Who said that I can't write succinct secret santa stories?
... because they deserve a medal, honestly.
Well, friends, here we are again: time for me to share a story I've written based on a prompt created by another randomly selected writer on this forum (five years running)! As always, it was a lot of fun to write; as always, it took a lot of effort, perhaps more than was intended; as always, a significant amount of that effort was only required because I procrastinated so much; and as always, I got to try out some new and interesting things! I actually haven't written anything since last year's secret santa, so it was good to get back into the groove for a bit, without much (external) pressure.
My victim this year is fellow writer and friend XPND.Dev, who provided a very interesting prompt:
Looking to bring some holiday cheer to Yamaku, an unknown resident lined the halls of the girls' dorm with candles... and accidentally started a fire. Nobody was hurt, but it could be weeks before repairs are complete.
With no other options, Yamaku administration temporarily moves the girls into the boys' dorm, and due to a shortage of open rooms, some students have to share with the opposite sex.
In a stroke of terrible luck, a girl of your choice ended up in room 117- home of the bespectacled madman Kenji Setou.
Now, I have a rough idea of what he was thinking when he wrote that prompt. But if you've ever read any of my secret santa stories, you'll know that I have a penchant for subverting expectations, with the help of excessive exposition and unconventional twists. Will this year's story live up to that precedent? There's only one way to find out!
Crafty's One-Shots (Dec 31st, 2023: Happy With Yourself)
-
Craftyatom
- Posts: 374
- Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 11:38 pm
- Location: Washington, USA
Re: Crafty's One-Shots (Dec 25th, 2020: Rising Steam)
Main route: COM(promise)
One-shots: Crafty's One-Shots (Dark Winter Sky, Dreamy, Path of Least Resistance, Project Blue Curtain, and more!)
Old poetry: Google Drive Collection
One-shots: Crafty's One-Shots (Dark Winter Sky, Dreamy, Path of Least Resistance, Project Blue Curtain, and more!)
Old poetry: Google Drive Collection
-
Craftyatom
- Posts: 374
- Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 11:38 pm
- Location: Washington, USA
Disconnection (1/5)
Disconnection
This is not the room I was expecting.
The whole place feels nice, but also... wrong. A standing lamp in one corner provides warm lighting, but it’s dim enough that the room feels dark. A tall potted plant sits in the opposite corner, but the room has no windows, so it must be fake. Across from me is what looks like a dull red sofa, and to my left is a wooden desk with an office chair, in which a portly figure is sat.
“Ah, Mr. Setou?”
The voice is one of an old woman, and like everything else in this room, it feels too kind for what it is. Like she’s somebody’s grandmother, but this is her day job that she can’t tell her grandkids about.
I nod, and she gestures with one arm. “Please, make yourself comfortable on the couch. It’s across the room from you.”
I’m not blind enough to need her instructions, but I don’t have the energy left to complain, instead quietly walking over and plopping myself down with a sigh. It’s a very soft sofa, the kind that can swallow you up; once again, I’m not sure whether to find that relaxing or terrifying.
She swivels around in her chair to face me, holding what looks like a notepad. “Well then, shall we begin?”
I don’t feel like playing games. “Just tell me what you want.”
“Hmm... how about a billion yen?” She laughs, and I don’t. “I’m joking, of course. All I want is to talk.”
“Fine. Talk all you want. Let me know when you’re done.”
Another chuckle. “On the contrary, Mr. Setou, I’m much less interested in talking to you than I am in listening to you.”
Now it’s my turn to laugh. “Listen? To me?” I shake my head. “Nobody’s bothered yet. Why start now?”
“Because that’s what I do, Mr. Setou. I listen to people, especially if they don’t feel listened to. I know that it-”
“No, you don’t. You don’t know what it’s like.” I want to be more angry, more aggressive, but I’m too exhausted. “You don’t understand.”
“Then why not help me understand?”
I groan. “It’s not worth the effort. Even if you listened, even if you believed, what would you do? The decision’s already been made.”
She leans back in her chair. “Well, I may not make decisions, but I do make recommendations, which my colleagues tend to respect. They send people to me because they want my opinion, because they know I will listen carefully. If they had already made up their minds, they wouldn’t’ve bothered.” She leans forward again. “So, why don’t you let me listen to what you have to say?”
She’s lying. I’m here as a matter of procedure, not because there’s any doubt regarding the outcome. What I say to this hag isn’t going to make the slightest bit of difference. But I also get the feeling that I’m not leaving until she thinks we’re done. “Fine. What do you want me to talk about?”
“Well, I think it would help if we started from the beginning.”
No chance of finishing early, then. Sigh. “Well, it’s pretty obvious where this all started.” I try not to think about the days since in too much detail. “Friday. Three weeks ago.”
~~~~~~~~~~
I was just getting back from class that evening when I ran into my hallmate.
“Hey, Kenji! How’s it going?”
He had only transferred in at the start of the year, but in no time he had become my best friend. I guess it was a case of opposites attracting: I was quiet and studious, while he was a social butterfly who skipped class more often than not. He couldn’t exercise much due to his heart condition, but his personality always made him feel like the strongest guy in the room, and people loved that. Guys felt like he always had their back, and girls... well, they ended up skipping class with him a lot.
“Oh, hey Daizo. Just finished class for the day. You?”
He laughed, the way he always did - like he was happy everything had turned out this way. “Good on you, man. I couldn’t stomach it this morning, and ended up just hanging around here.”
“Is someone at least bringing you the homework?” Since he was in 2-3, and I was in 2-2, I couldn’t really get his assignments and stuff for him.
“Yeah, Miki was hanging out with me, and she texted Suzu, who said she’d get it for us. Speaking of which, are you okay helping me out like usual?”
He asked for my help with homework a lot. He had to read it out to me, of course, but that actually made it kind of interesting, since he’d be teaching me about the differences in our classes’ curricula while I taught him the material itself. And he was always so thankful, and humble... he always said that he wished he could be as smart as me.
It didn’t help that he was so forgetful. I think that’s why he was never very interested in school. I tried my best to help him remember any important stuff, but it always felt like he could’ve lived each day on its own, not caring about the past and not worrying about the future. I envied him for it, but that was just part of looking up to him. I think we all looked up to him, at least a little bit.
“Sure thing! And hey, as payment, we can have something to drink afterwards.”
He liked his alcohol. Not to an unhealthy level, but certainly more than any of the other students I’ve met here. I wasn’t that big on it - we were old enough, but it was still a violation of campus policy - but I enjoyed doing it together. It felt like we could relax and bond with each other a bit better.
“Ah, sorry, I’ve got a test tomorrow morning. Probably shouldn’t make it any harder than it needs to be.”
“Damn, that sucks. That’s why you’re the responsible one, though!” He patted me on the back. “Anyways, come over to my room when you’re ready to start on homework. I’ll try to make sure Miki’s presentable!” We laughed, and I went back to my room to change.
I was never really sure what he and Miki were. To anyone who didn’t know them, they looked like best friends. To a lot of people, they looked like they were in a relationship. But it was always somewhere in between. They were very physically intimate, but they certainly weren’t bound to each other. Daizo could have a different girl over every day of the week, and then have Miki over on Sunday, and they’d laugh about his escapades before going at it themselves.
It was as if they thought of each other as ‘the one’, but didn’t think that came with any rules. I used to wonder what would happen to them when they graduated - were they just convenient, bound to go their separate ways? Or were they close enough that they’d stick together, even if they weren’t always with each other? It would’ve driven me crazy, but they seemed happy with how things were, so I just stayed out of it.
I got back to my room, opened a window to get some fresh air in, and was about to change until I realized that something felt off. It took me a second to put my finger on what it was: a smell. A faint scent of something, almost like... smoke.
Not sure where it could be coming from, I went back into the hallway and knocked on Daizo’s door. “Hey, Daizo, do you have a minute?”
“Sure, one sec!” I heard him get up and come to the door. “What’s up?”
“Something in my room smells weird, and I can’t tell what.”
“Oh, okay.” We went back to my room. “What’s it smell like?”
“Kind of smokey.”
He sniffed the air a few times. “I can’t really smell it, and nothing looks wrong. Can you tell where it’s coming from?”
I moved around, trying to tell where the smell was strongest. “It’s coming from over here, by the window.”
He walked over and stood next to me. “Oh yeah, I can only just... Holy shit.”
“What?”
“It is smoke. It’s coming from the girls’ dorm.” He turned back and yelled “Miki!”
I followed him out into the hallway just as Miki stepped out of his room, wearing an oversized sweater. “Oh, hey Kenji. What’s up?”
Daizo didn’t give me time to respond. “Miki, I think there’s a fire in the girls’ dorm.”
“Ah hell. Probably someone failed at cooking again.”
“No, it’s bigger than that, come look.”
All three of us filed back into my room, and Miki whistled once she got a view out the window. “Well shit. They’re all evacuating the building now, too. Ugh, and it’s freezing out there.”
Daizo put one hand on her shoulder. “We should see if we can help.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Miki sighed. “And maybe find out whether my room is still standing. Come on.”
The two of them quickly walked out into the hallway, and I could hear Miki break into a run, her footsteps slowly disappearing into the distance. Hopefully Daizo wasn’t trying to keep up; running wasn’t good for him. As for me, I closed my window and sat down, not really sure what to do - there wasn’t really anything I could do. After a while, I just started doing my homework, and tried not to think about it.
Before I knew it, two hours had passed, and I heard some commotion out in the hallway, so I stuck my head out to see what was going on, and hopefully go get some dinner. Instead, I almost ran head-first into the source of the noise: a boy running around, knocking on every door while repeating one message: “The administration is making an announcement down in the common room, in just a few minutes! Everyone, go downstairs as soon as you can!”
It wondered for a moment why they might be calling a meeting, but quickly remembered what had happened with the girls’ dorm earlier. Still, what could that have to do with us? Were they looking for a culprit? Or maybe they were going to break some bad news? Then again, Yamaku isn’t the kind of place where everyone gets a day of mourning, so gathering all the students together to break the news would’ve required something disastrous. Just how bad was it? I tried not to think about it too much, and just went downstairs, joining a flow of other students.
The common room was louder than I had ever heard it, packed full of students wall-to-wall. Many were sitting on the floor to try and get comfortable, or to relieve their legs, but I joined a group standing up against one of the walls, since space was running low, and I didn’t trust myself not to accidentally step on someone’s hand while trying to find a place to sit down.
Luckily, I wasn’t waiting for long. “Alright, alright, everybody, listen up!” A tall boy in a uniform - presumably a third-year - standing near the doors called for everyone’s attention. To his left, a shorter student waved his arms a bit, presumably signing to the deaf students. To his right were two men, both dressed in black suits.
The shorter suited man spoke first, and I vaguely recognized his voice from other school gatherings. “Many of you may have already heard about what happened earlier, but I’d like to start by filling everyone in, and dispelling any rumors.” He cleared his throat. “A few hours ago, a small fire started in the girls’ dormitory. Thankfully, nobody was seriously hurt, but the nature of the incident meant that the dormitory building sustained non-trivial damage.”
The crowd murmured. “We’ve got multiple contractors doing their best to assess the damage, but the consensus right now is that the building is not safe for students to enter. Obviously this presents a problem for your fellow students, who are currently camped out in the cafeteria, and cannot return to their rooms. As such, I have been working with Administrator Watanabe on a plan to temporarily house them. Administrator?”
The taller suited man nodded. “Thank you, Principal. While there were multiple options for housing the displaced students, we believe that the most comfortable and least distressing option would be to temporarily stretch the available capacity in the other dormitory building - that is, this one. There are many rooms here that are mostly furnished but unoccupied, and with the help of the laundry and cleaning staff we can temporarily fit two displaced students in each of them.”
“Unfortunately, even that measure will not entirely solve the problem. As such, we will need to double up some of the currently occupied rooms too.” The crowd murmured again, slowly realizing what exactly he meant. “That means that many of you will have to accommodate a temporary roommate. I know that it will not be easy for you, but please try to think of it as easing the burden of your fellow students, who have it even worse. And of course, in the spirit of making things a bit less disruptive for you all, we will be placing a moratorium on testing during this period.”
The crowd cheered, clearly bolstered more by the prospect of a reduced workload than they were perturbed by the plan to assign temporary roommates. Despite the unusual nature of what he was proposing, it didn’t feel strange. It was a logical plan - those girls had to sleep somewhere, after all. Still, I got the sense that I hadn’t really grasped the gravity of the situation.
Everyone remained jubilant until the third-year from before quieted them again. “Okay, I know, we’re all excited, but we’re going to need to - Taro, shut up!” A large boy in the front instantly went from boisterous to silent. “As I was saying, we’re going to need to work through some logistics if we want this to run smoothly.”
“Of course, some of you can’t support a roommate, for any of a number of reasons - if you think you can’t, all you have to do is tell us. But keep in mind that this option is aimed at those for whom it is impossible. For the rest of us, it will obviously be difficult, but there’s no way around that. We have no way of checking, but I am trusting that you will do the right thing and only opt out if you are truly unable to support a temporary roommate.”
“I, along with everyone else involved in this operation, will try to be available here in the common room if you need us. If you have a problem or a question, if you need more sheets or an extra futon, or if you just need someone to talk to, we will do our best to help. That said, at times we may have a lot to deal with, so please be patient. And, of course, one last thing.” He glanced over at the men in suits before continuing.
“It should go without saying, but I want to make this very clear: your new roommates, hallmates, and dormmates will be treated with the utmost respect. We’re all going through this difficult time together, and as such, you should in no manner harass them. I have told them, in no uncertain terms, to report any such incidents directly to me. And let me tell you, whatever excuse you think you have, I do not care. I don’t care whether you’re friends, I don’t care whether they started it, and I absolutely do not care who your parents are. If any of you misbehave, we will START with expulsion, and work up from there. Do I make myself clear?”
Nobody said anything, cowed by his speech. “Perfect. Now, are there any questions?”
A skinny boy to my left raised his hand, and the third-year up front called on him.
“How long will we be doing this for?”
The trio up front took a moment to glance at each other, silently negotiating who would answer what was obviously a difficult question. In the end, the Principal spoke. “Unfortunately, we don’t have an exact timeline right now, since there hasn’t been much time to evaluate the situation. However, we’re confident that we can have the dorms open again before the winter break is over.”
The third-year followed up. “Even before the break is over, however, things should ease up. We’re hoping to match roommates so that at least one of them will be going home for the break, meaning that once the break starts, those of you who are staying will have your rooms to yourselves again. We’re also hoping to allow some students to leave for break early.” Before the crowd could get excited, he quickly added “Only for those whose teachers are confident they can complete the material from home, of course.”
A few more questions came in over the next few minutes, but nothing too interesting, and before long we were all sent back to our rooms, to await our potential new roommates. I was beginning to get a bit nervous when I heard a knock on my door - but not the one I was expecting.
“Hey, Kenji, you in there?”
I opened the door to find Daizo and Miki standing outside. “Oh, hey man, hey Miki. I assume you heard the announcement?”
“Actually, I’ve been in the cafeteria helping out the girls, but I the spiel you got was probably pretty similar to the one they did.”
I wasn’t even surprised. “Yeah, probably. So Miki, do you know where you’re staying yet?”
“Yup!” She put her good arm around Daizo’s shoulder. “Right here with this guy.”
“That’s... quite the coincidence.”
She laughed. “No, they didn’t assign me here, we just decided it would make sense, since I spend so much time in his room anyways.”
“Oh.” I immediately saw a problem. “What if they try to assign another girl to his room?”
“We’ll tell them he’s already got one.”
Daizo smirked. “Or we could just make room for one more!” Miki scoffed at that, but didn’t say anything else.
“So what about your room, Miki? Is it okay?”
