Chiyo is sick today. I blame myself for passing the flu to her. She insists she got it on her plane to Germany despite having similar symptoms to my illness and tells me it’s not my fault. I’ll know if she’s telling the truth once I visit her home with all of the work that she’ll be missing.
Either way, school is boring without her. While she’s trapped beneath the pink sheets of her bed, I’m stuck to my desk during lessons. Cram school has helped me catch up with the curriculum so I’m no longer behind, but as usual, my work is nothing exceptional. My grades are middling, high enough so that my mother won’t subject me to private tutors and passive aggressive lectures over the dinner table.
I struggle to focus on what the teacher is writing on the board, paying attention to the crumbs of chalk piling on the floor. The girl in front of me has her hair in a long shiny black braid. I resist the urge to pull on it even though some part of me deep down wants to know what kind of sound she’ll make if I do. An ant crawls on the window sill, sneaking into the building through a tree branch close by. Another student throws an eraser at her friend’s head behind the teacher’s back.
Life happens around me and yet I am terrifically bored. I daydream to pass the time, writing the wrong numbers as I do complicated calculus problems. I’m walking through the woods with you, laughing at a joke you told that I can’t quite remember. Something about bees or was it beetles?
I float with you in the pond as the teacher drones on about obscure poetry, playing with fish as the students around me play with words. Chiyo’s sister is there with us, her brown hair sparkling with goldfish. Airi lingers nearby, venturing to dip her toes in the water. She goes into the pond ankle deep, holding up her skirt. We talk like old friends. I breathe in the fresh air, smelling the greenery. I miss the scent, spending most of my time around Tokyo’s city air. The garden and trees surrounding the manor don’t come close to it either, emitting their own foreign sweetness.
In a weird way, I am homesick. I don’t miss the town we grew up in, especially the people we were around, but my heart longs for the woods and the mountains which were always a few steps away. If I had a bad day, I could listen to the river run over the brooks and speak to the hills looming above.
Here, flickering neon lights and cold skyscrapers are deaf to my pleas. It’s not the same as the open nature. I even miss the fast food in California, the In-and Out burgers and McDonald’s fries salted and cooked just the way I liked it. The stuff they have here doesn’t taste right. I stick to the food the staff at the manor cook and keep my cravings to myself.
In about a year, when I graduate from St. Catherine’s, I could go back. I would pay my respects at your grave, grabbing a bouquet of white roses to rest on the headstone. Maybe I’d visit Evan, let him know where I ran off to despite what he did. Mr. Watanabe reminds me frequently that I have that choice. I could stay in Japan or even choose another country aside from the U.S. to continue my studies.
I think about Los Angeles and San Francisco, about the life we were supposed to have. If you were alive, I would go there in a heartbeat and ask my stepfather to buy a place there. There would be room for all your things. We’d have a view of the beach. You would be able to learn how to surf like you always wanted to. I’d fall in love with life again.
There were other options now. I could learn French and apply to a school in Paris to accompany Airi while she studied fashion. Maybe I’d send my scores to Germany, go to school with Chiyo and live in her grandmother’s empty villa. It all pales in comparison to that dream we shared in my old bedroom.
Where do I go? The easiest thing to do would be staying in Tokyo and living in the comfort of the Watanabe manor. I could get a job with my stepfather’s connections shortly after and build a life of my own. It would be what my mother expects of me, in character for her underachieving daughter.
None of these choices feel right. During lunch, I hear the students around me talk about the colleges they want to go to, the marks they need for Japan’s most prestigious universities. Many are aiming for the best places in the world, Ivy Leagues, Oxford, Cambridge, and other schools that I can barely keep track of. The more pretentious the name, the better it sounds to their families.
Most, if not all, of the girls will either work for their family’s company or be married off afterward. A good deal of them hope to find their husbands at those universities, sharing classes with the sons of CEOs, royalty, budding entrepreneurs, and others of the same ilk.
I have no desire to do the same. My aspirations were very little; my wants were simple. I could live in a cabin in the mountains and be satisfied with only the snow as company. Better yet, a shack in the woods, far from the nuisances of civilization. Science has not developed enough to bring you back to life. I had no hope of it resurrecting you anytime soon or else I would have begged my mother to bring my father’s ashes with us here.
In that sense, the wealth of my new family was wasted on me. Every now and then, my mother nudges me to do something with it. She thinks with enough encouragement, I will one day desire the world.
It hasn’t even been a year and already she pretends that the life we had before never existed. Granted, I’m getting used to the comforts that come with being the stepdaughter of a rich businessman, but sometimes I blink and think I’m in that old house again, waiting for my paycheck to cash in so dinner could be more than a cup of instant noodles.
Airi visits my classroom during lunch. We eat a bento prepared by the maids, loaded with enough food to feed a village. Her glasses are missing again and there’s a purple bruise on her knee that I didn’t see the day before. I don’t point out these things. She knows that they’re there, the evidence of Dumb, Fat, and Angry’s harassment. There’s nothing that she wants to do about it, preferring to suffer through it like a martyr.
I fill the silence with idle chatter, trying to not make it obvious how much I notice that bruise on her knee or the bandaid over the cuts from the week before. I plan to confront the girls again. Even though Chiyo warned against using violent tactics, I don’t think I have a choice. Whatever I did to those girls before, wasn’t enough.
After school, I head directly for the arcade that Angry will be at. I drag the baseball bat with me, making up my mind that I don’t care if I’m going to end up in prison. What kind of world was it if people like you could die and Airi was forced to turn the other cheek with her bullies?
As the sun sets, a potent rage simmers within me. I’m struck by how unfair life is, the way the innocent are punished and nobody does anything about it. If I must trade my reputation for justice, so be it.
The arcade is empty by the time I get there. I walk further to the back, not caring if any of the workers recognize me from last time. I’m out for blood and I won’t stop until I get it.
Angry is alone among the machines, playing the same game as before. I sneak up behind her as quietly as I could, treading lightly on the carpeted floor. I raise the bat, getting ready for a deadly swing.
The world turns sideways and a sharp pain shoots up through my abdomen. Someone knocks me to the ground and kicks my stomach so I don’t get up. I fight back, but my limbs are pinned down. The blows rain down endlessly. The pain is so intense that I see stars.
I struggle in vain, feeling the wetness of my blood pool beneath me. The world is red, black, and white. I try to stay afloat, but it’s no use.
Six hands shove me under. I retreat into my head, unable to bear it all.
14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡj0sm2HEhRu
