Hiroki hadn’t expected to hear his name. 

They were next to the construction site between the Miyada and Enoda homes. Toward the back of the site, within the skeletal framework of piping that disappeared at the second floor, a blue tarp stretched over equipment. Its shape reminded Hiroki of a side sleeper. The rise of the shoulders, dip of the back, hip bulge.

“Hiroki,” the voice called, the sound dropping out around him. “Are you there?”

Hiroki looked between his neighbor and the tarp.

“Sho.” He pointed. “It’s my dad.” 

Sho cocked his head, turning back. Hiroki tensed for what would follow.

Sho leaned down, his fourth-grade frame seeming giant.

“First-graders.” In other words, beings lower than dirt. “You dummy. That can’t be true.”

Hiroki wasn’t stupid. He knew that. But—

“Hiroki!” the tarp boomed. “I’m cold!”

Hiroki turned and ran, leaving Sho. There was no mistaking it. If it really were his father, what would he say now, after all this time?

At home, Hiroki curled knees to chest. A rhinoceros beetle crawled along his windowsill, tapping the glass with its horn. Hiroki scooched away on the bed.

After about an hour spent trying to focus on math homework, Hiroki heard the front door downstairs unlatch. His mother walked in. His brother Takuya, home from practice, trudged in soon after.

“Hiroki,” his mother said after a mostly silent start to a bento dinner at their kitchen table. “How was everything today?”

Hiroki picked at his chicken. “Fine.”

“Did you walk home with Sho?”

Hiroki’s mother had gotten a call from Sho’s. Hiroki had lied and said Sho took off in another direction to meet friends at the park. He wasn’t sure why. He couldn’t bring up what he’d heard. It seemed like something he shouldn’t say.

Sho still hadn’t returned the next morning. Since Sho had walked him to school every day for the last year, now it would be Takuya’s turn. The two took off extra early, to give Takuya time to walk to the middle school on the opposite side of town.

Hiroki’s stomach churned. They approached the construction site.

“HIROKI.” The voice was louder than before, but still unmistakable.

The tarp looked slick and glistening in the hazy morning light. Its edges billowed in the wind, folds crinkling. The sound of rustling leaves fell away. No equipment had been moved from the previous day.

“YOUR BIRTHDAY IS JUNE 16.”

“Takuya!” Hiroki called. “Did you hear that?”

Takuya turned around. “What?”

Hiroki pointed to the tarp. It loomed against the other equipment, the sole spot of color in the lot.

“I heard Dad…”

“What?” Hiroki understood immediately that he had said something he shouldn’t have. 

Takuya was silent for a moment, looking past Hiroki toward the site.

“Come on.” Takuya’s voice was cold. “I can’t be late.”

Hiroki glanced back down the hill occasionally at the shrinking, vibrant blue dot.

There was a commotion in the fourth-year hallway. Hiroki kept staring at the blue cleaning rags hanging from the rack at the back of the classroom. Ms. Oka told them to travel home in pairs. Takuya suggested they take a different route back.

“Hiroki,” Takuya said in their shared room that night. Red sirens were flashing purple outside. Red, no blue, red. “Did you really hear dad?”

Behind him, Hiroki could see the small bookshelf lined with insect encyclopedias, black carapaces gleaming on the white of their spines. He had inherited them from Takuya when Takuya had grown too old.

Hiroki stayed seated on the bottom bunk. He nodded.

Takuya glanced at the door.

He tried to convince himself that by the time he opened his eyes in the morning, Takuya would be back in the bunk above him. He was greeted instead by a creaseless comforter.

Hiroki tramped downstairs.

His mother was making breakfast in the kitchen. Rice and fish smells wafted upward. School had been cancelled. Work too.

“Hiroki,” she said. “Where’s your brother?”

He kept his eyes on the floorboards.

“Hiroki?”

Something burst inside him. He couldn’t remember what he’d said. But he remembered how the pace of her voice picked up in a way he had never heard before, eyes darting around his face like she was searching for something. Well, maybe once before…

“You heard a voice?” she asked again and again. “Someone knew your name?”

By the construction site, just two blocks away?

“Stay here,” she repeated. “I’ll be right back. Don’t move.”

The sky had turned from white to pink to dark blue. Calling his mother’s cellphone number gave no answer. He made himself microwave rice and cup noodles. Hiroki sat on a floor cushion with his back to the wall in his room. His eyes clung to the blue blanket draped over his brother’s desk chair. Its folds gave way to shadows, dark caverns. He shifted his gaze to his bed. His covers peeled back like a maw.

The front door rattled. He heard the crinkle of the tarp.