“Hey Emi! Where were you yesterday? I was looking everywhere!”
Emily Monson frantically shoved the object she was holding back into her backpack, hugging it close to her body. That was close, she thought. I need to be more careful. She turned to her friend, who was still wearing the same little cat earrings from yesterday.
“Hi, Mandy! I had to head home early. I had sooo much homework to do, you know?”
The two girls hugged briefly.
“I get ya, girl. It seems wrong that they gave us so much when we’re only a day in. Like, I want my money back!”
“…School is paid for by government funds, Mandy.”
“With taxpayers’ money!”
“You’re seventeen. You don’t pay taxes.”
“Hmph!”
Mandy crossed her arms, pouting. She always does this when she loses an argument. When is she ever going to grow up?
Mandy cocked her head to the side, looking at Emily with sudden interest.
“What are you hiding in there, Emi? Not a picture of some boy, by any chance?”
Oh no, she noticed that I’m guarding my backpack from her. You may be my dearest friend, Mandy, but you're dead last on the list of people I could share my secret with.
“Who wants to know?” Emily responded tactfully.
“Oh! I know! It’s me, it’s me!”
“Well too bad. If I did have a boy I liked I certainly wouldn’t tell you. If I did, the whole school would know about it in ten minutes or less!”
“Aw, I’m not that bad, am I? Tell her I’m not that bad, Richy!”
“You’re that bad, Mandy,” Rich said from behind Emily.
“Aaaaah!”
Emily whirled around in surprise. How long has Rich been there?! Suddenly her head made contact with her locker and she fell backwards. Her mind raced as the ceiling grew farther away. I’m going to hit the floor hard, aren't I?
She braced herself for impact, but it didn’t come. Instead, she felt herself floating in a leaned-back position, somewhere between the ground and standing. It felt like being held in the arms of an angel.
She tilted her head back to see Haruto standing behind her, supporting her by her armpits. His glasses were slowly slipping down the bridge of his nose.
“Are you alright? That could have been bad if you landed wrong.”
Haruto smiled at her, a single bead of nervous sweat trickling down his forehead.
Emily swung her backpack at him. He fell back, causing both of them to crumple to the floor.
“Don’t touch me!”
Emily sat up as she shouted at him.
“Well excuse me! Next time I won’t help you at all!”
Rich put out his hand and helped Haruto up. Emily stood on her own, turning a cold shoulder toward the Japanese boy.
Suddenly her face paled. The others followed her gaze to where her backpack lay on the floor. A few books had slipped out. Emily dived for the backpack just as Haruto picked one up, studying the back of the dust jacket.
“Great Women of the Twentieth Century, huh?”
He thumbed his finger along the book’s pages and narrowed his eyes.
“Ooh, that sounds interesting.” Mandy’s violet eyes were sparkling excitedly. Emily reached over and snatched the book from Haruto’s hands.
“It’s research for a school project. Not that you need to know.”
She returned it to its place in her backpack, then stooped to pick up the others, brushing Haruto off when he tried to help.
“Is something going on between the two of you?” Mandy asked. “You seem mad tense.”
““NO!”” They shouted in perfect synchronization.
It’s not like I don’t appreciate Haruto catching me and helping me with my books, but I can’t let anyone know that I’m interested in being friends with him. It’d give too much away. I can’t risk it. I hope he understands.
Oh, who am I kidding? There’s no way he’d ever just magically get it, and I’m not doing him any favors by not explaining it to him.
“Oh hey, Haruto, I don’t think you’ve met my best friend yet,” Rich spoke up, interrupting Emily’s thoughts.
“Which one? I thought everyone in school was your best friend?”
“True, but I’m talking about my super mega best friend! This is Amanda Teagan, but everyone calls her Mandy. She’s pretty much the most popular person in school, and she’s guaranteed to know all the latest gossip.”
The girl with the cat earrings waved excitedly.
“That’s me! You’re Haruto, right? I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Mandy’s lips curled into a sly grin. What are you thinking, Mandy?
“That’s… bad, right?” Haruto said apprehensively.
He took a step back from Mandy, keeping an eye on her as he did as if he were a mouse waiting to see if the cat would try to pounce. As he examined her a look of recognition suddenly spread across his face.
“You’re the whale girl!”
Mandy glared, her otherwise cute face suddenly becoming quite terrifying. Emily could have sworn that her earrings morphed into tigers and bore their fangs. Maybe he had a reason to see her as a predatory animal.
“You got a problem, buddy?”
“N-no, of course not! My English isn’t very good, that’s all!”
Dummy, Mandy’s not going to fall for that excuse. You’re practically native level!
“Hm… alright, I’ll let you off the hook just this once.”
Oh, I stand corrected. He’s not as much of a noob at lying as I expected.
Sun cowers as Mandy fixes him with an intense glare, her earrings morphing into angry tigers. [https://i.imgur.com/QmP3M5g.jpeg]
Emily let her tense muscles loose as she let out a relieved breath. I’m not sure what this whale girl thing is about, but I absolutely cannot have Mandy being suspicious of him. I took a risk trusting him to not tell everyone about our meeting, even if he doesn’t know all my secrets yet. She didn’t take this kind of risk often. Hopefully it paid off.
