中学生の時、校長室に呼び出されたことがあった。ベルリンの夜道を歩く中で、暗がりに浮かぶ校舎を見つけ、一瞬のうちにタイムトリップ。

放課後に女子クラスメートと3人で、好きな先輩の教室へ忍び込み、何か所持品を拝借しようという計画を立てた。侵入したはいいが、先輩の机には「置き筆箱」しか見つからず、落胆しながら悩んだ挙句に手にしたのは消しゴム。正直、先輩のものだという証拠は何もない。「取れ高」はかなり低い。

渋々と帰ろうとしたところ、廊下から足音が聞こえた。元来、小心者なので、慌てて隠れようとして激しく机にぶつかった。「誰だっ！」と、足音の主が叫び、お縄頂戴。驚くことに、その主は校長だった。「君らはここで何をしているんだ」と、私たちに問うた時の、驚きと安堵が入り混じった顔は今でも忘れない。「小娘3人でよかった」と。

翌日、ドラマのような展開で、校長室からお声がかかった。3人とも案外真面目な生徒だったので、クラスの視線はかなり熱かった。「何をやらかしたんだ？」と。結局、校長にやんわりと怒られたというお粗末なオチしかないけれど、少し笑える私の武勇伝。

I was called into the principal’s office when I was in junior high. When this school building emerged in the dark while walking down the street in the night, I got a memory flashback.

Two girl friends and I had a secret crush on senior students and made a plan to sneak into their classroom one afternoon. I found a desk of my favourite person but couldn’t find anything but a pencil case. I was very disappointed. After pondering what to pick in it, I decided to take just an eraser. Clearly, my earning was very low.

When a big disappointment was about to push us to leave, we heard somebody walking in the hallway. I was extremely panicked and hit my hip on the corner of the desk. “Who is it!” The voice of the footsteps shouted loudly, and we got caught unfortunately… To our surprise, it was the headmaster himself. “What are you doing here?” I still remember the look on his face very well, which was a mixture of surprise and relief. I even felt like hearing his inner voice, “Thank God, they are just little girls”.

Next day, we were called into the principal’s office. Since we were all ‘good’ students, classmates were suspicious and wondering “What did they do?” —What happened after all was just a gentle complainant from the principal however this is the one of few heroic stories in my school days.

^{photographed in jan/2021}