“I’m surprised that my mother drove me this morning,” he continued in his thoughts with an air of impotent frustration, “she usually changes her mind; she’ll say something and then say the complete opposite, and when I confront her, she’ll deny ever contradicting herself at all. I’m surprised that I didn’t have to catch the bus. The first time I caught the school bus… that was when it started… It started before I had even stepped foot in highschool. Perhaps the answer all along was to not live highschool at all. That would truly scare them, wouldn’t it?”
“Klaudia, what are you up to?” Mr Durm asked irritably from behind the thick wad of newspaper he held in his hands, leafing through it with a vigorous temperament.
Everyone turned towards her with a mixture of pity and curiosity. At that moment Rod also looked at the foreign girl and saw how timid she was and slow in movement. He had caught earlier how she had refused to work with some of the girls who had wandered over and invited her to join them. His first impression, now being older and less naive, was that she was trouble and not worth the effort to engage with in conversation or attempted rapport building. It was women like her who brought him to the highest peaks of the world and to the bottommost depths of hell. He hated them and yet desired them, and he hated that fact, and he resented it. This woman was Polish: he knew that the moment he first heard her name; in fact, he knew that from the moment he first laid eyes on her, for he was overwhelmed with the similar sensation he had been consumed by plenty of times before with the women of his past. He could feel it therefore on a visceral level that this woman was Polish.
Before he had entered the classroom, Rod had seen her through one of the rectangular window panels stretching along either side of the door already sitting down at the back table, staring out the window at the back of the classroom with a quiet and longing and thoughtful air. She was a tidy girl, modest and plain. It was only a matter of time, he thought, when that would change. The law of self-preservation dictated that she would inevitably don the western ‘Juicy’ jeans and the fleshy tank top. And he had noticed the sharp, discerning eyes on her oval, golden face. The way in which she wore her uniform as well bespoke a quality of character that Rod sought in his own life.
“On the other hand,” Rod had thought, “is there such a thing as a perfect woman? For that there must be a perfect man as well. But why do I care?” All these questions had made Rod feel afraid, for he had grown up with beliefs that were continually being challenged the more he navigated the social strata and suffered defeats. “Maybe,” he had pondered further, “the rigid beliefs that I have are what is causing my unhappiness and constant state of misery.” All this had wearied him greatly and that is why he avoided with difficulty escaping into his usual romantic fantasy.
“You’re without a partner,” exposed Mr Durm bombastically, leaping out of his chair suddenly.
The poor girl’s face reddened considerably. She looked up from her keyboard, twisting her upper back, at the teacher with watery eyes, but her face remained straight and flat. “Yes…” she managed to say.
“Why?”
Klaudia smiled awkwardly. “I don’t know…” she gulped. Rod noticed that her hands were trembling slightly above the keys.
“You don’t know?” sneered the middle-aged man. Then he looked over at Rod, and said, hurling everyone’s attention to the other side of the room, “This young man over here doesn’t have a partner. Why don’t you partner with him?”
She looked at Rod for the first time and he felt embarrassed for her, almost. At the same time, however, he felt entertained. But overwhelmingly he felt excited. “She is pretty. If I can get her to think that I am good enough then my life will be perfect,” he thought giddily, his heart carrying away with itself. He forced his face to remain straight and expressionless like stone even though a pretty girl was sitting next to him.
“Oh, what the fuck!” a thought flashed in his head, startled and panic-stricken; guilt washed over him. He was mystified and he tried to hide his terror. “What are these thoughts that I am having?” he asked himself. He started to sweat profusely, his forehead soon a sheet of oiled shine. “All my life I have been treated as a creep. They are the ones who made me like this.” By ‘they’ he meant adults in an authoritative position who he had relied on for help.
“Creep,” someone said behind him.
He whipped around, glaring at the faceless crowd. His mind oscillated between hope and condemnation, the thuds of his heart enveloping his ears.
Rod stood up, white as a sheet, and looked at the door. A series of anxieties swirled in his head all at once as everyone’s eyes was upon him like an indigenous ambush. He wanted to drench himself with gasoline and light himself with a match the emotion was so extreme. Had he gone mad?
[You are regressing… Your mind will soon reach age-dependent level. Cognitive flexibility and emotional maturity will reduce unless you gain Magical Points to improve Adult Skills. This will include memories as well because of the deterioration of neuropathways.]
“What?” Rod asked out loud, forgetting himself for a moment. He stumbled back, his heart racing. “If I revert back fully to my immature, twelve-year-old mind, then
“What are you doing?” shouted Mr Durm sternly. “Sit down and stop acting the fool.”
Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.
If he had full control over his mature brain, he would have cussed the teacher out for there was no trace left of concern for his safety at this point, for he had gotten in trouble quiet a lot after highschool for things outside of his control, and thus a detention or a shouting at would not at all phase him. He believed that he was ready for an assault on his senses. In fact, Rod craved it. His legs trembled with excitement and his pupils dilated and he became giddy. The young boy brought up his shaking hands and looked at them, thinking to himself that he had made a mistake coming here. “What the hell is going on?” he asked himself over and over again. “Kill me,” he begged internally, “kill me.”
