of one. Once it was all in place, Maru turned to me.
"No more mosquitoes bothering Hana!"
She really was dependable. Maru was the best, just as expected. I plastered myself against her thigh.
"Maru's the best!"
"Hehe."
She giggled, clearly pleased by the praise. Moments like this reminded me how young she still was—only her early twenties. Girls her age were in college, or just starting to look for jobs.
If she'd been a guy, he'd be out of the military and back in school by now. I wasn't particularly curious about the guys, so I let that thought go and caught her sleeve.
"Hm? What's wrong, Hana?"
The truth was, after all that chaos hunting the mosquito, my sleepiness had completely fled. Lying down and closing my eyes wasn't going to bring it back anytime soon. I looked up at her.
"Maru! Can we watch a movie together?"
I even deployed my ultimate move, staring up at her desperately with tears brimming in my eyes. Use this skill, and Maru, Bora, Haru—every one of them gave me whatever I wanted. Even now I could see her gaze wavering violently.
"Of course! Let's watch a movie, Hana!"
"Hehe!"
I nestled into her arms, and off we went to watch. Being cute really did make life easy. That was a universal truth.