“Anyway, Emi, some of the girls and I were planning on checking out the new food court at the mall. You want to come? You boys could come too if you want.”
Rich beamed. “That sounds great! You’ll come, right Haruto?”
“Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it,” Emily intoned. “I have something I have to do after school.”
She looked pointedly at Haruto. He looked back with a confused expression. Emily waited to make sure the other two were looking at Haruto and not her, then formed the words with her mouth.
Our meeting.
She was afraid he would be unable to decipher her meaning, especially since lip reading didn’t seem like an easy skill to learn for a language that isn’t your native one, but whether he actually understood or not, he definitely realized why she was trying to get his attention. His eyes widened all the way to the rim of his glasses and he started stammering.
“O-oh, I just remembered that I, uh, have something I need to do, um, after school… as well.”
Not the most graceful response, but it will do. Was what Emily thought for only the split second before Mandy spoke up again.
“Ooh, are you two doing something together?”
How could I be so stupid?! If we both give the same half-assed response of course she’s gonna suspect something!
Okay Emi, hold it together. You need to regain control of the situation, and that is not going to happen if you’re panicking.
She did her best to scowl. “Of course we aren’t. I would never go anywhere with him.”
Surprisingly Haruto looked shocked by this statement. Surely he knows I’m just trying to keep them off our scent, doesn’t he? I thought I was making it pretty obvious.
“Oh yeah? Then I’d never go anywhere with you!”
“You’d never get the chance, genius.”
“Woah, woah, let’s calm down here,” Rich interjected. He leaned over to Haruto and started whispering.
…I’m standing right here, Rich. I can still hear you.
He continued, seemingly unaware of this fact.
“I know I told you she’s bad news, but you didn’t have to go and make enemies of her. You don’t want to be turned into a toad or something, do you?”
What kind of rumors are you spreading about me, Rich?
“So, what exactly went down during that meeting you two had?”
Haruto hesitated, like he was considering how to respond. Emily felt her face pale slightly.
This is it then, the moment of truth. Time to find out if I was right to trust this strange boy I’ve never met.
She swallowed nervously.
Haruto lowered his voice to a whisper as well. “I can’t say exactly. But I’ll tell you one thing. Emily and I will never be friends.”
“If you say so, man.”
Omigosh, he came through! I think I’m sweating right now. Ugh, yeah, definitely sweating. Why was I so nervous in the first place? Everything turned out great, just like it always does. It’s all smooth sailing from here.
“What are you two whispering about?”
Mandy had stepped between Haruto and Rich, forming a sort of football huddle with the three of them.
Rich smiled slyly. “Try to guess.”
“No fair! Give me a hint at least!”
“Alright, one hint.”
“Sweet! What is it?”
“It’s—”
At that moment the bell rang, signaling that it was time for the students of Atwater High School to go to their next classes.
“Oops, too late,” Rich teased.
“Dammit.”
Mandy broke away from their huddle, freeing Haruto from his apparent paralysis. He probably wasn’t used to that kind of physical contact yet, especially from a cute girl.
“I will find out your secret, Richy, mark my words! Detective Mandy is on the case!”
Emily smiled. Not in a million years, Mandy. Not with your track record of failing to even notice mine.
To be fair, I have a lot of practice keeping it from you.
With that, the four students went their separate ways.
Apple scene break [https://i.imgur.com/plQ2Umy.png]
I watched Emily climb the stairs toward her third period classroom until she turned around the bend and I couldn’t see her anymore. I was glad I managed to catch her, regardless of the fact that doing so had resulted in me getting a taste of her backpack straps. She could have been hurt if she hit her head on the hard floor like that, and besides, I had gained something interesting from the encounter—the first real piece of information in my investigation, although thus far I was unsure what it meant.
I had so many confusing thoughts and feelings about what had just gone down with Emily and friends in the hallway that I couldn’t keep them all straight. There was clearly a dynamic between the three of them that I had stumbled into the middle of, and a weird one at that.
A naive part of me had hoped that what Emily had said to me yesterday after school meant that her prior aggressive attitude had just been a fluke, but she had gone right back to assaulting me with flower patterned backpacks, so I didn’t feel justified assuming anything about her anymore. Which meant figuring out her secret before our second meeting at the end of the day today was a must.
Unfortunately, I had no idea where to start. Unless I could get those books out of her backpack and get a closer look at them, but I was pretty sure that qualified as a serious invasion of privacy.
I supposed I could ask Rich if he knew anything. And Mandy, the whale girl from yesterday, was apparently good friends with Emily and Rich, in whatever strange form friendships took around here. Maybe she could tell me something.
Coincidentally, Mandy and I were currently walking in the same direction.
I could understand why she was “pretty much the most popular person in school.” She radiated a positive energy that you couldn’t just ignore, like she was totally confident in her own skin and anyone around her would just have to deal with it.
If I had skin like hers, I would have been pretty confident too. It looked so smooth it gave satin a run for its money, and there was just enough color behind it to make it clear that she wasn’t a shut-in like me.
The scent of lavender wafted over to me as I walked next to her. Was it weird to say that her fragrance matched her eyes? Probably, considering I’m the one who came up with it.