“Klaudia sit down to…” Mr Durm walked quickly over to his desk and searched for something. “Ah, that reminds me: why did no one remind me to take the register?... Rod, right? Sit down for me.”
Rod’s face twisted and he turned to him. He was losing it; he knew that much. “Remember your therapy skills,” he tried to remind himself. It had gotten too much. Was this why his mind had to regress? Was it too much for the mind to stay intact? He would never have chosen to go back if that was the case: it defeated the whole point of reliving his highschool experience. “I’m on the precipice of death,” he muttered. His head was hot and raging with memories his parents treating him like scapegoat.
“What?” asked Mr Durm.
Everyone was watching him with uneasiness and nervousness and curiosity. Klaudia was still sitting in her original seat, watching him intently with an unchanging, blank expression; one could even be forgiven for assuming a morbid curiosity from the way her pupils seemed to dance.
“Is this what I get after all that hard work,” said Mr Durm under his breath. He gritted his teeth.
“What’s happening to me?” Rod asked himself, almost in a hissing whisper. His chest rose quickly as his eyes flickered to each face around the classroom.
“Sit down!” roared the teacher.
“Don’t I get points for killing demons? Isn’t he one?” Rod thought angrily.
[You must undergo the Demon-Slaying Tutorial before you can fight demons. To proceed to the tutorial, you must be wearing a magical-girl uniform]
“What madness is this?” Rod asked exasperatedly, holding his aching head. It as though he could feel intimately the axons in his brain untangle ever so slowly. “This… this is sick, right? Isn’t that right? Isn’t that what people would say?”
“If you don’t sit down right this minute you will get a detention!” screamed the teacher.
When he had heard this, the muscles and tendons in his fingers and hands tensed altogether in a frightening manner. Mr Durm recognised this and at once swallowed down his own fear, for surely no boy at his age would feel such white-hot rage. There was nothing said in the interview about teaching remedial students, and there was nothing in the budget for anything even remotely effective. On the other hand, Klaudia’s face seemed drawn to such an electric display of shameful emotion, and she stood up and walked over to the young boy with her heart thumping excitedly; however, she could never let this be known not even to herself, for such was shameful. As she neared, Rod’s nose could not help but tickle with the sweet scent of strawberry, and he felt utterly disgraced and confused.
[Regressing… Brain Reconfiguring…]
“What the hell I do?” Rod asked himself repeatedly as the girl sat next to him. “I’m an adult, of course I am. Am I?” he doubted himself, flipflopping between identities. It was as though the core of his being was in constant flux; he was facing a downstream wherein his self was floating like rocks.
He was too preoccupied with his ruminations to notice the delicate hand in front of him leafing through the music sheets. “I’m so rotten,” he thought with sunken shoulders, his brain swirling with an identity crisis. Had this happened when it should have, he would have been over the moon. But now? Now he was severely disappointed. For his entire school life he had spent it alone, marginalised from the other, wishing that he would have had someone give him attention. Paradoxically, even if and when he did receive attention he would dismiss it offhandedly as a distraction, as a falsity, as a dishonest attempt at controlling him; in truth, however, he did not think that he deserved to have anyone love and want him. All of this was of course confusing and multi-layered, and it only added to the anxieties of the young brown boy.
“Oh, you wouldn’t believe what we have to do,” she said suddenly with a cheeriness of voice that did not match the seriousness of her expression hitherto.
Rod looked up at her and saw that she was smiling. At the same moment, the thoughts and memories attached to his adult self seemed to dissipate gradually, and as they did so his feelings of wanting to belong and be loved intensified. He swivelled around and his eyes darted around the room suddenly. “Where can I get a magical-girl uniform?” he asked himself apprehensively, unsure as to whether he wanted to delay the brain reconfiguration process or leave it to wipe his memory clean, and all the residue trauma along with it. Most of the boys clustered in the corner, already separated into their social hierarchies by virtue of how close they were to the back wall. “Sure, some of it happened before I got into highschool, but a lot of what happened afterwards certainly did not help!”
He felt disgusted with himself still like he had committed a heinous act. Or did he? He was not sure, and this only served to confuse him all the more. His frustration was palpable because he did not want to feel these emotions, and he believed Aleku the cause of them, and this enraged him further. As he sat their fuming, he recalled what his mother had said often enough to his stepfather: “Your vein is going to burst if you’re not careful!” referring she was to the one prominent in his forehead. When he had been growing up the first-time hearing this, he had felt bad for the old man and was confused as to why his mother was attacking him thus like his classmates were to him. It confused him greatly. And then they would argue ‘till the moon was had started its descent.
“So, what do you think?” Klaudia’s question snapped him out of his trance. Her eyes were big and bold and brown like walnuts or those ball-shaped chocolate cereal floating in a bowl of milk. Rod hadn’t eaten cereal for years. This morning he had forgotten to eat breakfast, and his mother had forgotten to remind him.
“Huh?”
Klaudia smiled sympathetically, her smile soft and melting. Were those dimples?
“Yes, yes… Of course, I think so too,” Rod muttered absentmindedly, extremely agitated and annoyed at her sudden closeness and familiarity. “Who does she think she is?” he thought with a frown. His heart was beating like a fireplace and he felt its fumes seep out through his ribcage and lash the surrounding organs.