“Yeah, they said the stuff in our rooms should be fine, it’s just that we can’t go get it. Supposedly tomorrow they’ll be letting us request workers to go fetch anything we need, but it’ll still be a pain.” She sighed. “The admin isn’t saying anything about it, but rumor has it that someone tried to put a bunch of candles in the hallways for ‘holiday spirit’, which is why the building got damaged but our rooms were mostly fine.” She shook her head. “Fuckin’ idiot.”
“Damn.” It seemed weird, but also sounded like the kind of thing you couldn’t make up. “Well, hopefully it won’t be long until you can go back. Are either of you going home for the break?”
“Nah, it’s easier for me to just call my parents, and Miki... She’d rather stay here.”
I didn’t really know much about Miki’s family, but his tone suggested it wasn’t worth getting into. “I guess we’re in this together, then - I’m staying on campus too.” Like Daizo, I would have enjoyed some time with my family, but it wouldn’t’ve been worth the hassle to travel all the way home for just a few days.
“Alright! Well, good luck on your roommate roulette, and we’ll see you tomorrow!”
“Thanks, see you guys then!” They disappeared into his room, and I was about to head back to mine, until I remembered something. I walked back over to their door, knocked on it twice, and yelled “Hey, Daizo, don’t forget to take your meds!”
I could hear a muffled “Ah, shit.” followed by a loud “Thanks, got it!”
I returned to my room for real after that, and prepared myself for the aforementioned game of chance.
This is not the room I was expecting.
The whole place feels nice, but also... wrong. A standing lamp in one corner provides warm lighting, but it’s dim enough that the room feels dark. A tall potted plant sits in the opposite corner, but the room has no windows, so it must be fake. Across from me is what looks like a dull red sofa, and to my left is a wooden desk with an office chair, in which a portly figure is sat.
“Ah, Mr. Setou?”
The voice is one of an old woman, and like everything else in this room, it feels too kind for what it is. Like she’s somebody’s grandmother, but this is her day job that she can’t tell her grandkids about.
I nod, and she gestures with one arm. “Please, make yourself comfortable on the couch. It’s across the room from you.”
I’m not blind enough to need her instructions, but I don’t have the energy left to complain, instead quietly walking over and plopping myself down with a sigh. It’s a very soft sofa, the kind that can swallow you up; once again, I’m not sure whether to find that relaxing or terrifying.
She swivels around in her chair to face me, holding what looks like a notepad. “Well then, shall we begin?”
I don’t feel like playing games. “Just tell me what you want.”
“Hmm... how about a billion yen?” She laughs, and I don’t. “I’m joking, of course. All I want is to talk.”
“Fine. Talk all you want. Let me know when you’re done.”
Another chuckle. “On the contrary, Mr. Setou, I’m much less interested in talking to you than I am in listening to you.”
Now it’s my turn to laugh. “Listen? To me?” I shake my head. “Nobody’s bothered yet. Why start now?”
“Because that’s what I do, Mr. Setou. I listen to people, especially if they don’t feel listened to. I know that it-”
“No, you don’t. You don’t know what it’s like.” I want to be more angry, more aggressive, but I’m too exhausted. “You don’t understand.”
“Then why not help me understand?”
I groan. “It’s not worth the effort. Even if you listened, even if you believed, what would you do? The decision’s already been made.”
She leans back in her chair. “Well, I may not make decisions, but I do make recommendations, which my colleagues tend to respect. They send people to me because they want my opinion, because they know I will listen carefully. If they had already made up their minds, they wouldn’t’ve bothered.” She leans forward again. “So, why don’t you let me listen to what you have to say?”
She’s lying. I’m here as a matter of procedure, not because there’s any doubt regarding the outcome. What I say to this hag isn’t going to make the slightest bit of difference. But I also get the feeling that I’m not leaving until she thinks we’re done. “Fine. What do you want me to talk about?”
“Well, I think it would help if we started from the beginning.”
No chance of finishing early, then. Sigh. “Well, it’s pretty obvious where this all started.” I try not to think about the days since in too much detail. “Friday. Three weeks ago.”
~~~~~~~~~~
I was just getting back from class that evening when I ran into my hallmate.
“Hey, Kenji! How’s it going?”
He had only transferred in at the start of the year, but in no time he had become my best friend. I guess it was a case of opposites attracting: I was quiet and studious, while he was a social butterfly who skipped class more often than not. He couldn’t exercise much due to his heart condition, but his personality always made him feel like the strongest guy in the room, and people loved that. Guys felt like he always had their back, and girls... well, they ended up skipping class with him a lot.
“Oh, hey Daizo. Just finished class for the day. You?”
He laughed, the way he always did - like he was happy everything had turned out this way. “Good on you, man. I couldn’t stomach it this morning, and ended up just hanging around here.”
“Is someone at least bringing you the homework?” Since he was in 2-3, and I was in 2-2, I couldn’t really get his assignments and stuff for him.
“Yeah, Miki was hanging out with me, and she texted Suzu, who said she’d get it for us. Speaking of which, are you okay helping me out like usual?”
He asked for my help with homework a lot. He had to read it out to me, of course, but that actually made it kind of interesting, since he’d be teaching me about the differences in our classes’ curricula while I taught him the material itself. And he was always so thankful, and humble... he always said that he wished he could be as smart as me.
It didn’t help that he was so forgetful. I think that’s why he was never very interested in school. I tried my best to help him remember any important stuff, but it always felt like he could’ve lived each day on its own, not caring about the past and not worrying about the future. I envied him for it, but that was just part of looking up to him. I think we all looked up to him, at least a little bit.
“Sure thing! And hey, as payment, we can have something to drink afterwards.”
He liked his alcohol. Not to an unhealthy level, but certainly more than any of the other students I’ve met here. I wasn’t that big on it - we were old enough, but it was still a violation of campus policy - but I enjoyed doing it together. It felt like we could relax and bond with each other a bit better.
“Ah, sorry, I’ve got a test tomorrow morning. Probably shouldn’t make it any harder than it needs to be.”
“Damn, that sucks. That’s why you’re the responsible one, though!” He patted me on the back. “Anyways, come over to my room when you’re ready to start on homework. I’ll try to make sure Miki’s presentable!” We laughed, and I went back to my room to change.
I was never really sure what he and Miki were. To anyone who didn’t know them, they looked like best friends. To a lot of people, they looked like they were in a relationship. But it was always somewhere in between. They were very physically intimate, but they certainly weren’t bound to each other. Daizo could have a different girl over every day of the week, and then have Miki over on Sunday, and they’d laugh about his escapades before going at it themselves.
It was as if they thought of each other as ‘the one’, but didn’t think that came with any rules. I used to wonder what would happen to them when they graduated - were they just convenient, bound to go their separate ways? Or were they close enough that they’d stick together, even if they weren’t always with each other? It would’ve driven me crazy, but they seemed happy with how things were, so I just stayed out of it.
I got back to my room, opened a window to get some fresh air in, and was about to change until I realized that something felt off. It took me a second to put my finger on what it was: a smell. A faint scent of something, almost like... smoke.
Not sure where it could be coming from, I went back into the hallway and knocked on Daizo’s door. “Hey, Daizo, do you have a minute?”
“Sure, one sec!” I heard him get up and come to the door. “What’s up?”
“Something in my room smells weird, and I can’t tell what.”
“Oh, okay.” We went back to my room. “What’s it smell like?”
“Kind of smokey.”
He sniffed the air a few times. “I can’t really smell it, and nothing looks wrong. Can you tell where it’s coming from?”
I moved around, trying to tell where the smell was strongest. “It’s coming from over here, by the window.”
He walked over and stood next to me. “Oh yeah, I can only just... Holy shit.”
“What?”
“It is smoke. It’s coming from the girls’ dorm.” He turned back and yelled “Miki!”
I followed him out into the hallway just as Miki stepped out of his room, wearing an oversized sweater. “Oh, hey Kenji. What’s up?”
Daizo didn’t give me time to respond. “Miki, I think there’s a fire in the girls’ dorm.”
“Ah hell. Probably someone failed at cooking again.”
“No, it’s bigger than that, come look.”
All three of us filed back into my room, and Miki whistled once she got a view out the window. “Well shit. They’re all evacuating the building now, too. Ugh, and it’s freezing out there.”
Daizo put one hand on her shoulder. “We should see if we can help.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Miki sighed. “And maybe find out whether my room is still standing. Come on.”
The two of them quickly walked out into the hallway, and I could hear Miki break into a run, her footsteps slowly disappearing into the distance. Hopefully Daizo wasn’t trying to keep up; running wasn’t good for him. As for me, I closed my window and sat down, not really sure what to do - there wasn’t really anything I could do. After a while, I just started doing my homework, and tried not to think about it.
Before I knew it, two hours had passed, and I heard some commotion out in the hallway, so I stuck my head out to see what was going on, and hopefully go get some dinner. Instead, I almost ran head-first into the source of the noise: a boy running around, knocking on every door while repeating one message: “The administration is making an announcement down in the common room, in just a few minutes! Everyone, go downstairs as soon as you can!”
It wondered for a moment why they might be calling a meeting, but quickly remembered what had happened with the girls’ dorm earlier. Still, what could that have to do with us? Were they looking for a culprit? Or maybe they were going to break some bad news? Then again, Yamaku isn’t the kind of place where everyone gets a day of mourning, so gathering all the students together to break the news would’ve required something disastrous. Just how bad was it? I tried not to think about it too much, and just went downstairs, joining a flow of other students.
The common room was louder than I had ever heard it, packed full of students wall-to-wall. Many were sitting on the floor to try and get comfortable, or to relieve their legs, but I joined a group standing up against one of the walls, since space was running low, and I didn’t trust myself not to accidentally step on someone’s hand while trying to find a place to sit down.
Luckily, I wasn’t waiting for long. “Alright, alright, everybody, listen up!” A tall boy in a uniform - presumably a third-year - standing near the doors called for everyone’s attention. To his left, a shorter student waved his arms a bit, presumably signing to the deaf students. To his right were two men, both dressed in black suits.
The shorter suited man spoke first, and I vaguely recognized his voice from other school gatherings. “Many of you may have already heard about what happened earlier, but I’d like to start by filling everyone in, and dispelling any rumors.” He cleared his throat. “A few hours ago, a small fire started in the girls’ dormitory. Thankfully, nobody was seriously hurt, but the nature of the incident meant that the dormitory building sustained non-trivial damage.”
The crowd murmured. “We’ve got multiple contractors doing their best to assess the damage, but the consensus right now is that the building is not safe for students to enter. Obviously this presents a problem for your fellow students, who are currently camped out in the cafeteria, and cannot return to their rooms. As such, I have been working with Administrator Watanabe on a plan to temporarily house them. Administrator?”
The taller suited man nodded. “Thank you, Principal. While there were multiple options for housing the displaced students, we believe that the most comfortable and least distressing option would be to temporarily stretch the available capacity in the other dormitory building - that is, this one. There are many rooms here that are mostly furnished but unoccupied, and with the help of the laundry and cleaning staff we can temporarily fit two displaced students in each of them.”
“Unfortunately, even that measure will not entirely solve the problem. As such, we will need to double up some of the currently occupied rooms too.” The crowd murmured again, slowly realizing what exactly he meant. “That means that many of you will have to accommodate a temporary roommate. I know that it will not be easy for you, but please try to think of it as easing the burden of your fellow students, who have it even worse. And of course, in the spirit of making things a bit less disruptive for you all, we will be placing a moratorium on testing during this period.”
The crowd cheered, clearly bolstered more by the prospect of a reduced workload than they were perturbed by the plan to assign temporary roommates. Despite the unusual nature of what he was proposing, it didn’t feel strange. It was a logical plan - those girls had to sleep somewhere, after all. Still, I got the sense that I hadn’t really grasped the gravity of the situation.
Everyone remained jubilant until the third-year from before quieted them again. “Okay, I know, we’re all excited, but we’re going to need to - Taro, shut up!” A large boy in the front instantly went from boisterous to silent. “As I was saying, we’re going to need to work through some logistics if we want this to run smoothly.”
“Of course, some of you can’t support a roommate, for any of a number of reasons - if you think you can’t, all you have to do is tell us. But keep in mind that this option is aimed at those for whom it is impossible. For the rest of us, it will obviously be difficult, but there’s no way around that. We have no way of checking, but I am trusting that you will do the right thing and only opt out if you are truly unable to support a temporary roommate.”
“I, along with everyone else involved in this operation, will try to be available here in the common room if you need us. If you have a problem or a question, if you need more sheets or an extra futon, or if you just need someone to talk to, we will do our best to help. That said, at times we may have a lot to deal with, so please be patient. And, of course, one last thing.” He glanced over at the men in suits before continuing.
“It should go without saying, but I want to make this very clear: your new roommates, hallmates, and dormmates will be treated with the utmost respect. We’re all going through this difficult time together, and as such, you should in no manner harass them. I have told them, in no uncertain terms, to report any such incidents directly to me. And let me tell you, whatever excuse you think you have, I do not care. I don’t care whether you’re friends, I don’t care whether they started it, and I absolutely do not care who your parents are. If any of you misbehave, we will START with expulsion, and work up from there. Do I make myself clear?”
Nobody said anything, cowed by his speech. “Perfect. Now, are there any questions?”
A skinny boy to my left raised his hand, and the third-year up front called on him.
“How long will we be doing this for?”
The trio up front took a moment to glance at each other, silently negotiating who would answer what was obviously a difficult question. In the end, the Principal spoke. “Unfortunately, we don’t have an exact timeline right now, since there hasn’t been much time to evaluate the situation. However, we’re confident that we can have the dorms open again before the winter break is over.”
The third-year followed up. “Even before the break is over, however, things should ease up. We’re hoping to match roommates so that at least one of them will be going home for the break, meaning that once the break starts, those of you who are staying will have your rooms to yourselves again. We’re also hoping to allow some students to leave for break early.” Before the crowd could get excited, he quickly added “Only for those whose teachers are confident they can complete the material from home, of course.”
A few more questions came in over the next few minutes, but nothing too interesting, and before long we were all sent back to our rooms, to await our potential new roommates. I was beginning to get a bit nervous when I heard a knock on my door - but not the one I was expecting.
“Hey, Kenji, you in there?”
I opened the door to find Daizo and Miki standing outside. “Oh, hey man, hey Miki. I assume you heard the announcement?”
“Actually, I’ve been in the cafeteria helping out the girls, but I the spiel you got was probably pretty similar to the one they did.”
I wasn’t even surprised. “Yeah, probably. So Miki, do you know where you’re staying yet?”
“Yup!” She put her good arm around Daizo’s shoulder. “Right here with this guy.”
“That’s... quite the coincidence.”
She laughed. “No, they didn’t assign me here, we just decided it would make sense, since I spend so much time in his room anyways.”
“Oh.” I immediately saw a problem. “What if they try to assign another girl to his room?”
“We’ll tell them he’s already got one.”
Daizo smirked. “Or we could just make room for one more!” Miki scoffed at that, but didn’t say anything else.
“So what about your room, Miki? Is it okay?”
“Yeah, they said the stuff in our rooms should be fine, it’s just that we can’t go get it. Supposedly tomorrow they’ll be letting us request workers to go fetch anything we need, but it’ll still be a pain.” She sighed. “The admin isn’t saying anything about it, but rumor has it that someone tried to put a bunch of candles in the hallways for ‘holiday spirit’, which is why the building got damaged but our rooms were mostly fine.” She shook her head. “Fuckin’ idiot.”
“Damn.” It seemed weird, but also sounded like the kind of thing you couldn’t make up. “Well, hopefully it won’t be long until you can go back. Are either of you going home for the break?”
“Nah, it’s easier for me to just call my parents, and Miki... She’d rather stay here.”
