“It’s too late, Dr. Mixson,” the nurse cried out. “We can’t save him!”
Dr. Mixson tightly pulled his nitrile gloves over his hands, letting out a deafening *slap* as each glove collided with his skin. “Don’t be ridiculous, Janet! I’ve come back from worse before.”
Janet grabbed Dr. Mixson by the wrist, holding him back as he made his way towards the operating table. “But… his oxygen levels are already dangerously low! It’s only a matter of time until-”
“For God’s sake! Don’t touch me, Janet!” Dr. Mixson shouted as he pushed her hand away from him. “...I’m sterile,” he uttered with a smirk as he approached the patient. “You’re acting like this is the first case of chronic virginity that’s ever come to this hospital.”
Aiko tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, “Psst… who the hell wrote this movie?”
“You don’t have to be quiet, you know,” I told her at a perfectly acceptable speaking volume. “We’re the only two people in the room.”
“Yeah, but…” Aiko paused to shovel a handful of popcorn into her mouth. “You were the one who said ‘authentic movie-going experience’, mister - Not me.”
I snatched the popcorn bowl out of Aiko’s lap and moved it to mine. “You never been in a movie theater by yourself before? I figured-” Aiko swiftly elbowed me in the stomach without looking away from the screen. “Ow!! What did I-”
Aiko shushed me by holding her finger up to my lips. “Shh… there’s a movie playing, if you couldn’t tell.” She reached over with her other hand and stole back the bowl of popcorn. Did her dad never teach her about the importance of sharing? I groaned as annoyingly as possible before letting my eyes return to the shiny, orange retro television.
“Quick, Janet!” Dr. Mixson shouted. “Get me the vibrator!”
Janet ran for the emergency first aid kit that hung from the wall. “...You mean the defibrillator, right?”
“Don’t make me repeat myself, Janet.” Dr. Mixson held out his arm, ready to grasp whatever device that Janet was about to hand him. “I’ve never failed to resuscitate a virgin, even in the most dire circumstances - and I’m not planning on changing that tonight.”
“But…” Janet nervously handed the ‘defibrillator’ to Dr. Mixson. “This one’s in critical condition. I’ve never seen anything like him before.”
Dr. Mixson started up the instrument. “Sounds like you had a pretty boring college experience.” He lifted up his mask to cover his face. “Look away, Janet. This might get ugly.”
I grabbed the popcorn by the rim of the bowl to take it back from Aiko. “Which one of us chose this movie, again?” I don’t know if it was the black-and-white filter, or if I was just imagining things, but Dr. Mixson’s transatlantic accent was starting to become really grating.
Aiko tugged back on the bowl, refusing to let it escape from her grasp again. “What, have you never wasted a few hundred yen on a shitty, awful movie in theaters before?”
“...Point taken.” I eventually gave up on fighting the war for the popcorn and settled for an extra few seconds of travel time between the bowl and my mouth. “Seriously, this wasn’t actually your pick, was it?”
“Nope!” Aiko pumped her fist in the air victoriously as she continued munching. “I was just too lazy to get up and change the channel.”
I started to look around hoping to find the remote buried beneath the endless mass of pillows we sat upon. “Hey, you didn’t lose the remote while we were setting everything up, did you? I can’t find it anywhere.”
Aiko threw a piece of popcorn in my face. “Silly, you think that TV uses a remote?” She pointed at the comically large dials to the right of the television screen. “Who the hell do you think I am, some teenybopper that uses all that new fangled ‘digital’ stuff? Get real!”
I took my phone out of my pocket and sent Aiko a message reading:
“Get off the phone line, Grandma. I’m trying to surf the web :P”
Can’t wait for her to read that one later. “How do you even get that damn thing to work? I thought they got rid of analog TV broadcasting over a decade ago.”
“Oh, Dad found a converter at a flea market.” Aiko gestured her hand at the underside of the TV towards a weird, hidden box that had several cables coming out of it. “It’s the only way that you can still use these darn things.”
“Man, you’re really dedicated to making all this old stuff work.” I crawled up to the television to change the channel, searching for something that might actually be watchable. “Listen, I mean what I’m about to say in the best way possible, but… why?”
“Um…” Aiko rolled her eyes with a huge smile on her face. “...it’s cool? Why else?”
I sat back down next to Aiko. “Well, obviously… But like, what got you into this stuff in the first place?”
Aiko wiped her hands on her skirt after wolfing down the entire bowl of popcorn and put her black lace gloves back on. “So… remember how I didn't have that many friends as a kid?” She reached underneath her bed and pulled out a large, green scrapbook. “Well, by the time I got to middle school, I had completely given up on trying to make more friends. One night, I got so upset about it that I threatened to run away from home and move out of the country. Imagine… a little 12 year old Aiko looking at moving guides for other countries…”
The pages of her scrapbook were filled to the brim with pictures and drawings of various outfits with notes such as ‘THIS ONE OMG???’, ‘Beg Dad for this one <3’, and ‘literally where am I going to find this’ written in green permanent marker. When I looked back up from the scrapbook, I realized that the dress that Aiko was wearing was, in fact, the one in the picture next to the final note. “And along the way, you got obsessed with… old American fashion?”