She was a little shorter than me, but she held her head up all the time, so next to my computer-desk-slouch the difference wasn’t very noticeable. Today she was wearing a blue overall dress over a striped T-shirt and the same earrings and bracelets as the day before.
She shot me a side-eye as we walked next to each other. She pulled a stick of gum out of her pocket and started chewing it, then blew it into a bubble.
POP!
I flinched.
“So, Haruto, are you following me or something?”
“What? No, this is just the direction my next class is in.”
She looked satisfied with that answer, thankfully.
“I see. What’s your next class?”
I stopped. We were standing in front of room 118.
“Uh, this one.”
“US History? Me too. Good choice!”
Mandy swallowed her gum, then stepped into the room.
That’s supposed to be bad for you, right? Well, I guess it’s not my problem.
What was my problem was this class. I had no idea what possessed me to choose it.
I vaguely remembered thinking that it would be neat to learn more about the place I was moving to, but I clearly didn’t think it through very well. This was high school senior level history, which meant that it was assumed I would have the basic foundation down already, which definitely wasn’t the case. And learning in English made all my classes a bit harder already.
United States history was by far the biggest hurdle I would have to overcome on a day-to-day basis.
I followed Mandy in and sat down at my desk. The teacher, Mr. Bussgil, was already sitting at the front of the room, scrutinizing each student from behind his narrow glasses as they entered, like a vulture checking to make sure the roadkill it was after was really dead. He was about a hundred years old and made entirely of skin and bones. He definitely belonged in a history class.
The bell rang again, and class officially started. I tried my best to pay attention, but it was all so hard to follow. I was fighting to stay awake.
The vulture noticed.
“Mr. Higasaki, maybe an easier piece of trivia would be more your speed. How about this—what date was the Declaration of Independence signed?”
Like I was supposed to know that! Taking this class really was a mistake.
“Not… recently?”
A round of laughter filled the classroom. I felt my face start to turn red.
“Not particularly. In fact, the exact date was July 4th, 1776, which is why—”
“Incorrect.”
Immediately all attention shifted from me to the person who had spoken. Mandy was raising her hand.
Mr. Bussgil sighed. “Miss Teagan. Would you care to tell me what was incorrect about my statement?”
“You said the declaration was signed on July 4th, which was the day it was adopted. But the signing didn’t all happen at once, and some delegates didn’t get around to it until August 2nd.”
Mr. Bussgil checked his notes. Then he sighed again.
“Thank you for the correction. Now, let’s continue with our actual lesson. On page 23…”
*
“Thanks. For saving me back there.”
Class was over and Mandy and I were both leaving room 118. She popped another stick of gum into her mouth.
“No prob. I don’t like to see people being singled out unfairly. And besides, I’m a big history buff, so I probably would have corrected him anyways.”
I did a mental double take. That’s unexpected.
“That’s not quite…”
“The vibe I give off? Because I’m so popular?”
She tossed her hair dramatically.
“Uh, yeah, I guess.”
“Well, it’s true that most of the time people with really particular interests like mine aren’t exactly at the top of the social food chain. But it’s all about presentation really.”
It was about… hm, I didn’t get it.
“How so?”
“You said I didn’t seem like a history nerd, right? That’s because most nerdy people present themselves that way. I wear nice clothes, talk to everyone I meet, and always remember to smile and listen. Of course I enjoy shopping and stuff like that too, but you can like shopping and not be popular. It all comes down to what other people see when they look at you.”
“I see.” I hadn’t really thought about it that way before, but it made sense. I wondered if this was something high school students in general were aware of and I was the only one out of the loop.
Mandy bounced in place on the balls of her feet. She didn’t seem to like staying still much.
“Rich mentioned you were in the same study hall as him, right? That’ll be your next class then. See ya!”
She waved and started walking away. I suddenly remembered my mission. If I want to ask her about Emi, this is probably the only good opportunity I’ll get.
“Wait!”
“Hm?” She turned around and looked at me.
“I wanted to ask… about Emily…”
“So there is something going on with you two!”
She slammed her fist and palm together triumphantly.
“No! Well, not exactly anyway. I was wondering if you ever noticed anything… weird about her.”
“Weird, huh?”
She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. Phew, that was a close one. I didn’t know why I was trying so hard to keep Emily’s secret… secret, other than that it felt wrong not to. I couldn’t betray her trust like that.
“I got it!”
Mandy pointed her finger at the ceiling to emphasize her revelation.
“So, she’s pretty normal most of the time, right? But sometimes, for no reason at all, she leaves school early. Like, the moment the bell rings she’s out the door. And when I text her to ask where she went, she never texts me back. Weird, huh?”
That didn’t seem like super abnormal behavior, but I nodded anyway. It lined up with what Rich had said about her locking herself in her room and not answering anyone at least.
“Was that all?” Mandy gave me a quizzical look.
“Oh, yeah. You can go now. Thanks.”
“Welcome!”
Mandy turned and hummed to herself as she headed to her next class. I had to say, my opinion of her had changed pretty drastically over the course of the day, and it wasn’t even lunchtime yet. Not that I’d had that bad of an impression of her to start. Rich had picked a good super mega best friend.