I didn’t really know much about Miki’s family, but his tone suggested it wasn’t worth getting into. “I guess we’re in this together, then - I’m staying on campus too.” Like Daizo, I would have enjoyed some time with my family, but it wouldn’t’ve been worth the hassle to travel all the way home for just a few days.
“Alright! Well, good luck on your roommate roulette, and we’ll see you tomorrow!”
“Thanks, see you guys then!” They disappeared into his room, and I was about to head back to mine, until I remembered something. I walked back over to their door, knocked on it twice, and yelled “Hey, Daizo, don’t forget to take your meds!”
I could hear a muffled “Ah, shit.” followed by a loud “Thanks, got it!”
I returned to my room for real after that, and prepared myself for the aforementioned game of chance.
-
Craftyatom
- Posts: 374
- Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 11:38 pm
- Location: Washington, USA
Disconnection (2/5)
“So you knew Mr. Matsuo and Ms. Miura fairly well, then?”
I haven’t mentioned their last names. Another sign that this woman already knows the whole story. Not that it makes a difference, apparently. “Sort of. I didn’t really talk to Miki that much, but Daizo liked us both, and we respected him enough to assume that meant we were good people.”
“I see. So despite not knowing her very well, you thought of her as someone you could trust, because Mr. Matsuo did?”
“At the time, yes.”
I expect her to try and dig further into that statement, but to my surprise, she relents. “So, you were waiting to be assigned a temporary roommate. What happened then?”
I open my mouth, spend a few seconds trying to think of what to say, and then sigh. “Do I really have to go into this?”
“Mr. Setou, I know it might be hard, but I need to know how you felt about what happened. And unfortunately, if it hurts to talk about, that means that you must have felt very strongly about it.”
I swallow. “Yes. I felt... It felt...” There’s no point denying it. “Magical.”
~~~~~~~~~~
I was beginning to get tired when another knock finally came from my door, and I jumped up to answer, entirely uncertain what awaited me. Upon opening the door, however, all I saw was a skinny boy, holding what I assumed was a clipboard. “Kenji Setou?”
“Yes?”
“Alright. Are you staying here over the break?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, let’s see...” He looked at his clipboard, then turned to his left. “Elise?”
He stepped back, and up walked a tall girl with long, flowing brown hair, carrying something under her left arm. Despite what seemed to be a striking appearance, even I could tell that her body language was a little shy. “Um... Hello. My name is Elise. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Her accent was just as surprising as her stature - I had never heard anything like it. “Ah, uh, I’m Kenji. Nice to meet you too.” I put my right hand out, only realizing afterwards that I had no idea whether she had hands, this being Yamaku. I remembered being lucky that Miki only lost her left hand, the first time I met her.
Thankfully, this new girl had hands, and shook mine. Her hand was big, but still dainty and soft, reinforced by a fairly weak handshake. I quickly pulled my hand back afterwards, not wanting to linger, but couldn’t think of anything to say.
Luckily, she spoke first. “May I come in?”
“Oh! Right, right, sorry.” I stepped back and let her through the door frame, though she had a bit of trouble fitting through with whatever she was carrying. “It’s been a long day.”
She giggled, and I was taken aback by the sound. “Yes, yes. Mine too.”
“Right, the fire. Were you there when it happened?”
“I was in my room, and had to leave. I didn’t see the fire though.” She looked around the room, and I could only hope it looked presentable - I wasn’t a very good judge. “Where can I put this futon?”
It took me a second to realize that she was talking about the thing she had carried in - it must’ve been her makeshift sleeping arrangement. “Oh, anywhere on the floor is fine, as long as you have room.” I thought again about how tall she was. “Are you sure you don’t want to take the bed? I’d be okay using the futon.”
“No, no! It’s your room, I’m a guest.” She began to unroll her futon onto the floor.
“Well, yeah, but then... you’re a guest, I should accommodate you.”
“No, no, it’s okay, really. I’ll sleep in the futon.”
“O-Okay.” She continued setting herself up a place on the floor, and I found myself without anything to say or do. “So, uh, where are you from?”
“Why do you think I’m not from here?” She laughed, and I blushed.
“No, I mean, your accent is just, very, uh...”
“I know, I know, I have a big accent. I’m from France.”
From... “France? I... How?”
“I’m an exchange student. My parents work for a company in the United Kingdom, which is connected to Yamaku somehow. So I decided to try it!”
As if the day hadn’t been strange enough already. “For someone who’s just trying it, your Japanese is excellent.”
Another giggle. “I’m very good with languages. It’s from my family.”
“Your parents probably taught you English too, huh.”
“Of course!” She smirked. “Better than some of the English teachers here, I think.”
“Wow.” I feel a bit overwhelmed. “That’s way more interesting than me. I’m just... some dude.”
She seemed to be taken aback by that. “No, no, really not. I’m from overseas, but I’m a boring girl. The other students here, they are interesting.”
“How so?”
“Well... There is a girl in my class without arms. Instead, she does everything with her feet! It’s incredible! And at lunch, I see the deaf girls signing to each other, so quickly! And the blind students, they walk around without any problems!”
“Yeah, we’re pretty good at working with it, I guess.”
She paused. “We? Which one are you?”
“Er, blind.”
“Blind, but... You choose to wear glasses?”
Ah, that old bug. “I’m only legally blind. I can still see shapes and colors and stuff, and the glasses help.”
“Ah, so you can still see a little. That’s why your glasses are so thick - they must be much stronger than mine.”
“Yours? You wear glasses?”
“Of course, I’m wearing them right- Oh.” She realized. “You really cannot see very much.”
I shrug. “Yeah, but it’s still a lot more than most of my classmates, so I can’t complain.”
“Of course, you’re in class 2-2, your classmates are also blind. That’s why I haven’t met you before. I’m in class 2-3.”
“Oh, 2-3, do you know Daizo and Miki?”
She fidgeted a little. “Well, I see them, I suppose. When they decide to come into class.”
I laughed. “Oh yeah, that’s them alright. Daizo’s my hallmate, and Miki hangs out with him a lot.”
“Hangs out with him... Are they not, um, a couple?”
I wasn’t entirely sure how to answer. “Well, I mean, they’re, uh... They’re definitely sort of like a couple. But also, they’re not a couple couple. They’re more of... Shoot, how do I even describe it...”
“Ah, where I’m from, I think we’d say c'est compliqué: it’s complicated.”
“Yeah, complicated definitely describes it. Saycum pleekay.”
She laughed quite hard at that. “Exactly!”
“Well, whatever they are, they’re across the hall from us until this whole mess is over.” Which reminded me. “Speaking of which, are you going home for the break, or staying on campus?”
“I’m going home, but not until a few days after the break starts. We bought the plane tickets a long time ago, and can’t change them now, so you will be stuck with me for a bit longer.”
I laughed, though perhaps a bit nervously. “No, I think you’re the one who’s stuck here with me!”
She laughed again, which I was really beginning to enjoy. “Perhaps we will just have to be stuck with each other.”
“I guess so.” At that moment my stomach grumbled, and I realized that I hadn’t eaten since lunch. “Ah, Elise, have you had dinner?”
“Yes, we ate while we were waiting in the cafeteria.”
“Oh, okay. I’ll just go grab dinner myself, then - it completely slipped my mind, with all the stuff going on.”
She stood up from her futon. “I’ll come with you!”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, it will give me something to do. Besides, I think you’re interesting.”
It was a compliment I don’t think I had ever received before. “Well, if you say so.” And with that, we headed out.
We swung by the cafeteria, came back to my room - our room, for the time being - and chatted for a bit while I ate. Then we got ready for bed, which involved the new bathroom arrangements: Daizo and I switched to the bathroom one hallway down, while the girls got the one we usually used. And, finally, tired after what had ended up being a very long day, we went to sleep. Which was fine, until I got up early in the morning to go to the bathroom.
I vaguely remembered, groggily getting out of bed, that I needed to use a different bathroom than usual, though I didn’t remember why. I was reminded a moment later, however, when my foot collided with something, and I fell over onto the floor. I grimaced as I felt a sharp pain on my palm, and rolled over onto my back just as I heard a voice come from whatever I had just tripped on.
“Aie, merde... Ugh... Kenji?”
“Sorry, sorry, I- ow, ow- I forgot you were there, and tripped. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. And you, are you okay?”
“My hand hurts, but that’s it.”
“Hmm.” She took a moment to think, which I couldn’t blame her for, given the situation. “Is it broken? Or bleeding?”
“I, uh... I don’t think so.” I touched it with my other hand, and it seemed a bit wet, but that could’ve been sweat. “I can’t really tell whether it’s bleeding, though.”
“Let me see, then.” She got up and carefully walked over to turn on the lights, then sat next to me on the floor and took my hand. “Ah, yes, there’s a small cut.” She grabbed a tissue and pressed it into my hand for a bit - I honestly couldn’t tell how long - then looked again. “It should be fine, just make sure to wash it well.”
“Alright, I’ll go do that.” I got up and went to the bathroom, which was the whole reason I was awake in the first place, but made sure to wash my hands more thoroughly as well.
When I got back, the lights were still on, but Elise was lying on the floor where we had been sitting. I guess she had gone to sleep, so I tried to rouse her. “Elise. Hey, Elise, get up.” I prodded her with one foot, and she stirred.
“What’s up?”
“You should get back into the futon. You’ll get cold sleeping on the floor like that.”
“Oh... right.” She shuffled back to where she had been sleeping before that whole mess and tucked herself in. I turned the lights off, carefully stepped over her, and got back into bed. The stillness of the night returned, only to be broken by a quiet voice a moment later. “Thanks, Kenji.”
I didn’t exactly feel like she should’ve been thanking me, given that I had just tripped over her, woken her up, and then had her help with my hand. “Sorry, Elise.”
“Ça va.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but decided it was probably okay.
I haven’t mentioned their last names. Another sign that this woman already knows the whole story. Not that it makes a difference, apparently. “Sort of. I didn’t really talk to Miki that much, but Daizo liked us both, and we respected him enough to assume that meant we were good people.”
“I see. So despite not knowing her very well, you thought of her as someone you could trust, because Mr. Matsuo did?”
“At the time, yes.”
I expect her to try and dig further into that statement, but to my surprise, she relents. “So, you were waiting to be assigned a temporary roommate. What happened then?”
I open my mouth, spend a few seconds trying to think of what to say, and then sigh. “Do I really have to go into this?”
“Mr. Setou, I know it might be hard, but I need to know how you felt about what happened. And unfortunately, if it hurts to talk about, that means that you must have felt very strongly about it.”
I swallow. “Yes. I felt... It felt...” There’s no point denying it. “Magical.”
~~~~~~~~~~
I was beginning to get tired when another knock finally came from my door, and I jumped up to answer, entirely uncertain what awaited me. Upon opening the door, however, all I saw was a skinny boy, holding what I assumed was a clipboard. “Kenji Setou?”
“Yes?”
“Alright. Are you staying here over the break?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, let’s see...” He looked at his clipboard, then turned to his left. “Elise?”
He stepped back, and up walked a tall girl with long, flowing brown hair, carrying something under her left arm. Despite what seemed to be a striking appearance, even I could tell that her body language was a little shy. “Um... Hello. My name is Elise. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Her accent was just as surprising as her stature - I had never heard anything like it. “Ah, uh, I’m Kenji. Nice to meet you too.” I put my right hand out, only realizing afterwards that I had no idea whether she had hands, this being Yamaku. I remembered being lucky that Miki only lost her left hand, the first time I met her.
Thankfully, this new girl had hands, and shook mine. Her hand was big, but still dainty and soft, reinforced by a fairly weak handshake. I quickly pulled my hand back afterwards, not wanting to linger, but couldn’t think of anything to say.
Luckily, she spoke first. “May I come in?”
“Oh! Right, right, sorry.” I stepped back and let her through the door frame, though she had a bit of trouble fitting through with whatever she was carrying. “It’s been a long day.”
She giggled, and I was taken aback by the sound. “Yes, yes. Mine too.”
“Right, the fire. Were you there when it happened?”
“I was in my room, and had to leave. I didn’t see the fire though.” She looked around the room, and I could only hope it looked presentable - I wasn’t a very good judge. “Where can I put this futon?”
It took me a second to realize that she was talking about the thing she had carried in - it must’ve been her makeshift sleeping arrangement. “Oh, anywhere on the floor is fine, as long as you have room.” I thought again about how tall she was. “Are you sure you don’t want to take the bed? I’d be okay using the futon.”
“No, no! It’s your room, I’m a guest.” She began to unroll her futon onto the floor.
“Well, yeah, but then... you’re a guest, I should accommodate you.”
“No, no, it’s okay, really. I’ll sleep in the futon.”
“O-Okay.” She continued setting herself up a place on the floor, and I found myself without anything to say or do. “So, uh, where are you from?”
“Why do you think I’m not from here?” She laughed, and I blushed.
“No, I mean, your accent is just, very, uh...”
“I know, I know, I have a big accent. I’m from France.”
From... “France? I... How?”
“I’m an exchange student. My parents work for a company in the United Kingdom, which is connected to Yamaku somehow. So I decided to try it!”
As if the day hadn’t been strange enough already. “For someone who’s just trying it, your Japanese is excellent.”
Another giggle. “I’m very good with languages. It’s from my family.”
“Your parents probably taught you English too, huh.”
“Of course!” She smirked. “Better than some of the English teachers here, I think.”
“Wow.” I feel a bit overwhelmed. “That’s way more interesting than me. I’m just... some dude.”
She seemed to be taken aback by that. “No, no, really not. I’m from overseas, but I’m a boring girl. The other students here, they are interesting.”
“How so?”
“Well... There is a girl in my class without arms. Instead, she does everything with her feet! It’s incredible! And at lunch, I see the deaf girls signing to each other, so quickly! And the blind students, they walk around without any problems!”
“Yeah, we’re pretty good at working with it, I guess.”
She paused. “We? Which one are you?”
“Er, blind.”
“Blind, but... You choose to wear glasses?”
Ah, that old bug. “I’m only legally blind. I can still see shapes and colors and stuff, and the glasses help.”
“Ah, so you can still see a little. That’s why your glasses are so thick - they must be much stronger than mine.”
“Yours? You wear glasses?”
“Of course, I’m wearing them right- Oh.” She realized. “You really cannot see very much.”
I shrug. “Yeah, but it’s still a lot more than most of my classmates, so I can’t complain.”
“Of course, you’re in class 2-2, your classmates are also blind. That’s why I haven’t met you before. I’m in class 2-3.”
“Oh, 2-3, do you know Daizo and Miki?”
She fidgeted a little. “Well, I see them, I suppose. When they decide to come into class.”
I laughed. “Oh yeah, that’s them alright. Daizo’s my hallmate, and Miki hangs out with him a lot.”
“Hangs out with him... Are they not, um, a couple?”
I wasn’t entirely sure how to answer. “Well, I mean, they’re, uh... They’re definitely sort of like a couple. But also, they’re not a couple couple. They’re more of... Shoot, how do I even describe it...”
“Ah, where I’m from, I think we’d say c'est compliqué: it’s complicated.”
“Yeah, complicated definitely describes it. Saycum pleekay.”
She laughed quite hard at that. “Exactly!”
“Well, whatever they are, they’re across the hall from us until this whole mess is over.” Which reminded me. “Speaking of which, are you going home for the break, or staying on campus?”
“I’m going home, but not until a few days after the break starts. We bought the plane tickets a long time ago, and can’t change them now, so you will be stuck with me for a bit longer.”
I laughed, though perhaps a bit nervously. “No, I think you’re the one who’s stuck here with me!”
She laughed again, which I was really beginning to enjoy. “Perhaps we will just have to be stuck with each other.”
“I guess so.” At that moment my stomach grumbled, and I realized that I hadn’t eaten since lunch. “Ah, Elise, have you had dinner?”