“Yep!” Aiko scooted closer to me on my right and started flipping through the pages with me. “Even after I gave up on the ‘running away from home’ plan, those old photographs stuck with me. Next thing I knew, I had gotten way too deep down the rabbit hole - About two whole months went by before Dad finally said something about it.”
My eyes were fixed on a particularly shiny blue dress that was covered in silver stars. “What did he say when he finally brought it up?”
Aiko held her hand over her mouth to hold back laughter. “Well, the first thing he did was sit on my bed next to me and say, ‘Get up and get movin’, sunshine, your flight leaves in an hour!’, but then he started asking me a bunch of questions about all of the outfits in my book here.” My hands sank by about an inch as she suddenly dropped the massive scrapbook in my palms. “Dad always likes to talk to me about my interests once he realizes that they’re not just a phase. I got to tell him all about the prominent fashion designers of that era, all of the small differences in their styles that made them unique, and even all of the dresses that I wished were still around so I could wear them to school!”
“Wow, I didn’t realize you were this knowledgeable about all this,” I said as I tried my best to hand the five-pound scrapbook back to Aiko. “I figured you just thought they were cute, or something.”
“You have that little faith in me, huh?” Aiko closed the scrapbook and delicately placed it back under the bed in the exact position she had found it. “I don’t half-ass things, pal. Men love me - Dresses fear me.” Her attempts to laugh maniacally were only mildly convincing at best - Pretty unusual for the ‘Mythic Matsuura’. “In all seriousness, I gotta give Dad most of the credit - He was the one who bought me most of this stuff.”
I turned my head to look at the chrome-plated mini fridge that sat adjacent to her massive wooden turntable console. “Shit, I wish my parents spoiled the hell out of me like that.”
Aiko sneakily flicked me in the back of the head. “Not spoiled, dummy.” She crawled over towards a crate that was chock full of records, gesturing at me to follow. “I still had to do my fair share of work around the house. Dad always had enough money to get by, so he never forced me to get a job. Acting was just for fun, remember?” Aiko pushed the crate in my direction. “Wanna pick the record, music man?”
“Sure, if you’re offering!” I flipped through the stack of records, eventually settling on an album that I knew was fairly laid-back and simple. “By the way, that’s quite the nickname for a guy who couldn’t even finish writing one song, but thank you anyway.”
“Hm?” Aiko’s ears perked up. “You never told me you wrote music!! Come on, show me!”
I set the needle down on the record and let it play at a soft volume so I could still hear Aiko speak. “Shit, I didn’t… Forget it.”
“Nope.” Aiko tugged on my jacket sleeve. “You’re doing that thing again.”
"What thing again?” I grabbed onto my sleeve, fearing that she would somehow find a way to rip a piece off it.
“That thing where you mention something about yourself and then get really flustered when someone asks you to explain it.” Aiko pouted and pinched harder on my arm. “You’re not gonna weasel your way out of this one.”
I dropped my head in defeat and laid on my back. Without the roof of the blanket fort in the way, the ceiling light directly above would’ve irritated the hell out of me. “...My best friends - Well, my only friends back home roped me into joining their stupid band. I kept telling them I wasn’t any good, but that didn’t stop-”
Aiko didn’t even wait two full sentences before interrupting. “Why didn’t you want to do it? That sounds so fun!”
I guess it’s time to rip that bandaid off. “...About that.” The delicate glockenspiel-esque sounds that came from the turntable’s speakers helped to keep my nerves under control. “Not very many people at my school liked me very much. I knew that part of being in a band meant performing, and I didn’t want people looking at me.” Feeling a draft making its way into the fort, I zipped up my jacket as high as it could go. “...I’m sure you can’t relate to that, huh?”
“Of course I can! Let me tell you a secret, Genjo: I used to have a bad, bad case of stage fright like you wouldn’t believe.” Aiko laid down next to me, putting our heads at equal level with each other. “It actually got worse as all of the drama and the media started to pick up steam. It was… part of the reason I retired.”
I felt a twitch in my pocket as my phone vibrated for a brief moment. “Sorry, I just assumed-”
Aiko snapped her fingers in front of my face. “Bzzt! What did I tell you about apologizing, mister?” Her hand returned to her lap where it rested with the other. “No matter what people say; it’s never your fault that you struggle.”
“You’re right, but…” I stretched my arms up, preparing to rest them behind my head - Thankfully, I remembered exactly whose face my elbow would end up in if I did, so they went back to resting by my sides. “...sometimes I wonder if-”
“Bzzt!” This time, Aiko’s snap was substituted with a pinch on the cheek. Personal boundaries be damned, this girl knows how to get you to stop moping. “It really hurts to see you be so hard on yourself, Genjo. I wish I knew how to help you forgive yourself more.”
My attention was more focused on the occasional skip coming from the record as the needle dragged its way across the surface. “And I wish I knew how to help you be less nervous around new friends.”
“I really do appreciate your help,” Aiko whispered. “But I think it’ll all be alright. Yesterday, I remembered that progress doesn’t happen overnight. It’s more like-”
“You don’t always cross the tightrope on your first try.” I found myself dragging my finger across the barely-healed scar on my palm just like the needle on the turntable. “It takes a lot of practice. That’s… what you were gonna say, right?”