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
Speaking of Rich, unlike on my first day, we did talk to each other during study hall. It seemed like studying was the last thing on most kids’ minds while they were there, in fact. There was a lot more chatting than any kind of homework. One boy was even playing a game on his Switch Lite.
“Hey Haruto, sup?”
Rich sat down next to me, his face still plastered with that goofy permanent grin.
“Hi, Rich. I was actually hoping I could ask you a question.”
“Okay, bet.”
“On what? I don’t think we’re supposed to be gambling in school.”
“No, it’s another expression. I have got to get you up to date on your slang.”
That sounded like a pain. Learning slang was hard.
“Sooo, your question. Shoot.”
I figured that was more slang and decided to go ahead and ask.
“You said that you heard weird noises coming from Emily’s room before, right?”
“Yup.”
“What exactly did you mean by that? You… weren’t stalking her or anything, were you?”
Rich would have done a spit take if he had anything in his mouth. A few flecks of actual spit landed on my face.
“Of course not! Emi and I are neighbors. We have been since my family moved here when I was in middle school.”
I was not expecting that. The way he talked about her didn’t seem much like a childhood friends kind of relationship, although now that I thought about it, he did seem pretty comfortable around her when they were actually in the same room.
My expectation of what childhood friends looked like must have been skewed by all the light novels I’d been reading the last several years. And wait, did he say he moved here in middle school? That was news to me (it was my second day, so just about everything was news to me).
“Where did you live before?”
“Connecticut.”
“…What state is that in?”
Rich chuckled. “It is a state.”
“Oh.”
If you pressed me to name states in the US, I would know the famous ones like New York, California, Florida, and Texas. And then Ohio for some reason. Beyond that, I was likely to get stumped.
“Anyway, about Emi. Our dads got to be pretty good friends, so we would visit each other’s places for dinner sometimes. When I was over at their house, she never came out of her room except to eat. It was kind of disappointing actually. I thought since we were the same age we could play together.”
“And that’s when you heard the noises?”
“Exactly. One day I went upstairs to see what she was doing, but her door was locked. Inside I could hear grunting and this weird, ominous music. It was wack.”
I had a hunch I knew what that meant.
“Is there any chance you remember what the music sounded like?”
“Weirdly, yeah. I hear it in my nightmares sometimes. It went something like this.”
Rich hummed a few bars of a familiar melody. It was off-key, but I still recognized it.
I was starting to put the clues together. So it’s like that, huh? I wasn’t totally sure, but one more piece of evidence would probably confirm my suspicions.
“So, why d'ya want to know?”
“W-huh?”
Rich suddenly speaking again caught me off guard, even though it had only been like a minute. That’s what I get for zoning out.
“I, um, I was just curious is all. I was wondering if… if she’s really a witch or whatever, like you were saying.”
Have I mentioned before that I’m completely pathetic? This feels like a relevant moment to remind you, because that’s about how I was feeling after giving that incredibly lame response.
“Oh, is that all?” Rich looked perplexed, but he shook it off. Since the goal of our conversation had officially been reached, he said, “see ya,” and went to go talk to some of his other friends.
I tried studying. I really did. But this was not the right environment for it. And by this, I don’t mean study hall. I mean my own mind. It was far too occupied going over all the events that had happened to me in the past two days, over and over again. There was so much to process I was worried my brain would short-circuit. My mental CPU processor was already at full capacity.
And the thought at the front of it all? Why is it so important to her to keep that a secret?
Lunch period was next, which was a perfect opportunity to observe Emily Monson in her natural state, out in the wild of the school cafeteria, hanging out with her friends. Since I couldn’t make myself think about anything else I figured I may as well. Maybe I’d be able to get that last necessary piece of evidence I was looking for.
First, I had to find her. That wasn’t hard, she was with a pack of stylish girls all sitting together at the same table, like a pride of all female lions. Their kind are typically pretty easy to spot.
Mandy was there too, but the girl Emily was talking to directly at the moment was someone I hadn’t met before. She had silvery hair that had to be dyed, which made it weird for me to see in a high school setting. Also, her boobs were huge.
It’s not like I was looking at them or anything! They were just hard not to notice.
Anyways, she was looking at her phone while she was talking instead of making eye contact, but Emily didn’t seem to mind. That’s just the way high schoolers communicate these days, I guess.
Wow, I sound old.
I tried to look like I was focused on my food in order to be as inconspicuous as I could while I watched them from a distance, but it honestly wasn’t necessary for me to make much effort. Girls like that would never notice a guy like me in the first place unless I was really making a scene. Which I did not intend to do. Ever.
The girl with the b— blanched hair (yes, I know the word blanched) glanced up from her phone for a moment and her eyes locked onto Emily’s backpack. More particularly, as I noticed when I looked closer, to a pin on the side pocket of the backpack that was shaped like a very particular character. A black cat with a crescent moon on its forehead.
It also happened to be the last clue that I needed.
“Hey Emi, is that pin new? I don’t think I’ve seen it before.”
Emily’s eyes flitted down to her backpack, and I saw fear flash across them for just a moment before she returned to her typical peppy self.
“Oh, that? Yeah, it is. Do you like it?”