“Yes, we ate while we were waiting in the cafeteria.”
“Oh, okay. I’ll just go grab dinner myself, then - it completely slipped my mind, with all the stuff going on.”
She stood up from her futon. “I’ll come with you!”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, it will give me something to do. Besides, I think you’re interesting.”
It was a compliment I don’t think I had ever received before. “Well, if you say so.” And with that, we headed out.
We swung by the cafeteria, came back to my room - our room, for the time being - and chatted for a bit while I ate. Then we got ready for bed, which involved the new bathroom arrangements: Daizo and I switched to the bathroom one hallway down, while the girls got the one we usually used. And, finally, tired after what had ended up being a very long day, we went to sleep. Which was fine, until I got up early in the morning to go to the bathroom.
I vaguely remembered, groggily getting out of bed, that I needed to use a different bathroom than usual, though I didn’t remember why. I was reminded a moment later, however, when my foot collided with something, and I fell over onto the floor. I grimaced as I felt a sharp pain on my palm, and rolled over onto my back just as I heard a voice come from whatever I had just tripped on.
“Aie, merde... Ugh... Kenji?”
“Sorry, sorry, I- ow, ow- I forgot you were there, and tripped. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. And you, are you okay?”
“My hand hurts, but that’s it.”
“Hmm.” She took a moment to think, which I couldn’t blame her for, given the situation. “Is it broken? Or bleeding?”
“I, uh... I don’t think so.” I touched it with my other hand, and it seemed a bit wet, but that could’ve been sweat. “I can’t really tell whether it’s bleeding, though.”
“Let me see, then.” She got up and carefully walked over to turn on the lights, then sat next to me on the floor and took my hand. “Ah, yes, there’s a small cut.” She grabbed a tissue and pressed it into my hand for a bit - I honestly couldn’t tell how long - then looked again. “It should be fine, just make sure to wash it well.”
“Alright, I’ll go do that.” I got up and went to the bathroom, which was the whole reason I was awake in the first place, but made sure to wash my hands more thoroughly as well.
When I got back, the lights were still on, but Elise was lying on the floor where we had been sitting. I guess she had gone to sleep, so I tried to rouse her. “Elise. Hey, Elise, get up.” I prodded her with one foot, and she stirred.
“What’s up?”
“You should get back into the futon. You’ll get cold sleeping on the floor like that.”
“Oh... right.” She shuffled back to where she had been sleeping before that whole mess and tucked herself in. I turned the lights off, carefully stepped over her, and got back into bed. The stillness of the night returned, only to be broken by a quiet voice a moment later. “Thanks, Kenji.”
I didn’t exactly feel like she should’ve been thanking me, given that I had just tripped over her, woken her up, and then had her help with my hand. “Sorry, Elise.”
“Ça va.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but decided it was probably okay.
-
Craftyatom
- Posts: 374
- Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 11:38 pm
- Location: Washington, USA
Disconnection (3/5)
“So that’s how you came to know Ms. Laennec.”
Another last name that she already knows. I wonder just how much this woman knows about Elise - more than I did, back then? I guess we’ll find out soon enough. “Yeah, she was my temporary roommate.”
“Yes, but you two were assigned to be roommates. I gather that, even early on, you started to mean more to each other than just that.”
“Obviously. I have no idea what she thought of me, but I was entranced by her.”
The woman seems surprised. “When you say that you didn’t know what she thought of you, why is that? Didn’t she act differently around you, or tell you how she felt?”
“Well, yeah, we said and did a lot of stuff. But you never know what someone’s thinking, really. You never know how they feel. You’re forced to decide whether you trust what they’re telling you.”
“And you didn’t trust her?”
“I did, back then. But I don’t know anymore. Maybe I was wrong to trust her.” A dark feeling flashes back into my head for a moment. “I was wrong to trust her.”
“Hmm.” The woman pauses for a while. “Can you tell me about some of the times that you trusted what she said she was feeling?”
“Yeah. I suppose that’s what happened next, after all.”
~~~~~~~~~~
I awoke with a start to the sound of someone yelling.
“BLOOD, BLOOD, LET IT RAIN! IN THIS TORRENT DROWNS THE PAIN! RIPPED BENEATH THE SCARLET TIDES! PAYING EXISTENTIAL TITHES! BLOOD, BLOOD, ONCE A-”
As quickly as it had started, it stopped, leaving me bewildered. “What the fuck?”
I was startled again by a groaning noise coming from the floor next to my bed, followed by a yawn and a groggy “Good morning, Kenji.”
Having sat up in bed, I remembered whose voice that was, though she didn’t seem at all concerned about the commotion. “Elise?”
“Hmm?”
“What was that yelling just now?”
“Yelling...” She thought about it for a moment, and I began to wonder whether I had just imagined it. “Oh, you mean my alarm?”
“Alarm? Why would your alarm be yelling?”
“This one, right?”
Before I could object, it began anew. “BLOOD, BLOOD, LET IT-”
“Ah, turn it off, turn it off!” Thankfully she obliged. “Yeah, that was it, I guess. That’s... your alarm?”
“Yes. I use my cellphone as an alarm, and luckily I still had it with me after yesterday.” She gasped. “Ah, I’m sorry, did it scare you?”
“Well, uh, just a little bit, I guess.” I didn’t know that cellphones could be alarms, let alone that those alarms could be so... violent.
“Sorry, sorry! I have trouble waking up sometimes, so I need a very loud alarm.”
That made more sense than the rest of the situation, at least. “That’s okay. Why is it... yelling, though?”
“Oh, um, it’s... It’s a song. I really like it.”
“That’s a song?”
“Yes! Bloodrain by Desolace Incarnate. They were one of the first Japanese bands I listened to!”
The morning just kept sprouting more surprises. “It doesn’t sound like any Japanese music I’ve ever heard.”
“Yes, there’s lots of Japanese music like that! Some of the bands did songs for anime, too.”
First cellphones, then yelling music, and now anime? I was getting further out of my depth by the minute. “Well, I don’t really watch any of that stuff, so I wouldn’t know.”
“Oh, I wish I could show it all to you! There are so many good moments, like the fight against the commander in Rebirth of the Fabled Seven-Army Swordsman, where they used Cliffside Lightning by Prayer in the Wind, but they got the lead singer to do some of the voice acting too, and it was just...” She trailed off, possibly because of the lack of comprehension written on my face. “Anyways, I’m really sorry. I should’ve told you, or turned it down, or something.”
“It’s fine, it’s fine.” I got up, being careful not to step on her, which reminded me of my stumble during the night. “Like... what was it? Sava?”
That seemed to pique her interest. “Ça va?”
“Yeah, yeah, that one.”
“Where did you learn that?”
I was surprised she didn’t remember. “Last night, after I tripped over you. I said I was sorry, and you said... that.”
“Oooooh! So that wasn’t a dream!” She laughed, and I found myself laughing too. My memory of it was a bit hazy, being from so late at night, but a twinge of pain in my hand told me that it definitely hadn’t been a dream. “It means, like, ‘it’s okay’.”
That was about what I had expected. “Well anyways, now we’re even!”
She giggled, and it reminded me of how it felt when she was taking care of my hand the night before. Realizing that she was still sitting on the futon, I put my uninjured hand towards her, and after a moment she took it and pulled herself up. She was definitely a bit heavier than I had expected, but once we were both standing I remembered just how tall she was, so it made sense.
We didn’t immediately leave to start preparing for the day - there was this interstitial moment where I could swear she was looking at me, and we just stood there.
I don’t know how long it lasted, but it was gone soon enough, washed away in the need to get ready for school.
We walked to class together, which was unusual for me; ordinarily, I’d only walk in with Daizo, and even then, only on the days he decided to show up to class on time. As it turned out, however, it didn’t matter that day: so few people showed up, given the events of the day prior, that the teacher dismissed us for the day almost as soon as the bell rang.
I was already feeling pretty good about getting the day off, but soon felt even better: “Hey, Kenji! Did they cancel your classes too?” Evidently it wasn’t just the blind students who needed some time off; Elise’s class had been practically empty as well. I told her that she’d have to thank Daizo and Miki when we got home, but in the meantime she wanted to go to the library, and I followed.
“Do you read much, Kenji?”
“Not a lot, but sometimes. I can’t read braille as fast as my classmates, and reading printed text is really difficult, but if I find something interesting then I will.”
“Ah, I understand. So what do you find interesting?”
That question was made tougher by the fact that I hadn’t read anything recently. “Mostly random historical stuff, like battles and coups and the like that they gloss over in school.” She was about to reply, but I remembered to throw in one last interest: “And aliens. Lots of alien-related stuff.”
She seemed surprised. “Aliens? Like, from space?”
“Yeah, exactly - like, how they’ve interacted with us throughout history and stuff.”
A long pause. “You think they have?”
I groaned. “That’s the thing, it’s so hard to tell. They could’ve touched every part of history, and we’d have no way of knowing. It’s all about reading between the lines, at least until you get to the space age, where it’s more a matter of information warfare.”
“But... If you can’t tell, do they even exist?”
“That’s the thing, they have to exist! There are trillions of stars out there, and each of them could be just like our Sun. What are the chances that life evolved right here, but nowhere else?”
“But they’re far away still.”
“No, no, see, humans are young. We’ve only been around for one millionth as long as the universe. In that time, some of those aliens must have built spaceships and light drives and cloaking fields - they’re just too far ahead of us!”
“Hmm. So then, you think they came here?”
“Earth is easy to spot as a planet with life. They must have come, it’s just a question of where. My best guess is the Moon.”
She laughed. “The Moon? That people walked on?”
“Exactly! Those guys went to the Moon for a few days, just a few times, and then never went back. Why’d they go there in the first place if it was only going to be for that long? Because they realized there was something up there! Why didn’t they keep going back? Maybe because they got what they needed... or maybe because they awakened something they didn’t mean to.”
There was another pause while she thought about it. “I told you that you were interesting, yes? You sound like you should write a book.”
“I... hadn’t really thought about that before. You think so?”
“Yes! You tell a good story.” I wondered about that for a bit before she continued the conversation. “Me, I like action stories, but with a little romance. I like reading about girls who beat up bad guys, but also have feelings.”
Once again, that was uncharted territory for me. “So, kind of like magical girls?”
Another laugh, this one a bit louder. “A little, but not really. I want stories that are darker, a bit more serious. Like the music I listen to!”
In retrospect, her musical taste didn’t exactly mesh with how I thought of magical girl stories. “That’s fair. I don’t really know what that would be like, but it sounds neat.”
“Well, I can show you, if you want.” I raised an eyebrow, interested in what she had in mind. “Why don’t we pick out books we like, and then trade? Try out each others’ tastes?”
“I don’t know, most of the ones I read are in braille, and they might not have braille versions of yours for me. Besides, you’d probably find my books boring... though I suppose there is action in some of them.”
“Hmm.” She thought about that for a moment before gasping. “Of course! We could read them to each other! We have lots of time, with classes finishing and the break starting. And we could do it in your room, so it wouldn’t bother people. What do you think?”
It was a good idea, but I liked it even more because it felt more like something we’d do together, unlike reading two different books. I still wasn’t entirely sold on exploring each others’ tastes, but it couldn’t hurt to try. “Sure, I’ll give it a go.”
After picking out some books, we went back to our room and tried it out. She read me a chapter from a book about a woman who shoots robots in the future, which was actually pretty interesting. I needed her to explain some parts, though, since it was apparently the third book in the series. I read her a section about the attack on the Sui-Ho Dam, and she seemed to be interested - enough to ask me some questions as well.
I was surprised by how quickly the time seemed to pass. Both reading and being read to in class seem to take forever, but it was different there with her. It was like it was easy to care, because she cared. And so I was surprised when, after I finished reading, she sighed sadly and laid down on her futon.
“What’s up?”
“Oh, it’s...” She thought for a moment. “Do you ever feel sad that you’re happy?”
“I... I’m not really sure what you mean.”
Another sigh. “Because you know that the happy times will end.”
“Not really, I guess. The happy times don’t necessarily have to end, if you don’t let them.”
“Sometimes you can’t control it, though. You can only watch it happen. Like if your parents have already bought the plane tickets.”
I suddenly realized what she meant. “Well, yeah, but that’s only temporary. You’ll be back soon enough.”
She chuckled glumly, then sighed once more. “For that, yes, but... My language has a word, microcosme.”
She turned to me expectantly, and I knew what she wanted. “Meekwo cosmuh?”
She laughed more heartily this time, but it soon faded. “Perfect. It means when part of a thing is like the whole thing.” My bewildered look told her to keep going. “Like, a class where the students were mostly girls but the teacher was a man, in a school where the students were mostly girls but the administrators were mostly men.”
“Ah, okay. Yeah, you know, come to think of it, there really are a lot of girls here, huh.”
She groaned. “No, I mean-”
“I know, I know, meekwo, I was just thinking.”
“Anyways, my point is, this week is a microcosme of my exchange student life. I meet a bunch of new, interesting people. I have a lot of fun with them. But there’s an ending that I can’t control.” She sat up, and hugged her knees to her chest. “I’ll come back from the break. But the school year will end, and then... I don’t know.”
Her explanation filled me with the same emptiness that I assumed she was feeling. I had barely thought about the end of the year, myself. It didn’t even seem real. But to Elise... “And you can’t come back next year?”
“No. Well... no.” Another wave crashed over me - or rather, went straight through me. The girl in front of me was almost a ghost: bound briefly to this place, but destined to disappear eventually. And, like she had said, we were powerless against it. A minute prior I had believed that happiness would always eventually return; that belief was being tested.
After we spent what felt like too long wallowing in her sadness, she got up, walked towards me, and put her arms around me, pressing her chest into mine and my face into her cheek. “I’m sorry, Kenji. I really am.”
I slowly put my arms around her as well, having difficulty comprehending how close she was, how I could hear and feel her breathing. “Elise, it’s... I think...” Words failed me. Or at least, my own did. “Sava.”
She chuckled, and I could feel her chest and stomach bounce as she did. And finally, I understood what she had meant about being sad that I was so happy.
Another last name that she already knows. I wonder just how much this woman knows about Elise - more than I did, back then? I guess we’ll find out soon enough. “Yeah, she was my temporary roommate.”
“Yes, but you two were assigned to be roommates. I gather that, even early on, you started to mean more to each other than just that.”
“Obviously. I have no idea what she thought of me, but I was entranced by her.”
The woman seems surprised. “When you say that you didn’t know what she thought of you, why is that? Didn’t she act differently around you, or tell you how she felt?”
“Well, yeah, we said and did a lot of stuff. But you never know what someone’s thinking, really. You never know how they feel. You’re forced to decide whether you trust what they’re telling you.”
“And you didn’t trust her?”
“I did, back then. But I don’t know anymore. Maybe I was wrong to trust her.” A dark feeling flashes back into my head for a moment. “I was wrong to trust her.”
“Hmm.” The woman pauses for a while. “Can you tell me about some of the times that you trusted what she said she was feeling?”
“Yeah. I suppose that’s what happened next, after all.”
~~~~~~~~~~
I awoke with a start to the sound of someone yelling.
“BLOOD, BLOOD, LET IT RAIN! IN THIS TORRENT DROWNS THE PAIN! RIPPED BENEATH THE SCARLET TIDES! PAYING EXISTENTIAL TITHES! BLOOD, BLOOD, ONCE A-”
As quickly as it had started, it stopped, leaving me bewildered. “What the fuck?”
I was startled again by a groaning noise coming from the floor next to my bed, followed by a yawn and a groggy “Good morning, Kenji.”
Having sat up in bed, I remembered whose voice that was, though she didn’t seem at all concerned about the commotion. “Elise?”
“Hmm?”
“What was that yelling just now?”