Aiko giggled and playfully smacked me with the back of her hand. “Not even close, dummy!” She paused for a second, waiting for her laughing fit to die down. “...But it’s probably better than what I was gonna say anyway. My point is…” Aiko rolled over on her side to face me. “...You don’t have to worry about me so much. I’ll be okay.”
My head rolled to the side to face her, my torso staying perfectly still. “...Does that mean I did an awful job trying to help? I’m sorry if I was being too pushy about it.” Wait, did I just-
She raised her hand to slap me for apologizing again, but put it back down as she saw the look of realization in my eyes. “No, silly! Of course you didn’t do a bad job. I just don’t want you to exhaust yourself - You already do so much for me, so can you trust me when I say that, no matter what, I’ll get to that point someday?”
“...I guess you’re right.” I had to look away for a second. Making eye contact for that long started to make my heart pound like a drum, and not in a good way. “Sounds like I’ve already helped you take more steps than I thought.”
“Huh?” Her eyes widened and her mouth was agape. “What do you mean by that?”
I smiled. “I think that might’ve been the first time you’ve asked me to trust you.”
Aiko’s ears turned red. “...I seriously doubt it was the first time, dummy.”
“Yeah, but…” I scratched an itch on the top of my head. “...it’s still music to my ears.”
~
[Incoming Video Call: Fumio Kogane]
I looked over my shoulder from my desk. “Hey, Ryu, is it cool if I take a call? I know you’re kinda busy right now.”
Ryu hoisted up a large cardboard box whose contents metallically clanged together as he lifted it into the air. “Go for it. I was on my way out, anyway.”
“Cool.” I reached over and gave him a fist bump. “You’re the best, dude.”
“Mhm.” Ryu walked to the door and twisted the handle with his elbow. “By the way, I probably won’t be back for the rest of the week. Hiro and I decided to lock ourselves in his room for a few days so we can grind out this project. Especially with the forecast looking as rough as it does.”
I stood up to pour myself a glass of water from the tap. Since my drinking glass was made using an old 500 mL beaker and a melted glass stirring rod as the handle, I watched carefully from the side until I had exactly 400 mL of water. “You guys already have projects to do? Isn’t it a bit early in the year for that?”
“Beats me.” Ryu leaned his back against the door to hold it open. “I mean, this is an advanced academy. I’m surprised you don’t have any projects yet.”
“Guess I’m pretty lucky, huh?” I took a sip from my glass - The water tasted eerily like fluorine.
“Don’t press your luck, bud.” The hinges of the door started to creak as Ryu stepped out of the doorway. “Well, have fun with the room to yourself. I’m headed off to Hiro’s place. See ya around.”
Right before the door closed, I called out, “Wait, where the hell is Eiichi staying, then?”
The door slammed shut, but I could still hear Ryu shout, “He’s rich! He can figure it out.”
Once Ryu left, I frantically hit the button on my phone to answer Fumio’s call while I paced around my room looking for my MP3 player. “Hey! Sorry I took so long. I was busy talking to my roommate about-”
An unexpected voice came from the other side - and it sounded nothing like Fumio’s. “Genjo, you need to start calling me and your father more often.”
Damn it. “H-hey, Mom!” I ran over to my desk and picked up my phone and was greeted by my mother sternly staring me down from eight and a half thousand kilometers away. “I swear I didn’t do it on purpose! You know how school can be…”
Mom wasn’t exactly satisfied by that answer. “It’s been over a week, Genjo. Your father and I have been worried sick about you.”
“Correction,” my dad shouted from his office. “You can scratch ‘your father’ from that statement. I’ve only been worrying a perfectly healthy amount.”
I waved at the camera, knowing full well Dad couldn’t see it. “Hey, Dad! How’s work been going since I left?”
Dad still didn’t get up from his office chair, apparently finding it much easier to yell from across the house. “Eh, my client’s been pretty silent. Haven’t really heard from him in several days. I wonder if he even remembers that I exist. Sound familiar?”
“Ouch. Message received.” I loosened the zipper on my jacket to get rid of the choking feeling in my throat. “I’ll start calling you guys once a week. Fair deal?”
Mom’s frown came on too suddenly to be real. “Twice a week?”
I tried not to roll my eyes in front of the camera. “Mom… Don’t forget that I’m still a student. I can’t just-”
Another unanticipated voice interrupted from off camera. “Ugh!! I’m sick of waiting already, it’s my turn now!!!” Suddenly, the camera feed on my phone shook wildly as Taisuke snatched the phone out of my mother’s hands. “Miss me yet?” he said with a toothy grin wiped across his face.
“Depends on if 24 hours is long enough to be considered ‘missable’.” I jumped up onto my bed and laid the side of my head on my pillow, holding my phone in front of me. “But if it makes you happy, then sure. I think about you every night, Taisuke.”
Taisuke audibly gagged. “Fine. You win.” He walked out the back door of my house with the phone in hand and sat beside the small sakura tree that Dad’s been trying to grow for the past few years. “How’ve you been?”
“Not much worse than I was when you asked me that yesterday, I hope.” If anyone should’ve asked me that question, it should’ve been one of the three other people I haven’t spoken to all semester. Speaking of… “Wait, where’s Fumio? Isn’t that his phone?”