“It’s cute. Isn’t it from a show or something? What’s it called… Sailor Moon?”
Emily nodded. “I saw it on my last trip to the mall, and it was too cute to just leave it there. I’ve watched a few episodes of the show before, so I thought, why not?”
“Makes sense.”
The other girl went back to her phone for a bit before lunchtime was over and we all had to return to our classes. That time came after only a few minutes.
“See you later, Sophie!” Emi said to her.
“After school?”
“She has somewhere to be, so she won’t be joining us.” Mandy literally jumped into the conversation. She seemed… hard to pin down.
“Hm, that’s too bad. Next time, then.”
I’d seen everything I needed to. I was sure that I knew now what the secret Emily was keeping from even her closest friends was, though not just anyone could have figured it out.
I’m not trying to brag about my sleuthing skills, which were average at best. (What do “average” sleuthing skills look like anyways?) I just happened to have some very situational knowledge that gave me a big advantage.
There was one thing I still didn’t know. Why? Why was this secret so important to her that she would go to such lengths to cover it up? I had a hunch, but for all I knew it could be way off base. No amount of investigation was going to give me the answer either. My only options were to go on not knowing, or to ask her directly.
And a secret meeting after school was the perfect place to do just that.
Apple scene break [https://i.imgur.com/plQ2Umy.png]
This time Emily was already waiting for me when I got to room 333. She was standing at the front of the room, near where the teacher would be if I were coming here for a class.
I wondered briefly what classes this room was used for during the day. Judging by the amount of dust in the air I guessed not many. It made for a neat effect as the sun streamed in through the windows though.
The next thing I considered was how even in a poorly illuminated, dingy, abandoned classroom Emily could still look so gorgeous. No, on second thought, the low light only enhanced her beauty. It made her red hair and bright eyes stand out even more. I wondered if that presentation thing Mandy was talking about contributed as well.
Emily was definitely doing her best to look confident in herself. She stood straight and tall and her brow was furrowed determinedly. But I could see by the flickering of her eyes and the way she moved her hands that she was still just as nervous as I was.
I may as well get this over with. I had thought through what I was going to say in advance (at least a dozen times), so I blazed ahead instead of giving myself even a second to hesitate.
“I can be friends with you, on one condition.”
“Huh?”
Emily was definitely surprised. I couldn’t blame her—I would hardly expect myself to open with a line like that under normal circumstances.
“I’m guessing you’re going to want to know what that condition is.”
“Um, well yeah, obviously.”
“You have to tell me what your secret is.”
To be clear, this wasn’t about getting confirmation or anything like that. I already knew what she was going to say, assuming she agreed to tell me.
But was she willing to share her secret with me, even though there was a possibility I would go and reveal it to everyone? (I wouldn't, but she couldn’t know that for sure). I wasn’t interested in becoming friends with her if she couldn’t do that much. Not without our relationship developing a bit more naturally anyway.
“W-what secret? I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
She waved her hand in the air dismissively as if she could just blow this part of the conversation away and move on. Her smile was more visibly nervous now. I doubled down.
“The reason you can’t tell anyone that you want to be friends with me. There’s obviously a reason behind that, right?”
“Oh, well, I, um…”
“I can’t exactly keep up a secret friendship if I don’t even know why I’m keeping it a secret in the first place after all.”
“That… that makes sense, but…”
Her hands started to tremble.
“So? Are you going to tell me or not?”
Emily sat down at the nearest desk and hid her face in her arms.
“Okay, fine. I’ll say it.”
I could see her chest heaving. Was she… crying?
Oops. I suddenly felt really bad. I got so caught up in what I was saying that I forgot to think about her feelings, which isn’t great when you’re having a potential-future-friends meeting. I was definitely too hard on her.
We were fully branching from the conversation routes I had practiced for earlier, so I had no idea what to do. I was feeling kinda confident for a while there, but now I was back to totally pathetic, like normal. Should I say something? I should definitely say something.
“Uh, hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to tell me anything. I actually already know.”
Emily looked up. Her eyes were red and puffy, but she wasn’t crying anymore. Instead, her expression was filled with anger.
That was the wrong thing to say.
“Oh yeah? Prove it.”
“Wait, I didn’t mean to—”
“No, don’t take it back. If you really have figured out my secret, then prove it. Tell me what it is.”
She crossed her arms and looked at me triumphantly. Evidently, she was positive that there was no way I actually knew. In her eyes, she had just won.
I couldn’t back out now. She wasn’t about to give me that opportunity. Okay, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
“You’re an otaku.”
“I— huh?”
Emily was staring at me blankly. Her eyes glazed over as she descended into a state that could only be described as shock. Her confident expression had disappeared—her face was now an unreadable mask. I hoped she wasn’t about to cry again.
“But, I’m always so thorough in my cover-ups. How did you…?”
“It wouldn’t have been obvious to most people,” I tried to reassure her. “The thing you’re obsessed with is Japanese stuff, like anime and video games, right? I’m a lot more likely to notice things like that, even compared to normal Japanese people.”
She blinked twice and shook herself to regain her composure. “No, but really. How did you find out? I need to know so I can make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
That’s a practical line of thinking. Which is good, because it means I didn’t completely fry her brain. I figured it couldn’t hurt to explain myself.