“Yelling...” She thought about it for a moment, and I began to wonder whether I had just imagined it. “Oh, you mean my alarm?”
“Alarm? Why would your alarm be yelling?”
“This one, right?”
Before I could object, it began anew. “BLOOD, BLOOD, LET IT-”
“Ah, turn it off, turn it off!” Thankfully she obliged. “Yeah, that was it, I guess. That’s... your alarm?”
“Yes. I use my cellphone as an alarm, and luckily I still had it with me after yesterday.” She gasped. “Ah, I’m sorry, did it scare you?”
“Well, uh, just a little bit, I guess.” I didn’t know that cellphones could be alarms, let alone that those alarms could be so... violent.
“Sorry, sorry! I have trouble waking up sometimes, so I need a very loud alarm.”
That made more sense than the rest of the situation, at least. “That’s okay. Why is it... yelling, though?”
“Oh, um, it’s... It’s a song. I really like it.”
“That’s a song?”
“Yes! Bloodrain by Desolace Incarnate. They were one of the first Japanese bands I listened to!”
The morning just kept sprouting more surprises. “It doesn’t sound like any Japanese music I’ve ever heard.”
“Yes, there’s lots of Japanese music like that! Some of the bands did songs for anime, too.”
First cellphones, then yelling music, and now anime? I was getting further out of my depth by the minute. “Well, I don’t really watch any of that stuff, so I wouldn’t know.”
“Oh, I wish I could show it all to you! There are so many good moments, like the fight against the commander in Rebirth of the Fabled Seven-Army Swordsman, where they used Cliffside Lightning by Prayer in the Wind, but they got the lead singer to do some of the voice acting too, and it was just...” She trailed off, possibly because of the lack of comprehension written on my face. “Anyways, I’m really sorry. I should’ve told you, or turned it down, or something.”
“It’s fine, it’s fine.” I got up, being careful not to step on her, which reminded me of my stumble during the night. “Like... what was it? Sava?”
That seemed to pique her interest. “Ça va?”
“Yeah, yeah, that one.”
“Where did you learn that?”
I was surprised she didn’t remember. “Last night, after I tripped over you. I said I was sorry, and you said... that.”
“Oooooh! So that wasn’t a dream!” She laughed, and I found myself laughing too. My memory of it was a bit hazy, being from so late at night, but a twinge of pain in my hand told me that it definitely hadn’t been a dream. “It means, like, ‘it’s okay’.”
That was about what I had expected. “Well anyways, now we’re even!”
She giggled, and it reminded me of how it felt when she was taking care of my hand the night before. Realizing that she was still sitting on the futon, I put my uninjured hand towards her, and after a moment she took it and pulled herself up. She was definitely a bit heavier than I had expected, but once we were both standing I remembered just how tall she was, so it made sense.
We didn’t immediately leave to start preparing for the day - there was this interstitial moment where I could swear she was looking at me, and we just stood there.
I don’t know how long it lasted, but it was gone soon enough, washed away in the need to get ready for school.
We walked to class together, which was unusual for me; ordinarily, I’d only walk in with Daizo, and even then, only on the days he decided to show up to class on time. As it turned out, however, it didn’t matter that day: so few people showed up, given the events of the day prior, that the teacher dismissed us for the day almost as soon as the bell rang.
I was already feeling pretty good about getting the day off, but soon felt even better: “Hey, Kenji! Did they cancel your classes too?” Evidently it wasn’t just the blind students who needed some time off; Elise’s class had been practically empty as well. I told her that she’d have to thank Daizo and Miki when we got home, but in the meantime she wanted to go to the library, and I followed.
“Do you read much, Kenji?”
“Not a lot, but sometimes. I can’t read braille as fast as my classmates, and reading printed text is really difficult, but if I find something interesting then I will.”
“Ah, I understand. So what do you find interesting?”
That question was made tougher by the fact that I hadn’t read anything recently. “Mostly random historical stuff, like battles and coups and the like that they gloss over in school.” She was about to reply, but I remembered to throw in one last interest: “And aliens. Lots of alien-related stuff.”
She seemed surprised. “Aliens? Like, from space?”
“Yeah, exactly - like, how they’ve interacted with us throughout history and stuff.”
A long pause. “You think they have?”
I groaned. “That’s the thing, it’s so hard to tell. They could’ve touched every part of history, and we’d have no way of knowing. It’s all about reading between the lines, at least until you get to the space age, where it’s more a matter of information warfare.”
“But... If you can’t tell, do they even exist?”
“That’s the thing, they have to exist! There are trillions of stars out there, and each of them could be just like our Sun. What are the chances that life evolved right here, but nowhere else?”
“But they’re far away still.”
“No, no, see, humans are young. We’ve only been around for one millionth as long as the universe. In that time, some of those aliens must have built spaceships and light drives and cloaking fields - they’re just too far ahead of us!”
“Hmm. So then, you think they came here?”
“Earth is easy to spot as a planet with life. They must have come, it’s just a question of where. My best guess is the Moon.”
She laughed. “The Moon? That people walked on?”
“Exactly! Those guys went to the Moon for a few days, just a few times, and then never went back. Why’d they go there in the first place if it was only going to be for that long? Because they realized there was something up there! Why didn’t they keep going back? Maybe because they got what they needed... or maybe because they awakened something they didn’t mean to.”
There was another pause while she thought about it. “I told you that you were interesting, yes? You sound like you should write a book.”
“I... hadn’t really thought about that before. You think so?”
“Yes! You tell a good story.” I wondered about that for a bit before she continued the conversation. “Me, I like action stories, but with a little romance. I like reading about girls who beat up bad guys, but also have feelings.”
Once again, that was uncharted territory for me. “So, kind of like magical girls?”
Another laugh, this one a bit louder. “A little, but not really. I want stories that are darker, a bit more serious. Like the music I listen to!”
In retrospect, her musical taste didn’t exactly mesh with how I thought of magical girl stories. “That’s fair. I don’t really know what that would be like, but it sounds neat.”
“Well, I can show you, if you want.” I raised an eyebrow, interested in what she had in mind. “Why don’t we pick out books we like, and then trade? Try out each others’ tastes?”
“I don’t know, most of the ones I read are in braille, and they might not have braille versions of yours for me. Besides, you’d probably find my books boring... though I suppose there is action in some of them.”
“Hmm.” She thought about that for a moment before gasping. “Of course! We could read them to each other! We have lots of time, with classes finishing and the break starting. And we could do it in your room, so it wouldn’t bother people. What do you think?”
It was a good idea, but I liked it even more because it felt more like something we’d do together, unlike reading two different books. I still wasn’t entirely sold on exploring each others’ tastes, but it couldn’t hurt to try. “Sure, I’ll give it a go.”
After picking out some books, we went back to our room and tried it out. She read me a chapter from a book about a woman who shoots robots in the future, which was actually pretty interesting. I needed her to explain some parts, though, since it was apparently the third book in the series. I read her a section about the attack on the Sui-Ho Dam, and she seemed to be interested - enough to ask me some questions as well.
I was surprised by how quickly the time seemed to pass. Both reading and being read to in class seem to take forever, but it was different there with her. It was like it was easy to care, because she cared. And so I was surprised when, after I finished reading, she sighed sadly and laid down on her futon.
“What’s up?”
“Oh, it’s...” She thought for a moment. “Do you ever feel sad that you’re happy?”
“I... I’m not really sure what you mean.”
Another sigh. “Because you know that the happy times will end.”
“Not really, I guess. The happy times don’t necessarily have to end, if you don’t let them.”
“Sometimes you can’t control it, though. You can only watch it happen. Like if your parents have already bought the plane tickets.”
I suddenly realized what she meant. “Well, yeah, but that’s only temporary. You’ll be back soon enough.”
She chuckled glumly, then sighed once more. “For that, yes, but... My language has a word, microcosme.”
She turned to me expectantly, and I knew what she wanted. “Meekwo cosmuh?”
She laughed more heartily this time, but it soon faded. “Perfect. It means when part of a thing is like the whole thing.” My bewildered look told her to keep going. “Like, a class where the students were mostly girls but the teacher was a man, in a school where the students were mostly girls but the administrators were mostly men.”
“Ah, okay. Yeah, you know, come to think of it, there really are a lot of girls here, huh.”
She groaned. “No, I mean-”
“I know, I know, meekwo, I was just thinking.”
“Anyways, my point is, this week is a microcosme of my exchange student life. I meet a bunch of new, interesting people. I have a lot of fun with them. But there’s an ending that I can’t control.” She sat up, and hugged her knees to her chest. “I’ll come back from the break. But the school year will end, and then... I don’t know.”
Her explanation filled me with the same emptiness that I assumed she was feeling. I had barely thought about the end of the year, myself. It didn’t even seem real. But to Elise... “And you can’t come back next year?”
“No. Well... no.” Another wave crashed over me - or rather, went straight through me. The girl in front of me was almost a ghost: bound briefly to this place, but destined to disappear eventually. And, like she had said, we were powerless against it. A minute prior I had believed that happiness would always eventually return; that belief was being tested.
After we spent what felt like too long wallowing in her sadness, she got up, walked towards me, and put her arms around me, pressing her chest into mine and my face into her cheek. “I’m sorry, Kenji. I really am.”
I slowly put my arms around her as well, having difficulty comprehending how close she was, how I could hear and feel her breathing. “Elise, it’s... I think...” Words failed me. Or at least, my own did. “Sava.”
She chuckled, and I could feel her chest and stomach bounce as she did. And finally, I understood what she had meant about being sad that I was so happy.
-
Craftyatom
- Posts: 374
- Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 11:38 pm
- Location: Washington, USA
Disconnection (4/5)
“I see. So not long after you befriended Ms. Laennec, you found yourself saddened by the thought that she wouldn’t be around forever.”
“Obviously she wasn’t going to be around forever. Nobody’s around forever.” Sigh. “I just didn’t think she’d be gone so soon.” I guess that doesn’t just apply to her, though.
“But you mentioned that she also seemed very sad. Do you think that was how she really felt?”
I know where she’s going with this. “Who knows? I would’ve been sad in her position, but I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.”
“Even though she was in a sad situation, and was showing signs of sadness?”
“I don’t know! At the time I thought so, but now I just don’t know!” I rub my forehead. “People don’t make sense. Sometimes they do things and you don’t know why. Sometimes you know them for a year and then one day-” I clench my fists, purse my lips, and try to calm down.
“You hadn’t known Ms. Laennec for very long, though. But she gained your trust. Why do you think that was?”
“Because I was stupid, and I wanted to believe. I was seeing what I wanted to see. I got stuck in a circle, trusting her because I loved her, and loving her because I trusted her.”
The woman takes a while to digest that and plan her next move. “Do you think Mr. Matsuo trusted the people around him?”
“Of course he did. He trusted them too much. That’s what happened, that’s why I’m here in this room.”
“Who is it that you think he trusted too much?”
“Everyone. All the girls he brought home, who he barely knew? He always used to say that ‘Girls are easy, you just have to give them what they want. The hard part is figuring out what that is.’ He knew that they would lie to him, but he trusted them anyways! Same deal with Miki; he did whatever she wanted, and look where it landed him!”
I expect the woman to say something about that, but she remains silent, so I continue. “But you know the worst part?” I thrust one finger at my chest. “Me. He trusted me. He trusted me the most out of anyone, and in the end, I failed him. Not because I was selfish, like all those girls... just because I made the mistake of trusting someone else.”
There’s another long pause before the woman speaks again. “I know this might be hard, but could you tell me how exactly that happened? How that trust caused problems for you?”
As always, I’m sure she already knows, she just wants me to say it. “Fine.” If she wants to hear the sordid details on how it all happened, I have no choice but to oblige.
~~~~~~~~~~
Throughout the following week, I still spent as much time with Elise as possible, and she seemed to enjoy it. I did my best to forget it when we were together, but the spectre of her departure still hung over me. Maybe she felt the same, but she didn’t show it, and I was kind of glad for that. It made it easier to forget. Hell, sometimes I forgot so completely that when she held my hand, I would imagine us being together forever.
And so we went about getting closer and closer, despite knowing that there was only so close we could get. The break started, and we even went into town a few times. I was a lot more confident going places with her, partly because she could see a lot better than I could, but also just because of the way she made me feel. We got food, went shopping, and just... had a good time.
And then, just like that, it was her last day before her trip home. She spent the day packing, having had all the important stuff fetched from her room, and we talked. She mentioned having to get up and go to the airport early in the morning, and she had her bag there on the floor, but somehow it still didn’t feel real. It wasn’t until after dinner, when she sat down on my bed with me and sighed a long sigh, that it really hit me.
“Well, that’s it. In twelve hours, I’ll be in a taxi to the airport. I can only wait, I suppose.”
“Yeah.” I felt like I needed to keep the conversation going. “But you’ll be back in just over a week, right?”
She chuckled. “Yeah. It’s just for a little while. We can meet up again when I get back.” Still, she sat with her hands folded in her lap, and I figured she was thinking about the big picture.
“I, uh... I’m gonna miss you.”
She perked up at that, and looked at me. I thought she wanted to say something, but instead she lifted her hands and put them on the sides of my face. Not quite sure what to do, I put my hands on her shoulders and waited.
We stared at each other, her thumbs slowly tracing up and down my cheeks, and something within me began to feel alive. I could hear her breathing, and started noticing my own breathing too. It felt like a shockwave when she spoke.
“I... I just... K-Kenji, you...”
Unable to find the words, she let go of me and pulled away, letting my arms fall limply from her shoulders.
“Kenji, I’m... sorry. I want to, so badly I want to, but... I can’t.” Her voice began to waver. “It’s not fair. It’s not fair to me, and it’s not fair to you.”
She sniffed, and I tried to respond, but before I could figure out what to say, she got up and headed in the direction of the bathroom.
I sat there for a minute, trying to process it all, before getting up and going to the bathroom myself. I needed to think, and hoped some cold water would do the trick. I ran my hands under the faucet for a while, feeling them grow cold, and then numb, but it didn’t help with the burning in my chest, or on my cheeks. I wondered how long I would stay there. Luckily, I didn’t get to find out, as the door opened behind me.
“Oh, hey Kenji!”
“Daizo?” I turned off the tap.
“Hey, long time no see, man!” He headed for one of the urinals as I began to realize just how long it had been since we last talked.
“Oh, yeah, sorry. I’ve been really busy the past week, so I just-”
“Hah, don’t worry about it!” He started his business. “I’ve had my hands full with Miki the whole time, so it’s not just your fault.”
“If you say so.” I stood there, listening to the sound of falling water, until something came to mind. “Daizo, can you give me some advice?”
“Advice? You want advice from me?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I guess so.” He finished up, then turned and walked over to the sink next to me to wash his hands. “What sort of advice do you want?”
I tried to think about a clever way to phrase it so that it wouldn’t give everything away, but gave up pretty quickly. “Advice on girls.”
“Ooooh, I see. Sure thing, man! What sort of girl troubles are we talking about?”
“Well, see, there’s this girl I like, and I think she likes me too, but... she’s leaving Yamaku after this year.”
He laughed. “Damn, snagged yourself a third-year? I’m impressed, I-”
“No, no! She’s a second-year, she’s just... leaving after this year.”
“Oh, fair enough.” He shrugged. “So what’s the problem?”
“The... I just said, she’s leaving.”
He scoffed. “Yeah, a couple of months from now. That’s so much time! You can make more than enough memories before the school year ends.”
“Ugh, Daizo, I’m not like you. I don’t want to be jumping from fling to fling, I... I want something special.”
“So what, you’re just not even going to try?” He finished at the sink and went to dry his hands. “Listen, maybe she’s special, maybe she’s not. If you don’t try, you end up with jack shit. If you try and it doesn’t work out, no big deal, she’s leaving anyways. If you try and it does work, and she’s your soulmate or whatever, then you can do whatever it takes to stay with her.”