“Yessir!” Taisuke’s sunny and cheerful thumbs up told me everything I needed to know about how he got the phone in the first place. “He’s just-”
Finally, the only voice that I actually expected to hear today rang out from far away. “Taisuke Endo, you son of a bitch!”
Taisuke’s entire demeanor crumbled as his fight-or-flight response immediately shot into overdrive. “Shit - Gotta bounce, Genjo! I’ll catch you on the-”
Fumio’s voice roared with fury. “When I get a hold of you, I’m going to rip out your tongue and shove it up your-”
“Oh, fuck-” Taisuke muttered before dropping the phone in the grass and making a mad dash for the fence. My jaw dropped as I watched Taisuke effortlessly leap over the fence in the corner of the screen - Not even a scratch left on the fence or Taisuke. When the hell did he get so athletic?
The screen momentarily went black as Fumio picked his phone off the ground and struggled to wipe the dirt off it. “Oh, for the love of-”
“What’s up, Fumio!” I tried to contain my excitement to finally see my friend again - especially since I’ve been waiting for the guy who actually called me to show up for about… 4 minutes now - but a little bit of it came out through my tone regardless. “Long time, no see. How’s school going?”
Fumio pushed up on the frames of his glasses. “Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that, Genjo?”
I shook my head. “Nope! I asked first, didn't I?”
“Ugh, fair enough.” Fumio walked back inside the house and took the stairs to the second floor hallway. “Pretty boring. No one at tech schools is all that social in the first place, but I don’t mind. Gives me plenty of time to actually study for once.”
“Ooh… ‘studying’, you say?” I rolled over on my back, still holding the phone in front of my face. “That’s a new word for you, Fumio! Look at you go!”
Fumio kept walking, seemingly unfazed by my joke. “Ha. Ha. Like you were any better in high school.” Suddenly, Fumio opened a random door and walked inside. “What about you, lover boy? Heard you’ve already been around the block over there.”
If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
“Ugh, what did Taisuke tell you this time?” My eyes rolled back into my head. “It’s not what y’all think, I swear. I haven’t even kissed a girl yet - Let alone anything…” I felt a disgusting taste in my mouth. “...further.”
“Hm, never thought I’d see the day where a guy isn’t proud of being a lady’s man, but you do you, bro.” Fumio crouched down and set his phone on the ground. “While we’re on the topic, what’s the deal with that Chika girl? You guys been hanging out?”
I closed my eyes, hoping that I would somehow wake up to a different conversation topic. “It’s complicated. I’d rather not get into it right n-” When my eyes reopened, Fumio was completely out of the camera’s sight, giving me a perfectly unobstructed view of the ceiling. It reminded me of how I would stare at the little bumps and imperfections in the paint on my room’s ceiling during countless sleepless nights. Wait a second… That scuff looks exactly like the one that I made a few years ago when I accidentally let go of my drumstick and threw it straight up in the air. I hastily stood up straight at the realization of where he had taken me. “Fumio… What are you doing in my room?”
Fumio’s voice was a bit distant and hard to make out, but I could still hear him say, “Surprised it took you so long, genius.” After a few seconds, the sound of his footsteps grew increasingly loud until he picked his phone back up. His glasses were covered in a thin layer of dust. “I was checking to see if you had left anything on accident. Honestly, you should be thanking me for invading your privacy.”
“I’ll only thank you if you actually found anything.” I jumped out of bed and stepped back towards my desk. “So, um… did you?”
A faint sigh escaped under Fumio’s breath. “Just one measly photograph. I was hoping you’d forget something more important so I could feel a bit more useful.”
I propped my phone up against my computer monitor, freeing up my hands to work on organizing my desk setup. “A photograph? I thought I grabbed all of those off my wall before I left.” I slid open the drawer in the bottom left corner of my desk and took out the case full of photos, stole some pins off Ryu’s desk, and started recreating my old photo wall as perfectly as I could remember. After taking a step back, none of the photos seemed to be missing. “You’re not fucking with me right now, are you?”
“Honest. Feast your eyes.” Fumio briefly held the photo in front of the camera, but he decided to put it away before I could get a better look at it. “Actually… Maybe some secrets are best kept for later, hehehe…”
“Oh, fuck off.” I flicked the camera with my finger, trying to manifest that he would somehow feel the pain. “It’s my picture, dude. Can you at least tell me what it is?”
Fumio shrugged. “I think it’ll be more fun for the both of us if I just mail it overseas to you. I figure this is one you’d rather see for yourself in the flesh.”
I groaned and lightly hit my head against the desk, instinctively putting my arms in the way first to soften the blow. “Fine. This better be worth it.”
“Trust me, you’ll appreciate it when it gets there. Promise.” Fumio delicately set the photo on top of my old bed. “Hey, can I call you back later? I think my phone’s about to-”
The live video suddenly froze on a single frame of Fumio scratching at the peach fuzz on his chin. After a few more seconds, the call abruptly ended. I tossed my phone on my bed and went back to looking at the pictures on the wall - They were all exactly the same as I remembered. Where the hell did this ‘missing photo’ come from? To say that my imagination was running wild would be an understatement. “Fumio…” I said aloud to myself.
“Just what the hell are you trying to hide from me?”