“A few things clued me in.”
I now present you—and Emily—with the evidence that I discovered in my day of investigation.
“The first thing I noticed today was that book you dropped. I didn’t open it because it probably had pictures inside that Rich and Mandy would have noticed, but I could tell from the size and shape that it was actually a manga volume. Bold move bringing that to school with you by the way. Using a fake dust jacket was a clever cover-up, but it was still risky.”
Emily fidgeted. She really is cute when she gets shy like that.
“I stayed up late reading that series last night, but the volume I was on ended on a cliffhanger. I couldn’t wait until school was over to read the next one.”
I nodded. I could relate to that feeling.
“My second piece of evidence came from Rich and Mandy. They mentioned that you go home from school early sometimes and lock yourself in your room, and Rich heard ‘creepy music’ coming from in there. I had him hum it for me, and I could tell he doesn’t play a lot of video games, because if he did, he definitely would have recognized it. It was that iconic boss music from the seventh Final Fantasy game.”
“It’s my favorite in the series,” Emily said meekly.
“I preferred ten, personally.”
“Eh, the voice acting kinda put me off when I played that one. Oh, but I played it in English, so it’d be different voices than you’re used to.”
“That makes sense.”
As our conversation went on Emily’s eyes slowly started to sparkle excitedly in spite of herself. It was the first time I’d seen her actually look happy when she wasn’t in public with her friends. This was going better than I had expected.
“Sorry for getting sidetracked. You were saying?”
“Right. Lastly, there was the pin on your backpack. The one your friend pointed out during lunch? That one seemed a little too obvious, actually.”
“Maybe. I felt like it was pretty safe though.”
You were literally wearing it out in the open! How exactly is that supposed to be safe? I thought that, but it also occurred to me that her friend had asked about the pin directly and she’d managed to play it off just fine. She really was good at hiding her passion for these things, wasn’t she?
“And of course there’s the two of us meeting alone here in secret so you could ask to be friends with me.” The only reason I could imagine she would approach me of all people like that was because I was from Japan myself.
Emily’s face turned as red as a tomato. I could feel heat creeping into my cheeks as well. Somehow it hadn’t really crossed my mind until I said it out loud, but I’m alone with a girl in a secluded corner of the school. This is a precarious situation!
“Um, was there anything else?” She looked away from me as she spoke. I was honestly grateful. I wasn’t sure I could handle eye contact right now.
“N-no, that was it.”
“Ha.”
“Ha ha. Ha ha ha ha!”
Emily had burst out into laughter.
“Um, are you okay?”
She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye.
“Of course, I’m fine. Having someone at school tell me all about my hidden interests was stressful, but it’s also weirdly relieving at the same time. You don’t know how hard it’s been to keep it a secret from my friends for so long.”
Of course I don’t, I’d have to have friends to understand that.
Oh, that reminds me…
“There’s still one thing I don’t get.”
Emily looked up and met my eyes.
“What’s that?”
Gulp. Doing this while looking at her perfect face was a lot harder.
“It’s, uh, with your friends. Why is it so important that they don’t know that you’re into Japanese stuff?”
Emily’s smile dropped off her face again. She didn’t look mad anymore, but I’d obviously hit upon a serious, maybe even painful matter.
“For most of my life, having any interest in anime and otaku culture was a social death sentence. Things have actually been getting better lately, like you noticed with Sophie’s reaction to my pin. There’s no way I would have shown that off in public five years ago. But even with certain anime starting to break into the mainstream it’s still far from cool to be as deep into it as I am. Popularity is a delicate balancing act, and any kind of obsession weighs heavily on the wrong side of the scale.”
I understood where Emily was coming from. I really did. Being a huge anime nerd didn’t exactly score you a ton of social points in Japan either. But after talking to Mandy about her interests, the last part didn’t ring quite true to me anymore.
“Are you sure you couldn’t just… break it to them slowly? Like that saying about boiling a frog or something?” I was proud of myself for remembering the English metaphor.
She shook her head. “It’s not that easy.”
“But what if you—”
“Look, it’ll be easier for me to show you.”
Emily whipped her phone out of her bag and started texting furiously. After a moment her text tone went off, indicating she had got a reply. She texted back, then handed the phone to me to read. The contact said Sophie Bennet, the same girl who had complimented her pin earlier.
Emi: Hey Soph, what do you think about people who are big anime fans?
Sophie: Weird question
Sophie: Well no offense but they’re kinda hard to talk to you know? Like they’re so one track about the stuff that they’re into that they can’t even think about anything else. Its a little creepy, tbh
Sophie: Whydya ask
Emi: Just proving a point. Thanks!
“So, do you believe me now?”
Having just been presented with direct proof, it was hard to disagree. At the very least there was no way I would want to reply to a conversation like that and say, “Well guess what, I’m one of those people you think is ‘creepy,’ isn’t that great?”
Maybe having an interest in Japanese media was different from being into American history. That didn’t seem very fair, but the world rarely is, especially in high school.
“I think I get it. But hold on, wasn’t Sophie complimenting your Sailor Moon pin earlier? That doesn’t match up with this response.”
