Brave Story by Miyuki Miyabe

off as a simple jerk.
    “I heard you took a picture of a ghost here,” Wataru blurted. Mitsuru’s face slowly swiveled up, his book lying open on his lap. His expression remained impassive, but Wataru cheered inwardly. That got his attention.
    “You said people shouldn’t make a fuss about it,” Wataru went on. “I think so too.” Mitsuru’s eyes twitched—a sure sign of interest. Wataru felt a smile creep slowly to his lips. “I know it’s not easy for everyone to do, of course. Sure, it’s stupid to freak out over a ghost but there are strange things out there. That’s why you’ve got to approach them with a cool mind, with…”
    “Photographs,” Mitsuru said, cutting him off.
    “What?”
    “I see you have photographs.”
    It was true. Wataru was still clutching the envelope of photos from the drugstore. That was the entire reason he’d come here in the first place. In fact, Wataru had been about to mention them, but Mitsuru beat him to it.
    His embarrassment returned. Wataru’s stomach lurched as though he’d just stepped onto a high-speed elevator. “I might, uh…I might have taken pictures of a ghost too.”
    Wataru hurried over to Mitsuru, his feet lifting across the gravel like he was walking on air. One part of Wataru was furious at himself for acting like some kind of awestruck fool. Another part was jumping for joy that he was actually talking to Mitsuru Ashikawa. Why, they might even become friends.
    “I took these in my room.” Wataru nervously began fumbling through the envelope with shaking hands. “You know what fairies are, right? Like the ones in Eldritch Stone Saga ? Well, I think there’s one in my room. I heard it speaking… and not just once, but twice!”
    As the son of Akira Mitani, man of logic, reason, and rationality, Wataru would rather have bitten off his own tongue and died from massive blood loss before allowing himself to spew such irrational chatter. But, every once in a while, even the most normal of people act in ways that surprise themselves, doing things they might never have imagined themselves doing because they’re excited, or they’re obsessed, or they’re in love…not that Wataru realized any of this. “I took so many shots I’m sure I got it—check it out!”
    Hand shaking, he drew the photos he had taken of his room from the envelope and handed them over to Mitsuru. In the process, he managed to drop the thin plastic sleeve containing the negatives and a few pictures from the zoo onto the ground. Wataru quickly scooped them up and placed them in a pile on the seat next to Mitsuru. He would have sat down, but the boy didn’t move from his spot in the center of the bench, and there wasn’t enough room on either side.
    Wataru had taken close to twenty photos. He watched nervously while Mitsuru shuffled through them rapidly like someone leafing through trading cards looking for something valuable. Mitsuru finished and flashed a smile at Wataru for the first time.
    “Where is it?”
    It took a few seconds for Wataru to realize that Mitsuru meant the fairy.
    “You didn’t see it?”
    “Nothing. Looks like pictures of an empty room.” Mitsuru shrugged. His smile was gone. Now he was holding the stack of photographs in front of Wataru’s nose.
    After a pause, Wataru snatched them back. He started clumsily leafing through them. His hands were shaking. “No way!” Wataru cried, shuffling wildly. Several of the photographs slipped through his fumbling fingers, fluttering down to rest on the tops of his running shoes.
    It was like Mitsuru said: pictures of an empty room. The walls, the curtains, even the pattern on his comforter—all were perfectly clear. He could even make out the titles of the textbooks he kept in the little hutch atop his cluttered desk.
    But no sign of the fairy.
    No golden hair. No flowing robes. Nothing. Zip. Nada.
    Wataru slowly raised his head and looked at Mitsuru. The boy had returned to his book again. It was as though