~
Professor Hirotada was running late for class today. Briefly looking around, I saw that nobody in the classroom was sitting where they usually sat - Instead, they were all gathered in pairs, only talking amongst themselves. I didn’t exactly feel like getting up or speaking to anyone, but I wasn’t exactly sure why - Was it a weird sense that nobody wanted me to approach them, or was it the pounding headache that’d been chipping away at my sanity all morning? My eyelids grew heavy as they began to slouch shut. I reached below my desk for my bag to take out my energy drink, and my reward for my attempt was nothing. Actually, I found the real answer to my question - Caffeine withdrawals are a bitch.
About 10 minutes passed by without any sign of Professor Hirotada. It was truly agonizing to watch hundreds of precious seconds of my life slip through my fingers, vanishing like sugar in water. The faint sounds of sleigh bells that were quietly woven into this morning’s song of choice were lulling me into a half-conscious daydream. Whatever was happening in the room around me, it was no longer any of my concern. I rather enjoy these rare moments of what I’ve always lovingly called ‘public solitude’ - They remind me that my escape from the world is always sitting right inside my pocket whenever I need it.
The professor’s desk was still completely vacant. I gave my eyes a few seconds of rest, hoping that no one would show up to teach and I could go home and take a quick nap. After getting their well-deserved break, my eyelids went their separate ways and, to my surprise, Professor Hirotada was standing right where he always does. He wasn’t still unpacking his bag and setting up his computer, though - From the looks of it, he seemed to already be well into his lecture. What was equally bizarre was that my headache had gotten better, even if only a little. Just how long was I asleep?
I unlocked my MP3 player and turned down the volume as low as it could go without actually muting it. Finally, Hirotada’s words unearthed themselves from beneath the guitars and bells. “...is to be completed by our first midterm exam. You should have gotten an email notifying you of your assigned partner a few days ago. If nobody has any questions regarding this project, let’s move on to today’s-”
…Midterm? Email? Project?? Assigned partner??? I quickly snatched my phone out of my pocket and started scrolling through my emails. Sure enough, there was one labeled ‘General Chemistry - Information Regarding First Project (DO NOT IGNORE)’. I opened the email and scanned every word from top to bottom.
‘Dear students, I hope you all are taking advantage of the wonderful weather we have been blessed with today. My intention with this email is not to interfere with any plans that you may have already made prior to this message - It is merely to get you to start thinking about it. A “calm before the storm”, as it were.
Starting next class period, you will begin work on what will become this semester’s first major project. You and a partner (see attached spreadsheet) will be given a unique list of chemical compounds, all of which will be randomly selected from a master list. For each compound, you must provide as many details about their structure, properties, synthesis (if applicable), and practical uses in everyday life, industry, or laboratory settings. This must be presented to the class on your assigned presentation day, and will additionally need to be submitted as a written report before you present.
The due date for this report, as well as your presentation, will be the week of May 1st. Reminder: Saturday, the 6th, will be the day of your first exam in this course. Keep this in mind when preparing your work, as procrastinating on this project may negatively affect your ability to study and your performance on the exam. If there is any confusion, please email me well in advance of the due date.
- Prof. Tomoru Hirotada, M.S. Theoretical Chemistry’
I opened the spreadsheet and skimmed it until I found my name, not paying much attention to any of the others. Alright, Genjo… it’s going to be fine. You don’t know anyone in this class, but you’ve been pretty good at making friends lately. What’s the worst that could-
A strong force took hold and twisted my heart when I finally saw it.
‘Genjo Sazama - Chika Dokuro.’
No. Fucking. Shot. What hellish figure has been pulling the strings in my life for the past two weeks? ‘I have to be reading it wrong. I must be seeing things,’ I thought. I rubbed my eyes and looked again - The text stayed exactly the same. Has Dokuro been in this class the entire time, and I just never noticed? My hands started to tremor as they went completely numb. ‘It’s just the caffeine,’ I kept telling myself, my mind too cloudy to remember that I didn’t have any at all today. How could-
A finger tapped me on my right shoulder, but I wasn’t startled whatsoever - It’s not like I could be any more apprehensive than I already was. I didn’t want to find out who it was… Or maybe I already knew, and I just wasn’t prepared to face them again.
Dokuro’s muted voice barely made it past the headphone barrier. “Shall we get to work, Sazama?” Her emotions were… hard to discern, to say the least. She’s always been like that - Calm, unfazed, and serious… and it annoys the shit out of me.
I kept my headphones on, but still at least had enough courtesy to respond. “Seems like now would be the time, I guess.” I spoke with very little inflection, happy or sad. Whether it was on purpose or accidental, I was talking exactly like her.
“Then let’s go.” Dokuro began walking towards the door. “I’m looking forward to working with you, Sazama.” It was only then that I realized - Class was already over. What’s been going on with my perception of time today?
With no good excuse to ditch, I unenthusiastically followed her to the exit.
~
It didn’t take Dokuro long to decide on a spot for us to work. The moment we stepped out of Kurosawa Hall, she practically made a beeline for a very specific bench in the campus’s central park. We sat down next to each other on the bench, Dokuro took a gray composition book out of her leather messenger bag that she carries around on her shoulder, and we immediately got to work. “Sazama, do you prefer to do work indoors or outdoors?” she asked without looking up from her notebook.
