The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

A FEAR OF HEIGHTS

When Masako sat down and thought about it, the Prajna mask wasn’t the only thing she was afraid of. She was also pretty scared of heights. To be fair, quite a lot of people are scared of heights. But in Masako’s case, the fear was a bit more extreme. Even if she had a really firm grip on the handrail, she could never bring herself to look down whenever she was standing somewhere high up. She’d certainly tried on many occasions to have a look at the ground far below. But somehow she was scared that if she did, then she might suddenly feel a strange and sudden urge to climb over the rail and step off. And just the thought of that made her want to scream. There were also many cases where she was too afraid to even grab hold of the handrail. After all, what if the part she was holding on to suddenly were to break off and send her plummeting face down to the ground below?

I can’t always act like a child, she thought to herself. I have to overcome this silly fear as soon as possible. What I need to do is to find somewhere really high up, somewhere that doesn’t even have handrails. Then I need to force myself to climb up! But what if I suddenly get dizzy up there? I might fall! Maybe I should ask Bunichi to come with me. Just to be safe.

A couple of days later, on the way home from school, Masako told Bunichi about her idea.

“You’re scared of a lot of things, aren’t you Masako?”

he replied, unhelpfully.

“So what if I am? I can’t help it, can I?” she said. “But at least I can try to do something about it. Or would you prefer I try to do something about your fear, huh? I could drop a few spiders down the back of your shirt and see how you like that!”

Bunichi turned pale at the bare mention of the word “spider”.

“No no, please, anything but that,” he pleaded. “I can’t stand spiders. Just thinking about them makes me sick!”

“See! Even you are afraid of things. So how about it? Will you climb somewhere really high with me?”

“Yeah, I’ll go. So long as you promise me you won’t ever do what you just said. You know, with the… spiders.”

“Okay, I’ll let you off.”

“But where do you have in mind? Do you even know of anywhere high that doesn’t have any handrails?”

Masako actually did know just the place.

“The clock tower, of course!”

“What?! That’s so dangerous,” said Bunichi, clearly taken aback. The clock tower was located on the roof of their school. It was an old tower, with the hands on the clock permanently stuck at 9:15, and it was about three storeys high!

“But that place is off limits!” Bunichi said with a worried look on his face. “Because it’s so dangerous!”

When Masako and Bunichi reached the stairs that led to the machine room at the back of the clock tower, they noticed how very narrow they were. And not only were they narrow, but there were no handrails along the stairs and no walls on either side! Perhaps it had been designed that way to make it easy to build, but it certainly wasn’t designed for being very safe.

“Are you going to go up there?” asked Bunichi.

“Of course. Why, are you scared?”

“Of course I’m not scared! I just don’t want us to be caught and get into trouble, that’s all.”

“Don’t worry. The place is only off-limits because they’re worried about boys like you going up there and being stupid and reckless,” said Masako, determined to convince Bunichi. “But we’re just going to go up there and then come right back down.”

“But off-limits is off-limits!”

“And rules are there to be broken,” said Masako, bringing the conversation to an end. It didn’t matter to her that her argument made no sense at all.