“That’s because it’s a ‘safe’ show. It’s so popular even normies know it. Plus, it’s one that lots of kids grew up with, so it’s plausible that I might have watched a bit of it in the past without being totally engrossed. If I told them I’d seen every episode of both the original and the remake and I own figures of all the main characters, or that I’m also into My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, or the villainess subgenre in general, my social life would be forfeit.”
“I see you’ve really thought this through.”
“I take everything I do very seriously. Speaking of which…”
Emily reached into her backpack again and this time she withdrew a spiral notebook and a mechanical pencil. She flipped the notebook to a blank page, then looked at me expectantly.
“Let’s start with nicknames. You can call me Emi. That’s a given, it’s what all my friends call me. Now, what should I call you?”
Aaaand she lost me again. Where was this coming from all of a sudden? I swear, every time I think I’m starting to understand her…
“How about Haru-kun? Is that alright?”
A shiver ran down my spine. That’s what she used to call me.
“No, definitely not that.”
Emily looked kind of disappointed.
“Oh, alright. Do you have a nickname you go by with your friends or family already?”
“Not… really. Do we need to call each other something other than our given names? Aren’t they enough?”
“Maybe in Japanese culture, but here everyone calls each other by their given names. You need a nickname to make it feel special. Almost everyone has at least one or two.”
I thought about the other students I’d met so far. Rich and Mandy were both nicknames, for Richard and Amanda respectively, if I remembered correctly.
Maybe I was overthinking this. It certainly wouldn’t be a first. Then again, maybe I wasn’t.
“But aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves? Choosing nicknames doesn’t feel like the first step to me. In fact, shouldn’t they just come up naturally over time?”
I assumed that was how it worked. I’d never been chummy enough with anyone to see it in action.
“Normally yeah, but this isn’t exactly a normal scenario we’re in, is it? We can’t force ourselves to be comfortable around each other, but we can use some techniques to make it happen faster, like we’re speedrunning it. My theory is that if we start calling each other something other than just our names we’ll start acting like the kind of friends who do that naturally.”
Speedrunners don't seem like ideal role models when it comes to making friends, I wanted to say.
What I said instead was, “I already feel comfortable around you though.”
“You… do?”
Strangely, I did. I couldn’t say why for sure—if it was the abnormal nature of my encounters with her or what—but despite being a Detective Conan level mystery to me, Emily Monson was surprisingly easy to talk to. I tried my best to express that.
“I mean, we have some shared interests, and more importantly you’ve shared an intimate secret with me that you haven’t even told your other close friends. I have to respect that. If you’re comfortable sharing that much with me, the least I can do is reciprocate. Oh, and assure you that your secret’s safe with me! I’ll protect it no matter what.”
I thumped my fist against my heart for emphasis.
Emily’s blush started to return. She crossed her arms in front of her and averted her eyes.
“You can’t just say things like that to a girl, dummy.”
What does that mean? What am I supposed to say, then?
“Sorry,” I tried.
“It’s fine.”
She breathed out heavily and established eye contact again. My heart involuntarily skipped a beat. Cut that out! It’s distracting.
“You know, you sounded kinda cool there for a moment.”
Me? Cool? As if. But the fact that Emily was saying it made me feel good.
“Can I still give you a nickname? Just for fun.”
“Oh, sure I guess.” It couldn’t hurt. Even if it was kind of embarrassing.
Emi clicked her pencil and crossed something out in her notebook.
“Okay, not Haru-kun, so what about… hey Haruto, what do the kanji in your name mean?”
Oh no. This was about to get way more embarrassing than I was prepared for.
“Well, uh… both my surname and my given name contain characters that mean sun or sunshine. The ‘Haru’ in Haruto is spelt with the character for sunny weather, and the other part of it means person. So it literally translates to “sunny person.” My parents wanted me to be sunny and cheerful, so they manifested it in my name. It doesn’t fit me at all, huh?”
It almost physically hurt to tell her that, but I figured I owed it to her to share a dark secret of my own.
“No, I think it does fit.”
Emi jotted something down quickly.
“Yeah, Sun is perfect. From now on I’ll call you Sun.”
“A-are you sure?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I’m not bright and sunny at all. I’m more…”
“More what?”
“I don’t know. Pathetic.”
“Higasaki Haruto, there are a lot of words I could use to describe you…”
I flinched just thinking about what that list might include, although a rebellious part of my mind was joyfully repeating, she remembered my full name! Although I did sort of just say it, huh? She put it in Japanese order too. She really is an otaku.
“…But pathetic isn’t one of them.”
…
I was stunned. Being called anything but my one defining character trait by a cute girl was not on my bingo card for the year, or for ever.
And the thing is, I almost believed her. I certainly wanted to.
“Well in that case, I guess Sun is fine,” I mumbled.
“Excellent!”
Emily slammed her notebook shut emphatically.
“I’d say that concludes all the business we have to take care of, unless you wanted to bring anything up? Any questions?”
Where to start?
“Yeah, I do have one.”
“Go ahead then.”
“What exactly do secret friends do?”
Emily paused. She scratched the tip of her nose with her pencil’s eraser.