I let out a short yawn, wishing I had gotten a chance to pick up an energy drink on the way here. “Shouldn’t that be a question you ask before we pick a study spot?”
“Depends on the person.” Dokuro took a gray, metal water bottle out of her bag and took a sip from it. Is everything that this woman owns gray? “I’ve found that, with many people our age, that if you give someone such open-ended options before you even start working, it can lead to both parties getting indecisive - Thus, wasting precious time that could be spent being more productive.”
My jaw clenched for a brief second. “...indoors.” My stomach growled ferociously. I guess that I forgot to eat breakfast, too. Dokuro reached into the bag again, this time grabbing two small, dehydrated fruit bars. She placed one bar in her lap and held out the other, indicating that she wanted me to take it. “Thanks,” I murmured as I took the snack from Dokuro’s hand. Reading the wrapper, I found out that the bar she gave me was made from dehydrated lychee, so I tried to hand it back. “Oh, I’m allergic.”
Dokuro had already eaten about half of her fruit bar by the time I said something. “Hm? Is it a contact allergy? Or anaphylactic?”
I set the bar down in between us. “Contact.” Seeing that the bar that Dokuro had been eating was made with mango - my favorite fruit - made me a bit frustrated.
“My apologies.” Dokuro tried to hand me the rest of the mango bar, but I refused. If she hadn’t already put her lips to it, maybe I would’ve considered it a bit more. “So, have you made any progress on the assignment yet? I already started doing preliminary research into lignite coal, but I figured I should leave that one to you.”
“Huh?” I elected to temporarily ignore the fact that she just blatantly dumped the workload for that portion on me, and instead searched through my mind for a more appropriate response. “Wait, when did you get the list?”
Dokuro’s lips shifted and her left eyebrow rose in perplexion. “...Over the weekend?” She picked up her phone and started scrolling through her camera roll. “Hirotada sent it to us when we were assigned as partners. The only way you could’ve missed it is if you didn’t read the email.” Under her breath, I could barely make out Dokuro repeating, ‘didn’t read the email…’ to herself. When she found the screenshot that she took of the email, the list read:
* Triacetone triperoxide
* Lignite coal
* Icaridin
* ∆8-tetrahydrocannabinol
* Lidocaine
* Isoamyl acetate
“Doesn’t seem that bad to me,” I told Dokuro as she put her phone away. “What’s with Hirotada giving us such a massive timeframe to work on it?”
“Because we have to go in-depth on every single one of them, Sazama.” Dokuro handed me a slip of paper that had the exact same list of chemicals on it as the email, but with a key difference - She had already divided them all up between us.
‘Sazama - Lignite coal, isoamyl acetate, icaridin’.
‘Dokuro - ∆8-tetrahydrocannabinol, lidocaine, triacetone triperoxide’.
I stared at the paper. “Hey… did you give me all of the difficult ones on purpose?”
She simply went back to work. “The point of the assignment is for students who already have an expertise in chemistry to assist less knowledgeable students. I’m simply doing as we were instructed to do.”
“Bullshit.” I shoved the paper into the pocket of my jacket. “That’s not what he-”
“How do you know, Sazama?” Dokuro interrupted, and quite sternly at that. “Did he say that in the email that you didn’t read? Or during the lecture that you slept through?”
Instead of saying anything back, I just turned up the volume on my headphones, took out my laptop, and began working silently.
…Hours went by as the air stayed dead between us. We agreed to take occasional breaks to go to our other classes or pick up food, but Dokuro insisted that I come straight back to the bench once I was done. I didn’t really understand why she was so assertive about staying in this exact spot, but it was beyond aggravating. Why couldn’t I just go work in the room that I have to myself for the next few days? What the hell is she trying to pull here?
On top of that, she kept asking me for help about the most obvious concepts, like how molar masses are calculated, or what a ‘mechanism of action’ is. I know that the point of the partnership is for me to educate her on a lot of these concepts, but isn’t that - oh, I don’t know… the teacher’s job?? After a while, I would just start turning my music up louder every time she asked something. If that know-it-all really needed to know something, she had a perfectly functional tablet in her hand.
I was held captive by Dokuro for so long that the sun began to set. In her defense, I guess I was making pretty decent progress. But that absolutely does not excuse having to waste my entire day on this stupid project. Once the sky started to turn blood-red, I took it as my cue to pack it up for the night. I put my headphones back around my neck, revealing to the immediate vicinity just how loud I had turned up the volume on them. “I’m heading home. And, if it’s alright with you, I’d prefer to work by myself for the rest of this project.”
Dokuro put her tablet and composition book back inside her messenger bag. Her notepad and the fruit bar, on the other hand, still stayed put on the bench. “I don’t see what you hope to gain in working alone on a partner project.”
I hoisted my bag back around my shoulders. “I just don’t want to be stuck working on this stupid bench anymore. I work better by myself, anyway.” After checking my phone for any text messages I might’ve missed, I stood up.
“Why are you so incessant on avoiding me, Sazama?” Dokuro rose at the exact same time. “Of course you don’t think we work well together - You spent this entire work session ignoring me as much as you could.”
