Shizuku shows up in class half-way through the fifth period. She walks through the classroom door, her slippers squishing and leaving a trail of shoe-sized puddles down the hall. The physics teacher stops her lecture and asks sharply, "Why are you coming in here like that?"

"Had to look for my slippers."

"Why are you leaving water all over the floor?"

"They were on the third floor, in the girl's restroom, in an un-flushed toilet."

"Ah!" The class erupts.

"Ewww!" Hanashita and her friends laugh while making mocking noises of disgust.

"You can't wear those!" the teacher shouts.

"They're clean now," Shizuku's voice was flat and calm.

"Throw them away and clean up the mess on the floor. You know where the supplies are."

Shizuku takes off her slippers and drops them in a waste basket.

"And your socks."

She takes off her socks, drops them in, standing by the teacher's desk in her bare feet while her classmates laugh.

Their laughter is really starting to irritate me. A few others, including Himura and Shimura, aren't laughing. Neither is Kioko who studies me from her desk. I realize I'm clenching my jaw and force myself to relax.

The teacher returns to her lecture. Shizuku leaves, returning with cleaning supplies. I try to concentrate on my notes as she kneels and cleans the floor, slowly working her way back to the door and out into the hall.

On Thursdays, after Physics, we have PE in the sixth period. The girls all change in another classroom. So, after they leave, the boys pull out their gym uniforms and start changing. I can hear the girl's laughter from down the hall.

"Be sure to clean up all that toilet water, toilet girl!"

We pass by her in the hallway on the way to PE. Shizuku patiently crawls along the floor, wiping it. She doesn't acknowledge the laughing taunts and mocking comments from the passing students. Even many of the boys who had wanted to date her join in.

It has to bother her, I think. If she was ever human, if she has even a spark of humanity left in her, it has to bother her — even if she doesn't realize it. I remember what Shimura said about the dissa-social disorder thing—that her apparent emotionlessness could have been caused by an extreme emotional trauma—and I wonder how traumatic her death must have been.

Shizuku had said that only the strongest souls, those with unbreakable wills, can become shinigami. Perhaps she simply chose to lock down all those hurtful emotions. I get the feeling she's been a shinigami for a long time and I wonder, as we enter the gym, how long it's been since she's lived as a human. If it's been a while, she might have forgotten that she even has emotions to lock down. Now that she's...sort of...human again, might she remember? How will she react to all this if she does?