“I can’t stay with her, she’s-”
He finished drying off his hands and turned to me, cutting me off. “Is she dying?”
“W-What?”
“Is she going to die at the end of the year?”
“No, no, I said she’s just leaving!”
“So she’ll still be alive, somewhere on this planet. Would you rather know where she is and try your fuckin’ hardest to be there too, or never hear anything from her ever again?”
“I don’t understand! How could I possibly be with her after that?”
“Listen, man, you and her are both living in the present, and always will be. You don’t get to decide what happens in the future. But you do get to decide what happens right now. So spend that time setting your future self up for success, instead of worrying about whether he can succeed. Focus on making the best decisions that you can today, and tomorrow you can find out what came of them, knowing that you tried your best.”
His words were inspiring, but their literal application to my situation seemed terrifying. “Daizo, I’m... scared.”
“It’s okay to be scared, as long as you don’t let it stop you. Be afraid to do it, and then do it anyways, because you can do it!”
“O-Okay.”
“No, tell me! Tell me you can do it!”
It took me a moment to understand what he wanted. “I can do it!”
“Attaboy!” He slapped me on the back, then pointed towards the door. “Now go do it!”
I marched out of the bathroom, down the hall, and back into my room, where I found Elise sitting on my bed again, having regained her composure.
“Ah, sorry, Kenji, I got a little carried away.” I barely listened as I walked over and sat down next to her. “I guess I’m just emotional about-” She stopped as I put my hands on her shoulders again and gently turned her towards me.
“Elise, I promise that when you get back from break, I’ll be here waiting for you. And I may not know what’ll happen at the end of the year, but I promise that I’ll try my best to stay with you, if that’s what you want.”
She stared at me, her mouth slightly agape, for what felt like eons. The feeling from before was back: our breathing, her shoulders, something deep inside me desperate for release. Eventually, without saying a word, she reached up, took off her glasses, folded them, and tossed them gently onto her futon on the floor. Then she reached over, took my glasses, and did the same. And finally, after putting her hands on the sides of my head again, she inhaled, leaned forward, and kissed me.
I had never been kissed before, but the moment I understood what was happening, I wanted more. I wanted it to last forever, but it couldn’t. Luckily, it still lasted a long time, and each time we pulled away, the looks we gave each other brought us back again, arms wrapped around each others’ backs, until eventually I felt her reach down and begin unbuttoning my shirt.
I was nervous at first, but then realized that if she wanted to see me, then I damn well wanted to let her. Furthermore, I realized just how badly I wanted to see her too - or rather, without my glasses, I wanted to feel her. I haphazardly reached out, found her shirt, and began unbuttoning as well. Her breathing sped up, but she kept pressing her lips into mine, and I took it as a good sign. Luckily, since the break had started, we weren’t wearing ties, and already had some of the buttons undone.
She finished unbuttoning my shirt first, and didn’t even bother trying to take it off completely, instead immediately putting one hand on my chest and the other around my back. I decided to follow suit, and ignored the remaining buttons on her shirt, since I had already opened enough of a gap up top. With my eyes closed as we kissed, I got my hands inside her open shirt and pushed her bra up, kneading desperately at her chest - she hummed happily, but didn’t take her lips off of mine.
As we continued, she slowly pushed me back onto the bed, which unfortunately required breaking our kiss. I expected her to lay down with me shortly afterwards, but instead, she straddled my legs. Unsure what she was doing, I breathlessly asked “Elise?” but withdrew my complaints a second later, when she started unbuckling my belt.
It wasn’t until she pulled my pants down that I realized: I was harder than I had been in my entire life. And it just didn’t stop; she got off of the bed and began removing her shorts in return. I loved those shorts: she said that she found them more comfortable than the uniform skirts, and I enjoyed the way they fit her thighs. But then and there, I could not have been happier than to see her toss them onto the floor.
Finally, she crouched down to grab something from her bag - giving me what I could only imagine was a spectacular view in the process - then came back and knelt over me again. She stroked me a few times, reintroducing me to the heavenly touch of her fingers, then fiddled with something before applying it to me. The sensation was strange, but soon enough she began stroking again, and it felt good enough that I didn’t care anymore.
Finally, she moved forward a little, towering over me, her skin glistening beautifully in the dim light of the room. “Kenji, I... I love you.”
“I-I love you too, Elise.”
She leant forward and kissed me again, but soon pulled away, though this time I was anticipant instead of disappointed. She straightened herself up, adjusted herself slightly, and then carefully lowered herself onto me.
It was like everything I had loved about her, all at once. The kissing, the embraces, the laughter, the feeling of holding her hand... Inspired, I absentmindedly reached out and grabbed her hand, and she squeezed back, now feeling even closer than before.
In no time at all she began to move, lifting herself slightly, then letting herself fall again, and it felt fantastic. As she got more and more into it, I put my other hand around her back, trying weakly to help with her movements.
She stopped for a bit and carefully leaned forward, putting her head near mine - though the position and height difference meant that her mouth ended up in line with my forehead more than anything. Still, I was content to kiss her neck instead, and she whispered “Ah... Kenji, mon amour...”
“E-Elise...” I briefly considered trying to repeat what she had said, but lost my train of thought as she tucked her feet under my legs and sped up, both of us now moving our hips as fast as we could. “Elise, I’m, I’m...” She moaned in response, and squeezed my hand, which sent me over the edge. I lost control of my body, riddled with pleasure, and felt my head go blank - but didn’t mind one bit. I was at peace with the world as it drifted away from me.
When I awoke, it was to the sound of a scream, followed by some yelling. I had gotten used to Elise’s alarm by then, though, and so I slowly woke up, even as the screaming continued. Bright sunlight streamed through my window - which was strange, because Elise was supposed to have left early in the morning, before the sun rose.
After realizing that she wasn’t lying in bed with me, I rolled to my right and looked at her futon, which was empty. Her bag was gone, too. Had she left already? How did I miss it? And what about the-
“DAIZO! DAIZO, COME ON, PLEASE!”
My heart sank into my stomach as I recognized Miki’s voice.
I scrambled out from under my sheets, only to find that my shirt was unbuttoned and my pants were pulled down. I quickly pulled them up, but didn’t bother doing my belt or buttoning my shirt before dashing out of my room, across the hall, and into Daizo’s room.
Miki was standing next to the bed, her hands desperately pumping at Daizo’s chest.
But no matter how hard she tried, he wouldn’t stir.
“Obviously she wasn’t going to be around forever. Nobody’s around forever.” Sigh. “I just didn’t think she’d be gone so soon.” I guess that doesn’t just apply to her, though.
“But you mentioned that she also seemed very sad. Do you think that was how she really felt?”
I know where she’s going with this. “Who knows? I would’ve been sad in her position, but I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.”
“Even though she was in a sad situation, and was showing signs of sadness?”
“I don’t know! At the time I thought so, but now I just don’t know!” I rub my forehead. “People don’t make sense. Sometimes they do things and you don’t know why. Sometimes you know them for a year and then one day-” I clench my fists, purse my lips, and try to calm down.
“You hadn’t known Ms. Laennec for very long, though. But she gained your trust. Why do you think that was?”
“Because I was stupid, and I wanted to believe. I was seeing what I wanted to see. I got stuck in a circle, trusting her because I loved her, and loving her because I trusted her.”
The woman takes a while to digest that and plan her next move. “Do you think Mr. Matsuo trusted the people around him?”
“Of course he did. He trusted them too much. That’s what happened, that’s why I’m here in this room.”
“Who is it that you think he trusted too much?”
“Everyone. All the girls he brought home, who he barely knew? He always used to say that ‘Girls are easy, you just have to give them what they want. The hard part is figuring out what that is.’ He knew that they would lie to him, but he trusted them anyways! Same deal with Miki; he did whatever she wanted, and look where it landed him!”
I expect the woman to say something about that, but she remains silent, so I continue. “But you know the worst part?” I thrust one finger at my chest. “Me. He trusted me. He trusted me the most out of anyone, and in the end, I failed him. Not because I was selfish, like all those girls... just because I made the mistake of trusting someone else.”
There’s another long pause before the woman speaks again. “I know this might be hard, but could you tell me how exactly that happened? How that trust caused problems for you?”
As always, I’m sure she already knows, she just wants me to say it. “Fine.” If she wants to hear the sordid details on how it all happened, I have no choice but to oblige.
~~~~~~~~~~
Throughout the following week, I still spent as much time with Elise as possible, and she seemed to enjoy it. I did my best to forget it when we were together, but the spectre of her departure still hung over me. Maybe she felt the same, but she didn’t show it, and I was kind of glad for that. It made it easier to forget. Hell, sometimes I forgot so completely that when she held my hand, I would imagine us being together forever.
And so we went about getting closer and closer, despite knowing that there was only so close we could get. The break started, and we even went into town a few times. I was a lot more confident going places with her, partly because she could see a lot better than I could, but also just because of the way she made me feel. We got food, went shopping, and just... had a good time.
And then, just like that, it was her last day before her trip home. She spent the day packing, having had all the important stuff fetched from her room, and we talked. She mentioned having to get up and go to the airport early in the morning, and she had her bag there on the floor, but somehow it still didn’t feel real. It wasn’t until after dinner, when she sat down on my bed with me and sighed a long sigh, that it really hit me.
“Well, that’s it. In twelve hours, I’ll be in a taxi to the airport. I can only wait, I suppose.”
“Yeah.” I felt like I needed to keep the conversation going. “But you’ll be back in just over a week, right?”
She chuckled. “Yeah. It’s just for a little while. We can meet up again when I get back.” Still, she sat with her hands folded in her lap, and I figured she was thinking about the big picture.
“I, uh... I’m gonna miss you.”
She perked up at that, and looked at me. I thought she wanted to say something, but instead she lifted her hands and put them on the sides of my face. Not quite sure what to do, I put my hands on her shoulders and waited.
We stared at each other, her thumbs slowly tracing up and down my cheeks, and something within me began to feel alive. I could hear her breathing, and started noticing my own breathing too. It felt like a shockwave when she spoke.
“I... I just... K-Kenji, you...”
Unable to find the words, she let go of me and pulled away, letting my arms fall limply from her shoulders.
“Kenji, I’m... sorry. I want to, so badly I want to, but... I can’t.” Her voice began to waver. “It’s not fair. It’s not fair to me, and it’s not fair to you.”
She sniffed, and I tried to respond, but before I could figure out what to say, she got up and headed in the direction of the bathroom.
I sat there for a minute, trying to process it all, before getting up and going to the bathroom myself. I needed to think, and hoped some cold water would do the trick. I ran my hands under the faucet for a while, feeling them grow cold, and then numb, but it didn’t help with the burning in my chest, or on my cheeks. I wondered how long I would stay there. Luckily, I didn’t get to find out, as the door opened behind me.
“Oh, hey Kenji!”
“Daizo?” I turned off the tap.
“Hey, long time no see, man!” He headed for one of the urinals as I began to realize just how long it had been since we last talked.
“Oh, yeah, sorry. I’ve been really busy the past week, so I just-”
“Hah, don’t worry about it!” He started his business. “I’ve had my hands full with Miki the whole time, so it’s not just your fault.”
“If you say so.” I stood there, listening to the sound of falling water, until something came to mind. “Daizo, can you give me some advice?”
“Advice? You want advice from me?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I guess so.” He finished up, then turned and walked over to the sink next to me to wash his hands. “What sort of advice do you want?”
I tried to think about a clever way to phrase it so that it wouldn’t give everything away, but gave up pretty quickly. “Advice on girls.”
“Ooooh, I see. Sure thing, man! What sort of girl troubles are we talking about?”
“Well, see, there’s this girl I like, and I think she likes me too, but... she’s leaving Yamaku after this year.”
He laughed. “Damn, snagged yourself a third-year? I’m impressed, I-”
“No, no! She’s a second-year, she’s just... leaving after this year.”
“Oh, fair enough.” He shrugged. “So what’s the problem?”
“The... I just said, she’s leaving.”
He scoffed. “Yeah, a couple of months from now. That’s so much time! You can make more than enough memories before the school year ends.”
“Ugh, Daizo, I’m not like you. I don’t want to be jumping from fling to fling, I... I want something special.”
“So what, you’re just not even going to try?” He finished at the sink and went to dry his hands. “Listen, maybe she’s special, maybe she’s not. If you don’t try, you end up with jack shit. If you try and it doesn’t work out, no big deal, she’s leaving anyways. If you try and it does work, and she’s your soulmate or whatever, then you can do whatever it takes to stay with her.”
“I can’t stay with her, she’s-”
He finished drying off his hands and turned to me, cutting me off. “Is she dying?”
“W-What?”
“Is she going to die at the end of the year?”
“No, no, I said she’s just leaving!”
“So she’ll still be alive, somewhere on this planet. Would you rather know where she is and try your fuckin’ hardest to be there too, or never hear anything from her ever again?”
“I don’t understand! How could I possibly be with her after that?”
“Listen, man, you and her are both living in the present, and always will be. You don’t get to decide what happens in the future. But you do get to decide what happens right now. So spend that time setting your future self up for success, instead of worrying about whether he can succeed. Focus on making the best decisions that you can today, and tomorrow you can find out what came of them, knowing that you tried your best.”
His words were inspiring, but their literal application to my situation seemed terrifying. “Daizo, I’m... scared.”
“It’s okay to be scared, as long as you don’t let it stop you. Be afraid to do it, and then do it anyways, because you can do it!”
“O-Okay.”
“No, tell me! Tell me you can do it!”
It took me a moment to understand what he wanted. “I can do it!”
“Attaboy!” He slapped me on the back, then pointed towards the door. “Now go do it!”
I marched out of the bathroom, down the hall, and back into my room, where I found Elise sitting on my bed again, having regained her composure.
“Ah, sorry, Kenji, I got a little carried away.” I barely listened as I walked over and sat down next to her. “I guess I’m just emotional about-” She stopped as I put my hands on her shoulders again and gently turned her towards me.
“Elise, I promise that when you get back from break, I’ll be here waiting for you. And I may not know what’ll happen at the end of the year, but I promise that I’ll try my best to stay with you, if that’s what you want.”
She stared at me, her mouth slightly agape, for what felt like eons. The feeling from before was back: our breathing, her shoulders, something deep inside me desperate for release. Eventually, without saying a word, she reached up, took off her glasses, folded them, and tossed them gently onto her futon on the floor. Then she reached over, took my glasses, and did the same. And finally, after putting her hands on the sides of my head again, she inhaled, leaned forward, and kissed me.
I had never been kissed before, but the moment I understood what was happening, I wanted more. I wanted it to last forever, but it couldn’t. Luckily, it still lasted a long time, and each time we pulled away, the looks we gave each other brought us back again, arms wrapped around each others’ backs, until eventually I felt her reach down and begin unbuttoning my shirt.
I was nervous at first, but then realized that if she wanted to see me, then I damn well wanted to let her. Furthermore, I realized just how badly I wanted to see her too - or rather, without my glasses, I wanted to feel her. I haphazardly reached out, found her shirt, and began unbuttoning as well. Her breathing sped up, but she kept pressing her lips into mine, and I took it as a good sign. Luckily, since the break had started, we weren’t wearing ties, and already had some of the buttons undone.
She finished unbuttoning my shirt first, and didn’t even bother trying to take it off completely, instead immediately putting one hand on my chest and the other around my back. I decided to follow suit, and ignored the remaining buttons on her shirt, since I had already opened enough of a gap up top. With my eyes closed as we kissed, I got my hands inside her open shirt and pushed her bra up, kneading desperately at her chest - she hummed happily, but didn’t take her lips off of mine.