“How about you check your notepad and figure it out yourself?” I started to turn around and walk towards my dorm, but I was immediately stopped by Dokuro yanking on one of the straps of my bag. “Hey! Just what the hell is your deal?”
Dokuro’s face was still mostly expressionless. If I didn’t know any better, I’d call her a god damn sociopath. “Is that what this is about, Sazama? You’ve been nothing but distant, cold, and quite frankly, rude… All because of a notepad?”
“Don’t act like you have no idea why that’s fuckin’ weird, Dokuro.” My voice grew louder as I tried (and failed) to bite my tongue. “And it’s more than just that - I want you to stop treating me like I’m some kind of experiment for you to study that you just to get to fuck around with and watch what happens. You act like you know everything about me, and I’m fucking sick of it.”
She continued to keep her composure. “Three days ago, I wouldn’t disagree. But at this very moment… I think I do know you, Genjo Sazama.”
My hands started to cramp from the sheer strength at which I clenched my fists. “No. Shut. The fuck. Up.” Thankfully, no one else was in the park at this time of day to hear me. The sky became less red - and more black. “You decided who you thought I was on the first day you met me. That’s not ‘knowing’ somebody, Dokuro - It’s fiction.”
“Do you know what’s not ‘fiction’, Sazama?” Dokuro’s voice had yet to change in volume, only in intensity. Her demeanor is the most annoying thing about her - It just doesn’t change. “Every time you see me, you can’t resist the opportunity to give me a piece of your mind... This narrative in your head that I’m some kind of villain that exists for the sole purpose of making your life worse in any way I can… Ignoring my texts and calls about this project just because you can’t swallow your animosity for even a second… None of that is ‘fiction’.”
“Oh, here we go again!” I threw my arms up in the air in frustration. “You know there’s nothing forcing you to lecture me every single time I say anything that you don’t personally deem ‘normal’, right? But no… You just can’t help yourself, can you?” I angrily snatched the unopened fruit bar off the bench and threw it at Dokuro’s feet. “What’s even the point of all this, huh? Does it help you get your rocks off, or something? Does it make you happy to make me hate myself more than I already do?”
Dokuro reached down, picked up the fruit bar, and put it back in her bag. Thunder started to roar fiercely in the distance. “...I understand now.”
I lowered my voice - Not by choice, but because I didn’t have it in me to keep yelling. “Understand what?” The sound of the thunder grew louder as clouds began rapidly approaching.
“You think that I hate you…” Dokuro took a deep breath. “...because you project all of the disgust you hold towards yourself onto me.”
My throat started to ache. “What are you-”
"Stop." Dokuro moved a stray hair that was hanging in front of her glasses. “You loathe yourself, Sazama, by your own admission. You’re filled with so much anger and contempt, and you’ve always directed it towards yourself. However, I can tell that you really do want to be better, but that anger doesn’t just go away on its own - It has to go somewhere.”
The wind picked up at an alarming speed. My hair swayed violently as the gusts of wind tried to snatch it away from me. I hate wind. It makes me feel ice-cold. I despise the way it scratches away at my skin without a care in the world.
Dokuro didn’t pause for a second, still relentlessly slicing me apart with her words. “You detest me because it makes you feel better about yourself. No longer are your problems your own - Instead, it’s my fault that you’re forced to think these thoughts about yourself, even though these ideas have been planted in there from the very start.”
Her notepad got abducted by the wind, blowing it directly into my face. I took the notepad into my hand, thrust it into the sidewalk below, and stomped on it with all the power I had remaining in my body. “Dokuro, why are you doing this? What did I do to-”
She took a step closer to me. “Listen to yourself. ‘What am I doing to you?’, you ask? I’m telling you what you need to hear. Whether or not you want to listen to me, that’s your choice. I can’t stop you from holding your eyes shut in the face of reality.”
I took a step back, my feet quaking in my shoes with unease. “...I can’t shut my eyes to a truth that doesn’t exist. You’re lying to me - You’ve always lied to me. About everything… About who you think I am… About how you think I’m pretending to be someone I’m not… About how I ‘take things too personally’... I’m-”
“-the victim here, not you?” Dokuro shook her head. “Fine. If you still believe that, then I guess I will have to spell this one out for you.”
Her bright, blue eyes probed through my mind as she maintained firm eye contact with me. “Genjo Sazama, you have a severe victim complex. You’ve fooled yourself into believing that every single obstacle in your life is somebody else’s fault - Namely, you have chosen me to become your scapegoat. In your mind, you have created a Chika Dokuro that exists as the physical manifestation of all the hindrances that you believe shackle you down. You treat me like I’m a set of chains wrapped and locked around you, and yet, you fail to realize…”
She took one final step closer to me until she stood right above her notepad. “...that the key has been in the palm of your hand all along.”
My mind was too hazy - and my body too numb and paralyzed - for me to be anything but speechless. All I could do was continue to look in her eyes, and get swallowed up by the scorn that emanated from them.
“Go ahead and prove me wrong, Sazama.” Thunder bellowed around us while Dokuro kneeled to the ground and picked up her notepad. When she stood back up, I could view the image in her lenses once again - I couldn’t recognize the man I saw in the reflection. “I’d like to see you try.” Dokuro stormed off, leaving me behind to get swallowed up by the rain. The sky wept - but for which one of us? For once, I didn’t want to know the answer.
