Story 35
Just the Head
I belong to the brass band club.
It happened on the day of last year’s summer competition.
In these competitions, each school performs two pieces. After your own school finishes, you usually stay and listen to the other schools’ performances until the program ends, and then comes the results announcement.
Our performance finished in the morning, and after that, it was just waiting for the results. I stayed inside the hall, listening to the other schools play. Since my school is small and weak, I thought I’d use the time to study how the stronger schools played, so I listened pretty seriously.
Our school had taken a block of seats toward the back left of the audience. All of us sat nearby one another.
While many of the students and parents who’d come to support us were dozing off during the performances, I stayed awake and listened the whole time. After a few bathroom breaks and lunch, before I knew it, there were only three schools left in the program.
I had been trying hard to stay focused all that time, but I was starting to get tired and space out.
Before I knew it, another school had finished performing—only two schools left.
Between each performance, there’s a short break—just a few minutes—to swap people and instruments on stage.
During that time, people come and go, and the hall fills with chatter.
I was absentmindedly staring toward the stage.
That’s when I noticed… something strange.
There was a person sitting in the left front area. Judging from their uniform, they were from one of the top schools in the prefecture. Everyone around them wore the same uniform, so I figured that school had also taken a block of seats together.
But what was strange about that person was… the angle of their neck. It looked wrong.
At first, I thought maybe they were just looking down—maybe they’d fallen asleep sitting like that.
But the angle was weird…
From the shoulders up, there was nothing there.
(Their… neck… isn’t there…)
Then, the next school’s performance began.
In the dim light, I kept staring at that person.
Every now and then, their body moved—as if they were writing something on paper.
Probably taking notes while listening to other schools play, I thought. Lots of students do that.
But no matter how long I looked, their head never appeared.
Then the last school finished, and after a while, it was time for the results.
Even then, that person still had no head.
Their school won the gold prize, of course—they were a powerhouse.
Everyone started hugging and cheering.
That person, too, was hugging the people beside them, giving high-fives to the people in front.
(Don’t they notice… that they don’t have a head?)
Aside from the missing head, that person moved exactly like everyone else.
Was I just seeing things?
I couldn’t make sense of any of it, and the competition ended.
—A few days later—
I bought the DVD of that school’s performance.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the headless person.
And right away, I noticed it—
the clarinet player had no neck.
The area behind the neck was transparent,
and the clarinet… was floating.