“Hm, I hadn’t considered that.”
“You considered everything else, but not that? It seems like a pretty crucial detail.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
She rubbed harder. I worried that the tip of either the eraser or the nose was going to come off from the friction.
“How about this—we can keep meeting here in this classroom after school and talk about the things we like. I’ve always wanted to have someone I could actually discuss the shows I’m watching with. Yeah, I think that’d be a lot of fun! Of course we won’t be able to get together every day or my friends will start to get suspicious. Here, give me your number so I can text you when I’m free.”
She hit “add new contact” on her phone and handed it to me for the second time that evening. My hands were shaking so much I almost dropped it. This was only the second time I had ever given my contact info to a girl.
Somehow I managed to fumble my way through entering my info into the correct fields and returned Emily’s phone to her. We both stood awkwardly, not knowing what to say next. Our conversation had come to a standstill.
I was the one who broke the silence. “I guess I’d better go now. My little sister is waiting for me to go home with her since she doesn’t have the route memorized yet. She’ll be wondering what’s taking me so long.”
This was not an excuse—it was a fact that I had simply forgotten until now because I was so distracted. I was lucky I hadn’t forgotten my own name.
“Oh, right.”
The red-haired beauty standing before me looked like she wanted to say something else too, but she stopped herself. I shuffled my feet and pushed my glasses up out of anxious habit.
“Well, see you later… Emi.”
And with that, I made my exit.
Apple scene break [https://i.imgur.com/plQ2Umy.png]
Emily Monson stood alone at the front of classroom 333 on the third floor of Atwater High School. She stared at the door that her new friend had just left through.
Was friend even the right word at this point? Looking at it logically, they barely even knew each other.
Yet she had opened up to him in a way she couldn’t with any of her other friends. Was there even a word for the strange connection they were forming? Confidant, maybe? That sounds so stiff, but I’m not sure I can think of anything better.
One thing she knew for sure—becoming friends with him was like walking into a minefield. She would have to be a hundred times more vigilant now to ensure that no one ever suspected they were close, lest someone discover the reason the two of them had become that way, that being his connection to her favorite place in the world.
She had gotten excited the instant she heard from Rich that a Japanese student would be transferring to their school this year. It felt like an opportunity. For what she didn’t know. Only time would tell, and she got the feeling that time would happen much sooner than anyone anticipated. The next chapter of her life was about to begin.
That’s kind of cliché. What if instead it was, “She was about to turn over a new leaf?” Nope, that’s worse. Or how about, “Next time, on Dragon B—” Hm, that one’s just stupid.
Being the ever-prepared professional secret keeper she was, she was already working on a plan to deal with that “next chapter.” As long as her new friend cooperated, they shouldn’t encounter any problems at all. Not one. Definitely don’t check how many pages are left in the book.
Somehow, I have faith in him though. She put a hand on her cheek, and even though he had already left the room she whispered after him.
“See you later, Sun.”
That weekend an incident would occur that would become well known among all the students of Atwater High School. Emi thought she knew how hard keeping her secret was about to become, but in reality, she had no idea.
----------------------------------------
Translation notes:
The black cat with a crescent moon on its forehead described in (paragraph 215) is Luna, a main supporting character from the manga series Sailor Moon by Takeuchi Naoko.
I'm going to assume that most people reading this know what an otaku is (paragraph 266). If you don't know, you most likely aren't one. Feel free to look it up.
The boss music mentioned in (paragraph 279) is a reference to "One Winged Angel", a piece from the soundtrack of Final Fantasy VII that is the theme music of the game's main villain, Sephiroth.
(Paragraph 282) has a further reference to Final Fantasy. The English voice acting in Final Fantasy X is notorious, hence why Emi found it off-putting but the same issue wasn't present when Haruto played it in Japanese.
The villainess subgenre (paragraph 321) is a category of isekai or other world fantasy in Japanese media in which the main character is reborn into the role of a villainess (often in the world of a visual novel) and must take different actions from the character she has replaced to avoid her comeuppance at the end of the story. Series in this subgenre are generally female targeted.
Detective Conan (paragraph 342), also known as Case Closed in the West, is a highly popular detective manga and anime that has been ongoing since 1994. The original manga is written by Aoyama Gosho.
(Paragraph 358) There are many ways to spell most names in Japanese due to the kanji (Chinese characters) that they are made up of having multiple possible readings. Haruto spells his name 日ヶ崎 晴人. 日 (hi) means Sun and is the character used to count the days. 晴 (haru) is sunny weather, and 人 (to) is person, so put together they translate to "sunny person." The second kanji in his surname, 崎 (saki) means coast, and isn't specifically relevant to talk of his name being overly sunny.
In (paragraph 400) Emi starts to think the phrase, "...next time, on Dragon Ball Z!" which is a meme that arose from the English dub of the Dragon Ball Z anime series. The meme uses the frequently repeated narrative line to highlight the anime's drawn out pacing and repetitive plotlines (so it's a "the manga was better" meme in disguise).
(High School in the Big Apple is originally in English. Japanese words, cultural ideas, and media references in the series are explained in this section as if it were a light novel that was translated from Japanese. Paragraph locations may not be exactly accurate.)