As we continued, she slowly pushed me back onto the bed, which unfortunately required breaking our kiss. I expected her to lay down with me shortly afterwards, but instead, she straddled my legs. Unsure what she was doing, I breathlessly asked “Elise?” but withdrew my complaints a second later, when she started unbuckling my belt.
It wasn’t until she pulled my pants down that I realized: I was harder than I had been in my entire life. And it just didn’t stop; she got off of the bed and began removing her shorts in return. I loved those shorts: she said that she found them more comfortable than the uniform skirts, and I enjoyed the way they fit her thighs. But then and there, I could not have been happier than to see her toss them onto the floor.
Finally, she crouched down to grab something from her bag - giving me what I could only imagine was a spectacular view in the process - then came back and knelt over me again. She stroked me a few times, reintroducing me to the heavenly touch of her fingers, then fiddled with something before applying it to me. The sensation was strange, but soon enough she began stroking again, and it felt good enough that I didn’t care anymore.
Finally, she moved forward a little, towering over me, her skin glistening beautifully in the dim light of the room. “Kenji, I... I love you.”
“I-I love you too, Elise.”
She leant forward and kissed me again, but soon pulled away, though this time I was anticipant instead of disappointed. She straightened herself up, adjusted herself slightly, and then carefully lowered herself onto me.
It was like everything I had loved about her, all at once. The kissing, the embraces, the laughter, the feeling of holding her hand... Inspired, I absentmindedly reached out and grabbed her hand, and she squeezed back, now feeling even closer than before.
In no time at all she began to move, lifting herself slightly, then letting herself fall again, and it felt fantastic. As she got more and more into it, I put my other hand around her back, trying weakly to help with her movements.
She stopped for a bit and carefully leaned forward, putting her head near mine - though the position and height difference meant that her mouth ended up in line with my forehead more than anything. Still, I was content to kiss her neck instead, and she whispered “Ah... Kenji, mon amour...”
“E-Elise...” I briefly considered trying to repeat what she had said, but lost my train of thought as she tucked her feet under my legs and sped up, both of us now moving our hips as fast as we could. “Elise, I’m, I’m...” She moaned in response, and squeezed my hand, which sent me over the edge. I lost control of my body, riddled with pleasure, and felt my head go blank - but didn’t mind one bit. I was at peace with the world as it drifted away from me.
When I awoke, it was to the sound of a scream, followed by some yelling. I had gotten used to Elise’s alarm by then, though, and so I slowly woke up, even as the screaming continued. Bright sunlight streamed through my window - which was strange, because Elise was supposed to have left early in the morning, before the sun rose.
After realizing that she wasn’t lying in bed with me, I rolled to my right and looked at her futon, which was empty. Her bag was gone, too. Had she left already? How did I miss it? And what about the-
“DAIZO! DAIZO, COME ON, PLEASE!”
My heart sank into my stomach as I recognized Miki’s voice.
I scrambled out from under my sheets, only to find that my shirt was unbuttoned and my pants were pulled down. I quickly pulled them up, but didn’t bother doing my belt or buttoning my shirt before dashing out of my room, across the hall, and into Daizo’s room.
Miki was standing next to the bed, her hands desperately pumping at Daizo’s chest.
But no matter how hard she tried, he wouldn’t stir.
-
Craftyatom
- Posts: 374
- Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 11:38 pm
- Location: Washington, USA
Disconnection (5/5)
“I’ve spoken to many students here, over the years - often because they lost someone close to them. It’s not uncommon for them to feel responsible, as if they could’ve-”
“No! You don’t understand, I am responsible!”
“Nothing you’ve said so far makes me think that’s the case. Why do you think so?”
I sigh. “Daizo needed his meds to survive, but he was terrible at remembering to take them. I was the one he trusted to remind him. But that whole week, between school being messed up and me focusing on Elise... I hadn’t reminded him in days.” The woman starts to respond, but I keep going. “And the night he died, I should’ve known. They said it must’ve happened sometime during the night, probably earlier on. I would’ve been awake, but...” I clench my fist. “I was unconscious with my dick out.”
“Hmm. And you don’t think any of his other friends should’ve reminded him to keep up with his medication?”
“They had never needed to before. I always took care of it. They couldn’t’ve known that I’d just suddenly stop.”
“Even Ms. Miura, who was staying in the same room as him?”
I purse my lips and furrow my brow. “Miki. Yeah, she probably should’ve known. But I blame her for a hell of a lot more than that.”
“Oh?”
I roll my eyes. “Look, quit pretending. You know full well what went down. She’s lied about a lot, but somewhere along the line you must’ve heard the truth about why Daizo died. How we killed him.”
“Mr. Setou, I’ve heard a lot about what happened, and nothing suggests to me that anyone is to blame for his death. Not you, and not Ms. Miura.”
I groan in frustration. “I’ve already told you why I’m to blame. But for now, sure, let’s talk about Miki. After all, she’s the reason I’m in this mess in the first place.”
~~~~~~~~~~
I spent the rest of that day sitting in my room, trying to figure out what had happened, and realizing that I had played such a large role in it. I didn’t eat, and that night, I barely slept.
By the next day, however, I was too hungry to ignore it. But I didn’t want to go to the cafeteria. I wanted to eat something that would make me feel like I was dying. With that in mind, I headed to the convenience store in town, carrying a bag so that I could sneak whatever I bought back onto campus. I picked up random candy bars, greasy snacks that I didn’t even like, and the biggest, strongest bottle of alcohol they had.
The line was unusually long, but I didn’t mind waiting - or so I thought. It wasn’t until I stood there, listening to the lone cashier ring someone else up, that things started to creep up on me, like bugs making their way across my skin. Random syllables in her speech would seem familiar, and then trigger memories, memories of Elise speaking. I looked up to try and convince myself that it wasn’t her, but saw only long brown hair, and felt a pain in my stomach.
By that point a cold sweat had broken across my skin, and I could hear my heart pounding in my head. Everything I saw, everything I heard, every single train of thought crashed into either Elise or Daizo. They began to blur together, and I realized they were one and the same. They turned to look at me, smiling, before stabbing each other and crumbling to dust.
Miki’s voice joined theirs soon after. “Woah, Kenji, are you okay?” Her words echoed, then morphed into screams. “DAIZO!” I heard over and over. I felt like I was going to vomit, and ached all over. But instead, finally, slowly, it seemed to fade away, replaced by a dull chill.
When I opened my eyes again, I was outside, in the fresh air, alone - except for a familiar tanned figure walking towards me.
“Yo, Kenji, what’s up? You alright?”
I caught my breath a little, then nodded. “Yeah. I just...”
“You were freaking out, I saw.” She finally stood next to me, and put her hand on my shoulder. “I’m not surprised. I’ve been having a pretty shitty day too. For the same reason, I’m guessing.”
Of course. She would understand, I thought. Not about Elise, obviously, but about Daizo. “Yeah.”
“Plus side, it looks like you got away with lifting that shit.”
“What?”
“Your bag.”
I looked in my bag and was surprised to see the items I had picked out in the store. I had put them in there to make them easier to carry, since there were so many individual items, but I ended up just taking them with me when I left the store. “Shoot, I should-” I looked back up at the store, remembered what had happened inside, and quickly made up my mind. “No, no, I can’t go back in there.”
“Hey, no worries, I won’t snitch, so long as you’re willing to share.”
It seemed like a fair trade. “Alright, how much do you want?”
“Honestly, I just want half of that bottle. Let’s get back to campus, and we can share it once we have some privacy.”
Without much of a choice, I followed her back up the hill. Maybe it would be a good way to connect with each other a bit more. Maybe we could help each other through it all.
She led me back to Daizo’s room - her room now, I supposed - and unlocked the door to let us both in. I dumped my bag out onto the floor, and we sat down next to the pile of ill-gotten goods, slowly picking at whatever caught our fancies. It wasn’t long before Miki grabbed the bottle, then handed it to me. “Can you open this? Shit’s a bitch.” As I did, she sighed. “He’d always help me out with that.”
Once it was open, I looked around for something to pour it into, but Miki just grabbed it from me and took a swig from it, her face puckering a little as she swallowed. I took it back from her and took a drink myself - and indeed, it was strong. “Ugh.” Still, it felt good to feel bad. Maybe that was the other side of the way I had felt with Elise.
“Good choice. Hopefully we can knock ourselves straight into next week.” She took another long drink, then burped and handed the bottle back to me. “Ah, that’s the stuff. Man, I’m gonna miss drinking with him.” After a brief pause, she added, “But not as much as fucking him.”
I almost spit out my drink, and ended up coughing once I finally swallowed it. I had generally tried to avoid any connection to their intimacy, but Miki was the type not to care, in many respects. Once the coughing stopped, I hoarsely replied, “Yeah, you and most of the other girls at this school.”
“Heh, yeah. Dude did more deflowering than the fuckin’ gardeners.” She sighed. “And I fuckin’ loved it.” She stared at the floor for a bit, then took another drink. “So what about you?”
“What about me?”
“Was he fuckin’ you too?”
“What? No, of course not! Do I look like someone who fucks dudes?”
“Well...” She stared me down for a second, then burst out laughing. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. He wasn’t into dudes. Trust me, I tried - it would’ve been hot, goddamn - but he always said no.”
“Jesus Christ.” Hearing Miki describe her sexual fantasies about Daizo was not how I had expected the day to go. “You’re a one-track mind, huh.”
“You know it, man. Especially the past week. I’m surprised you and your roommate girl could get any sleep.” We had actually heard some of the louder noises from across the hall, but had tried our best to ignore them. “I gotta find out who set the dorms on fire and thank them. Imagine if he had died without giving me the ride of my goddamn life!”
I take another gulp. “Honestly, at this point I’m just surprised you two weren’t fucking when he died.”
She goes silent, and slowly takes another drink. Something seems off.
“Hold up; you weren’t, were you?”
“No. Shut up.”
Something about that morning comes back to me: the colors. “Wait a minute... He was stark naked! You were doing CPR while he had his cock out!” She dropped the bottle, and I heard it spill onto the floor, but I didn’t care - I was laughing harder than I had in days. “I’ve been beating myself up this whole time, but you literally fucked him to death! I can’t believe you-”
I didn’t even see anything - there was just a sudden impact on the left side of my face, which threw me to the floor, and sent my glasses flying.
I tried to get my bearings - not helped by the alcohol - but before I could figure out what was going on, Miki was on top of me, pressing her left arm into my throat, pinning me to the ground. I instinctively brought my arms up to try and push her off, but didn’t manage to do anything before she hit me in the face again, and again. She was yelling something, but I couldn’t tell what; the whole world was already spinning.
I tried moving her arm, but she was too strong. I tried covering my face to stop her from hitting me, but she was too fast, and had the benefit of being able to see. I flailed my legs to no avail, then tried to choke her as well, but it didn’t seem to do anything. Desperate, I begin clawing at her neck, eventually tearing at the collar of her t-shirt, but all that seemed to do was rip the clothes, not stop her punches.
Finally, out of options, I went limp, accepting my fate. Finally, after a few more punches, she stopped. I gasped for air as she removed her arm, only for her to thrust her knee forwards into my crotch, causing me to instinctively curl up. Then, and only then, did she get up, open the door, and walk away.
I lay there for what seemed like forever, nauseous and bruised, bleeding onto what used to be Daizo’s carpet. I hoped I would die. It would’ve been fitting, if Miki had killed both of us in that room. And the pain would’ve gone away - the pain pulsing in the left side of my face, the pain in my stomach, and the pain of having missed out on a happy life. Instead of getting sad about being happy, and getting happy about being sad... Maybe it would be better if it all went away.
Unfortunately, it was not to be. I lied there for what felt like hours, until I heard a knock at the door. I froze, thinking it was Miki, back to finish the job, and didn’t say anything at first.
Another knock. “Kenji Setou, are you in there?”
It wasn’t Miki - I vaguely recognized it as the voice of a third-year. “Yeah, yeah, I’m here.” Finally, I thought, some help had arrived.
The door burst open, and a trio of boys walked in, briefly surveying the room before the leader of the group spoke to me. “You’re coming with us. Now.”
“I... I don’t know if...” Before I could even finish my sentence, the other two grabbed my arms, lifted me up from underneath my shoulders, and began to carry me out of the room and down the hall. I didn’t know where I was going, but at the time, I didn’t really care.
I started caring pretty quickly once I woke up.
My head hurt, my face hurt, my stomach hurt, and I was in an unfamiliar room with multiple angry men, some in suits. “Ugh... What happened?”
The suited man closest to me replied, as the others looked on. “What happened, Mr. Setou, is that you got yourself into big trouble.”
“Trouble? I...” I realized what I had been doing, and where they had found me. “Oh, right, the alcohol. Yeah. Shouldn’t’ve brought it onto campus. I’m sorry.”
“That’s the least of your worries.” I suddenly remembered that I had actually stolen the alcohol, too, but the man soon made it clear that he wasn’t interested in that either. “I’d be more worried about what you did to Ms. Miura.”
“What I...” Memories of the fight came back to me. “You mean what she did to me? Choked me, beat my face in, kneed me in the balls?”
“Was that before or after you tried to grope her?”
“W-What? I didn’t-”
“I suggest you pull yourself together and tell us the truth pretty quickly, Mr. Setou.”
So I told them the truth. I told them every detail. They asked their questions over and over, and I just kept telling them the truth. Some of them believed me, I think. Probably not enough of them.
But I couldn’t tell everyone the truth.
Miki was a popular girl who knew every gossip in the school. I was one shut-in guy whose only friends had either died or were on another continent. I was never going to win the propaganda war. Everywhere I went - even once they stopped having a guy follow me everywhere - I heard their whispers, and I swear I could see their stares. They wouldn’t go near me.
Fine. I didn’t need them. There was no point anymore anyways.
The girls’ dorm got fixed, and they all went back to their own rooms. At least it meant fewer people gawking at me in the hall. I didn’t keep track of when school was going to start again - they were probably going to expel me anyways. The only date I still cared about was the day Elise got back, but even that was probably pointless: they had moved all of her stuff out of my room anyways, so there was no need for her to come to my room.
Still, my heart leapt when I heard a knock on my door that day, before realizing that it was probably just someone from the administration. “What do you want?”
“Kenji?” It was actually Elise’s voice. I froze, not sure whether to run to the door or curl up and try to fight the delusion.
I hedged my bets. “The door’s unlocked.” It was required to be.
Light from the hallway spilled in as the door opened, and I couldn’t stop myself from turning to see who was there. Sure enough, it was Elise, looking as beautiful as ever, though it felt like she was looking at me differently, and it hurt. Just like at the convenience store, except worse, because it was real this time. “Kenji...”
“Why are you here?”
“Kenji, they said... They called my parents, and they talked to me, and the girl who used to be across the hall from us came up to me, and-”
“Miki.” My voice is loaded with disdain. “She lied to you.”
“What? Why would she-”
“Daizo died, the day you left. Because of me and Miki. When I told her that, she beat me up. Then she claimed I tried to grope her so that I’d get in trouble instead.”
Elise was dumbfounded, and took a while to respond. “What do you mean, because of you?”
By that point I had told the story so often that it didn’t mean anything to me when I repeated it. “He needed to take medication for his heart condition. He always forgot, and I always reminded him. But all of that week, I forgot too. Combined with Miki having sex with him the whole time they were rooming together... It was too much.”
“Kenji, that’s not-”
“Don’t. Don’t tell me it’s not my fault.” My voice wavered, and tears began to roll down my cheeks. “Don’t let me start thinking it’s yours instead.”
I could hear her gasp, and she began speaking through sobs. “Kenji, before I left, you made me a promise.”
If there was any more of my heart left to break, it would’ve shattered on the spot. But despite the tears on my face, I couldn’t let myself feel any more.
“I’m sorry, Elise.” She sobbed harder. ”I didn’t realize how bad I would be at keeping it.”