Raindrops fell from the streetlights and trees like streaks of tears. My eyes followed the streaks further up the trunks of the trees - and the trees stared back. Countless eyes suddenly revealed themselves all throughout the park, all focused intently on my every move. My blood ran cold and my lungs felt empty, severing me from whatever groundedness remained in my body as I desperately gasped for air. I threw my hood over my head, drenching myself in the rainwater that had pooled inside, and ran for my life back toward the West Dorm. I never looked up from the ground, afraid of seeing the glares of judgment all around me.
I violently swung open the door to the West Dorm and took the shortest possible route to the stairs. Somebody called out to me before I had even made it three steps up the staircase. “Hey, Genjo? Is everything-” I quickened my pace up the stairs and pulled on my jacket strings, tightening the grip of my hood firmly around my skull. Once I reached the third floor, I nervously looked up and down the hallway. Once I knew the coast was clear, I made a dead sprint for my room, fumbled through my pocket for my ID card for what felt like ages, and quickly deadbolted the door behind me. With my back pressed against the door, the numbness had only grown more agonizing.
My eyes frantically surveyed my room; There were no signs of life anywhere. Ryu’s side of the room was still completely untouched. I stumbled over to my desk and bent over to catch my breath. I felt my hands tremble while they struggled to hold up my weight against the chair. Nothing felt real anymore. I didn’t want it to. This numbness is what everything is supposed to feel like, right? Yeah… That’s right. Nothing is real. Nothing is real. Nothing. Nothing. No-
I fell arm-first onto my desk as the chair suddenly slipped underneath my weight and rolled across the room, making a loud thud as it collided with the door. The pain that radiated from my arm was indescribable - not because of the hit itself, but because I was forced to feel something. I want to feel anything other than what I feel right now. I slammed my other arm against the same edge of the desk so that the pain in each arm would match. Maybe that’ll make it feel more normal. Maybe now I can work in peace.
…Oh, that’s right - the project. I cleared off the top of the desk, dragged the rolling chair across the floor, filled my beaker glass with water, and sat down to work. My headphones were turned up as loud as possible to tune out any unnecessary distractions, internal or external. I don’t need her help anyway. I can do this all by myself. I’ll show her. I was churning out countless structures, reactions, and products like clockwork- but none of them were any good. This isn’t that fucking hard, Genjo. Focus. Pages and pages started to spread out all over the floor as I tore them from my notebook out of ever-increasing frustration. Ink was bleeding through into the next pages as I pushed my pen fiercely against the paper. I’m supposed to know this shit. Why can’t I just fucking focus?
My grip on my glass and my pen intensified.
I know what I'm doing. Of course I do. I’m not a failure. I’m not what people think I am. I’m not what she thinks I am… Chika Dokuro. Who does that bitch think she is? She’s wrong about me - She’s wrong about everything. There’s nothing wrong with me. She’s fucking insane. I’m not the problem. It’s her that’s the problem. That fucking-
The sound of shattering glass rang out as I smashed my left hand against the desk, crushing the beaker into large, sharp fragments. Though the pain in my hand was excruciating, I couldn’t bring myself to loosen my grip, allowing the shards of glass to feel at home in my embrace. I looked at my notebook - my pen had completely torn its way through some of the pages. On the first page, I had written all of my thoughts down without even realizing. A single message repeated itself all over the page:
That fucking bitch. That fucking bitch. That fucking bitch. That fucking bitch. That fucking bitch. That fucking bitch. That fucking bitch. That fucking bitch. That fucking bitch. That fucking bitch. That fucking bitch. That fucking bitch. That fucking bitch. That fucking bitch. That fucking bitch. That fucking bitch. That fucking bitch. That fucking bitch. That fucking bitch. That fucking bitch. That fucking bitch. That fucking bitch. That fucking bitch. That fucking bitch.
My pen drifted out of my hand and clattered against the floor. What the fuck is wrong with me? A harsh chill took hold of me. I unclenched my fist - the glass shards had reopened the wound in my palm. I was almost fully paralyzed out of fear - Fear of what I had forgotten I was capable of doing to myself.
For some reason, I couldn’t displace my gaze from the bleeding gash in my hand. My eyes glazed over as I stopped believing that there was even anything else to look at. Thoughts beyond my control began to seep their way into my mind. The inner workings of my brain felt crowded as millions of thoughts fought with one another for my attention. I felt physically claustrophobic. I wanted to tear myself out of my own skin. Why is it getting harder to breathe again? Is someone watching me? I can feel the eyes around me. Why are they back? Was the room always this small? Is this even my room at all? Where am I???
I got up from my desk and ran straight into my bathroom, locking the door and turning on the shower. Freezing water poured out from the shower head, blasting my hair and clothes relentlessly as my vision started to turn into TV static. My hands were pressed against the tile walls of the shower as I barely held myself together. As the water drained all the heat from me, I finally started to feel my own body again. I felt calmer, knowing that the eyes that judged my every move couldn’t watch me anymore through the curtain. I’m safe. Finally… I won’t let them hurt me - Never again.
The sight of a bloody handprint smeared across the tile said otherwise.