MeNaSe Publications

Master Content List

2021-03-21T19:48:00.000-07:00

Please find below a master list of all of our content, broken down by length and genre. Novels first, then short stories, along with downloads for e-versions.

Download Directory

Novels
Historical Fiction
A Young Macedonian in the Army of Alexander the Great by Alfred J Church e-download
The Count of the Saxon Shore by Alfred J Church e-download
The Lance of Kanana by Harry W French e-download

Realistic Fiction
Ore No Imouto Ga Konna Ni Kawaii Wake Ga Nai by Tsukasa Fushimi e-download

Speculative Fiction
Digital Devil Story: Reincarnation of the Goddess by Aya Nishitani e-download
Digital Devil Story: Warrior of the Demon City by Aya Nishitani e-download
The Longing of Shiina Ryo by Ryuno e-download

Short Stories
Horror
The Yellow House by Amberlynne O'Shea e-download

Speculative Fiction

Amazon by Cari Brunton e-download
Nothing is Free by Ronald D Mina e-download

Return by Ronald D Mina e-download
Angel Notes by Kinoku Nasu e-download
Put a Stake in It by Andrea L Rau e-download

Realistic Fiction
It's All Normal by Kate Ottavio e-download

The Longing of Shiina Ryo Volume 2: d.m.c - Chapter 2: Akane

2012-02-06T06:51:00.000-08:00

Inside that seemingly calm and forgotten room, the synchronized movements of four students generated results that simply could not be witnessed by anyone else. That was probably part of the beauty of the whole thing, the way we always forgot the world around us whenever we got together. Sometimes I would even forget there was more of me than just a center panned, low rumbling waveform in the midst of many other sounds produced by the three girls I shared most of my afternoons with.

The now longer, slightly sweaty strand of hair that fell over my eyes for a second as I ran my fingers through the bass’ neck was crude, poor, but undeniable physical evidence of the passage of time. Nothing drastic, though.

Only two months had passed since practice began, but I had already grown used to having this activity as part of my life. We couldn’t do it every single day because of Rin’s position as a student council member, and every once in a while Akane’s mother would need help because running the only flower shop with delivery service in town by yourself is not much of a glamorous lifestyle if you ask me.

In order to avoid Rin’s suspicion, I came up with a system that works similarly to some countries’ day-based driving restriction: whenever the occasion came, the colorful guitarist would follow the plan we agreed on and depending on the previous experiences use a new alibi (such as having to study) or just tag along and help Akane. To ensure it wouldn’t look too fishy and obviously formulaic after a few occurrences, even I had to take part in the scheme, sometimes as a helper in the flower shop and others as the younger student tutoring her. All the irony in that generated little more than two or three jokes from Rin that were repelled with barely passable acting performances of Megumi’s false anger.

It sure helped that Rin did not seem to be particularly interested in spending time with us outside the rehearsal room except for the obligatory food quests we did on a regular basis, and I can’t honestly blame someone with her upbringing for not caring for commoner experiences such as having fun simply by going to a mini-market with friends, which is exactly why I never pushed her to come with us whenever she didn’t felt like it (and I noticed it happened more often in places where she could actually be seen with us). Chances are her father remained unaware of her afterschool activities, or at least assumed they were still pertinent to the council.

Or just did not care. There are families like that.

An unpleasant surprise struck me as an initially-sharp, distorted noise morphed from absurdly high to low and lost definition in less than a second in my right ear. It was one of those sounds you never really get used to no matter how many times it pierces your timpani. The sound of a guitar string breaking passing through a distortion system is just, for the lack of a better (or in this case much worse) word, unique.

“Again, Megumi?” I said as we all took off our headphones to avoid permanent hearing damage from the subsequent rising levels of static that followed. “A fair share of our budget is going straight for replacement of strings because of this, you know. Take it easy.”

“No can do, bro. Someone keeps complaining about my finger tone or whatever, so all I can do is pick harder.”

“Perhaps next time you could try picking better instead of harder. Technique before strength, always.” Rin gave her a bored look before turning the distortion off, but it didn’t last long as she moved her head towards someone else. “Akane-san, would you be so kind as to pass me the string box? Unfortunately one of our members cannot perform such basic maintenance on her own instrument.”

From where I stood I could see Akane taking the box from behind her drum throne and handing it to our school council president in the most discrete manner someone possibly can, an interesting contrast to how ‘loud’ she could be when it came to playing. Even though I only heard her through the synthetic sounds triggered by the electronic drum kit she borrowed from Rin, I could already tell the reason of all that admiration I at first assumed to be uncalled: she was a very precise and tight player, even if almost mechanical.

The way she could read through our intentions as the four of us jammed while not being able to look me in the eyes even though we’ve been sitting in front of each other for two months interested me a lot.

“Hold on, it’s not my fault! I told you I’m still not used to messing with floating bridges and this guitar isn’t even standard!”

And she was correct: it really wasn’t. Although not half as ‘customized’ as her acoustic one, the guitar Megumi got from a pawn shop was a seven string one, the extended range handy even if the reason why she got it in the first place was because it was flashier than her previous electric guitar. Apparently the guitar was ‘abandoned’ by her original owner, as he pawned it and did not show up to get it back for around six months. Money issues, one figures.

It required some work in order to make it functional again, such as electronic repair and minor part replacements, which a luthier supposedly did (though I’m sure Rin did it on her own). I could see no other reason for the secondary pickup remaining useless after the supposed ‘professional repair,’ especially considering wiring transducers is something those people do every day for a living. When I realized that was the case I didn’t know if I should be more surprised at her working hard with her own hands or her being genuinely nice and not bragging about it.

“If you intend to throw excuses at me on a regular basis I suggest you take some time to ponder them. Two months is more than enough time to learn how to string a guitar, especially considering how often you break strings.” It was even harder to believe she was capable of being kind when she spoke like that. She unplugged the guitar and cable from the mixing console. “If the two of you want to take a break, now is the time. I will try and teach Megumi how to do this.”

The colorful girl set her animosity aside for a moment and smiled, an action that simultaneously stirred all of her piercings.

“Whoa, really?”

“Certainly. I have no intention of doing this for you any longer, so pay attention.”

I tried to meet Akane’s gaze to see whether she wanted to keep on jamming, just the two of us, but gave up when I saw her already nibbling on an oversized, definitely homemade fiber cookie.

Her mother had a penchant for natural-ish vegan recipes, something I experienced every time I went there and she greeted me with a new one. Not to say that they were bad or anything, but everything always seemed to taste rather earthy. While the shy drummer seemed not to mind it at all, her friend and secret roommate seemed eager to eat some meat whenever she was outside.

Trespassing through a thin breach in the thick curtains, a thread of light illuminated my bag on the floor, making it cast a new set of shadows. Without a doubt, it was a sign from Heaven that I should drink the strawberry juice that waited for me inside before it got warm.

Bass resting on my lap like a baby, I just arched my back once as a warm up and clumsily moved my body as if I was swimming sideways afterwards in order to be able to reach for the bag. I felt lazy at that point but opened the juice while doing those weird movements just so I could drink from the can while going back to my original sitting position.

“So, what exactly are we going to play here?” I asked after a sip, knowing that was a million-dollar question. “We have done nothing but jam all the time and any omniscient sentient being in the universe knows we’ve done it enough to create themes and clichés of our own. So before someone just answers ‘music’ to sound witty or cool, in this particular moment I am referring to genres, subgenres and such. I will tolerate no jokes on conceptual darkness, brutality, innovation or similar as an answer either. Intensity comes in many forms, so it doesn’t give me the slightest bit of a clue. It could be some subgenre of metal, could be screamo or math rock, technical skate punk wouldn’t be bad and it could be free form jazz for all I know. Therefore, I beg: someone please, please give me a hint.”

Their eyes fell upon me like I uttered the world’s most absurd words.

“I assumed such a thing would be obvious by now, but it might have been a mistake of mine to do so. Forgive me for considering all of you would be able to understand the rather simple thought patterns I used on this subject.” Our school’s Student Council President was, effectively, the only person I knew who could sound like an arrogant spoiled child while saying ‘I’m sorry,’ be entirely aware of it and add a bit more of heat on purpose for both fun and strategic profit, if there is such a thing as her thinking of those two targets separately. “Apparently it is time for me to put the cards on the table.”

“Please do so.”

“While I cannot say I had the highest expectations for this project, I find myself forced to admit we have chemistry as a band, despite the lack of individual ability of some members. A certain portion of that is absolutely required in order to achieve the status where a combined group of musicians conceive and engineer a properly devised array of tunes.”

“Yeah, that’s right!” Megumi looked at Rin intensely and for the first time I saw genuine, unadulterated admiration without a trace of frustration or jealousy. “What kind I don’t know, but no one can say we’re not making music here! This is going to be huge!”

The aura that emanated from Akane made me feel like she too watched Rin, even though her messy, curly bangs covered her eyes, which would hinder a normal person’s visibility. Then again Akane still strikes me as an abnormal fellow. Considering the time it took to get to this level of acceptance, it’s safe to say her strategy wouldn’t be one I’d willingly adopt and it doesn’t seem like I’m being tsundere for her tsundere ways of leadership. I wouldn’t fall for…

…no, it’s best if I avoid thinking about it. Nothing good comes out of pondering on subjects pertaining to things you simply cannot achieve, or rather could but should not for the greater good. Instead, it reminded me of a game I feel like playing whenever I can.

“That would be nice.” I carelessly and slowly unbutton the top of my shirt with my left hand, aware that the flaming gaze that belonged to Rin was almost entirely on me ever since my index finger lay on the now-unfastened red tie; it was pleasant to know she would use peripheral vision in order to check if either of our two band members could see my actions. “It still doesn’t answer my question in any way. What are we going to play, and exactly when? Rehearsals are fun and all, but having goals such as recording a demo or playing gigs… that’s what I personally see as actual band activities. If anyone disagrees, I’ll be happy to listen, but I don’t think there’s a point in having ‘chemistry’ if we’re going to keep the end results to ourselves.”

My opponent crossed legs covered in just-thick-enough stockings visibly made of silk, the gentle rotation of her limbs making me imagine propeller blades spinning in slow motion.

“I was not finished with you, Koukishin-kun; patience is a virtue of utmost value, so I understand.”

The way she completely ignored the fact Megumi interrupted her before I did filled me with a wicked kind of joy. She was sending me a message I was happy to ignore, or rather, contradict… but not with words.

“Then please, proceed.” I said, aware that she had eyes only for me.

Her deep sigh was the confirmation I needed and motivated me to go further.

“Therefore, I took the liberty of saving most of our jam sessions’ recorded files and, after a certain amount of editing, and by that I mean editing as heavy as I could as an amateur audio engineer, I can announce we have the preproduction tracks for our EP ready.”

That’s when I stopped trying to tease her.

“An EP?”

“Surely you know what the acronym stands for.”

“Extended Play, a recording too long to qualify as a single but too short to be a full length album. While it’s hard to tell exactly at which point one category ends and the other begins, the modern usage implies four to seven songs, usually six, of equal importance, in comparison to a single which would usually be one main song, usually accompanied by a B-side track, or a maxi-single, which would be the same as a single but with two or three B-side compositions along with the main one instead. Not to say EPs don’t have remixes or B-sides in them, quite the other way around; as I stated before, it’s hard to pinpoint a measure for the format everyone would abide to, since the term’s meaning changed a lot through the decades since it was introduced back in… 1952, if I recall correctly.” Beat. “Now that it’s certain we all understand what the acronym means, what exactly do you mean by ‘our EP,’ pray tell? Enlighten me.”

A smirk of hers.

“Oh, I will. This conversation of ‘where are we going with this’ is bound to happen at least once in every musical project, so I decided to be prepared, in the same manner people who have been in a relationship for several years should not be surprised by a marriage proposal, and, in my personal opinion, if they are there is most likely something wrong with the relationship to begin with.”

It seemed to me Rin had a hard time transposing values and morals from one situation to another, which was not a surprise considering her train of thought led her to challenge someone in order to join a band as their leader in classic shounen manga style. It amused me, the way she couldn’t see the reason why she pulled that off and the reason why someone without a personal flaw could be surprised in the excessively specific and thereby suspicious situation she described are the same.

Whether the proposal is acceptable or not in theory, circumstantial issues might result in completely adverse outcomes to what is standard. It’s not what is done, but how and to whom: had she used the same strategy to anyone who wasn’t as stubborn and authority-defying as Megumi, she would be ignored at best, and after several years of wait some people assume it’s just not going to happen anymore and settle for the stability that lies in not having titles that imply, say, stability.

“Moving on, the reason why I was sure to turn our multi-tracked rehearsals into drafts of songs is because I think we achieved the maturity required to take this to the next level. We should record and publish our music worldwide.”

“That’s awesome! It’s going to be so, so great!” Megumi started fist-pumping the air but tried to contain herself when she realized she almost made Rin drop her guitar. “Us, becoming real artists and getting signed!”

It was easy to see Rin would scoff at the colorful girl’s behavior.

“Signed? Really, in this day and age? If you have the connections and money, labels are completely useless.”

“W-what if you don’t?” Akane took a deep breath, something she usually did whenever she needed to have some composure and avoid stuttering. The pitch in her voice usually went lower and serious, which had an odd effect since her figure that was almost a comic rendition of a J-horror novel-turned-movie character, but after months of seeing her nibble and sneeze and be shy while not getting any closer to her I could say ‘odd’ was not the same as ‘terrifying,’ unlike early horror and science fiction magazines would proclaim. “I don’t know about Koukishin-kun and you, Ms. President, but my financial situation isn’t stable enough at the moment to afford professional recordings, and I know for a fact Megumi’s isn’t either. There’s no way you can tell me the ‘allowance’ the club is given by the school is going to enough because I know for a fact you won’t settle for anything less than perfect. Where does this leaves us?”

As expected of Akane.

While I didn’t manage to get any closer to her as friends, I had watched her from a safe distance for long enough to realize similarities between us. She always considers the worst outcome possible first, was always evasive and, whenever she’s not stuttering, presented her arguments in ways that guided you to the same answer she got to.

At that moment, she was trying to make Rin either back down or take the responsibility for whatever ego-feeding plans she had, or make me go against the plan because, in one of the possible scenarios, I’d have to pay for something while they didn’t. It was inspiring to see how she admired our self-proclaimed leader as a musician but did not stand behind her on every occasion, thus confirming the excessive curtains of hair in front of her eyes were not blinding her enough to make her view the Student Council President as a good person who was right all the bloody time. Not only that, she realized that when it came to take decisions, the effective way to stand against someone who held herself in such high regard as Rin was to be passive-aggressive, an activity in which Akane excel.

I liked that in her, even though it implied her self-esteem had been as completely crushed at some point as mine. I could only hope she’d gotten that skill in a different way. Perhaps she got that rather uncanny skill or character trait from watching her mother and then perfected it, most likely not even conscious of doing it at first?.

Whether it’s the whole forbidden fruit appeal thing or something else, at that point Akane was the one out of the three girls that interested me the most despite, or perhaps because, I still barely knew her.

I knew she was going to fail, though.

“…I understand. However, my plan was having the tracking phase happening here . It’s usually the hardest, expensive and most time-consuming part of recording so we would be cutting most of our costs by doing so and also getting a larger and more flexible time-span to work in comparison to booking a studio for the same. Mixing and mastering, now that is something I would rather have a professional do for us because my knowledge in the field only goes so far, but with the way the world has moved forward thanks to technological advancement, it is not unthinkable to have an audio engineer from Europe or America work on your tracks and then send them back to you… As far as I can tell, it is common practice and the price is fair, or so the common man says.”

Of course she wouldn’t bring us a half-baked idea. It was easy to tell she’d probably spent days researching people and if I asked, she could give me a list of names, pricing rates and previous works then and there . Dedication was her strong point.

“We probably will not require any more funds than we already receive from school, but if not, I will happily cover whatever extra costs we may ha-”

“No way. That won’t fly.”

Megumi interrupted Rin’s speech. Took her long enough.

This was the point when I stopped caring and put myself on automatic mode, something that has happened a lot ever since I began hanging out with them . It’s not the same as blanking out because of focusing too hard on an issue, but more like being aware of what was happening and really not giving a damn. I cared about them and I cared about the band but I also knew what it was going to be like because I’ve seen that scene a thousand times before: Megumi would say that it was unacceptable, get a part-time job or something to be able to help if it came to spending more, and make Rin always show her the budget so they could be sure Rin wasn’t just spending her own money. It wasn’t a matter of how much you had but working as a team of companions on the same level. It was mediocre storytelling bonding.

It was boring.

The only twist in that whole thing was that Akane made it all happen without knowing it would end this way. Her lack of experience against criminal masterminds brought her to this situation; her plan backfired because you simply can’t con an honest person. Good or bad, smart or dumb, extreme or not, both Megumi and Rin knew what they wanted and it was the exact same thing as what they said they wanted, while ulterior motives are the cornerstones of every single con ever. In their case, making them think they held the advantage over others by appealing to greed or self-protection only made them even more willing to share and sacrifice for a greater purpose. Clashing personalities aside, no main character would take a shady deal like that, especially with friends or allies involved, and those two occupy that spot in their respective minds. In that particular sense they were ‘normal.’

Now if Akane had all that in mind, knew just how deep this would go and did it intentionally so everyone would hug and feel closer, that would have been quite the impressive feat. However, no matter how much I wanted Akane to be a potential rival in mind games, a genius with strange ideals and goals, I knew that expecting her to think of subverting, inverting and playing straight fiction tropes with people was projecting and most likely far from what was really happening.

I saw Megumi laughing, Rin trying not to and Akane looking confused.

In only a little while, the situation had changed. Rin had real friends she didn’t need to put her mask on for, but did it anyway because it was fun for her, Megumi was less rebellious and more willing to learn even when it was way all above her head, Akane managed to talk to us whenever she had time for that little preparation, even though she’d still stutter around other people no matter how long it took her to mentally prepare herself, and I got my rest from bizarre things and all things related to my past life, to the point where I haven’t even called my parents yet. I should be happy, but this is all incomplete.

At the end of the day, we don’t always get what we want.

***************

As I approached the Student Council room, all I could think about was the mess in the corridor that led to it. Being a corner room, it was only expected that a few things would be gathered by its door, but what I was seeing was a whole new level. While I am sure the boxes and sorted equipment lying on the floor did not belong to the Council or to Rin, I couldn’t help but wonder how someone as easily irritable by imperfection as her could stand working near such a puddle of chaos.

Or whether the Student Council room wasn’t a former improvised storage room.

“Ah, Koukishin-kun. I am glad you found time to lend me your hand.” She was sitting behind a desk and did not raise her gaze to meet me. “We have a fair amount of work to get done with, so for optimal performance it would be better if there were no interruptions. Lock the door.”

“Sure.”

I turned around to do so. When the knob finished its turn with a click, I felt a sudden pressure on my back and wrists pushing me against the wooden door. While my first instinct was to react with violence and the muscles on my body were already contracted, the hot breath I felt on my neck that came along with the rough and breathy contralto made me reconsider.

“Why do you do this to me?”

“And what exactly am I doing?”

“You know just how much you tease me.”

She kept pressing me, and I reminded myself dedication was her strong point.

“As you know exactly why.”

“Because we both have issues with codependency.”