“Kenji, please, I need-”
“Don’t!” Her voice, her hair, the feeling of holding her hand, of having it squeeze back - I pressed on my forehead as it began to ache. “I can’t, I can’t! I couldn’t help Daizo, I couldn’t help myself, and now I can't help you.” I looked up at her, wondering whether it would be the last time. “Save yourself. Don’t drown trying to rescue me.”
“Kenji, I love you.”
I hung my head. “I loved you too.”
~~~~~~~~~~
“There. Are you happy now? Did you enjoy getting a special screening of my life falling apart in slow motion?”
“Mr. Setou, as I said before, I needed to hear your story so that I could help you.”
“Well, the story’s over. Are you helping yet?”
“It has certainly informed my recommendation.”
“Great. Are you going to recommend what they want to hear, or are you going to set yourself up for disappointment when they ignore you?”
She smiles. “I don’t usually discuss meetings I’ve had with other students, for confidentiality reasons. But I’ve received special permission from one Ms. Laennec.”
More secrets. Or maybe more lies. It doesn’t matter which. “So what?”
“When I met with her, she had a lot of good things to say about you. She was adamant that you had told the truth, and put a lot of weight behind what you had said. And she was very distraught at the idea that others might not do the same.”
I’m surprised, but that just makes it more likely to not be true. I simply shrug.
“Anyways, that’s all I needed from you for today. You can go now, if you like.” I get up and head for the door, but the woman continues. “However, you would do well to be more optimistic about your own future. I see things looking up for you.”
I scoff. “Your eyes must be even worse than mine.”
“No! You don’t understand, I am responsible!”
“Nothing you’ve said so far makes me think that’s the case. Why do you think so?”
I sigh. “Daizo needed his meds to survive, but he was terrible at remembering to take them. I was the one he trusted to remind him. But that whole week, between school being messed up and me focusing on Elise... I hadn’t reminded him in days.” The woman starts to respond, but I keep going. “And the night he died, I should’ve known. They said it must’ve happened sometime during the night, probably earlier on. I would’ve been awake, but...” I clench my fist. “I was unconscious with my dick out.”
“Hmm. And you don’t think any of his other friends should’ve reminded him to keep up with his medication?”
“They had never needed to before. I always took care of it. They couldn’t’ve known that I’d just suddenly stop.”
“Even Ms. Miura, who was staying in the same room as him?”
I purse my lips and furrow my brow. “Miki. Yeah, she probably should’ve known. But I blame her for a hell of a lot more than that.”
“Oh?”
I roll my eyes. “Look, quit pretending. You know full well what went down. She’s lied about a lot, but somewhere along the line you must’ve heard the truth about why Daizo died. How we killed him.”
“Mr. Setou, I’ve heard a lot about what happened, and nothing suggests to me that anyone is to blame for his death. Not you, and not Ms. Miura.”
I groan in frustration. “I’ve already told you why I’m to blame. But for now, sure, let’s talk about Miki. After all, she’s the reason I’m in this mess in the first place.”
~~~~~~~~~~
I spent the rest of that day sitting in my room, trying to figure out what had happened, and realizing that I had played such a large role in it. I didn’t eat, and that night, I barely slept.
By the next day, however, I was too hungry to ignore it. But I didn’t want to go to the cafeteria. I wanted to eat something that would make me feel like I was dying. With that in mind, I headed to the convenience store in town, carrying a bag so that I could sneak whatever I bought back onto campus. I picked up random candy bars, greasy snacks that I didn’t even like, and the biggest, strongest bottle of alcohol they had.
The line was unusually long, but I didn’t mind waiting - or so I thought. It wasn’t until I stood there, listening to the lone cashier ring someone else up, that things started to creep up on me, like bugs making their way across my skin. Random syllables in her speech would seem familiar, and then trigger memories, memories of Elise speaking. I looked up to try and convince myself that it wasn’t her, but saw only long brown hair, and felt a pain in my stomach.
By that point a cold sweat had broken across my skin, and I could hear my heart pounding in my head. Everything I saw, everything I heard, every single train of thought crashed into either Elise or Daizo. They began to blur together, and I realized they were one and the same. They turned to look at me, smiling, before stabbing each other and crumbling to dust.
Miki’s voice joined theirs soon after. “Woah, Kenji, are you okay?” Her words echoed, then morphed into screams. “DAIZO!” I heard over and over. I felt like I was going to vomit, and ached all over. But instead, finally, slowly, it seemed to fade away, replaced by a dull chill.
When I opened my eyes again, I was outside, in the fresh air, alone - except for a familiar tanned figure walking towards me.
“Yo, Kenji, what’s up? You alright?”
I caught my breath a little, then nodded. “Yeah. I just...”
“You were freaking out, I saw.” She finally stood next to me, and put her hand on my shoulder. “I’m not surprised. I’ve been having a pretty shitty day too. For the same reason, I’m guessing.”
Of course. She would understand, I thought. Not about Elise, obviously, but about Daizo. “Yeah.”
“Plus side, it looks like you got away with lifting that shit.”
“What?”
“Your bag.”
I looked in my bag and was surprised to see the items I had picked out in the store. I had put them in there to make them easier to carry, since there were so many individual items, but I ended up just taking them with me when I left the store. “Shoot, I should-” I looked back up at the store, remembered what had happened inside, and quickly made up my mind. “No, no, I can’t go back in there.”
“Hey, no worries, I won’t snitch, so long as you’re willing to share.”
It seemed like a fair trade. “Alright, how much do you want?”
“Honestly, I just want half of that bottle. Let’s get back to campus, and we can share it once we have some privacy.”
Without much of a choice, I followed her back up the hill. Maybe it would be a good way to connect with each other a bit more. Maybe we could help each other through it all.
She led me back to Daizo’s room - her room now, I supposed - and unlocked the door to let us both in. I dumped my bag out onto the floor, and we sat down next to the pile of ill-gotten goods, slowly picking at whatever caught our fancies. It wasn’t long before Miki grabbed the bottle, then handed it to me. “Can you open this? Shit’s a bitch.” As I did, she sighed. “He’d always help me out with that.”
Once it was open, I looked around for something to pour it into, but Miki just grabbed it from me and took a swig from it, her face puckering a little as she swallowed. I took it back from her and took a drink myself - and indeed, it was strong. “Ugh.” Still, it felt good to feel bad. Maybe that was the other side of the way I had felt with Elise.
“Good choice. Hopefully we can knock ourselves straight into next week.” She took another long drink, then burped and handed the bottle back to me. “Ah, that’s the stuff. Man, I’m gonna miss drinking with him.” After a brief pause, she added, “But not as much as fucking him.”
I almost spit out my drink, and ended up coughing once I finally swallowed it. I had generally tried to avoid any connection to their intimacy, but Miki was the type not to care, in many respects. Once the coughing stopped, I hoarsely replied, “Yeah, you and most of the other girls at this school.”
“Heh, yeah. Dude did more deflowering than the fuckin’ gardeners.” She sighed. “And I fuckin’ loved it.” She stared at the floor for a bit, then took another drink. “So what about you?”
“What about me?”
“Was he fuckin’ you too?”
“What? No, of course not! Do I look like someone who fucks dudes?”
“Well...” She stared me down for a second, then burst out laughing. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. He wasn’t into dudes. Trust me, I tried - it would’ve been hot, goddamn - but he always said no.”
“Jesus Christ.” Hearing Miki describe her sexual fantasies about Daizo was not how I had expected the day to go. “You’re a one-track mind, huh.”
“You know it, man. Especially the past week. I’m surprised you and your roommate girl could get any sleep.” We had actually heard some of the louder noises from across the hall, but had tried our best to ignore them. “I gotta find out who set the dorms on fire and thank them. Imagine if he had died without giving me the ride of my goddamn life!”
I take another gulp. “Honestly, at this point I’m just surprised you two weren’t fucking when he died.”
She goes silent, and slowly takes another drink. Something seems off.
“Hold up; you weren’t, were you?”
“No. Shut up.”
Something about that morning comes back to me: the colors. “Wait a minute... He was stark naked! You were doing CPR while he had his cock out!” She dropped the bottle, and I heard it spill onto the floor, but I didn’t care - I was laughing harder than I had in days. “I’ve been beating myself up this whole time, but you literally fucked him to death! I can’t believe you-”
I didn’t even see anything - there was just a sudden impact on the left side of my face, which threw me to the floor, and sent my glasses flying.
I tried to get my bearings - not helped by the alcohol - but before I could figure out what was going on, Miki was on top of me, pressing her left arm into my throat, pinning me to the ground. I instinctively brought my arms up to try and push her off, but didn’t manage to do anything before she hit me in the face again, and again. She was yelling something, but I couldn’t tell what; the whole world was already spinning.
I tried moving her arm, but she was too strong. I tried covering my face to stop her from hitting me, but she was too fast, and had the benefit of being able to see. I flailed my legs to no avail, then tried to choke her as well, but it didn’t seem to do anything. Desperate, I begin clawing at her neck, eventually tearing at the collar of her t-shirt, but all that seemed to do was rip the clothes, not stop her punches.
Finally, out of options, I went limp, accepting my fate. Finally, after a few more punches, she stopped. I gasped for air as she removed her arm, only for her to thrust her knee forwards into my crotch, causing me to instinctively curl up. Then, and only then, did she get up, open the door, and walk away.
I lay there for what seemed like forever, nauseous and bruised, bleeding onto what used to be Daizo’s carpet. I hoped I would die. It would’ve been fitting, if Miki had killed both of us in that room. And the pain would’ve gone away - the pain pulsing in the left side of my face, the pain in my stomach, and the pain of having missed out on a happy life. Instead of getting sad about being happy, and getting happy about being sad... Maybe it would be better if it all went away.
Unfortunately, it was not to be. I lied there for what felt like hours, until I heard a knock at the door. I froze, thinking it was Miki, back to finish the job, and didn’t say anything at first.
Another knock. “Kenji Setou, are you in there?”
It wasn’t Miki - I vaguely recognized it as the voice of a third-year. “Yeah, yeah, I’m here.” Finally, I thought, some help had arrived.
The door burst open, and a trio of boys walked in, briefly surveying the room before the leader of the group spoke to me. “You’re coming with us. Now.”
“I... I don’t know if...” Before I could even finish my sentence, the other two grabbed my arms, lifted me up from underneath my shoulders, and began to carry me out of the room and down the hall. I didn’t know where I was going, but at the time, I didn’t really care.
I started caring pretty quickly once I woke up.
My head hurt, my face hurt, my stomach hurt, and I was in an unfamiliar room with multiple angry men, some in suits. “Ugh... What happened?”
The suited man closest to me replied, as the others looked on. “What happened, Mr. Setou, is that you got yourself into big trouble.”
“Trouble? I...” I realized what I had been doing, and where they had found me. “Oh, right, the alcohol. Yeah. Shouldn’t’ve brought it onto campus. I’m sorry.”
“That’s the least of your worries.” I suddenly remembered that I had actually stolen the alcohol, too, but the man soon made it clear that he wasn’t interested in that either. “I’d be more worried about what you did to Ms. Miura.”
“What I...” Memories of the fight came back to me. “You mean what she did to me? Choked me, beat my face in, kneed me in the balls?”
“Was that before or after you tried to grope her?”
“W-What? I didn’t-”
“I suggest you pull yourself together and tell us the truth pretty quickly, Mr. Setou.”
So I told them the truth. I told them every detail. They asked their questions over and over, and I just kept telling them the truth. Some of them believed me, I think. Probably not enough of them.
But I couldn’t tell everyone the truth.
Miki was a popular girl who knew every gossip in the school. I was one shut-in guy whose only friends had either died or were on another continent. I was never going to win the propaganda war. Everywhere I went - even once they stopped having a guy follow me everywhere - I heard their whispers, and I swear I could see their stares. They wouldn’t go near me.
Fine. I didn’t need them. There was no point anymore anyways.
The girls’ dorm got fixed, and they all went back to their own rooms. At least it meant fewer people gawking at me in the hall. I didn’t keep track of when school was going to start again - they were probably going to expel me anyways. The only date I still cared about was the day Elise got back, but even that was probably pointless: they had moved all of her stuff out of my room anyways, so there was no need for her to come to my room.
Still, my heart leapt when I heard a knock on my door that day, before realizing that it was probably just someone from the administration. “What do you want?”
“Kenji?” It was actually Elise’s voice. I froze, not sure whether to run to the door or curl up and try to fight the delusion.
I hedged my bets. “The door’s unlocked.” It was required to be.
Light from the hallway spilled in as the door opened, and I couldn’t stop myself from turning to see who was there. Sure enough, it was Elise, looking as beautiful as ever, though it felt like she was looking at me differently, and it hurt. Just like at the convenience store, except worse, because it was real this time. “Kenji...”
“Why are you here?”
“Kenji, they said... They called my parents, and they talked to me, and the girl who used to be across the hall from us came up to me, and-”
“Miki.” My voice is loaded with disdain. “She lied to you.”
“What? Why would she-”
“Daizo died, the day you left. Because of me and Miki. When I told her that, she beat me up. Then she claimed I tried to grope her so that I’d get in trouble instead.”
Elise was dumbfounded, and took a while to respond. “What do you mean, because of you?”
By that point I had told the story so often that it didn’t mean anything to me when I repeated it. “He needed to take medication for his heart condition. He always forgot, and I always reminded him. But all of that week, I forgot too. Combined with Miki having sex with him the whole time they were rooming together... It was too much.”
“Kenji, that’s not-”
“Don’t. Don’t tell me it’s not my fault.” My voice wavered, and tears began to roll down my cheeks. “Don’t let me start thinking it’s yours instead.”
I could hear her gasp, and she began speaking through sobs. “Kenji, before I left, you made me a promise.”
If there was any more of my heart left to break, it would’ve shattered on the spot. But despite the tears on my face, I couldn’t let myself feel any more.
“I’m sorry, Elise.” She sobbed harder. ”I didn’t realize how bad I would be at keeping it.”
“Kenji, please, I need-”
“Don’t!” Her voice, her hair, the feeling of holding her hand, of having it squeeze back - I pressed on my forehead as it began to ache. “I can’t, I can’t! I couldn’t help Daizo, I couldn’t help myself, and now I can't help you.” I looked up at her, wondering whether it would be the last time. “Save yourself. Don’t drown trying to rescue me.”
“Kenji, I love you.”
I hung my head. “I loved you too.”
~~~~~~~~~~
“There. Are you happy now? Did you enjoy getting a special screening of my life falling apart in slow motion?”
“Mr. Setou, as I said before, I needed to hear your story so that I could help you.”
“Well, the story’s over. Are you helping yet?”
“It has certainly informed my recommendation.”
“Great. Are you going to recommend what they want to hear, or are you going to set yourself up for disappointment when they ignore you?”
She smiles. “I don’t usually discuss meetings I’ve had with other students, for confidentiality reasons. But I’ve received special permission from one Ms. Laennec.”
More secrets. Or maybe more lies. It doesn’t matter which. “So what?”
“When I met with her, she had a lot of good things to say about you. She was adamant that you had told the truth, and put a lot of weight behind what you had said. And she was very distraught at the idea that others might not do the same.”
I’m surprised, but that just makes it more likely to not be true. I simply shrug.
“Anyways, that’s all I needed from you for today. You can go now, if you like.” I get up and head for the door, but the woman continues. “However, you would do well to be more optimistic about your own future. I see things looking up for you.”
I scoff. “Your eyes must be even worse than mine.”
Main route: COM(promise)
One-shots: Crafty's One-Shots (Dark Winter Sky, Dreamy, Path of Least Resistance, Project Blue Curtain, and more!)
Old poetry: Google Drive Collection
One-shots: Crafty's One-Shots (Dark Winter Sky, