Chapter Eleven: Window Talk
For explanations of Japanese terms, check Terminologies at Writings main page.
Kuromura Aki
The third semester had been rather uneventful after Takagi, Kentaro, Torikawa and I returned from Kyoto. While the two seniors slept without a worry after promptly devouring their eki-ben, a thick silent tension surrounded Torikawa and me for quite a while during the train ride back to Tokyo.
I was not sure if it was due to his new but limited knowledge about my family, or my strange statement about light and darkness. It might also have been my strange insistence about his family background and subsequently, his existence.
There had been a few minutes of our regular banter, of which I suspected Torikawa had started on purpose to lighten up the fog hanging around us, before he slipped off to sleep while I continued to gaze out the train window.
I pretended not to notice Torikawa's head slipping down to rest on my right shoulder when he had slumped from his seat ten minutes after falling asleep.
Winter in Tokyo was an easy affair, compared to Kyoto. There were some snow fights (rare for the hard-to-come-by occurances of snow piling up in Tokyo) in between our dozing off in class, disrupting them, and mad scramble to at least pass the final examination. School life was fast becoming bland, as no one had yet dared to take over Takagi and Kentaro's place as the school's two worst bullies, which naturally meant less physical exercise for me.
Before we knew it, buds were beginning to show through the last resistant sheen of frozen fluff on the branches of sakura trees and there were the few odd days where the temperature was warm enough for us to forgo our thick coats altogether.
Few tears were shed when Takagi and Kentaro graduated; most were dramatically supplied by themselves, while I had merely rolled my eyes before telling them to just get on with it and scram, but with a slight smirk of amusement. Torikawa had insisted that it was a smile until I smacked him upside his head to get him to agree otherwise.
Then there was the night before the start of the new school year that I caught myself in the act.
School was resuming the next day, which meant needing to see Torikawa again since we had been put in the same class for second year, and thus led to plans of at least stopping that guy from clinging onto me too much. Although life was peaceful without an overly-cheerful Torikawa chattering into one's ears, I would reluctantly admit that his presence was good for distraction from my family curse and the space that our two graduated seniors had left behind, filled with an iota of gaping emptiness.
There would not be any more strength left to angst about those issues when convincing Torikawa to shut up would typically drain what little I had, anyways.
Ever since he left last night for his hometown to visit his grandparents' and mother's graves, the only distraction I had was my sketchbook. Somehow, I would always end up unconsciously sketching dark, oppressing rooms with little to no lighting, while the drawn puddles on the floor in the pictures were what I assumed my mind to intend as blood.
Yes, a certain Torikawa would be a good diversion for any developing extreme dark thoughts. And it was at this that I caught myself doing that smile-smirk. I quickly stopped myself with a frown.
Before I could figure out why I had been smile-smirking frequently in the past semester, the Happy Tree Friends ring tone of my mobile phone caught my attention.
"Hello, if I knew you, make it short because school's starting tomorrow and I need my sleep. If you have no idea who I am, it'll do you good to hang up right about... now." I was not one of those girls who talk right through the night. Coupled with confusion about the unknown reason for the increasing frequency of my smile-smirks, at this moment, everything agitated me.
"Someone's cranky!" A familiar sing-song voice came through the phone. "Did you miss me too much? No worries, I'm actually back in my room already!"
Sure enough, as I pushed my window curtains apart, Torikawa could be seen grinning goofily in the darkness, waving at me enthusiastically from his window diagonally opposite mine.
I rolled my eyes. "You sure know ways to waste your money on phone bills."
"Of course! And yet I still have enough left to get you some souvenirs from my hometown! I know it's against some 'Kuromura Aki Rule' to ever say "Thanks" so I won't hold it against you. But, I'm saying "You're welcomed" in advance!"
Holding back the urge to roll my eyes again, I muttered, "Yeah, whatever."
Torikawa pretended to not hear that but bent down to pick something up before throwing it across the short distance separating the girls' and the boys' dormitories to my window. I caught the item swiftly, aided by instincts that were honed from martial arts training since young.
"Those are mochi. My grandparents' neighbours sell them as a small family business. It's good, trust me."
I frowned at the small box of glutinous rice cakes. "This had better not be an attempt to poison me."
"Nah, I love you too much to do that." He laughed through the phone at his own joking confession while I reached for a random piece of used paper, crumpling and throwing it in through his window. I was pleased to see that my arm strength had not yet abandon me when the ball of paper hit Torikawa square on his forehead.
"I'll put off your murder till when I see you in class in the morning. Goodnight. May you have a gruesome nightmare of me hacking your head off." I said before ending the call without waiting for his reply.
Seconds later, a ball of crumpled paper sailed through my window after I had turned off my light. There was only one messily scribbled word when I unraveled it.
GOODNIGHT :D
Sensing a smile-smirk threatening to start, I jumped in the bed with none of my usual grace, willing my lips to stop twitching.
"It is sort of weird when you walk around in school, expecting a certain Takagi-sempai to round the corner and shout "Aki-chan!", when it doesn't really happen," Torikawa mused beside me as he leant against the window next to the one I was looking out of.
"That is the one thing that I am glad to never hear again."
The beginning few hours of the first day back in school had been quite peaceful. Being moderately accustomed to Torikawa's behaviour and conversation patterns since last September had somehow taught me to succumb less to outbursts when it came to aforementioned overly cheerful guy.
It must be strange for him to know that I knew that his lively exterior was a mask he wore to hide and ignore the dark corners of his being, in addition to having the both of us recognise that what each other showed to the outside world was no clear representation of the tangle of melancholy that lay within us.
Plus, I was secretly relieved that things between us were left the way they were without either of us delving further. We would only reveal what we felt safe to speak of.
Maybe it was our mutual understanding on what was not yet told to the other? Whatever it might be, I was still glad for that.
Not only did we not need to become too vulnerable by admitting all our inner demons, the distance could help me keep people safe in the future. Though, I should probably not mull over that now; my time had not yet come.
"Argh! Damn! I lost again!" Torikawa's frustration at his PSP game woke me up from my ponderings. Just in time too, seeing that our new homeroom teacher for this school year had just made her way in.
"All right, people. Get back to your seats. Free sitting until I am convinced otherwise to reassign them."
I turned my eyes away from the line of sakura tree that were in mid-blossom along the road just beyond the school walls and relaxed against the back of my chair.
"I just don't understand why I'm stuck at that stage forever!" Torikawa continued to rant while turning off his gaming device. The teacher's voice was still going on, telling us her name and where her table was in the staff room, should we ever have the need to find her.
"Maybe you're just not good enough," I gave a dismissive wave of my hand. "Then again, you're rubbish at everything else other than bugging everyone."
"Aki-chan! You're so mean!"
I was about to reach over and whack his head with my metal pencil case when our classroom door slid open and girl- perhaps half a head shorter than me- with shiny light brown hair walked in.
"Transfer student? I think I see a trend for our class..." Torikawa wondered aloud.
"Hihi! I'm Nakamine Erika!" The girl introduced herself before the teacher could put in a word. "I'm one year younger than you guys because I skipped a year back in middle school, so in a way you guys are my seniors. I hope we can get along, please give me your guidance!"
"Sure is cheerful," Torikawa murmured beside me, clearly still put out by his game.
"Reminds us of someone, doesn't she," I murmured back sarcastically. Torikawa pouted.
"Okay, people, be nice and help her familiarise her way around the school," the teacher added before turning back to Nakamine. "You can take the one of those empty seats near the back."
Or more specifically, the barrier of empty seats around Torikawa and me. My behaviour had unsurprisingly kept the rest of the class from interacting with me, while they were already suffering enough from Torikawa's irritation before I had even joined the class last semester.
Nakamine bounded towards said barrier, all smiles, and chose the seat beside the window. Conveniently in front of mine.
I let out an exasperated sigh. Why did I feel as if my slowly smoothing out school life was about to be whipped up in disarray all over again?
After being properly settled into her seat and having arranged all her belongings comfortably, the new girl turned around in her seat to face Torikawa and me.
"Hi! Hopefully we won't have to rearrange our seats, I like window seats," Nakamine grinned at us.
"Oh and I absolutely adore window seats," I muttered scathingly to myself, "maybe we can meet up after lessons and you can come over to my room to play doll or something."
"I'm the adorable Torikawa Sekai and this is the not-so-cute Kuromura Aki," Torikawa introduced with a wink, ignoring my words, if he had even heard them. "If you need help around school, we'll be glad to help!"
"You mean you will be glad to help," I stated, turning to the window to prevent my senses from overloading due to their excessive liveliness. 'Not-so-cute Kuromura Aki', so not funny.
"Thanks!" The girl obviously did not catch my sarcasm.
"No problem, Nakamine," Torikawa grinned back. Cue massive headache. Grins were bad for my system.
"I have a hunch that we'll all be quite close, so you guys can drop the mannerisms and just call me Erika." She gave him an 'OK' sign before turning back to face the front of the class.
"Congratulations, Torikawa." He looked at me, confused. "Here's your 'cute girlfriend' from your earthly desire list back on New Year's Day."
"Nah, one of you is already too much to handle," he joked half a beat and a confused blink later, waving off my comment with his left hand.
Right back at you, Torikawa. Right back at you.
...To be continued