That usually results in bad relationships that are borderline parasitic. We see ourselves in a different light than other people, both for good and bad. The need for acceptance, the denial, a compromise of morals, the absurd judgments and addictions, a loyalty so extreme that we can tell when a situation is harmful but not leave it by making secondary interests a priority. We share that.

“It’s the agreement, our little war game.”

We figured that trait could be negated or at the very least canceled out if two people with it used each other as the target. Not to be in a proper relationship was important, as it would eventually just lead to a greater harm. One could say we were just killing time.

“Aren’t you having fun?” she asked.

I licked my lips and wondered if she was biting hers, as she usually did whenever I ‘played’ with her.

“Not as much as I would have if it was not just build-up with no resolution in sight.”

“You didn’t complain when we established the terms.”

Terms in question: no real couple action, just constant teasing. Every kind, whenever we feel like it and as much as we could possibly get away with, for as long as it doesn’t involve other people and similar stuff.

The pressure stopped because she finally let go.

“You say that, but you did not have a problem with running your finger through your collarbones when Akane-san could have easily seen you.”

“I was just performing a mindless, innocent action. It probably doesn’t mean a thing to other people who don’t have a thing for collarbones, you know.”

“Do not pretend you are unaware of how much I enjoy that!”

“Just don’t fret over it and we’ll be fine. Plus, denying you liked the thrill of having an audience for something that you and you alone consider risqué is very unusual. It is good, to know you react that way.”

“You are terrible.”

I finally heard her take a step back. I turned around only to be thrown against the door again, although this time it was my back that hit it. The front part of my body was basically covered by Rin’s as she stepped forth once again.

“Yes, yes I am, and you love it.” A few centimeters and my upward-pointing index finger blocking her lips were the only things between us. If we go down that road once, I can tell there will be no stopping us, so I’d rather not. “Don’t ruin the fun. The two of us kind of need it.”

“I know. I will not.”

No emotionally cathartic hugging happened after that, and it only served to remind me of how she was not Ryo. At the end of the day, that was both good and bad, but either way, that was constantly being splattered on my face.

Like something that is both poison and cure, depending purely on the occasion.

For our own private, petty reasons, ; we both needed escape valves for our tension and cravings, and they were too intense to involve others, whatever we felt towards other people. To ruin someone else’s life so yours won’t be so bad was not something we wanted to do. By sticking together without actually being together, we were hurting no one but ourselves, and to people like us that is a great achievement.

“That’s good. I was slightly worried you’d give up.”

“Am I not allowed to?”

“You are as free to go just as I am, but it would mean no more... fun.”

For a second that lasted two measures of forever, Rin just stared.

“Do not think lightly of me just because of the way you appeal to my tastes. The fun is yet to begin.”

It’s hard not to smirk whenever someone tells you something like that with a straight face.

“Really? I’ll look forward to it then.”

“And I shall look forward to the day you will get ready to move on so I can, as the common man says, make a real move on you.”

“Nah, surely you’ll get tired of me before that happens.”

“If I do, whose fault is it?” She willingly kissed my finger and then retreated, almost looking shy and romantic. “It is all on you, boy. Come on and set me free.”

I did say ‘almost.’

“I never thought you’d be the kind of person who quotes song lyrics to others.”

“Not to anyone. And Koukishin-kun, I am afraid there are many things you do not know about me yet.”

“I’m sure there are at least two or three I’d love to find out. A man of mystery, that’s me alright.”

Understatement of the decade.

“Is that so? Then I suggest my private investigator take the mysterious case of why the school water bill is here. It could be just an honest mistake, but it could easily lead to the unfolding of a complex money-washing scheme or something similar.”

She meant it as a joke, but I’ve seen too many things like that happen to find it funny.

“You seem disappointed, but I have to remind you I asked for your help and running errands is part of it. Not all can be fun and games.”

Affirmation which points out she honestly thinks I’m upset over not ‘playing around’ with her rather than stunned at how possible/accurate her joke’s assumption could. Given that I did not tell her about my past, it’s only remarkable and a bit too touchy that she had to go and say something like that. Not that she was ever ‘not uncommon.’

So yeah, we weren’t on the same page all the time.

I took the bill in my hands, nodded and left. As I closed the door behind me, I felt like I was stepping on something weird and realized my shoe lace had come undone. I squatted down so I could fix it, an action which consequently made me realize there was a faint shadow being cast near me that didn’t belong to an object.

Turning my head around to face the source just confirmed that the person was trying to conceal her presence. However, it was hard to hide properly in such a messy corridor because moving the objects would result in noise.

“…just how much did you hear, Akane?”

“P-plenty.”

There goes playing, here comes drama.

“Look, it’s…”

“G-go out with m-me.”

Was I shocked? Was I stunned? Did anyone see that coming? Considering my personal history, yeah, probably.

“…what?”

“T-tomorrow.” She breathed deeply and looked down, as if the composure she was searching for was physical and just fell out of her like contact lenses, but it didn’t seem to work because the request she made was quite probably way out of her comfort zone. “Keep it a s-secret, I’ll k-keep yours.”

“Oh.” For a moment all I could do was stare at her. “A-alright.”

With an eye and a frown visible amidst the sea of messy bangs, her face went absolutely serious, borderline furious.

“Don’t make fun of my stutter.”

Taken aback by her sudden shift I almost stuttered again, which would have been quite the portrayal of reverse psychology at work.

“Didn’t mean to. Sorry.”

She bowed, which was out of place even in Japan given the circumstances, and left in a hurry, walking even weirder than usual now that she didn’t have someone’s shadow to do it on. I was left standing there wondering how off the mark someone has to be to think a shy girl who, in the light of such events, seems to have a crush on him is the same kind of maniac manipulator as he is. Talk about being delusional… or right on spot, I couldn’t tell at all.

Oh boy, normal life can be tough too.

***************

Insisting on getting the chair by the window was a good move of mine.

Regardless of my interest or will to help Rin with the Student Council issues, she surely managed it all by herself before I even considered moving to this town. I spent time with her mostly because I had a very special reason to hang out in school for a little while that day. You see, from the Student Council room I had a great view of the entirety of the teacher’s parking lot, thus making my self-inflicted mission easier.

A peek outside, nothing yet.

Having observed the parking lot for a while, I could state without doubt it was always half empty (or half-full depending on your perception of the world). It was probably due to this being a small, increasingly developing town that didn’t need the number of teachers necessary to fill the spots. The school itself wasn’t as crowded as it could be, its three buildings filled with vacant rooms.

Numbers written on the paper placed in front of me made me sigh; the window shows no signs of what I’ve been waiting for.

Alternatively, it could have once been a much greater school both in staff, popularity and students in the past, because judging from the money invested in this place, the architect obviously had had bigger plans than an allegedly girl-predominant school in a small town whose other schools allegedly were crowded or lousy, conditions which resulted in flocks of students journeying daily to the larger town nearby.

One more look at the window, nothing yet.

Flocks of commuters were not an unusual sight, and it would explain why the regional division of the government would want to invest in making this town closer to what you’d expect of a big town. Based on the prices of everything I’ve bought so far and the fact the security of the school was demonstrably precarious, my educated guess said the economy here probably wasn’t doing that great. Perfectly understandable as a direct consequence of urban migration: living Here is cheaper but good open schools and work that really pays is There, so you would have to be rather stupid if, being able to afford it, you don’t spend all the day There and then just come back Here to sleep, which leads to you spending money There in activities such as lunch and recreation, money which Here was relying on because your town needs more than taxes to function as a whole, and then…

“I have to go, catch you later.”

Rin looked befuddled, possibly because I said that in the middle of helping her with the financial reports, but she didn’t try to stop me when I got my bag and ran out, although she might have had I actually given her the chance instead of moving so fast out of the room it was practically teleporting.

Yes, I actually helped her. We didn’t just almost fool around all day.

At that moment I couldn’t tell if it would be easy to make it up to her, but I could afford being treated badly for a while for the sake of my goal, so I kept running down the stairs all the way to the building exit. All I had to do was to make sure I wouldn’t lose sight of Reikoku-sensei because I knew she was up to something.

How?

The third time I went to the Student Council room to help Rin, which coincidentally was the day when Rin proposed this little game of sorts to me, I saw Reikoku-sensei go outside the school gates but leave her car behind. and as I stayed there for a couple hours because I, well, accepted Rin’s proposal, I can testify my homeroom teacher did not return while I was there. That night she had not gone to my place, but on the following day she acted like it was because she had a lot of work to do.

Over the many occasions our self-proclaimed band leader and only current member of the Student Council required my aid and/or just wanted to be together I realized there was, indeed, a pattern.

There was something she hid, and that was why I was going to follow her to find out exactly what ‘it’ was. Now, several interpretations could exist for my behavior, such as jealousy due to her revelation that she had someone she could call a ‘significant other,’ paranoia over the fact we never heard from Ayaka or her family again, concern for her well-being as she could be coping with the treatment of a disease, inner desire to get involved in something mysterious again and many other rationalizations to justify what I would describe as curiosity, raw and pure.

I needed to know.

More important than whether I was being betrayed, knowing was all I wanted and craved for. There was, of course, the thrill of the chase, but it was nothing compared to the revelation at the end of every chapter, to the climax achieved in those glorious moments. It was hard to admit I was addicted to it, and even though it usually came along with the rest of the process that was depriving me of sanity and killing me little by little, I had to have that in my life.

Too bad there wasn’t an Adventurers Anonymous organization to help people like me. I hope it’s because there aren’t many of us. If there are, I feel as sorry for them j I do for myself, and there’s no end to how much I feel sorry for myself, especially when I realized I ended up growing fond of the thrill to the extent the Heaven I worked so hard to conquer looks dull and lifeless.

Following her as she went towards the commercial part of town was interesting.

It wasn’t the first time I found myself having to stalk (or to use a less derogatory term, tail) someone. I could pride myself in not being a specialist of sorts, but not stupid enough to make the grossest beginner mistakes: catching up with her wasn’t necessary and for all effects it would be an undesirable outcome, as the only thing I wanted at the moment was to learn of her after-school activities. And if approaching her was out of question, there was absolutely no need to follow her from close distance; if you want to follow someone without being found out in seconds, it helps to keep just close enough not to lose sight of your target when he, she or person of indeterminate/intermediary gender turns a corner. Chances are that your moment of distraction will result in you losing your target or getting hit and knocked out by it.

Now, it was not a question of trust but survival instincts; while she could be just going out to bowl on a regular basis or a similar activity, my teacher most likely was going after something related to supernatural forces (and the probability of that only increased when I considered the constrained timeframe she had, having a day job and spending time with me most of her nights) and if that was the case, were my presence discovered I would not only expect but hope she’d attack me. Reason being that if, upon realization she was being tracked like prey, Reikoku-sensei didn’t at the very least try to confront someone who observed her, it would mean she definitely wasn’t as reliable as she tried to show during the Ayaka incident.

I wouldn’t make it a breeze for her, though. Since I wanted to test her perception, I figured I should conceal myself the best I could, which was harder to do in a small town because it wasn’t crowded like metropolises were. Hardly any people or cars to hide behind, and it made the secrecy part of the task much harder on me than it made the chase easier. I changed sides of the street once in a while to stay always on the one with better shadows to hide in.

Following her got harder because the rain and wind came suddenly, fast and hot upon the town, as if with the intent to blind me. She wouldn’t stop or hurry and there was some grace in that, which I could only assume would vanish if she got herself a really bad flu or pneumonia.

I kept watching her from afar even when she stopped near a factory and just stood there for what seemed to be hours. Checking my phone didn’t seem like a good idea as I could miss all the magic in a blink, her behavior being strange enough for me to assume there was something big going on and I did right by coming all the way here.

A short-haired young guy in a white t-shirt came out and then she followed him into an alley until he actively noticed her.

“Alright, this is getting annoying. Come here and let’s talk.”

“…”

“Who are you and why are you following me? Actually, I don’t care about who you are but why are you following me?”

“…”

But my teacher just wouldn’t answer it.

“Look, you’re pretty and all but a little too old for me. Sorry.”

“…”

“I even like the whole concept of ‘stalker’ girl. It’s a pretty good archetype if you ask me, if you can pull it off. Not that there’s anything wrong with what you’re doing, anyway.”

“…”

She kept closing the distance.

“No offense, I guess I just prefer my girlfriends younger. It’s a matter of taste and you shouldn’t feel rejected.You are attractive for someone your age. Then again, I haven’t been with anyone for a while now so it’s no time to be picky. And maybe it’s not so much ‘taste’ as it could be just ‘history’… never dated anyone older than me, you see. Could be nice, much better than what I’m used to. Had the chance once, but didn’t take it. Not the only bad decision I’ve made, either.”

“…”

“You see, dropping out of school and then working in a factory was never what I wanted for myself. Maybe I wasn’t a genius like everyone else thought, but at least I was bright enough to get good grades. College bored me, though. You should go there to learn, not to get grades doing stuff you already did before. I waited my whole life to actually learn what I wanted, and after a few months of not doing it when I was supposed to, I quit.”

“…”

Closer.

“Not the cleverest move, I know. Sorry I keep talking about it; it’s just that you look too much like a teacher for me not to think about the subject. I don’t talk to people often either, so sorry if you don’t enjoy this monologue. Adults don’t seem to like other people to expose their inner thoughts publicly, but younger people are quite the audience. They can still learn, so it’s always good to hang out with them. No, not always. Still.”

“…”

“I take it you’re not here to talk either... well, thanks for letting me. The other people that fought me sure weren’t this nice, letting me speak my mind and stuff. They died because of that. You probably will too, being within my ability’s reach and all.”

“…”

“Sorry… I was inconsiderate again. Is this what it’s all about? Were you friends with those guys? They did come after me, so no one can blame me for crushing them like maggots or ants or little rodents with a hammer. It’s a pity those kids got involved, but then again, by that time they were supposed to be at school anyway, so maybe we can disregard that as karma? I mean, come on. I drop school, unemployment followed by job I’m overqualified and underpaid for ensues; they skip school and die a gruesome death getting involved in a fight between super powered freaks. Guess we all learned a lesson there, right?”

“…”

“Well, I’m tired now. I’ll just finish you and then go home to eat a sandwich, perhaps complain about shows I don’t watch on the internet. Thank you for listening, though, I missed doing this. I’ll miss you too.” He let out a sigh and pinched his own left cheek as if to bring himself back to the real world. “So, shall we beg-”

A snapping sound of what it would now be generous to refer to as a jaw. He never finished his sentence because Reikoku-sensei clearly wasn’t chivalrous enough to wait.

Instead of taking a small break, she pressed on as he fell, her her well-known telescopic pointer in hand as his head hit the ground. That would be a great move if she was ready for what came next, and unfortunately she wasn’t.

Movement took place, too fast for my eyes to catch. Reikoku-sensei’s body flew away, resulting in impact with her back straight against the wall. Pain showed on her face in such an expressive way I reflexively reached for my own back.

Only when the humongous blur stopped did I realize what had happened. I saw that his arm had become significantly larger. As in monstrous, borderline demonic.

It was hard not to make that association when a guy has a multitude of horns coming out from his body.

Whether it was my teacher’s fault or not I couldn’t tell, but the fact remained that her enemy’s face looked anything but human at that particular point. His lower canines had become horns, even though they reminded me of the massive trademark features of a saber-toothed tiger; nothing compared to the increasing number of horns in his arms and legs, the pointed keratin-based projections literally blooming from his body. Ironically enough, not a single one on his forehead.

Just by looking at it I knew it was the work of a Shugoshin.

Reikoku-sensei got up and charged without a moment of hesitation. “Hah!”

While the guy’s ability seemed impressive in power at first, the moment I saw the bones fade into a cloud of dust I realized how useless that ability would be in an extended battle, the flaw so visible it felt like cheating . If Reikoku-sensei did not realize it, she probably wasn’t cut out for going around getting in fights and I’d be sure to tell her that right after saving her.

Once bitten, twice shy: the moment he saw her using the pointer as a whip to get him in the face again the guy did a back-flip, which was not enough to avoid completely her advance but, in what I can only assume was a streak of luck, the attack landed on the soles of his feet and somehow propelled him far away instead of causing injuries. At which point I found myself wondering where did luck end and circus performer skills began.

The man breathed as deeply as he could, a very prominent vein popping on his forehead.

“Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarge!”

His second attack was smarter, as he used the distance and the way he landed to crouch, run and throw himself forward in a tackle and activated his skill just at the end, making his body an enormous spiked cannon ball. It seemed like he figured out his flaw, so things were bound to get harder for my teacher.

It was a power designed for one-hit-kills and useless for everything else. Once he projected the heavy horns it was impossible for him to move. Punching with the horns, even if they were activated just a moment before they connected, was a ridiculous, amateur tactic. Humongous or not, a limb moving in a specific direction with predicable trajectory is definitely not the same as a giant ball of pure speed possibly weighing way more than a big car, the reason being simple: a sideways dodge was only possible with the first.

Her wide open eyes told me she knew death was near, but I found more surprise than despair.

Jumping over it was out of question without using propulsion from kicking a wall which sounded too hard to perform properly, not to say unrealistic… which could be seen as a perfectly reasonable goal considering she was fighting a man covered in magically materialized horns that weigh tons. Still, she just did the more logical thing and retreated.

Not to a usual position for the situation.

“Knight mode.”

Reikoku-sensei’s posture was the typical fencers’ en garde, her telescopic pointer held like a foil. I’d never have imagined the woman I saw as a somewhat-safe-for-work dominatrix teacher knock-off with a penchant for manipulation would be the kind to, against a hellish enemy, choose the high road and duel in the way only gentlemen would (or should, at the very least). Considering he was a walking rock of massive destruction, she was playing against type and could easily die because of that.

My interest was piqued.

She jumped forward and attacked using her pointer with immense strength, which made me wonder if the green glow I saw was nothing but phosphorescence instead of an amazing power. Her strike did not seem any less dangerous than the ones she used against Ayaka’s Shugoshin, although the shine aspect was not present in this battle, which I could only, taking into account how much information I had, assume was because of the difference in luminosity an alley has when compared to a closed warehouse. No matter how interested I would ever be in a fight, it was only natural for me to pay attention to details like that. Why exactly, I couldn’t tell.

Despite harming a fraction of the horn armor, the attack was not all that effective. As before, the young man’s primary weapons just vanished after usage. It confirmed my hypothesis: he ‘projected’ them rather than expelled them from his body or such. The fact his clothes remained intact was a huge clue.

The moment he ‘erased’ the horns, she went after him. One could easily see my teacher meant business.

She switched the position of her rear and front legs and stamped her foot as if kicking the ground. I could only understand why when he did too: she made it look like she was attacking his torso immediately, which gave him enough time to cross his arms in front of it to limit the harm she could do. However, the little kick at the end propelled her enough so she could position her arm like she were working her biceps and aim for the head with the tip of her pointer.

Even from this distance I could see her eyes flickering as she repeatedly stabbed at him, every thrust so fast it reminded me of a pneumatic jackhammer at work. Her foe did the best he could to retreat, but she would only push forward until her attacks connected with the ground.

A mildly thick cloud of dust rose, a result of the damage the concrete had taken from the man’s extremely heavy wall of marrow spikes and the hammering of Reikoku-sensei’s telescopic pointer, but it wasn’t enough to block my view of the battlefield completely for more than a second.

I got to catch a glimpse of his evolution process.

It was obvious the man wasn’t going to bow down before her, but it was also clear he had become aware of the limitations of his ability against a speed-based opponent. Anyone could see it was a situation where he had to either change his methods or accept his defeat. He put his left arm in front of his body like a butler, or more precisely, as if to do a horizontal karate-like hand chop.

It was only expected that he could and would adapt. As far as I was concerned, at first Ayaka’s power caused potent hallucinations or altered reality using objects, but the moment she needed to fight it changed almost completely, even if you disregard the whole ‘possession’ thing. I knew better than to expect other people with Shugoshin to stay the same.

Likewise, this guy learned too and pretty fast.

He focused his power. His horns emerged from his left arm and he slashed the air sideways generating a shrieking wave of pure pressure strong enough to make my mentor flinch before she was sent flying away.

“Fu-GUH!”

But the profanity cut short by visibly excruciating pain was his, and it was his fault for not calculating the outcome.

He had dislocated his shoulder; his arm was hanging there unnaturally enough to make the stomach churn. Keeping in mind the sheer weight of the manifestation of his power, it was no surprise at all: using such heavy horns that way would surely result in damage to him.

It happened specifically because he tried to stay still and go against the natural flow of Gravity, sustaining the suspension of such a tremendous burden to try and reach her at shoulder height while not allowing his body to move as a consequence. Even if one can gather the strength to maintain it for the whole maneuver, it doesn’t mean the body will take it well. There was a toll to pay and the joint was the losing end.

Doing his best to ignore the pain, the man scanned the alley with his eyes, analyzing how much harm the attack managed to deal, probably to see if it was worth it while thinking of more effective ways to use his improved weapon.

Reikoku-sensei was still getting up when he started to furiously run towards her and payback was due when he reached her, only this time it wasn’t a swinging arm he would use.

Right foot in the air.

Stomping the concrete with his bone-encased leg like a sledgehammer, he used the ground itself as a limiter and leveraged Gravity to his advantage. The man missed her feet by little more than an inch. However, before she could strike back and retaliate for this nearly-perfect attempt to cripple, one more horn, the longest of them all, rose out of his knee.

“AHH!”

My throat closed instantly upon hearing her distressed cry.

As he ‘released,’ she fell to the ground. I was thankful when I saw her writhing; it was a better alternative than the one I had in mind. I could feel the blood rushing through my veins again, although the anxiety would take a moment to go away completely. Ready to intervene, I positioned my body to rush over, but not a second before it was strictly necessary.

If I had to save her, it would probably mean she wasn’t capable of saving anyone, which meant this whole situation was hopeless. It wasn’t me putting her life on the line, though: I did not force this outcome in any way. She was an adult and responsible for her deeds. If she went after someone she should be ready for whatever consequences she could face, including harm and eventual death.

I needed to test her, and if it took priority over her assured safety it was no one’s fault but hers.

So far, she was passing. Despite being wounded, she did not let go of her weapon of choice for a single moment, going as far as holding her bleeding stomach with her unused hand to try and stop the bleeding. She even took the small time he stood still (after a possible overload due to changing the structure of attack halfway?) to gain distance by crawling. Good to know she was at the very least familiar enough with pain to understand crying over it meant death and pretending the wound wasn’t there meant death in the long run.

His eyes focused once again. So did mine.

The undamaged arm was now raised and pointing a few meters above my teacher’s head. A huge bastard sword-shaped agglomerate of lines encased the limb far beyond its extent. This time, the bones didn’t just come into existence: the framework appeared like a bad omen and was increasingly ‘filled in,’ becoming more and more of a solid and visibly crushing reality.

There was no way she could escape that without a hidden card up her sleeve.

“Die,” he said, with no emotion in the intonation but a smile wide enough for me to see the blood all over his jaw.

My body screamed for me to move, mostly because I felt like I never would again if she died right there because I expected way too much of her. My mind, on the other hand, knew better. I don’t think I could take him on in a direct fight either, so even if I were to rush in and save her I’d have to do it by distracting him.

The marrow guillotine dropped.

Cursing mixed profanities under my breath, I ran, bending space and time or at the very least trying the hardest I could. From my viewpoint, despite the speed I was running there was barely any noise at all. Once again, against all odds, my lightning gallop got me close enough to act.

At that point I realized I wasn’t needed and sighed deeply.

In the face of danger, my teacher dropped the knight act and just rolled on the ground towards him, getting so close to his body the only things they had between themselves were their clothes. A fraction of moment later, the hand that once held her injury gripped his throat. Whether his concentration was gone, he was trying to regain full control of the one good arm he had left or he just realized there was just no possibility of hitting her with his attack specifically because of how massive his weapon was, the fact remained he ‘released.’

She landed on top of him like a rider mounting a horse and kept choking with one hand as he struggled as the best he could with a dislocated shoulder. She raised the telescopic pointer up high.

Her eyes were filled with scorn when the beating began.

“Five.”

The smashing sounds of pointer against skull and thorax contrasted with the monotone in her voice. What went through her mind was hard to tell, but I could hypothesize: to her, he just was not worth the emotion. He was just another foe to be defeated.

However, if that was the case…

“Ah!”

…she wasn’t that different from him.

The man suffocated and Reikoku-sensei wouldn’t back down. In order to make sure he wouldn’t get a chance to get up again, she did not let go, even when her weapon hit her own arm as a consequence.

“Four.”

The whole scene expanded in my eyes, working like refraction in crystals.

“Ghh!”

His bloodshot eyes were pure anger at that point, the expression reflecting a mix between the very first time one finds an obstacle that cannot be overcome and having faced those one too many times. To be fair, it was stupid of him to try to overpower her when he had those reflexes.

“Three.”

It was brutal, thus fascinating: the kind of wicked you just can’t look away from.

“Mh!”

His strength was finally giving out. No matter how much endurance he had there was hardly anything he could do.

“Two.”

“…”

“One.”

After a moment of silence, I approached her.

“So is this what you do for fun? Cornering super-powered sociopaths and trying to exorcise them by beating them to a pulp?” Real smart of me to say that after seeing her perform that action. “Are you okay?”

Reikoku-sensei’s eyelids twitched for a moment when she looked at me.

“I’ll be fine, but I have to admit this was more than just a scratch. Where did you get so properly scratched?”

Oh, that. It was surprising what she could see from a distance, especially considering I expected her to be in an altered state of consciousness at that point. On the other hand, it could be specifically the reason why she was able to.

“You noticed. Also, don’t you mean ‘badly scratched?’”

“Of course I did, and no, whatever or whomever did that to you did it good. That cannot be said of your other minor bruises and injuries, however, and I can tell you did not get them here. Are you going to tell me the truth now or make up an excuse like the ones you keep throwing around like seeds in a field?”

As there were enough of them already germinating in front of my eyes and on their natural way to becoming trees with bitter fruits it seemed excessively tiresome and superfluous to spread some more.

“The scratches are recreational, for lack of a better word.” They actually were, to someone other than me. “Not a big deal at all, just teenagers and their things. What you really want to know about is the second source of cuts and bruises, and in a way I am sure you already do.”

For one moment I assumed she’d issue a snarky remark regarding the recreational aspect I mentioned. No, more than assumed, I hoped that was the case: it was a red herring devised especially for her, but somehow it failed to live up to my expectations. Reikoku-sensei did not bite and make fun of my generation’s experimentation standards when it comes to sexuality and relationships.

She got up, tried to clean the dust off herself, walked towards me and then just gazed into my eyes like she had lost something in my iris.

“You are hurting yourself.”

In retrospect, that was easily the deepest thing she ever said to me.

“Not directly, but yeah. I’m trying to figure out exactly how I did ‘that.’ It’s not something I recall being able to do before coming here.”

Stopping Ryo’s freefall could and probably should have killed both of us, but while the fact it seemed like a good idea to me at the time would imply I have a mental problem, what bothers me the most is that I managed to pull that off, clearly showing there were other forces at work. Running through a warehouse that fast was already hard to believe but the freefall thing outright defies Physics, and yet it happened. “And I guess you have a clue, but you also seem to have reasons for not wanting to tell me about it so I won’t push you.”

My teacher stared at the ground. “It’s best if you don’t know much about it. I’d be perfectly happy if you had not gotten involved at all with this too, but it probably is too late for that.”

“But doesn’t being ‘already involved’ qualify me as a target? Because if so, you’re only making me an easier target to hit by not supplying information, and things were not looking particularly good for me to begin with.”

And although I did not want to consider the possibility, it was hard not to imagine the reason why she was suppressing data could have been because having me as a sitting duck could benefit her. Whatever was the cause of the strange things would come after me and she could easily track the enemy that way. However, that would imply Reikoku-sensei did not care for me much more than a chess player cared for one of his pawns. I wished I didn’t have to doubt her, considering how much she seemed to genuinely care about me, but then again she was the one that made me realize I have this bonding issue where I get attached too fast.

“Not in this case. As far as I’m concerned, the ‘Ayaka incident’ was an independent, completely self-contained event. A random occurrence. A mistake, if you will.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“Do not underestimate me, Koukishin-kun. I was here long before you were and I know how this works.”

The messed up hair and the blood on the clothes didn’t reassure me.

“No offense, sensei, but we got to Ayaka before you did and we had absolutely no idea what was going on or what exactly we were looking for. Whatever you’re doing at the moment is not foolproof.”

“Answer me one thing first: what is? Do you honestly believe there is anything in life that is absolute and flawless? Stay around anything long enough and you’ll see the cracks in every mask and mirror. No such thing as fighting a war and leaving unharmed. You finding her before I did was just a coincidence.”

“So our deaths would have been mere battle causalities in your eyes? Is this what you’re trying to tell me? That we’re not safe and there isn’t much you can do about it? Well, I’ve got a question for you, teacher: just how many times have you lost students because of all th-”

My left hand stopped hers a split second before she could hit me good. Even so, my cheek was already warm in anticipation of the shock and friction of a dramatic slap that never came. It was an instantaneous psychological reaction and thus too fast to avoid by having simple control over one’s body, much like Reikoku-sensei’s breaking down in front of me.

At first I wasn’t moved by her tears. When I realized I made so many girls cry in such a short period of time, I found myself wishing I had not been fast or strong enough to stop her. I kind of deserved that slap.

“…I have a back-up plan.”

“And what if that doesn’t work either?”

“Then we’ll all die miserable deaths together after living miserable lives separately. Is this the answer you wanted?”

The sarcasm that dripped off her words was both a bad sign and a good sign and nowhere as awkward as the elephant in the room, which happened to be an unconscious, recently exorcised person that illustrated far too well what we were talking about.

“Yes. I needed to know you didn’t lose it completely, my favorite martyr.”

“Koukishin-kun, I am an adult. This means I know that what I have to do and what I want to are often going to be separate things, and this goes both ways. Children’s television bunny idealism alone will not save anyone and ruthless pragmatism can only take one so far. But I guess I don’t have to explain that to the person that effectively put his best friend out of the way for her sake. Bittersweet as it looked, I can’t deny that I felt very proud to see you using the one method that could work effectively.”

“It seemed only logical. If I had run away, she’d try to find me and get into more trouble because we’re both just that lucky. If I stayed and let her get involved, considering what happened with Akane, chances are sooner or later she’d get herself killed by one of these freaks you don’t think are out to kill me. Even if I tried to break off the friendship directly, she’d see the flag from miles away and know I was doing it for her sake, which would only bring us closer and consequently make her even more of a target.”

Hesitation showed on her face as she tried to fill the blanks using the information I just gave her.

It was understandable. Sure, it didn’t seem to be a popular solution as it didn’t particularly please anyone, except for Kouma Yon (and even that wasn’t a certain thing, as her presentation of this as a possible and to an extent presumably desirable outcome when she threatened me could be just a tsundere moment). But, even if this wasn’t quite happily ever, who was I kidding when I thought just winning against Akane would be enough to have a safe, decent life with Ryo? It was an idealistic miracle to gather strength I didn’t know I had to save the day when everything was going to hell, but it was obvious it couldn’t stand as a life philosophy on a daily basis.

All I was doing was getting the adhesive bandage off quickly. There would be pain, but it would be a dull one compared to how excruciating it would be if we stayed together and something happened to her.

Between dull pain and sharp pain, between Scylla and…Charybdis; if you’re going to hurt either way, minimize damage on the ones you love. Alternatively, maximize it on the ones you fight against.

Either way it sucked to know I wouldn’t be complaining all the time about this routine life or the days full of real schemes and such if I had Ryo by my side. No, thinking about it more carefully, I would be complaining about it every single moment but I’d be better off with my best friend. She wouldn’t be better off with me near her, and that’s why I took my distance.

Not so close she’d notice me, but far enough so I could watch her and protect her if it ever came to that.

“So you stayed but drifted away from her because of a new circle of friends you have more characteristics in common with. That happens often and is so realistic no one bothers to question that kind of development. It’s an unwritten law of reality that takes precedence over fiction’s. Teenage bonds can vanish as easily as new ones are formed. By now, she probably thinks you’re a side-character that got a featured in an episode or an aborted arc in her story. An otherwise reasonable plan. Unfortunately for you, it depends on the target having a predictable mindset, or at the very least very similar to yours.”

Which could be said of her in my story too; it works both ways, especially considering my sudden involvement with Rin was a direct consequence from this plan. A workaround rather than a solution.

“As expected of sensei, you got the main idea but missed a detail.”

She seemed annoyed by my remark but intrigued enough to save the retort for later.

“And what would that be?”

“There is absolutely no one in this world that is as similar to me as Shiina Ryo is in every way. This gambit I’m pulling off actually relies on that.”

“How so?”

“She knows that we’re the same and is afraid of me too.” At the end of the day, we don’t always get what we want. “It’s that simple.”

Reikoku-sensei frowned, the disapproval on her face so evident only a governmental bureau could deny it.

“Sure.”

“Now that we got that clear, what are we going to do about this guy?” We did not get anything cleared up, but I’d settle for her doubt while there were more urgent matters on hand, or rather lying on the ground unconscious after getting beat up by a sadist school teacher. “Because you told me to take the girls away last time I have no idea how your post-exorcism system works whatsoever. Should I help you bind him or anything like that? He’s bound to wake up sooner or later, considering how long our conversations go.”

Without waiting for her reply, I approached my teacher’s defeated foe. As my hand reached out to touch him, I felt something odd.

He was cooling.

“That won’t be necessary, Koukishin-kun.” Despite the choice of words, the tone was matter-of-factly. “Unfortunately, this one is already…”

***************

“So, are you ready to talk?”

“…”

Her house was the quintessential mess, making it easy to see that her lackluster, lazy attitude weren’t limited to her clothes outside school. There was just too much irony when compared to the rigid-borderline-OCD-level tidiness present in her work life.

I could only wonder if she brought Ayaka here.

After two days, my mind was already diverging from topic and calming down, in a sense. My body, on the other hand, still got fierce shivers and felt like it was all beyond my control. Quite an achievement from the previous state it was in, just after ‘that’ happened.

When I saw that corpse in front of me I crashed real hard, like an x86 trying to run a modern First Person Shooter.

Dead people don’t bother me; it’s passive and helpless. Nothing you can do about it, it already happened. However, people dying, especially if they are killed in front of me, is both active and disturbing. Ever since a certain point of my life I would rather not mention, if anyone dies in front of me I get catatonic.

It’s the kind of thing one cannot just ‘get over,’ a trauma that will probably haunt me for the whole duration of my life. I considered therapy but I’ve never been stable enough regarding location to take it seriously, therefore me staying seriously mentally unstable instead. Unless you call talking to Kouma ‘therapy,’ which I personally wouldn’t. Even if I did, I’d rather never bring the subject up, especially with someone as Freudian as her.

I don’t need any more mistaken judgments; this whole story started because of that.

“Koukishin-kun, you’re not mad at me, right?”

And there was another one.

Like me, Reikoku-sensei was quick to take things personal. Which was selfish and borderline silly because if I was mad and it was relevant compared to the fact I’ve been catatonic and speechless for two days and counting, I probably wouldn’t answer if I could, or rather would just walk away instead of being interrogated. Hell, angry or not, if I could I would have left when she gave me the sponge bath.

I swear that actually happened. I was catatonic, not delusional.

In the face of that accusation there was only one way to respond, given my state at the moment.

“…”

But getting used to not receiving the answer one wanted was part of the daily life of a public school teacher, so it was obvious that stubborn-by-nature adult would not give a traumatized me a rest until I actually spelled it out for her, which as a matter of fact I couldn’t do at the moment. Not talking for a couple days made me wonder if I still could, while she seemed to want to talk for the two of us.

“It wasn’t my fault and you weren’t supposed to see it anyway, so if there’s anyone to blame it was him for being a troublemaker and resisting and you for following me around.”

Denial and shifting the blame was useless when murder was involved, and this definitely was not about morals. Right or wrong, someone died as a consequence of fighting her and I have every right to be upset or even fear her, considering she brought and kept me, the only witness, here. The line between patient and captive was just too thin under those terms.

“I called the school and said I had a sick relative I needed to take care of, but I can’t keep using that excuse or the Council will not be pleased no matter how nice they are. Either way, to be able to work without being worried all the time I need to know you’re going to be okay on your own. I’ll stay with you for today, though. If you want me to.”

Had I the ability to speak properly I would tell her to go away, although that could be seen as a conceptual mistake, this being her house and if anyone had to leave it should be me. Getting up and walking out the door probably wouldn’t have the same psychological/dramatic effect, however.

“…”

“I know it’s hard to believe someone under these circumstances and you have probably been through a lot before to get a reaction that screams post-traumatic stress disorder like that, but you have to understand I did what I had to do.”

Oh, I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware of how stalking people and beating them to death in mildly dark alleys was part of a Japanese teacher’s work.

“…”

“Thing is, there are many of those. People like Ayaka and that guy, I mean. I have been researching them for a while now. They all seem to share a similar mindset, in the sense that they always seem willing to fight or manage to get themselves in trouble because apparently getting powers doesn’t come to those with the common sense to keep it on the down low. Alternatively, if there are indeed people fitting that criteria they must be really, really good at it then.”

Maybe, just maybe, the fact those persons were all aggressive or hot-blooded had to do with the fact they were, I don’t know, possessed by supernatural beings.

“…”

“What I’m trying to do is bait them out: with tempers like those, how could they stand the fact there’s someone out there defeating each and every one of them? They’re bound to come after me, which is exactly what I want.”

Based on the premise ‘they’ work in groups. Judging by Ayaka’s and that guy’s case, I wouldn’t say so; they all seem autonomous. Of course, I could be wrong to assume such, as she has been doing this for a while now and probably has seen more than a couple situations. She did say Ayaka’s was an isolated incident, so there is a chance she didn’t misjudge and there is at least one faction of them.

“…”

“If they come out one by one, I fight them. When they realize they have to come all at once I will try and bring them to my special trap. I don’t feel like talking about it now because it would take too long, but the details are in the safe. The combination is seven-nine-five-three-one-three-three-eight. Repeating, seven-nine-five-three-one-three-three-eight. If anything ever goes wrong, the data you’ll need to blow this town up is there.”

I prayed it wasn’t literal but knowing my teacher it could as well be.

“…”

“They took… killed a student of mine.”

“…”

For all I knew about what happened to Ayaka, so did she.

“Long before Ayaka’s case, there was a girl named Minato Suzuki. She wasn’t particularly bright or pretty. She wasn’t funny or lonely, she didn’t have any special talent... she was as regular as it gets. Regular grades, regular speech, regular number of friends, regular everything. There was virtually no one who would look at her twice, except someone did.”

This is giving me the weirdest vibe because of one really unusual dream I had a long time ago, just before I got involved with the band.

“...”

“I got to the room in the second building where she was standing, apparently untouched. I felt like something wrong happened to her, so I touched her shoulder to comfort her. Then she fell apart. He had slashed her in small, perfect cubes of three centimeters each side. She just disassembled in front of me.”

She skipped a good part of the story but I could not say she didn’t have my full attention at least from that last line on.

“…”

“And you know what really bothered me? Keep in mind I’ve seen my fair share of bad things, but this ticked me off big time. That despite what he did to her, despite being beat up really bad because when I found the bastard ‘deathly furious’ was just a euphemism, he didn’t even seem to remember it. Like she was just one more, nothing special about her. Mediocrity followed her all the way to the grave.”

“…”

“I decided to meet her parents to know how I’d deliver the news, although my plan was to do it indirectly so suspicion wouldn’t fall upon me. Her parents assumed she ran away, and after seeing how her family life worked I wouldn’t have blamed her if she did. Alcoholic, gambling-addicted father along with deny-reality-and-everything-will-be-fine mother is a lot for a kid to deal with. One can guess acting like she was nothing special was her self-defense mechanism to avoid having people interested enough to find out. Maybe not, this is just speculation after all.”

“…”

“I knew how to hide a body and considering the emotionless way the parents reacted to their daughter’s disappearance, it was probably for the best I did. No one at school seemed to care much after the first week either, so I let the rumor spread and added a few bits of my own to it. She deserved better than this, so I made her interesting. It was all I could do for her at that point.”

“…”

“So now if you ask anyone in this or the nearby towns about Minato Suzuki, they’ll tell you she was more than just another girl that vanished one day. They’ll talk for years about how she outsmarted a foreign con artist that passed by, how they fell in love and eloped. How she’s still out there, probably in Vienna or Berlin playing cards against the best of the best. Some might even say she came here to run away from her past, having been a genius all the time. Reports of events she was involved with have her part magnified and elevated her to a status that I don’t know she ever dreamed of, and all fame is good fame.”

“…”

“But I digress. You know how bad it gets when those jerks are around. Innocent people get involved, regardless of how important in society they are. People die for nothing, and I can’t have that.”

“…”

“According to my personal research, for now it seems like this particular region is the only one, say, ‘infected’. So I hunt them whenever I can and expect them to hunt me back, and I told you that because, though I fall, I expect you not to take my place, but finish it for me no matter how drastic this might be. Too much of a burden, I know. Still, you can’t deny this is bound to get in your way sooner or later if you plan to live around here and in the way of those you care for. It will be the worst case scenario if you do, but it still doesn’t mean we can’t win.”

“…”

“Whatever happens, this can’t spread all over the world. Even if it means staining our hands with blood.”

“…”

“You understand, right? Of all people, I thought you would.”

Because we’re the same? Don’t make me laugh. Everyone thinks that, and if anything that’s my one true power: charisma. The way it attracts a lot of monsters and deviant beings makes it my curse too.

“…teach me.”

“What?”

“Teach me.”

“To fight these monsters ruining society?”

“No.” Breath pause. Speaking was somewhat hard still and I wanted to get a few bigger sentences out next, so I took my time to regain the ability to talk. “Fine. I’ll put up with your Dark Knight-ish raising project. You’re making a huge mistake though, for I am absolutely and utterly worthless. If you don’t care about that possibility, use me. Whatever potential you saw in me, I will fake it until it becomes real. For a price.”

One eyebrow raised, her face was the same as usual and not the one of a murderer.

“And what would that be?

“Teach me how to kill without restraints.”

She seemed underwhelmed by that proposition.

“Oh, there’s no such thing. It sucks every time.”

…like, really?

“You don’t seem depressed or traumatized.”

But then apparently I struck a nerve by doing that.

“Oh no. You’re not going to give me that. Think about my speech just now. Hell, think about how I speak all the time. Think about how I act and how my students no longer look up to me but rather fear me because of the rumors that spread like fire. I’m putting the career and life I worked hard to get at risk despite having fought for it for years, coming from a similar scenario to yours and all. Everything could just be gone if I fail and there’s no clean winning no matter what I do, but I can only lose if I close my eyes to that. Do I look okay to you?”

I kind of deserved it.

“…”

“At the end, we’re all broken. Don’t bother denying it or overplaying it; both are futile ways to live because in that sense, everyone is the same. Embrace it and deal with it the best you can.” She then stared at me for entire five seconds. “Either way I’m here for you. So, are you ready to talk?”

“I just did, didn’t I?”

“No, I mean for real. There’s no way I can tell what your passive-aggressiveness is all about, but you need to get that off your chest, whatever it is.”

I wanted to say a witty retort.

“…yeah.”

***************

I went back to school on a Wednesday and it was all okay. For a given value of, at least: I was bombarded with questions from the dead tree where I usually meet my band members but a few well placed lies made to match Reikoku-sensei’s and it was like nothing ever happened.

Ryo just looked at me from her safe distance.

The day in school was uneventful. As in ‘really boring,’ even coming from a person who now had two training routines after school: a self-imposed one and Reikoku-sensei’s. The highlights were a simple short dialogue with the acquisition of an item and a discussion with the Rin. The first of those happened as follows.

“I take it your first day back was smooth.”

“You sure have a lousy sense of humor, saying something like that after applying a Physics test which was no surprise to anyone but me.”

“Let me make up for it, then. This is a gift.” My teacher handed me a wooden box I became familiar with when I was at her place. “No, not precise. You earned this, in a way. Spoils of war, you could say.”

“Ayaka’s knife?” I said meekly even though all the students were gone for lunch. “You know I can’t just use stuff like this.”

“That’s exactly why I’m handing it to you, Koukishin-kun.” She smirked in a way that actually made me sick. “Besides, I don’t think she needs it anymore.”

And the latter went a little like this: the scenario was the club room just after the end of rehearsal, one of the few when every single one of us had reasons to go our separate ways rather than stay and hang around.

“Here, yesterday I, as the common man says, ‘burned’ some copies of my music-related instructional DVDs for everyone. The recordings will start soon and we need every sort of power-up we can get. I am afraid you are the one with the fewest, Akane-chan: playing drums was never among my top ten priorities in life. Gladly, you are the one who needs the least of these.”

I didn’t like the sound of that.

“…Koukina-senpai, did you really buy all of these? You’re rich and all, but you won’t use your card for most stuff so you won’t get found out. Our budget isn’t that big and these are some expensive courses. Did you, say, ‘torrent’ them?”

She gazed at me with mischievous eyes and an ironic, almost enigmatic smile.

“Do you really need to know?”

“Nah, I don’t think I do.”

Our commander’s laughter was almost hysterical, by her standards.

“This is just too amusing: a young boy with the code of honor of a fictional medieval knight that is able to bypass its limitations by using willful ignorance. That contradictory and broken nature of yours is quickly making you my favorite person in the whole world, Koukishin-kun.”

“If the lovebirds don’t mind, we’re just going to take our discs of stolen data and leave the scene. Let’s go, Akane!”

I just looked at the student council president after they were gone.

“Why did you have to say ‘stolen’? You know it bothers me”

“Don’t be such a buzz-kill, you download series yourself.”

“While waiting for my pre-ordered DVDs to arrive, and never keeping the files for more than 24 hours! Entirely different situation!”

Rin sighed. “They are gone, this is just me here. You can stop faking morals now.”

“Slow down on the finger pointing. We’re not the same, Rin.”

“Exactly the reason why I am so interested in you. We are alike at first glance, compatible even, but so different individuals when it comes down to the actual facts. My values, they are unchanging. Good and bad are actually well-defined, although I try my best to stay in the neutral zone most of the time so I can flutter above and below however I want. But I see… well, anyone with a brain can see the evil in you. What I want to know is why you try so hard to be good.”

“What are you talking about? All I do is run, I’m no hero. You are projecting onto me the image of the savior you crave for.”

“A savior? Koukishin-kun, do not make me laugh. This is my juvenile rebellion, my phase of personal and silly mistakes so I can never look back as an adult and regret not having spent my younger days as the child I never felt like I was allowed to be. For you to save me, that would be the last thing I could ever wish for. You are the devil in plain sight, so obvious people instantly overlook you. Why you bother to put up that paper thin disguise, I do not know.”

I was going to reply addressing her daddy issues, but stopped myself at the last moment.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. If that’s how you think I am inside, you’re involved with the wrong person.”

“Yet my gut feeling tells me I am not. So I will deal with you, show you just how bad you are until you can relate to me, shape whatever corners you have that keep us apart and make you mine.” She kissed her index and middle fingertips and then let them hover over my lips. “Forever.”

“I can just walk away, you know.”

Rin smiled one more time, with extra feeling.

“Oh, I would like to see you try.”

***************

Something really interesting happened when I got outside the school. Since it looked like it was going to rain soon, I decided to go through the dead tree path because even though it was not the shortest, it had better streets to deal with when it comes to strong rain and brand shoes, had a decent convenience store and twice as many bus stops.

A certain someone was waiting for me under the tree.

I gulped, but made my best effort to keep a poker face when I saw Ryo. There it was; the special event I had been waiting for a while but would postpone forever if I had the chance.

Commence the last dance.

“Sucks how ‘I haven’t seen you in a while’ is not only imprecise, but an outright lie.”

“Keeping characters in the same environment for too long ruins dialog.” Her characteristic smile now looked tired and bittersweet. “Although one could argue we do have a lot to talk about, now that we’re leading our respective lives apart even on the internet.”

Ouch, strike one.

“It’s all about differences rather than similarities, isn’t it?”

“Except when it’s not. It’s not a rule, but a guideline. You don’t have to follow it by heart, just consider it if you are stray. There is one kind of situation when two of a kind manages to match perfectly in the same plot.”

“And in which situation one can find that example, Ryo?”

“Mutual antagonism.”

Strike two. To put these equal individuals on opposite corners and make them clash, that’s what Shiina Ryo believed would validate their existence if all else failed. It could work as an enforced acting method too.

“Only works when two have the will to duel, and as far as I’m concerned it’s not usual to find two individuals like that in real life, let alone with matching agendas.”

Concern painted all over her face.

“Yes, it’s unlikely. Unrealistic even. Too good to be true, I presume.” A sigh. “I’ve been really busy myself, too.”

“One figures. You sleep in class every day.”

Her eyes reminded me of a puppy’s.

“So you still watch over me.”

“On occasion. When I’m not sitting like a gargoyle on the top of the tallest building in a bat-themed costume, of course”

“That’s a lie.”

“Actually, a comic book character.”

“I meant the ‘on occasion’ part.”

“Probably.”

“I miss you.”

Strike three.

“I know.”

I was out.

And then, as we stared at each other from around seven meters apart with all signs of cosmic levels of gravitational attraction in the air, rain fell upon us hot and fast as fictional narrative demanded.

She held up her iconic parasol, a paragon of perfection against the hazel skies.

“Quick Shin-tsu, get in he-”

“No need to.”

I had gotten my own retractable umbrella, which was hidden behind my back, and opened it above my head.

Shattering shock was in her eyes.

On one side we had Ryo with her white-laced parasol and optimism hoping it would all be solved with a smile. On the other side, just a few meters worth of street apart, there was I, pessimism incarnate, with a black protection of my own. No longer needing hers. No longer needing her.

Ironic echo.

The water surrounded us like minuscule blades in fast rhythm patterns, a staccato wall of hits that would be quite soul crushing if I hadn’t been thinking about all the possible outcomes and suffering from anticipation over and over again until I was no longer affected by it. It was still fairly easy to pinpoint the exact moment when her heart broke just by looking at the face I found so angelical.

Infinite emotional distance.

I wanted to tell her I missed her too, but to be entirely frank, at that stage I didn’t know if I really did. Even if I blame it on having several short-lived relationships of all sorts, the fact remained I could no longer trace the line between memory and longing. Only time would let me know if burning that bridge was the right thing to do or the biggest mistake of my life. Either way, things wouldn’t work out with her no matter what I did.

If those were the lies I needed to go on, I would craft them so perfectly I would believe in them at some point. I could never lose her if I abdicated, if I transfered all the care I had for her to a different target. It would not be Rin; that would be unfair to her, no matter what she said or I could try and rationalize. There was only so much of that burden I could let her carry.

I’d pour myself on the band, an immaterial concept that would keep my mind away from her. Because that, the moment I was living, was nothing but music; both the most important thing in the world and worthless, too. Not any variation of metal, not pop, not classical, not drum and bass, not reggae, not synthpop, not polka, not electro, not blues, not house, not rock, not hip hop, not folk, not dubstep, neither hardcore punk nor hardcore techno, not jazz and absolutely not ambient.

It was tango, the kind of sadness you could dance to. It started quiet and uneventful, with no more than hints of underlying energy just waiting to be spent. It grew steadily until it exploded into something so vibrant and in your face you couldn’t ignore it. Then it alternated between the dynamics of strong and weak with such moving sorrow that every little object involved enhanced the others. It reached peak after peak as a revolving door of catharsis until it faded out to nothingness and the hollow left in your heart was a bullet hole the size of the world.

You could as well call it ‘goodbye.’

“Oh. So you got one.” She tried to put a straight face and act rational, pretending it didn’t hurt her when I knew for a fact that every little thing always did. She cared about concepts like I did, after all. “I really need to rest a little, but if you want to come over I can postpone that or-”

“I have to go. See you.”

I didn’t run or cry, leaving as calmly as I could. Just walked in the most normal rainy-day way I could, at least considering how aware of it I was at the time. At some point I got home, which showed my feet knew the path well enough by then to keep their action independent from my absent mind.

From my window, I watched the rainbow alone.

The Longing of Shiina Ryo Volume 2: d.m.c - Chapter 1: Megumi

2012-01-16T20:15:00.000-08:00

“Charybdis! That’s right, the name of the monster that created whirlpools by belching in Greek mythology is Charybdis!”

Only then I realized there were people inside the room whose door I had opened, and it was a good thing to find out that the two girls were as shocked as I was at that moment. Not for the same reason, probably.

“Say what?”

The one that asked the question was so unusual looking I had a hard time accepting the fact I managed not to see her during my first week. Eyes of completely different colors that could probably gleam in the dark, layered unruly hair so multicolored it made her look like a razor cut a Christmas tree covered in rainbow graffiti, along with obligatory pierced lips, ears (both the helix and lower conventional parts) and one eyebrow to match the hair and give to the viewer an extreme version of the ‘youth gone wrong’ stereotype. In her ink-marked arms, an acoustic guitar so customized with psychedelic drawings and stickers it could definitely find place in a postmodern art exposition (in the same way a pink brick with a rudimentary image of a kitten carved on it could; it’s postmodern we’re talking about).

Think rebel: judging by my first impression, that is definitely what she wants you to.

“…eh, nothing. Hm.” Sometimes explaining things properly takes time, pre-canalized energy and unreasonable amounts of effort one simply cannot afford. Bonus points if said one is so tired from running through the school buildings he starts generalizing about his oneself…-ness?! Besides, just seeing that person was confusing enough. “My club application form was mistakenly sent here and I just came to retrieve it.”

The pierced right eyebrow was raised in a surprisingly non-threatening manner, which reminded me that the person in front of me was definitely not a certain fashionista I had the displeasure of knowing. Not that the tattoos, metal and hair dye weren’t enough of a hint, really.

“Oh, so you’re Koukishin Shinzou.” The girl whose looks screamed ‘rebellion’ looked at the other one, who seemed to be doing her best to keep her distance from me while holding my application form. Maybe she was just shy, but the way she kept trying to slowly walk backwards when her body was already pressing against the wall was slightly disturbing even for an acquaintance with Kouma Yon. “Akane and I were just saying it would be very weird if there was a girl with such a name.”

How am I supposed to reply to something like that? Should I thank her or something? Not only that, the girl in the corner she called ‘Akane’ didn’t look like she would ever say anything.

“I …guess?”

“It was a good idea to stick to that thought until the end, even though I never heard of boys studying here. By the way, my name is Megumi.” She raised a fist and left it suspended in my direction, a gesture I could not comprehend coming from her but would have assumed being an attack from Kouma. Wait, why am I still thinking of her?

Then it dawned on me: that fist suspended in air and pointed at me was a greeting.

“Koukishin Shinzou, but you can call me Shin-tsu.”

I too turned my hand into a fist and punched hers firmly but definitely not with the same intensity I used when fighting that creature; this was a punch in name and aesthetics only, but as artificial as a closed fist could be. While our hands were still meeting each other, I heard something I wasn’t expecting at that moment, and just being in that school meant getting used to expect everything.

“A fist bump between two young individuals of different gender seems like a lacy glove slap on the face of those who still believe there is a gender war going on. Or a cute feminist photographic postcard, I am not so sure right now.” It took me a moment to realize someone had entered the room through the door I forgot to close and that’s why I was surprised, although this might be connected to the fact the third girl walked in without making any kind of noise. “It is hard to tell because he looks quite feminine for a boy or even for a girl, this affirmation based on certain urban areas.”

“I do not!”

When I turned around to face the new arrival with the accusative contralto voice, I found her significantly closer than I would have expected her to be. Too close for comfort and respect of personal space, perhaps. In retrospective, it makes me wonder why I didn’t consider the possibility of being a decent countertenor and therefore forces me to realize I can be a little bit biased when it comes to vocal ranges.

…perhaps not only on that matter.

While her way of speaking was similar to Ryo's, it would be impossible for me to ignore the precision of her resemblance to the other of my closest acquaintances in this city. She reminded me of Reikoku-sensei’s classroom appearance, only somehow neater (which was probably not quite true, just my mind’s natural reflex to my teacher’s bad habits outside school). Her long hair and narrow eyes seemed so perfect in symmetry that I almost assumed she was not a living person; the figure in front of me was giving me a sense of stability I could only get from well-crafted mannequins.

“I simply stated a fact but you are entitled to an opinion. If people are still silly enough to waste time on ‘science versus religion’ discussions you might as well state your opinion saying you are not a walking chunk of androgynous meat. For the record, I never said or implied it was a bad thing.” The long-haired girl was now looking at the colorful one with confidence. "And obviously, the whole anti-gender war propaganda loses its metaphorical sparkle once other factors such as a long-term relationship are established. Are you somehow ‘intimate' with this visually ambiguous boy?"

“We don’t know him that well. Actually he came out of nowhere saying stuff about mythological monsters, just like that.” Megumi stared at the school council president and I felt a little animosity between them, which is only to be expected when you put two graphical opposites in the same place. Thankfully, the girl was a bit too bold to just blush at the insensitive comment made by the older student. “What the hell are you doing here?”

But the rude question had no effect, apparently.

“Interesting. Do you often walk into rooms and say random fragments of information to complete strangers?” Said to me the complete opposite to the freak girl, the way she manipulated her voice keeping her intentions veiled. “If your answer is affirmative, I might actually enjoy talking to you.”

“…what?” Sadly that was the best line I came up with back then. “Seriously, what?”

The overtly colorful one looked a little more serious now. “You didn’t answer my question, Miss Student Council President.”

Apparently the moment the older student was referred to by her title marked the point where I lost focus and the other girl got the spotlight.

“And what would that be, my dear second year student who makes no effort to display an ounce of respect to her upperclassmen?”

“Why are you here?”

I could not entirely blame the girl with almost as much metal as face on her, uh, face: there was something in the arrogant eyes of the neat girl that made me want to scream ‘pretentious,’ even knowing that word didn’t quite apply, and for one brief and shallow moment, I knew exactly how elitist fiction critics and ranting music bloggers felt.

“Not quite sure, I do not care enough about the subject to have what a valid opinion by my personal standards. As one could presume by my previous statements, I do not enjoy the idea of wasting time in scientific and religious debates, metaphysics included, because in the end it is commonly connected to both,” she said, playing with what could hardly be called a lock of her hair, considering how fine and straight it was. Yes, I am kind of jealous. “On the other hand, if you meant that in a less universal way, I suppose the answer is one I can provide: I, Koukina Rin, am interested in this club.”

Upon hearing those words my curiosity took over me and I could not stop my eyes when they decided on their own to look at the paper sign on the door. I barely paid any attention to it on the way here because my motivation was strong and my directions were simple: find room 23. Although my eidetic memory was probably more than enough to remind me of the words written on the sign, my body felt the urge to look anyway; it was just like those occasions when you feel compelled to look just because someone told you not to.

"D… M... C?" When my gaze saw the words on the paper and they matched the words in my memory I could only think one thing: 'great, this time we're actually facing a lawsuit.' But as long as I kept breathing, I could not give in to despair. Not without knowing why, anyway. "Does this mean what I think it does?"

Visually puzzled, Megumi stood in front of me as if I had done some kind of unforgivable mistake.

“This obviously stands for Dark Music Club! What else could it stand for, really?”

And by doing that, the girl practically made of contrasting colors triggered a brief series of replies, the credit for them being shared between the Student Council president and myself. A very impressing similarity to an occurrence of today lingered.

“Digital Mixing Console.”

“Death Match Classic.”

“Dimethyl carbonate.”

“Donatio mortis causa.”

“Detroit Medical Center.”

"Diffusion Monte Carlo."

“Dynamic Matrix Control or even Dynamic Markov Compression would work fine, too.”

Strange as it may seem, considering her question was answered with honesty and amazing precision, Megumi was clearly infuriated, her vivid orange and azure eyes burning with sheer anger.

“Seriously? You guys came up with eight realistic and somewhat reasonable possibilities and not a single one of them was related to the famous hip-hop group, the manga/anime or the video game series?”

“To be honest I did my best to avoid those examples.” Koukina Rin maintained her elegant composure as she explained her reasoning, which is far more than you can expect from some national presidents. “The group was not that good to begin with, the anime is disappointing because there is no real death metal in it, and in the new installment of the game they changed the protagonist’s hair to black. As the common man says, ‘totally dropped’.”

By that, one could tell she considered people who browse internet forums to be the ‘common man,’ which is obviously an incredibly bad start for any premise on, say, anything.

“Still on the manga subject, corpse paint on death metal. No, really?” And with that I started playing along, violating all my common sense; it just seemed like a good idea at the time, like bad ideas always do. “What’s the point of writing about something that exists in the real world when you don’t have a clue of what it’s like? No matter how good it is, it’s hard to get past errors like that.”

“Very interesting.” While completely innocent on the surface, to a practiced eye Rin’s flaming glance towards me could easily be interpreted as the same kind Kouma would give her favorite kind of candy. “You are somehow and somewhat familiar with concept of death metal. Given your brief purist speech, one can presume you are a fan of the subgenre. Is that correct?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Are you, by any chance, a musician?”

“Well… I play both electric and double basses.” My initial plan was to act humble like musicians usually do when talking about their own abilities but something in her stance made me quit my false modesty act; the good thing about arrogant people is that their mere presence makes you want to do and be your best when you’re around them. “Permit me to frankly say I am fairly good at it.”

I don’t believe human contact is a bad thing. The concepts of personal space and distance between people who don’t know each other too well actually add to the flavor of closer and better-developed relationships as the beauty of the thing remains in the contrast. I don’t mind shaking hands with people or even being hugged after delivering good news (not to say that kind of thing happens to me frequently, anyway) to someone who was waiting for what seemed to be an interminable quantity of time. There are, indeed, exceptions, but they are so unlikely (or directly related to a certain fighting fashionista), I feel it would be a tad stupid to consider them even if only for the sole purpose of statistics.

Then there is another story, an unusual situation where a boy’s hand is suddenly grabbed by an older female student, who proceeds to tenderly and almost provocatively caress his fingertips while gazing into his eyes with tangible superiority and more than a hint of indifference burning in hers. In other circumstances I would have been surprised and acted like it, but then again what good could possibly come out of blushing, stuttering and acting like a complete shoujo manga shrinking violet lead character in front of someone like Koukina Rin? For that purpose, we already have the girl in the corner, Akane.

"The pattern of the calluses I found in his fingers matches his story: this is definitely the hand of someone who plays the bass on a regular basis. Given that he was the first person that walked into your club room and did not laugh and leave, one could go as far as saying this is a fortunate meeting."

Her reasons were now explained and thus her behavior didn't seem as odd as I first believed. The course of action she took almost sounding logical to me. What did seem odd, irrational and strikingly similar to my newfound battle partner's attitude was the fact that Rin too seemed fond of touching me past the point I found myself comfortable with, despite not being particularly familiar with me.

Almost as if stating what she was doing gave her complete freedom to do it and much more, the School Council president's fingers long fingers and flawlessly French-styled nails now ran over mine. The keratin blades that grew out of her hand scratched my skin as if she intended to mark me like cattle; the drawing movement her slender fingers did seeming anything but random.

She was clearly teasing me, and not in the way I was unfortunately already getting used to.

“Of course I’m telling the truth: why would anyone lie about being a bass player? We’re underrated as it gets, regardless of musical genre.” To ignore Rin’s body language (which was beyond the point where its signals could be called ‘protean’) was the only visible course of action for someone who didn’t want to give signs of weakness. I looked at Megumi, who seemed to be busy thinking of something else, and envied her. “And why would meeting a bass player be a fortunate thing? Were you looking for one?”

The weird-looking girl snapped out of her unfitting mundane daydream.

“Oh… yeah. I could settle for a club where the members would just spend their afternoons being lazy and listening to the darkest forms of music until we graduate, but what I really wanted was to recruit members to form a band. Well, that and spending my afternoons being lazy and listening to the darkest forms of music until I graduate.”

“I see.” The words came out of my mouth pretty easily: unlike the distressing patterns of colors present in her hair, accessories and figure, as a whole the girl was surprisingly not complex at all. “But don’t you need an assigned teacher for every club? What kind of teacher would want to watch over a ‘Dark Music Club’?”

“Excuse me, what are you talking about?” A puzzled Koukina Rin asked. “I have never heard of such practice and I have been on the school council since my first year in the school.”

It took me a moment or two to grasp the meaning of those words.

“That cannot be right, Reikoku-sensei told m-” And then it finally struck me: this too was part of a plan devised by my teacher, the arch conspirator. She relied completely on my paranoia and complete lack of knowledge about the ways and bureaucracy of this school to pull a prank on me and make me run through the hallways like there would be no tomorrow after something that couldn’t possibly matter less. My hand was raised in apology and, deep down my soul, defeat. “Never mind, my mistake. A band, you say?”

“Not ‘a’ band; I want it to be more like ‘the’ band.” The movement her mouth made when she smiled along with the angle by which the sunlight came out of the window made her lip piercings gleam in an obfuscating manner. “To take part in something huge and influential is what I’m looking for, you know? A band with a distinct, unique sound.Much more than merely fresh, I want something wild.”

Like your hair then, I thought but never stated out loud because that would be just rude instead of adorably witty.

“That sounds… nice.” And also as optimistic and naïve as it gets; funny thing is, pretty much everyone in the music business genuinely believes they are the ‘hot stuff’ and their albums are ‘complete revolutions’ and ‘the end of this genre as we know it’ even when they are generic at best and the ones who don’t quite believe they’re the best thing since wheels were invented but will say it anyway because boasting is the only way of getting people to pay for something they cannot touch or see. Those opinions are often considered laws by the cult-like band fans, and there was never a day the word ‘fan’ meant ‘extremely zealous’ as today. Well, maybe not but it's tough to compare to people with yellow submarines. “You do, however, realize that doesn’t explain much about your band idea, right?”

“Oh, right.” Megumi scratched her head and blinked twice. “I guess we can figure that out as we go; as long as it’s dark I’m cool with it.”

And with that statement she finished marking herself as a common, indecisive amateur in my eyes. Does she really expect to make a ‘huge and influential’ band without even having an initial concept? It’s like planning to write the deconstruction of a novel or a genre without ever reading the source material and expecting people to call you ‘genius’.

“Unfortunately you have been found wanting. That certainly is not enough to make the quintessential band.” A few minutes around her and Rin already seemed like the kind of person that felt the uncontrollable urge to always have the last word on a topic. That and running her fingers on my body; apparently, my hand too has been found wanting and now the girl was focusing her attacks on my arm. Still, it was nice to see I wasn’t the only one in that room who was unaffected by the overwhelming idealism in the air. “It takes good musicians, discipline, chemistry between the band members and the most important, superb leadership. That is why I am taking the role of leader of this band.”

At that exact moment, Akane sneezed just like a baby mouse does, involuntarily reminding us of her existence and presence in that room. After the shy and nearly invisible girl’s unexpected portrait of cuteness, her unusual friend blurted out her thoughts.

“Now why the heck did you get the idea I would let you join my band, let alone lead it?”

In face of this sentence Rin breathed artificial suavity.

“I play guitar fairly better than you, for starters.”

“Bravo sierra!” She didn’t actually say those words, but I’m doing my best to keep this story clean for the kids, so using a military slang seemed the right thing to do especially when the alternative was somewhat profane. If you’re an age appropriate and more than merely moderately curious reader, search-engine it. “You haven’t heard me play, ever!”

“And I do not need to because I know exactly how well I play.” Oh, the audacity; it was massively unreasonable to the point of making my blood boil and I wasn’t even part of the dialogue. It made me wonder if that girl managed to become School Council president by winning a bet. “Plus, I own enough equipment to set up a recording studio right here by tomorrow. Think of me as a blessing from the heavens that will turn your kiddy project into the real deal, if you will.”

I am not sure if this girl has the talent it takes to be a rock star but no one can possibly deny the fact she already has a surprisingly solid amount of sheer overconfidence, maybe enough for two or three big names. Not that there’s anything ‘sheer’ about her boasting, that is.

“Pretty full of yourself, aren’t you?” Megumi’s mismatched, mischievous eyes were completely full of delight. Possibly, from the rebel girl’s point of view, this was an invite to duel to the death; to me however it was just a pointless battle of egos. She extended the acoustic guitar she had been holding so carelessly to the school council president. “Let’s see if those wings you’re so proud of are made of wax.”

Does anyone know why people start saying stupid things when they get into fights? It might have something to do with testosterone, but I have always thought it worked differently in men and women (and I must clarify that this is not baseless sexism, just baseless science).

“Your loss, my friend. I always, always dare to win.”

Her slender, teasing hands were off me and, in a blink of an eye, on the guitar she took from her recently-acquired rival. While menaces not composed of words were brought to this plane of existence, I could only try and figure out how I managed to come across situations like this over and over again. The supernatural element wasn’t around but the shadow of tension that fell upon that room was hardly bearable.

Further investigation of my field of vision revealed a hawk-ish look coming from where I didn’t expect it to. The locks of not-so-wavy but most definitely slightly messy hair half-covering Akane’s eyes before were now being held by her right ring finger, revealing adorably huge but somewhat cold doll eyes, intent in a manner I could only fully describe as ‘targeting’. Unlike Kouma Yon’s, those eyes didn’t lack expression, but the heat and vibrancy we usually find in living beings. The apparently shy bird of prey seemed to have intentions of rapine for Koukina Rin.

Rapine, as in ‘abduction’ or ‘plundering’. Don’t get any funny ideas.

The body posture adopted by the School Council president as she sat on a chair with Megumi’s guitar was quite not the correct one for acoustic guitar players of classical style and thus I was a bit underwhelmed. There was something familiar about that pose, but I couldn’t help but feel like all that arrogance was just talk.

After a strum that only let natural harmonics out, she hummed a note and started loosening and tightening the strings repeatedly.

“What are you doing to my guitar?”

“You did not tune it properly to A440, thus I must tune this instrument myself. Thankfully, one of my many skills is perfect pitch. We shall not be hindered by your presumably usual clumsiness.”

“Oh, you little…”

“Please be quiet, this old G string of yours is giving me a hard time.” She became aware of me and looked in my direction as I chuckled because of the involuntary bilingual pun. “Is there something particularly funny or amusing you’d like to share with us, Koukishin-kun?”

Laughter suppressed, I waved a hand abiding with her true desire of having me quiet. After the situation with Reikoku-sensei earlier today, I should watch out and not react the way my body wants without considering the scenario first.

“…no, please proceed.”

The girl reassumed the playing posture to finish tuning and only when she struck the strings to test if the guitar tuning was still stable by using natural harmonics it came to me: I deduced her act wrong. That posture of hers implied she was going to play flamenco or something similar and not classical music per se; the two postures are a little different from each other and that’s why I assumed she was trying the classical one but making significant mistakes.

Suddenly and without another word uttered, the performance began. Strings successively struck using one slender digit nail per strum; the visibly older girl known as Koukina Rin sent the room an obscure signal through the expressive gypsy chords that were being attacked without absolution. Achromatic images formed as sour memories that weren’t exactly mine.

Her rasgueado technique was flawless and the musical progression presented itself with overflowing acrimony. The song sounded somewhat familiar but I could not recall when I heard it, if I in fact did. Adherence struck me faster than I could possibly expect but the whole short experience ended just as abruptly as it began. The motive of the conductor was obvious to me.

To tease.

A chord progression intentionally unfinished, build-up lacking resolution: it was almost unbearable, the thought of the missing final note. Instead of delivering what we were expecting and even craving, the girl with long nails preferred to replace the last part with a silence that was only interrupted by me unintentionally humming the resolution for the unfinished melody.

The idea of being musically manipulated struck me as an afterthought and a small movement in her jaw formed what I believed to be a hidden smile of pleasure.

No, she definitely did it on purpose.

A sudden change in the position of her body was made audible after she attacked not the strings but the body of the acoustic guitar with a percussive rattlesnake-like finger tapping. With her current posture being the proper classical one and the picking technique changed to tremolo, a fast continuous array of notes began.

This second musical round was entirely different from the warm-up. The values changed along with the technique, and this song I could recognize for sure. A composition of Francisco Tarrega written in 1986, Recuerdos de la Alhambra. Melancholy was still a major figure written in minor scale, but it wasn’t half as raw and over-the-top like the song used as introduction. My notion of how refined it was might have been biased by the fact I knew what would come in the B-section of the piece.

Pure cheerfulness and bliss, almost reaching sweetness.

Incoherent it was not, the transition well done to the point of coming across as a small anti-surprise such as guessing which side of the coin will be the one up correctly; not so much overall thrill on it, although there was an awful lot of note trill going on and I assume some people can find that distracting. Not a defect on the part of the performer, though.

The song continued exactly as expected, not a single broken section from beginning to end. Whether it was a faithful interpretation of the author’s ideas with nil experimentation or a subversion of the patterns she showed us until that moment it’s hard to tell. Both, perhaps.

In the silent intermission that took place after the piece was over and before the performer decided to talk, I analyzed the reactions of the two girls who apparently were my upperclassmen and Rin’s underclassmen: Megumi clearly was taken aback, the expression on her face probably connected to both her being unfamiliar with this kind of music and the shock of seeing someone around her age doing a great deal more than playing three powerchords and calling it a song. Akane on the other hand just covered her eyes with her wavy fringe again, like it was a theater curtain that closed after the show was over, an action that only made her more intriguing to me.

“This guitar is not so bad for a cheap, brand-less model although I particularly prefer cypress when it comes to inexpensive acoustic ones. May I ask what kind of woods is this made of other than Indian rosewood and maple?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea and I don’t care!”

“Oh, casual much?”

Megumi clenched her teeth and let out a low growl, and I started to wonder if the young woman called Rin was aware of how far she was going with her attitude towards others. It didn’t take a genius or prodigy of any kind to tell Megumi’s blood was boiling and a real ugly fight was just a step away.

“That does it: you’re going down now!”

“A short-tempered one, are you? Please, prove me wrong if you can.”

“What did you say?”

“I politely asked you to prove me wrong, if that is within your range of capabilities. If you believe in your technical ability enough to challenge me and take as the role of lead guitarist, now is the moment to show us all what you can do. Otherwise, I do not see a reason why someone who clearly does not plan ahead or have the skill and precision it takes to be the front man of a project of such, say, majestic proportions and should be leading. You do want this to be huge, correct?”

“Of course!”

“Well, you already showed us you are not fit as a strategist, so a splendid musician is the only redeemable feature you can achieve now. Consider this as a chance to claim your crown if you are worthy: I will have no objections with having you as director if you can at least outdo my performance with a piece or two of your choice.”

“Wait, why are you handing out rules like you already owned the place?”

“Simply because you set none.” Beautifully arrogant, but I could see where her reasoning came from: she expects Megumi to back down and thus avoid future discussions on leadership. The execution of that plan, however, was not something I would applaud under any circumstances; her extremist ways were paved with good intentions but would not necessarily lead to good results. “Go on. This time, I dare you.”

Acoustic guitar in her arms, Megumi stared down for a moment in what seemed to be the shadow of despair. Suddenly the colorful student smiled and it was not in a sweet, girly way but in a hot-blooded manga protagonist’s.

“Fine. I’ll do it!”

And the inked hand went down fast, clumsily holding a guitar pick with three fingers but when only a brief metallic and choked noise was heard, I admit I choked too.

I didn’t see that coming.

Her shy companion’s hand was muffling the strings and I almost felt like the silence present in the girl was being transferred to the guitar, an idea reinforced by the fact that girl talked only after performing that action.

“Save yourself the embarrassment and don’t play. There is no way you can defeat her as you are now and you know it.”

Truth be told, her voice was almost a whisper, although the words gave me the prospect she was anything but frail.

“Hmph.” Megumi did not seem satisfied at all with the outcome or her friend’s words, but she also seemed helpless and somewhat scared, like people who brag about their strength usually feel when someone stands up and accepts their challenge. “I will back down now because Akane knows much more about music than I do, but this isn’t over yet! Tomorrow band practice starts and I don’t care how good you are, if you don’t fit in, you’re out! Let’s go, Akane!”

The walking metallic rainbow stormed off without waiting for her friend. Said forgotten friend shook her head quickly and looked at Koukina Rin, one of her huge eyes uncovered by the movement.

“…that w-was impressive for so-someone your age.”

“Thank you.”

“N-next time I expect you to pick a piece you’re t-truly comfortable with to the point o-of improvising instead of a f-flashy one, t-though.”

“Once again, thank you for your honesty. Next time I shall sweep you off your feet.”

“I-I’ll look forward to i-it. See you t-tomorrow, senpai.”

“Farewell.”

Without making eye-contact with me, Akane left in a hurry, leaving my application form on a chair. That left me alone with the older student that had a fondness for teasing alone together in that borderline empty room. Keeping that in mind, I silently put some distance between me and the girl, as a somewhat effective immorality prevention measure.

“Now what on earth was that about?”

“A couple minor mistakes of mine made mostly out of nervousness, but nothing to be worried about.” Her breath was hot and somewhat tired. “You could say I know a thing or two about Akane-san’s musical background and being praised or scolded by her is something one should cherish or appreciate as constructive criticism, although in this case I had to do both.”

“I was talking about the sudden portrait of modesty! You can’t come in out of nowhere and act all high and mighty to the point of dueling with someone and then take a hundred and eighty degrees turn to being humble with someone else who is directly related to the first scenario. That doesn’t feel right or even fit!”

“Not quite the case, but the way you put it, that situation could easily be explained with bipolar disorder.” She stared at her own fingernails, their polish still enviably flawless despite the fast impact to nylon strings the fingers were subjected to. “There are times when even a very ‘technical’ musician needs to bow down to someone else.”

That indirect praise showed me the trait of arrogance was still present, only thinly veiled.

“Still…” Shrugging it off and changing topics sounded like the sensible thing to do because there more than enough pointless confrontation for a day or two already earlier occurred. “Regardless of technical difficulty, isn’t Recuerdos De La Alhambra a tad too standard for classical guitar demonstrations these days?”

“I was considering the possibility of playing a Django Reinhardt song and getting a few points with the jazz conservatory child prodigy, but I did not think it would be comprehended by the other. The regular ‘hardcore’ and modern metal fan is always looking for something that is close to what they already like but a little more, say, extreme than what they are used to listening. With that in mind, I thought that particular Tarrega piece would do the job.”

“So you knew more than only a thing or two about Akane’s musical background.” And that’s probably the real reason why she chose to join this club/band, arrogant dynamic entry included and everything. “Why not Niccolò Paganini? Many metal guitarists are inspired by his works, to the point of plagiarism if you ask me. His pieces are much, much more popular than Tarrega’s too.”

She looked calm, as if scheming something.

“If you want an honest answer, specifically because he is way too popular. Now go on, say it: we both know what you want to call me right now and just this time I shall allow you to, entirely consequences-free.”

“…you bloody hipster.”

For a split-second she raised both eyebrows in a very, very suggestive manner that struck me as twisted approval for using the words she assumed I would.

“A somewhat imprecise and thus entirely incorrect description, but I am much more interested in the obscure forms than the mainstream subgenres of music. To compare the technical, flawless beauty that lies in modern progressive blackened death metal to common radio heavy metal sounds like an awful joke even in theory.”

“That’s a pretty biased view you got there.”

“And yet it is by far closest to the utmost truth than the belief that all music is the same because of how they make people feel.”

“Right, I’ll grant you that.”

It’s very, very sad, but I believe you cannot condemn a person’s valid opinion because you don’t agree with the methods that person uses to express his or hers opinion: they are two separate things. Now if only I could get the rest of the world to think like that, political parties would get a tad more interesting.

“So, will you join us? A bassist would be good, and unlike the other members, your position does not require too much experience or talent therefore you will be fine either way.”

Rude.

“…I’m not sure. I don’t have a reason to, you see.”

“Do you need me to… give you a reason?”

A single line composed of cold sweat traced down my face to my mouth, and when I nervously licked my lip, I found out it tasted of subversion. Still, to give in would mean becoming a side character that would only be useful for jokes and teasing or a standard anime protagonist and, honestly, even I knew better than that.

“No.”

But she didn’t look disappointed or surprised at all.

“Perfect. Take your time and think about it. I must admit the idea of spending time with someone like you appeals to me on a personal level, but I have no intention of pushing you towards or away from this band.”

“That’s, hmm, very mature of you.”

“I see you underestimate me. I am the School Council president, after all. One of the first things I had to learn was that there are many times when the collective needs are so important we must ignore the wishes of individuals.”

“Wouldn’t it be a good idea not to tease people you just met then, especially in ways that can be considered harassment?”

Then she gave me a smile that could easily be found on face of the criminal mastermind in a secret spy movie.

“Good thinking. You could become a great Student Council secretary someday. There are, however, times when a leader like me needs to show her minions she has flaws so they won’t bother searching for them, although these flaws cannot be connected directly to the leading capabilities or knowledge of the subject the group has to deal with. You want your soldiers to think you’re human, but not like them at all. All work and no fun, etcetera.”

“So it was just for show? The teasing.”

Her gaze went to the roof like a rocket. Not to say that rockets usually go to the roof, but the motion was the same as a soaring rocket in the sky and… forget it.

“Not quite, I actually have a penchant for teasing people. However that doesn’t change the fact that unveiling and accentuating that natural, small flaw of mine for the purpose of achieving my goals was for show.”

I couldn’t deny she was amusing, regardless of pretty much everything else.

“…you’re weird.”

And then her mature eyes came rushing back to me like a falling meteor would, only with a good amount of expression one should not expect to find on humongous space rocks. The room lit itself on fire when her gaze met mine in an impact of cosmic proportions. Figuratively, of course: after the Ayaka incident it’s best to clarify these things.

“And you like it, correct?”

Always a bit too direct for comfort: only later it occurred to me she probably wasn’t able to turn that whole act off at will.

“I guess I don’t mind it as much as the ‘common man’ would.” Shrugging was more of a reflexive action rather a visual aid. “One could say I have high immunity to the uncommon, or at least should by now.”

She smiled at me, a glass façade of innocence I was quite sure she didn’t possess.

“Perhaps I should try harder in our next meeting?”

After walking with such style and rough grace that would make a hard-boiled noir detective protagonist jealous, I opened the door of the room and turned my upper body around to face her in a feature that was both rather mysterious and painfully vertebral column damaging.

“If you think you can.”

Then I closed the door and ran away like a scared little girl before she could have a chance to even consider attacking me right there.

***************

Shocked and almost infuriated without quite knowing the reason why, I pressed the space bar of my portable computer and stopped the movement of a group of handsome actors dressed as doctors on the screen.

“Wait, so you knew about the band thing?”

Reikoku-sensei did her best to pretend she wasn’t annoyed by the interruption during the climax scene of the streamed show she suddenly had her attention drawn to, possibly after identifying herself with the somewhat misanthropic main character.

“There isn’t much happening on that school I’m not aware of, Koukishin-kun. Plus, sending that paper to just any random club wouldn’t be half as fun to me. If it isn’t somewhat complex, it cannot be amusing. Every little thing needs at least two reasons to happen.” Playing with the pencil that only seconds ago was holding up her hair, she uttered words that would sound deep if they didn’t came from a grown woman in pajamas killing time late at night at her student’s house. Not quite what comes to my mind when I try and imagine a mentor figure, you see. “And that’s why my suggestion is that you give that club a try.”

For some reason that shocked me more than it should, enough for me to spit all the soda in my mouth all over a near region of the wooden carpet. Not an insignificant amount of liquid, definitely not an insignificant spread rate. Considering the pressure needed for that result, if I were looking at my personal computer screen at that moment, chances are some repair store with a shady fellow would have become a little richer by tomorrow.

“Are you serious? What would be the point of that?”

“Honestly, can’t you see what is wrong with your current situation?” Reikoku-sensei seemed genuinely and unusually concerned at that moment, so I figured interrupting her would be a bad idea. After this morning’s events, even a dog would understand that; Pavlov would be quite proud of my teacher. “You have only been here for a week and already started to hang out with the anti-social students, started a visible love triangle situation, got into a fight with a classmate and defied common sense and physics by using your body as a cushion to save someone from a fall without even considering the harm to yourself, including your death. As a matter of fact, I’m still trying to figure out how you survived the latter.”

“…love triangle? Seriously?” My sarcastic laughter was suddenly interrupted when I met her gaze. “Right, I know what you mean. An awful lot of things happened way too fast by normal standards.”

“But not by yours, I presume.” Right on the spot, as always. Then it was obvious to me: in one mere week, there should be nothing established as ‘always’ yet. That was exactly the problem, the fact bonds too deep were being made too soon. “And here I am, trying to slow down the carousel before someone gets hurt. Please notice I’m not telling you to stop talking to them but to consider the possibility of expanding your social circle a little, preferably with perfectly normal people who share interests with you.”

“Such as music?”

“Indeed.”

A simple, nearly silly plan that disappointed me somehow. I didn’t see that coming from the woman who led a double life and did her best to be a manipulator in both. Apparently, (self-proclaimed) geniuses are not sheer brilliance all the time and the incredible intuitive talent she possessed had no direct influence on her plans: the things I believed to be well pondered master strokes were very probably but lucky strikes.

So much for chess masters.

“I see. But why did you assume I would be interested in joining a band or that I have what it takes to be in a band with the School Council President? She is most likely quite the shredder.”

“Based on your CD collection, you listen to old school jazz and fusion, progressive and math rock, sixties funk, thrash, early death and avant-garde metal, baroque and tango and only a single album of post-hardcore. If there’s anyone I would team up with that musical elitist, it would be you.”

She seemed quite confident about it. “Plus, you own a five string bass; the chances of you not being a real musician are incredibly low now because more than half of the, say, ‘posers’ buy common electric guitars shaped after famous guitarist’s models. Spending much more money on a bass that’s not even industry standard does not sound very amateur-ish to me.”

“That reasoning was kind of dodgy.”

“Fine, there were a few complex sheet music pages with your handwritten annotations on them lying around on the first day I came here but that’s not the point.”

A genuine smile formed on my face too quickly for me to even consider the possibility of suppressing it, not that I would if I had the chance.

My teacher really watches out for me. In a creepy and somewhat plotting way, yes, but she does it and it’s much more than I could wish for. Based on what she told me last week, I can only imagine how hard she wanted to have someone doing that for her when she was younger. She gives up all of her free time outside school to be here, when she probably has something better to...

“Reikoku-sensei, do you have a significant other in your life?”

More soda on the wooden carpet, but this time it didn’t came out of my mouth: from that day on I tried buying more neutral drinks.

“What the… where did that came from?”

“Just sheer, potentially intrusive but honest curiosity.”

She touched her forehead with two fingers and took a moment to think, although I almost expected her to teleport away from my house.

“…you mean someone like a boyfriend?”

“That’s a little bit more specific than I was hoping for, but yes.”

Strange as it might sound, she stopped moving for a moment and then all of a sudden action took place again, with a presumably feigned attribute on it.

“Not so far from the truth, so I suppose you could say that. Why do you ask?”

“If you knew the people you care about were in trouble, wouldn’t you try and help them?”

“Oh, so you’re still thinking about that.” She seemed bored, but on further examination, I noticed the expression she had could be also interpreted as relief. “Caring for people is fine; we are prone to bonding because of our humanity. Still, there is a thin line between doing a number of things out of care and Messiah Complex. The real problem lies in the fact the perpetrator of the action never knows when he or she crossed said line. One moment you’re the knight in shining armor, next one you’re the Universe’s favorite punching bag wasting your life with a silly smile on your face and let me tell you one thing, your strings will only be pulled harder and harder.”

Saying that, Reikoku-sensei got up and went towards the kitchen while I followed her physicallybut not so much in the metaphorical sense. Her speech on morals was coming across as rather confusing and baseless to the point of referencing lyrics and movies rather than actually teaching something. As I had presumed, she stopped by the refrigerator and opened it looking for dessert, which was probably ready to be consumed by now.

“So you’re telling me I should stay out of Ryo and Kouma’s business?”

A bored sigh and a disappointed look.

“Koukishin-kun, I am a teacher who is starting a custom of going to a student’s house for dinner practically every night mostly because of the striking similarities that exist in our unfortunate lives. Does it sound like I could tell you such a thing without being a total hypocrite?”

Taking out a bucket filled with pudding-flan I had bought because of viral marketing, she went to the sink and picked up two spoons, one of which she handed me without any grace. “Don’t read too much into it. Young people like you just have to stop worrying about every single thing and learn to appreciate the moment. You’ll have the time to overthink everything later. But limits on what one should do to and for others should always, always be in sight.”

“…what does that even mean?”

“Never mind, it will come to you when it’s time. For now, let’s finish that episode. I really want to know what kind of disease it was and if I know that series, we still have three incorrect diagnostics left with straw man arguments and morals clashing as intermission.”

Knowing I wouldn’t be able to extract any more information from my teacher, I fed myself a spoonful of the flan and pressed the space bar to make the video resume playing. While I watched not the series’ weekly episode but the amusing reactions my companion made when the characters made witty remarks at each other (you’d think she be sick of that, considering it seems pretty much like her daily life), I couldn’t help but wonder what that woman so close to me had been through. Then the flavor kicked in and I let go of being so preoccupied because even Ms. Entropy wasn’t.

Being a victim of cutesy internet viral videos never tasted so sweet.

***************

Next day at school was pretty okay. No, really.

Unlike what I quickly trained myself to expect in that school, nothing much happened other than several successive Physical Education classes (something I managed to avoid last week by being absent due to an unfortunate meeting with an entity that was rather mysterious at the time). Walking with Kouma and Ryo during lunch kept people away, so by having my closest friends acting as natural repellents, I didn’t hear a lot of gossip on the Morimoto Ayaka subject. It wasn’t the worst thing ever, although I was sure it was within my capabilities to conceal any pertinent detail of last week’s happenings. Besides, for me, entirely avoiding particular topics is almost a super power.

For starters, there’s the Reikoku-sensei situation. She said a strikingly similar situation to mine marked her adolescence, yet I did not push her to tell me what happened. Kouma said she attacked me out of care for Ryo, but forcing her to say anything more didn’t feel right, even though I could see the traces of a badly formed relationship everywhere in her behavior. The way Ryo can change from too naïve to way too sharp in the blink of an eye also went uncommented, although God and many other supernatural entities know I had a plethora of chances I never bother to take.

Overlooking things on purpose and at command is an acquired skill used mostly to avoid red herrings and mind control. I don’t claim to be able to do it perfectly, as I am aware every little detail I run into will eventually come back to bite me at some point in my life: if anything, my best take on that skill is to dodge what can be dodged at the moment while thinking of a way to counter it when that potential disaster’s turn to try and ruin everyone’s life comes.

Postponing the end over and over again. That’s me alright.

“Does he ever get tired of spacing out?”

Knowing the girl for exactly a week was enough time to realize Kouma Yon always found a way to interrupt your train of thought. Funny and ironic as it might sound, yesterday she wouldn’t leave my mind while she wasn’t around and, now that she is, I keep thinking of something else.

“However, this too fits my hypothesis.”

Oh boy, another hypothesis. Any other teenager would have casually used the word ‘theory’ instead, but my particularly uncommon one-time battle partner knew better than that.

“What hypothesis?” Ryo asked. “Is this the one about him having ADD?”

With a sigh of mine, the three of us sat down on our secret place, our sanctuary of concrete, steel and sky to enjoy our meal. We have done this enough for me to assume it was a ritual, a custom they probably shared long before I came to this town. The formation was a perfect triangle in which each one of us could face the others, and by that I mean Kouma could watch us both with just one stare of hers, which was economical and effective when it came to comfort prevention. The rooftop was empty as always and the only reason I was comfortable with this situation was because if they hadn’t found trouble so far because of eating here every single day, I think the odds are smaller for a storm to start just because I’m together with them.

No, actually not.

“Imprecise, but yes,” proceeded the fashionista. “While we are talking about the same hypothesis, the correct term since 1994 is Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and no longer Attention Deficit Disorder. Therefore, the proper acronym for that would be ADHD. Predominantly inattentive, to be more specific.”

The fact I decided at the last second not to tease Kouma that most people, doctors included, still called the disorder by the old name was probably for the best. I do not think I have the energy it would take to get in a heated ‘popular knowledge versus scientific advance’ debate with Kouma Yon without eating first. Or after eating, for that matter; even if it’s only to annoy her a bit, it just wasn’t worth it.

“It doesn’t matter, I don’t have ADHD.”

It was easy to tell that dialogue wasn’t going to end there, so I figured I should eat as much as I could without looking disgusting in between my lines. Otherwise, I’d end up not finishing my meal before break was over. Again.

“Are you sure? You daydream on what could be called a ‘regular basis,’ your eyes go everywhere even while people talk to you, and anyone who saw your house before we went there would say you lack a sense of organization. The symptoms fit.”

“Not all of them.” Ryo intervened in the diagnosis. “He never showed any urges of touching and playing with everything in sight or even talked to excess.”

What would be considered as ‘excessively talking’ by Shiina Ryo, exactly?

“Actually, that’s not evidence.” I said after another portion of my gyudon was properly swallowed. Disagreeing with Ryo wasn’t half as bad when I had something in mind, and setting up a hook for Kouma was kind of worth it. “That just means I am not the hyperactive type.”

One could tell the dreadful fashionista grin was coming because of the aura that preceded it.

“He seemed fairly, say, touchy with you last week, if that counts.” Surely she, who had previously attacked this boy she hardly knew and who all of a sudden chose to lock arms with him due to alleged cold, is one to talk about people being touchy. “So, you see, my hypothesis is still val-”

Kouma completely lured in with the bait equals time to fish.

“But I am completely sure I don’t have ADHD because my parents had me tested for it, twice.” The first time didn’t really count, as the doctor was a hired Neapolitan assassin with fairly poor acting skills and a penchant for touching his moustache. The second doctor was legit and fairly well shaved. For a bearded woman, that is. “You can argue all you want, but I can get the medical papers scanned and sent to you in high resolution in less than fifteen minutes and then rub them in your face until your makeup comes off.”

It was obviously a bluff, and undeniably a tad too harsh for a friendly conversation between people who had only recently met, but I could frankly and rather disappointedly say Kouma did not appear appalled at all by my words. If anything, she stared at me with more lack of expression than she usually did.

Back then it didn’t occur to me that the complete absence of small nuances of concealed feelings itself could be a symptom of something else.

“Today’s P.E. seemed to be very tiring,” Ryo said, implementing passive diplomatic countermeasures.

There was some irony in the way she carefully picked the words, though.

“But none of us took part in it.” It seemed pretty obvious to me why Ryo didn’t participate in physical activities of any kind (and I have been around for only a week). In my case, I was directly told by Reikoku-sensei not to, although I’d rather believe it was because of my display of strength in that battle rather than the fact I am the only male in class. On the other hand, we have Kouma Yon, who is a fairly healthy girl with excellent motor skills yet won’t participate, presumably to not leave Ryo alone. This would not be an issue if Kouma became fond of the idea of leaving Ryo alone with me. “It’s been a while since I played any kind of sport.”

That gorgeous catty smile of Ryo made its appearance and thus my day was complete; I could as well go home at that moment and sleep, waiting patiently for my next fix tomorrow.

“Really? I could never picture you as someone who liked sports, Shin-tsu.”

“Wait Ryo, I might have given you the wrong impression. I’m not a fan of sports or similar physical activities but I’m pretty good at most of them because, well…”

Kouma finished taking a sip of whatever she was drinking, as rushed to speak as a half-asleep amateur actor who was just reminded of his line; the fashionista managed to maintain a certain degree of composure in her speech while lacking it in visual effect.

“You are used to running all the time.”

Denying it at that point would be juvenile and kind of silly.

“…precisely, thank you so very much.”

“You’re welcome.”

The flat expression (or rather, absence-of) in her face annoyed me a lot.

“For someone so used to analyzing people and their speech, your usage and perception of sarcasm is rather poor, Kouma.”

“The same cannot be said of the amount of split ends in that thing you call hair, unfortunately.”

That line sounded oddly familiar to me, although I was sure she didn’t mention a thing about my hair in the previous week. For some reason unknown to me, it also reminded me of an entirely different topic.

“Hey Ryo, how are the ARK thing’s projects going? Any new ideas?”

“Funny you asked. I got this novel series idea in a dream, but I can’t remember much of it so it’s just a vague concept now.”

“Not vague enough to wake me up at 4:17 AM, surely.” Kouma tilted her head to the left side, which was a bit creepy because her face was still hers. If I were to describe the effect to someone who had never met her, I’d tell them to imagine an Ichimatsu doll with a five hundred dollar haircut and sailor uniform moving only her head, j-horror movie style, to look at someone’s direction. “Not that I am complaining about being woken up to the sound of my mobile phone’s ringtone to listen to information on Sengoku-era clothing before breakfast.”

Then she looked at a rather dumbfounded me as if saying ‘if you want sarcasm, I can give it to you,’ but what really surprised me was the fact she could actually act in a non-worshipping way towards Ryo. Maybe I jump to conclusions a bit too fast…

“Who else could I text? You’re the only person I know who would know whether matching the colors of an obi with a hakama worked back then or not. And it turned out you knew an awful lot about gloves too!”

Then Kouma moved her eyes to me, and knowing that hideous grin of hers was forming, I wasn’t quite sure if I wanted her to have easy to spot expressions or not. It was Scylla and Charybdis all over again.

“Try and find a decent yukage pattern in less than thirty minutes. I double dare you.”

Apparently, I do reach conclusions too fast: even when acting sarcastic and annoyed, Kouma Yon actually likes to spend time with Ryo, and vice-versa. The fact they had been doing it for a long time cancels out any possible kind of offense taken by any remark they could make at each other. Weird as they really are, they’re completely comfortable being themselves around each other.

It made me so jealous that I could not refrain from biting my inferior lip. Not hard enough to break the flesh and spill blood like one would expect, to deliver a graphic example of my inner turmoil and justified angst when confronted with the fact that the chances of me actually sharing this kind of relationship with anyone are still slim. There’s only so much of a drama queen a person can be, even as a teenager.

“So,” I said, trying to divert the flow of the conversation to one topic where I would have at the very least chances of cringing slightly less, even if only a bit. “What are your predictions and speculations for this season’s Medical Doctor Holmes? The latest episode was pretty good.”

Shiina Ryo suddenly became radiant, so lively one could hardly imagine a girl capable of such vibrant vivacity had a physical health so different from that appearance. What caught my interest the most at the time was not the fact I didn’t know what kind of condition she had, but the lack of stability in her condition. I was not considering her fragile state to be false (although that might have been reckless of me), but rather how developed whatever her sickness or disorder was. In my experience, inconstancy is where the danger lies.

“Yes! Yes it was! The sudden yet somehow fitting development of his relationship with the gracefully feminine yet firm administrator caused by a petty argument that started very early on that episode was quite well written. To bring it back with a simple symbolic gesture at the final scene was a good tactic, although I have seen too many drama shows to miss the hint that this was a breather episode. Thinks are bound to get darker.”

“Even you, Shin-tsu?” Kouma had this bored, borderline ennui look on her pretty-but-easily-associated-with-cynicism face. “I didn’t assume you’d like that show.”

Pouting, I tried giving her a lazy caricature of her facial expression by reflecting it with mine. Now that I think of it, I still wasn’t sure whether Kouma and I were on friendly terms, given the whole on-off nature of hers. Slight teasing, unlike any other more intimate or aggressive attempt, worked both ways.

“Why, do I look like someone who likes monster truck demolition races or something like that? You’re not the only person around with ‘refined’ tastes, you know.”

“The opposite: I don’t consider that show very refined, especially when it comes to the application of medicine. Of course, it could be argued that since the show has to last the full timeslot, the writers have to come up with hardships for the doctors, but that doesn’t make me any more attracted to the idea of seeing them formulaically misdiagnose patients for a whole episode. Certainly not for more than five years, in all honesty.”

Although this will sound judgmental as hell, I must say: her analysis, regardless of right or wrong, was always anything but what one would usually expect from someone that actually bothered to follow the current fashion trends. If anything, Kouma Yon lacked the ‘charming shallowness’ almost glorified in that scene that would give her an illusion of the concept we (possibly wrongly) perceive as personality.

“Plus, you don’t even seem to be the kind of person that distinctly cares about television. When Ryo and I went to help you sort your apartment, a task I wasn’t uncommonly interested in doing but was urged to given the circumstances, we couldn’t help but notice you didn’t have one. And demolition races sound plainly unsuitable, you’re not alpha enough.”

“Hey, I take offense to the last line. And from all the people I know around here, I thought you would be the one that would like that series the most, Kouma. I heard they rarely get medical mistakes and everyone dresses and looks nice. Dr. Holmes manages to look really good even with permanent action movie guy stubble.”

“It just seems wrong, going through all the trouble of streaming, downloading or waiting for the horrid Japanese dubs of what I already know is more and more of the same. The way they’re using the relationship Ryo-chan and you care so much about just shows me the whole thing is even more of a waste of time, egging on shippers like that rather than raising the bar on its cases and making sure the accuracy is pitch-perfect all the time. Being serious though, your beta is showing. Hard.”

My adorable friend stretched herself and yawned, cue me feeling like yawning as well but doing my best not to succumb to that feeling. My tongue quickly touched the roof of my mouth and with a tickly movement the will to yawn was gone. Works every time; do try it.

“Mistakes happen, although writers are supposed to keep them to a minimum to avoid loss of the public’s interest. There’s only so much suspension of disbelief, really. You can retcon mistakes here and there, but do it on a regular basis and even the most naturally over-the-top Mexican telenovela will not appeal to the viewers anymore. And Kouma, this new season is just delicious, you have to give it a shot. I’m a tad tired because I didn’t get much sleep last night, but if you feel like it we could all go to Le Ciel Bleu and watch a few episodes toget-”

Ryo’s speech was brought to a rather abrupt halt, and because of that I could tell there was someone we didn’t usually see approaching us, which was something really unusual considering we were having lunch on the rooftop. And some people say poor social skills aren’t useful.

“Shin-tsu, my man!”

“Oh, it’s you.”

If you watch a reasonable amount of anime, you definitely don't need me to tell you the important characters are always given special, attractive (and often blinding) coloration when in comparison to, say, bland and normal ones. Judging by that alone, one could argue that Megumi was the most likely individual to be relevant to the plot the industry had ever seen. Still, the color thing is predominantly used to grant the viewer easy identification of the character (and thus, propel the sales of merchandise and make cosplayers earn their brief popularity with their blood and tears) and I don't see how a company could market what my eyes can on perceive as the result of infinite pigments of watercolor thrown into the world's most brutal kitchen blender. Unless it's one of those artsy things you're not supposed to really comprehend, just mock the ones who admit they don't while riding your fixie bike.

“We were playing detective all morning trying to find out where you were, bro. Yesterday you only told us your name, not your class or anything.”

“Were you? Also, what do you mean by ‘we?’” And then I noticed the second, almost shy shadow hidden almost entirely in Megumi’s shade, and couldn’t help but wonder if that was premeditated, considering she managed to vanish on a rooftop, a technically open area. “Never mind. Hey Akane. Didn’t see you there.”

The girl-shadow hid a bit more.

“Yeah, and to be honest I thought finding a boy in this school should be easier. Somehow, you don’t seem to stand out much,” said the peacock queen.

It might have just been my imagination, but I think I actually heard the air moving around Kouma’s well-designed lips when she smirked, possibly due to the irony of the situation. Another possibility is her fashionista roots being overwhelmed by fury at the sight of what even in my eyes could be considered an abomination of style and the color spectrum, and I’ve actually seen my and everyone’s share of real abominations, mind you.

“I need to talk to you, bro. You can spare a minute?”

“Sure.”

“Great, awesome.”

She squatted next to me and Ryo, putting herself between us as Ryo edged away. The triangle and its symmetry were gone, but Megumi probably didn’t even realize she was disrupting the natural order of things. As far as she was concerned, Ryo moved away from her as an invite for her and her friend to sit. Whether Akane felt the crescent animosity or just didn’t want to be near me, that’s another mystery I had to postpone; she stood still like a tower, casting her extended shadow over us. Due to the current position of the sun, her shadow’s head reached Kouma’s leg and darkened the detailed checkered patterns on her knee high socks, which I will pretend I just noticed and you will pretend you believe me. “Hey, are the three of you first years?”

I could not see how that was relevant to any topic Megumi could have to discuss with me.

“Yes, we a-”

“Cool. Class B, right?”

“Yeah, why is that imp-”

“So you’re really in Reikoku’s class. Tough luck, guys. Akane and I were in her class last year, and she makes even old man Kawajima look like an angel. Just wait for finals. I barely made it to the second year!”

Akane muttered something under her breath at that point but stopped all of a sudden when she noticed I was looking at her. She was visibly uncomfortable, even more than the Shiina Ryo I’ve caught a glimpse of while turning to face Megumi once again, and it might or might not be related to the fact the colorful older student was looking at her and Kouma while smiling sillily, like people do when they have a good set of Mahjong pieces in hand.

“Just wondering, how did you find me?” I asked.

“We actually had just quit for now and decided to visit our old lunch spot. The plan B was to find you before you went home, but by sheer luck we found you.” And just when I thought Megumi would get to the point, she turned to Kouma with the same smile of a few moments ago. “I think I remember you. You went to the kindergarten two blocks from here?”

“That is correct, both Ryo and I were in Honmaru Kindergarten.”

“Your hair wasn’t layered or anything, but you looked pretty much the same as a kid as you do right now. Not to say you look like a kid, but you stood out even then. And man, I’m drooling all over your hair.”

Kouma’s eye twitched upon being called ‘man;’ I could only expect a retort boiling to come out of that cold as ice person.

“Oh, I could get you the salon’s address, their specialty is this kind of cut. And I must say you stood out a lot back then, too.”

I started to notice the layers weren’t only present in those girls’ hair but in their conversation as well: no one could deny there were at least two conversations going on at that point, one on the surface and other underneath. As I could feel the levels of animosity rising without knowing why or how to solve the problem, all I could do was to use my power to divert the topic.

“What did you want to talk about, anyway?”

This brought the carefree thing back to Megumi’s expression.

“Oh, right. Akane’s mom just gave her a call. She heard us talking about the band thing yesterday and because a client changed his mind about the schedule she is free today to come to help us gather the instruments and other equipment after school. We’ll get to ride around town in her delivery van and everything. So, are you in or are you out?”

Too much seemingly unrelated information to digest at once for me, and this impression was coming from someone who texts Ryo on a daily basis.

“I don’t think I’m following.”

“The band thing, man. I don’t want to pressure you or anything, but Rin seemed pretty thrilled when I told her Akane’s mom would be free to transport our instruments today and stuff. That doesn’t usually happens, so we are in a pretty lucky moment right now. If you feel like being a part of this, I kind of need you to decide now or you might be on your own to bring your stuff all the here. Do you live close to the school or something?”

“No, he doesn’t.” Kouma Yon answered the question for me, possibly with the intention of interrupting the original course of the dialogue and thus gather my attention to her so she could pose a question of hers. “…a band? You been here for a week and already joined a band? Are you serious?”

But if my insight into Kouma’s intention was correct, the course of action the girl with enough metal piercings to disrupt small-sized magnetic balance zones had taken was a direct confrontation.

“It’s more like ‘the’ band, and it’s going to be brutal,” she said proudly, and then proceeded to fully ignore Kouma’s existence, a feature I’d envy if I didn’t know it only made my classmate more and more dangerous. Megumi looked at me like she was watching something surrounding my body and not the body per se. “Let’s say you decide to join us later, would it be hard to bring your bass and rig all the way here?”

Trying to overlook the imminent conflict of teenage girls for a moment, I pondered on that hypothetical scenario’s chances of coming true and realized it would be unlikely.

“A lot, I’ve got one huge amp.”

“Right.” She took a second to present another alternative. “Can you get your parents to bring it here by car later or something like that?”

I did my best to avoid making a face that screamed ‘touchy subject, don’t ask’ in front of this older girl I hardly knew, but it wasn’t easy at all because all I could see was Kouma Yon twitching her nose with Ryo’s nervous humming as background effect.

“…no.”

I couldn’t tell if she was trying to ignore the undertones or was just that simple, but Megumi did not bother with my specific and uncomfortable answer.

“Then I guess this is a now or never thing, eh? Which will it be, bro?”

Then intervention came.

“Do not rush things.” The vanishing girl had quickly got on her knees and whispered, but specifically because of that I managed to grasp the high frequencies of her voice’s sound waves. “Give him some time.”

“I would be okay if he could just call us when the time is right, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Just say ‘yes’ or ‘no’, man. It’s not that much of a deal.”

But it was.

Everybody involved was uncomfortable to some extent. Ryo hated being around new people and wasn’t particularly happy about having visitors in our sanctuary. Kouma was somehow teasing Megumi and did not seem pleased about being ignored. Megumi was acting a bit cocky and from yesterday’s experience I could tell she was nervous. Akane was clearly visible and I was in the midst of all that chaos.

It occurred to me then I could halt everything with a single word, so I did.

“Okay.”

All of the faces in front of me seemed surprised, Kouma being the exception. Megumi vocalized their thoughts.

“What?”

“Fine, I’ll play with you.” And to hint something I wanted but couldn’t directly ask for without being rude. “Meet you guys later, then?”

Whether she realized I needed them out of there or was just done with her business, I couldn’t tell. What I did witness was sudden movement and a girl fading once again to her position as the other’s shadow.

“Great, we’ll be waiting for you by the club entrance at the end of classes. Let’s go, Akane!”

They opened and closed the rooftop entrance door as silently as they had the first time and with that they were gone and it was all over. Everything would go back to normal, and I could finish the meal like nothing ever happened.

Surprisingly, Ryo didn’t seem relieved or happy at all.

***************

Funny or not, the thing that surprised me the most that afternoon was not the fact I was in a parked flower delivery van with three older girls and a grown woman, all of them borderline strangers to me. Neither was the realization that my life was not, despite all my constant efforts over a long period of time, becoming any more normal. It was something else entirely.

“So, is that really your house?

Rin tilted her head to be able to see me from her position next to the driver in a way I had only witnessed before in the works of a particular animation studio, and for a moment all I could do was wonder if it hurt.

“Was it not, what we are about to do would most definitely be considered a crime. Removing musical equipment from the home of another person would, in many circumstances, qualify as theft. Why do you ask, Koukishin-kun?”

I do not consider myself a particularly wealthy individual for a reason or two, but I know that I surely lead a comfortable life when compared to many less-fortunate others. With that in mind, I guarantee the school council president’s mansion made my flat look rather mediocre and unremarkable. The property was, at the very least, hard to describe without using stuff such as ‘big’, ‘large’, ‘huge’, ‘humongous’, ‘massive’, ‘monumental’, ‘gigantic’, ‘colossal’, ‘stellar’, ‘dude is that really necessary’ and so on. Not to say that it was flawless when it came to aesthetics or common sense, but it most surely peacocked just as much as Megumi did. Proportionally, I suppose.

Judging by that one, has to wonder why she bothers to attend a public school or any school at all: anyone with that kind of money could and would get better than decent tutors unless they have a reason not to or similar ulterior motives of some kind. A future career in politics sounds like a fairly good reason, though; the people need to think your roots are the same, although they expect you to be superior to them in honesty and morals. Go figure.

“No particular reason, not at all.” I looked through the window of the stationary vehicle with flower-themed paint job, mostly looking for a petty topic to divert my attention from what was not a mere elephant in the room. I could have dealt with that. In fact, I had, once. “Is that a Japanese Iris garden?”

The driver and owner of the car we were in let out a pleasant laugh that sounded a lot like a glissando slide played on a violin.

“Close, you have good eyesight.” Akane’s mom was astonishingly similar to her daughter physically, but a tad too different when it came to personality. As in complete opposite. It was quite the shock to me when I met her at the school entrance: to see a carefree, older version of Akane waving to us, chatting and smiling in a very calm way the whole ride while the younger Akane more intensely tried to fade into inexistence using both her predisposition to it along with the natural edge to it that dawns on every teenager when their friends or colleagues are meeting their parents. It was too much to take at once. “My bet is that those are flowers from the orchid family but varied genus. Am I right?”

Rin turned around to face her and nodded firmly.

“Absolutely. In that particular section there can be found several types of orchids, many of them brought from Central America.”

“That’s great! It’s good to know there is a garden so rich in diversity in our town. Flowers have power.” I did not know it then, but found out soon enough Akane’s mother was a hippie, technically. She believed in the ideals and loved the culture, but was not born in the right time to actually live any of that. In retrospect, being a single mom, driving a van, owning a flower shop, discussing the benefits of solar energy with high school students and having slightly messier hair than her daughter should have struck me as clues. “Those flamingoes fit well as decoration.”

They didn’t, both in the visual aspect and the geographic one: there are four kinds of Flamingoes in the Americas, but as far as I was concerned not one of them was from Central America, but from the South. The visual aspect was probably not as much of a lie as it was an honest mistake. The compliment on taste did come from a woman riding a flower-themed van around town after all, so it could be seen as being called ‘fashionable’ by someone who dresses very badly.

“Those are real.”

That small sentence did not seem to blend well and I don’t think I was the only one to think that way.

“Yes, I can tell those flowers are real even from here.” Hippie mom tried to look just as carefree as she did before, but I could see small sweat drops starting their despair-inducing descent from the points where her hairline was visible in the midst of too-messy-to-be-called-wavy black locks. “I see real and plastic flowers every day.”

“A misunderstanding; I was referring to the flamingoes.”

Silence reared its ugly head as a rising sun, eclipsed by the sudden beginning of a spring rain, a poke and a rather loud whisper coming from the colorful girl who sat by me in the center of the van’s backseat.

“Dude, she’s like, filthy as a wobble bassline rich!”

“…did you actually say that?”

Rin looked to the backseat once again.

“Well, this has been a good conversation …”

“No it hasn’t.”

I automatically muttered those words without considering the consequences, the alteration of my mood and lack of inhibition and self-restraint possibly occurring due to being inside a hot variation of car during a rather warm spring day.

“Is there anything you would like to add, Koukishin-kun?”

“No ma’am.” Quite the opposite, there was plenty I would have liked to subtract if we were under normal conditions. “Please proceed talking about how great the previous talk was.”

Chances are she grasped the implied insolence and sarcasm, but ignored it. I savored the sweet moment, given that it was easy to tell there would not be many of those.

“As I was saying, this has been a good conversation, but I would like to do what we came here to do and, as the common man says, ‘get done with it’. We still have two more houses to visit in order to gather musical equipment and time consumes itself easily.”

Megumi shook her head full of hair in slow motion.

“Just one more, I guess: my guitar, cables, pedals, amp, all my stuff is already in the back of the car.”

That sounded fishy to me, but apparently not to Rin.

“Excellent, in that case we will have more time to set the gear up back at school. Thus, I am going in.” Her gaze rolled and fell upon the girl who had done her best to conceal herself from being topic relevant or part of the discussion the whole time. “If you do not mind, I would much rather it to be you accompanying me, Akane-san.”

Shy girl didn’t need to uncover her eyes to show her surprise, as her open mouth did the job well enough. Megumi disagreed with Rin’s decision, as I was sure I would see happen more than once again in a not distant future.

“Just wait a second! Why don’t we all go in?”

“This is but a scout mission, so that would be completely unnecessary. Our first step is to gather intelligence on the whereabouts of my father and based on his location choose the best method of bringing the equipment outside in these current climatic conditions. Only then we will gather at the backdoor of the mansion and start transfer phase.”

I was interested in a particular detail of Rin’s lines.

“Could that be interpreted as your father not approving of these activities? As in the band being formed and moving your gear around?”

“I am afraid it suggests what you thought but in all honesty it means my father is not even aware of me having sound-related apparatus in my bedroom, let alone joining an extra-curricular activity unrelated to the School Council. That said, this maneuver is only a precaution. By this time he is usually working, so we shall have no more hindrances in executing the transport operation.”

Yet like a puppy playing with someone, Megumi wouldn’t let go.

“Fine, but why Akane and not me or Shin-tsu?”

“Seems remarkably simple and logical to me, but you and I are very distinct persons so I shall try and put it in terms you can comprehend. He is, contrary to visual-aided common sense, a male individual around my age and that would raise suspicion with the helpers, possibly enough for some of them to talk with to my father about some boy entering his daughter’s bedroom along with her. Worst case scenario, if my father is indeed inside, Koukishin-kun does not have enough data to act as if we were long-term friends or part of the School Council, thus creating an even stronger image of a hidden relationship paved with bad intentions and juvenile passion. About you, well, I do not think I can possibly explain why your appearance would gather unwarranted attention in a way that you would not perceive as directly offensive.” A breath and a blink later, I realize that I could not tell if Megumi understood the situation or was just looking mad because of Rin’s constant patronizing attitude. “It is obvious, then, why I am choosing Akane-san. Even like this, she is visually the closest to an acceptable companion for me that we have in this car. No offense meant.”

“None taken.” Akane’s mom was watching Rin with a soothing look in her eyes. “I keep telling this daughter of mine she needs to work on her looks a little bit. We’re not in the sixties anymore.” And from what I could tell by looking at her face, she never was. “Even then, boys had standards. Still, if being around Megumi-chan has not given her a wish to change her appearance, I hardly think you can do something about it. You just don’t have half as much boldness as she does, despite your manners, but I must congratulate you on managing to run the Student Council even with those social skills of yours. No offense meant.”

Megumi produced a muffled giggle, so it was probably okay making a little bit of fun of her looks if you were Hippie mom and attacking Rin with an almost static yet very natural carefree smile on your face. I sort of hoped for conflict, but it was prevented by Akane, who had somehow opened the van door at her side, moved outside, closed it and then opened the front one by Rin’s side without me noticing it.

“Let’s go,” Akane meekly said to Rin.

And without any further ado they left, presumably a tactical move of our School Council president devised as a way of avoiding meeting our eyes while flustered with anger and, in a less likely scenario, shame. Not as much of a sadist as the girl she had just teased, Akane’s mother had the decency to wait for the two girls to walk away before commenting the situation with the two students that stayed in the car.

“It’s great to see Akane-chan making new friends, but that older girl could use a small dosage of consideration for others. We all have flaws, anyway, and her vocabulary is great for her age.” She looked at me through the rear-vision mirror. “You don’t talk a lot, do you? Like my Akane-chan.”

She could have good vision for flowers, but her hearing was not the best.

“…no, it’s just that…”

“It’s probably hard when you’re the only boy around and surrounded by girls, eh?”

“No, not really,” I replied with a strong and secure voice that surprised even me, although it was the utmost truth. While it could be argued I have always been mainly in the presence of females, it wasn’t until then I realized it was happening. Perhaps that is the way a fish would feel if someone told it about the water. “You could say I am used to that kind of situation, as I always had more friends who are girls than boys. What’s really making it hard for me to get into the conversation is the fact I’m new around here and didn’t even know anyone until yesterday afternoon.”

“You’re not from here, then?”

“No, just moved here last week.”

That was probably news to Megumi too.

“Really?” The second year student seemed impressed. More than anyone, I knew there were people very interested in what was somewhat foreign, especially because I can hardly remember any time when I wasn’t a foreigner. “Were did you live before, Tokyo?”

“Actually, I was living abroad most of the time during the past years.”

Rising levels of uneasiness warned me the conversation was heading to a direction that could not meet a good end as I finished speaking that sentence. Her next question confirmed it.

“Where?”

The shrugging was automatic but the vague answer was completely intentional.“Everywhere, really.”

To divert their attention by bringing in another topic was a cheap and easy way out, but I wasn’t in any condition to be picky. “Hey, can I ask you a few questions, rapid fire style?”

“This is kind of sudden but sure, hit me.”

I breathe in.

“Blood type?”

“B.”

“Interests?”

“Music!”

“Hobbies?”

“Music again!”

“Favorite color?”

“All of them.”

“Favorite accessory?”

“All of them.”

The last two were quite believable, very much. I smiled without showing teeth and wondered for a moment if it looked anything like Ryo’s characteristic cat smiles, which was unlikely. However, as long as it was reassuring, it worked.

“Fantastic. So far, you’re doing great. Isn’t she?”

Akane’s mom nodded cautiously, as did not seem to understand what I was getting at. Still, she did not intervene.

“Thanks, man.” Megumi scratched the back of her head with the visible embarrassment of those who aren’t used to being praised. “I practice for the day I’ll get magazine questionnaires.”

“Interesting. A saying?”

“Ten persons, ten colors.”

Which basically translated to ‘to each their own’, if I was correct.

“Did you see the person you like today?”

“Never liked anyone, not in that way.”

“A painting?”

“None specific, but I dig abstract art.”

“Last movie you’ve seen?”

“Some old American black and white comedy. Wasn’t very interesting.”

“Have you found anything interesting while walking recently?”

“A golden paperclip. I still walk around with it in my bag.”

And there it was: we had reached the point where the defenses of the interviewed were lowered because of being conditioned to answer, the stage right before she’d get annoyed and answer things with sarcasm and quirkiness. Experimentation showed me how to identify that and, as it was a useful skill for extracting information, I made sure not to forget how to do it.

“Did you contact your parents while in school today?”

“Nope,” she said, seeming a tad unsure about it afterwards.

“So there was no way you or your parents could know today would be the day we’d gather stuff and move it to school?”

“Not really… Why do you ask?”

“How did you get to tell someone at home to get your stuff ready for Akane’s mother to just come by and pick it up without making mistakes?” Everything was just too convenient, too neat even for a fated situation. Even though it was possible due to how random life can be, it sure was not likely and questioning her was a risk I was willing to take. “You left school at the same time I did and did not even bother to look at your equipment. How could you possibly know everything is in there?”

“Well, I…”

I saw Akane’s mother movements in slow motion and could tell she was going to try and intervene, which implied I was doing it right. A bit more of pressure was necessary to expose the truth.

“Answer the question.”

“I didn’t, but what is the poi-”

Although fully aware that my final move was a huge stretch of the truth, the whole thing still sounded a lot like a good idea at the time.

“Megumi, don’t be offended by this supposition, but you are actually living at Akane’s place, right?”

Once again it was time for one of those silent moments, except this one was caused by yours truly. After it happened, I could only wonder why I had done it; the impulse that drove me was not composed of reason, but something much more primal and similar to what I felt when facing Ayaka last week. As if I was a beast that could attack in ways other than by using physical strength.

Not that despite the raging thrill I felt it was morally correct or, more importantly, socially acceptable.

I must admit she could have lied and dismissed my hypothesis with ease, but in her case I assumed she would not. No, the correct word would be ‘knew;’ I could without a trace of doubt tell she was the type that hid but did not have the custom of lying, although for reasons that shame me. To some extent, I am both: someone who hides and someone who lies, and good enough at both to tell when I see one of my kind.

The response to that behavior was fairly better than I expected or deserved.

“You are a nice guy, Shin-tsu.” Hippie mom had a good impression of me, somehow. “I am sure you wouldn’t tease Megumi over this or spread this rumor.”

Well, I could be mistaken but to me there wasn’t a hint of threat in that line: just pure motherly concern, which made me somewhat uneasy, I admit it. Days later I would understand they assumed I wasn’t being an obnoxious, offensive socially unfit individual but just someone without a perfect grasp of daily Japanese, my rudeness a mere lack of acclimation with the language and culture.

You stay around manipulators, literal monsters and such for too long and you start assuming everyone is one.

“I wouldn’t.” Ironically, there I was trying to assure someone I was one of the good guys after playing mind games. “I just needed to know because I’m concerned, and this is something you two might want to avoid hinting in the future in the presence of other people. People who would have a harder time understanding. You are obviously trying to keep this a secret for some personal reason, so it might be a good idea to think twice before giving out information that may be suspicious or contradictory in the light of other events. Never say anything concrete if you want to be able to take it back. When keeping secrets, chances are you’ll have to.”

Megumi’s mouth was still open, the piercing in her lip lacking the shine her eyes always had (which was probably a byproduct of the two different colored contact lenses she wore all the time). And those lips I for one moment felt strangely focused on started moving a bit sooner than I expected they would.

“Yeah, he won’t. And even if he did, I know it wouldn’t be anything like what Rin would do if she knew. Maybe something like calling names between bros, but that’s all. I know we’re going to be bros because we kind of clicked when I saw you, you know?” She did not say that in a romantic way, or at least I could only associate that line coming from her with friendship for some reason. Possibly related to the constant usage of the word ‘bros’, I guess. “Almost the opposite of what happened when I first saw Rin. Pfft. Man, there’s something about her that pisses me so much.”

To manage to ignore that, one would have to be trying very hard to do so.

“Sure.” I concurred, and then tried to come up with an understatement to follow that avoided minimalism. “You even talk way more casually when she’s not around. It’s like you two are competing all the time over everything.”

“Yeah, I do. Speaking like that is weird for me, but not doing it in front of someone like her would be like, giving her more fuel to act all high and mighty. Someone needs to fight her on her own terms, bro.”

A characteristic sound went off, something universal although not exactly popular: the sound of a cheap wristwatch’s alarm. The driver of the flowery van turned her head to face us.

“Megumi-chan, there are other ways of standing up to The Man. In the sea of life, it’s not always about rowing and rowing; fighting the power is an activity that can be performed in many ways, but what really matters is to do the right thing even if it means kicking reason to the curb.” Hearing Akane’s mother speak about whatever topic she managed to grasp was really amusing, for a given value of that word. Definitely a good person, but one could tell she believes in the flower power, power of the people and all that jazz from kilometers away. “Now if you kids don’t mind, it’s my meditation time, and I’m going to need phones for this or the binaural frequencies will be buried and lost in this van’s cheap boosters.”

Megumi started moving all of a sudden and seeing her searching for something in her school bag was rather trippy, certainly enough to make me dizzy -- way too many colors and movement happening in too little time.

“Oh, earphones!” She said, her hand continuously digging down and bringing a mess up as an excavator would do to a terrain. “What a great idea!”

“Someone already patented that, I’m afraid.”

“You’re real funny, man,” she took ear buds and extended me one of the pair, and once more I was entirely baffled by her corporal language. “Now seriously, let’s listen to some music and chill.”

For a moment I could only think of the irony present in her poor choice of words and then I understood what was going to happen.

“Sure, as long as it’s not metal. It wouldn’t work.”

“Eh? Why is that?”

“We will be sharing, right? That means one earbud for you and one for me.”

“So?”

“Modern metal production standards pretty much dictate at least one guitar track should be used in each side so when it comes to harmonizing or completely different riffs being played simultaneously, they can contrast and fill the overall mix. Listening to only half of what the sound engineer intended might sound a tad awkward for one of us, perhaps both.” Then I noticed I was doing it again, the whole Ryo-speak thing. “What I’m trying to say is that we probably won’t be able to enjoy the songs as much while sharing the earbuds because the music is usually mixed to only work properly in stereo.”

Her rather unfeminine laughter was somehow only noticeable when I stopped talking, or for the sake of a fairly more precise description, lecturing.

“…for one second you really sounded like Akane.”

Chuckling ensued.

“Wait a second, did I ever stutter or something? Never mind that, are you implying she ever actually speaks and a lot on top of that?”

“Boy, you’d be amazed.”

“I already am.” Sure, I met the girl yesterday but there are a few characteristics you just expect to be permanent, or at the very least, not contradicted within minutes. “Her mother doesn’t see her that way though.”

She wasn’t laughing anymore, and it wasn’t completely unexpected.

“Do your parents know exactly who you are?”

If they didn’t, they’d still be around. Or six feet under.

“You tell me. Most of the time I don’t know myself.”

Satisfied with my half-fabricated answer, Megumi pushed her hand further and made me take one of the earphones almost inserting it in my ear herself.

“Enough talking, let’s get down to business: it’s Dubstep time.”

A button press was all it took for a distorted synthetic bass to start growling inside one of my ears along with a beat that didn’t quite naturally felt like one, but grew on you after a while. Unlike some more common forms of music it was based on ambience and feel rather than a melody one can hum, and unlike most electronic subgenres the production was overflowing with a powerful sub-bass. Hundreds of glitches and sliced vocal samples happening almost at random added much to the composition. It was rather dark, dirty and harsh, yet somewhat contained and completely nothing I would expect from someone made of blinding chromatic variations and metal who got into a silly argument with a girl she apparently met yesterday just to get in a van with her on the following afternoon.

“This isn’t bad at all.”

“Not the kind of music you can get into at once, but once you get into it it’s pretty hard to fall out of love.”

“Yeah. But there’s one thing, Megumi.”

“What?”

“This track has basically nothing to do with dub or 2-step garage.”

A blurry window reflected the colorful Megumi biting a toothpick she found in her bag while searching for the earbuds, the reminiscence in her eyes barely visible amongst the hundreds of raindrops running on the glass at random speeds with unpredictable pauses during its course.

“It’s been raining at least once a week around here, but it’s always like that when it’s spring, so no biggie. There was this amazing rainbow these days though, it was really something out of this world. Totally unforgettable.”

“Last week?”

“Whoa, you saw that rainbow too, man?”

“Yeah, I was hanging out with… a friend.” Giving unnecessary information out has ruined too many kingdoms. “We caught a bit of rain and then all of a sudden there it was, the most beautiful l’arc en ciel I had ever seen, stunning as heaven. What were you doing?”

“Same as you, just chilling with a buddy: Akane’s room has a huge stained glass window so it took me a moment to realize it was open and all those colors were on the sky and not coming from the stained glass itself, you know?” When she looked at me I saw her face wasn’t particularly hard to read despite the heavy makeup. “I saw those amazing trippy colors outside and even told Akane about it, but she didn’t pay much attention to it so I guessed it was all in my head or something.”

Something clicked in me.

“Hey.” I lowered my voice so Akane’s mom wouldn’t have a chance to hear us. “Were you, say, ‘clean’ that day?”

Laughing loudly, Megumi ruined my efforts in making that question private, even though it was for her own good.

“Oh dude, relax: I’m always clean. Straight edge for life!” She held the toothpick between two fingers like it was a cigarette, looked to her hand, laughed slowly and then shook her head as if to wave the irony away. “I see where you’re coming from though. Thing is, I used to be around smokers for a long time and became what you would call a ‘passive smoker’. I don’t hang out with that kind of people anymore, so whenever I catch myself thinking about the smell of nicotine, I start chewing on a toothpick until the craving goes away.”

That sounded way more like a lie she spent quite a good time working on than an honest truth, but for that moment I assumed the best course of action would be not to pressure her on the subject. After all, it was definitely not my business.

Yet.

“So, why did you assume you were able to see that but Akane wasn’t?”

“I don’t know, man, my brain plays tricks on me once in a while when it comes to colors and stuff. Good to know it wasn’t all in my head though, or that there is at least one more person around here who is just as weird as I am.” I felt like disagreeing because at least in the visual aspect no one could be half as weird as she was without actually trying, but I figured I’d understand the meaning of her words at some point in the future after some cooking scene or something so I’d be wasting saliva and ruining plot points. One of her fingers pointed outside at Akane and Rin were walking towards us. “Here they come.”

The president passed in front of the window Megumi was watching so intently but didn’t stop, moving directly towards the van driver’s. I couldn’t hear all of what she said to hippie mom, but the words ‘help’, ‘butler’, and ‘backdoor’ gave me a vague but interesting idea of the overall context. Obviously it could have turned out to be something completely different from reality, as thoughts that start at the back of flower power vans often are.

The rest of that day was blurry and fast-forward but anything short of easy.

Rin had an awful lot of equipment for an individual and not a studio, enough to make me consider going back to school by foot to give everyone more free van space. I only stayed because Akane’s mother insisted, although we had to stop at the school to unload cargo before going to my place to pick up my stuff. The good thing about my house being the follow-up to Rin’s is that, in comparison, it did not seem surprisingly big at all.

We spent the afternoon setting up and turning what initially was a small empty club room into a small recording/rehearsal facility crowded with cables and equipment, activity that took time and a good deal of unnoticed effort in the nearly empty school campus. It was a day of carrying instruments, computers and gear while sweating in our uniforms. The irony is that to get things right for the band, we had to act less like musicians and more like roadies.

When the darkness of the night was starting to gain territory in the sky, Rin spoke.

“I believe I am speaking on behalf of all of us when I say we should just lock up the room and call it a day.”

“Yes, I concur. This was tiring.”

Megumi argued and not only for the sake of doing so. “But we haven’t even played a single note yet!”

“Still, significant progress was made. We now have a functional practice and recording room that will not attract attention or disturb anyone.”

Thanks to Rin’s meticulous planning, the room’s structure was absurdly effective despite being a mess: two guitar amps, a bass one, a microphone and a netbook working as host for the information sent by the electronic drum kit, all passing through a small mixing console with outputs to the main recording computer and four high fidelity headphones, two of them brand new. Definitely not eye candy setup, but it was so beautifully functional it hurt; we could jam and record the most brutal tunes at the same time without any passerby ever hearing what we were doing inside of that room, being only subpar in the vocal aspect because of acoustics. “Except for perhaps minor tweaking, the band studio is ready to start activities right away.”

I could only agree.

“Already far more than most bands can even dream of. I’m honestly surprised. We might get spoiled because of all this convenience.” But what surprised me the most was how smooth and fast everything went: it was too neatly executed to be part of a plan devised Reikoku-sensei. This crazy, abrupt and juvenile thing could actually work. “Do you guys know any ramen stands or something around here? Today is my treat.”

We left the room as Megumi barely could contain her excitement, considering she had worked as enthusiastically as I did; the other two did help, but we were the active ones, burning energy like there was no tomorrow and stuff. If her hunger was anything like mine, my words must have sounded like an oasis. Akane looked like she was about to faint or evanesce completely too, but that was just her usual self.

“Agreed.” To my surprise, Rin seemed a little calmer, almost to the point of vague, even after our driver left and kept acting like that for the whole afternoon. Maybe I was reading too much into it, but I think she just did not know how to deal with being defeated. “We managed to get most of the work done today, so I suppose we are allowed to have a break like that.”

A chance like that only came once; it was only obvious Megumi would bite.

“Isn’t it a commoner-exclusive activity, to eat ramen in stands and stuff?”

You’d think Rin would fluster, react with a disguised bad mannered answer or give us some odd line that would eventually reveal itself as having a deep meaning, being a reflection of her past or something like that.

“Rich people eat too.”

After that disappointingly mundane reply we locked the door and left, and with that my story with that unusual band started.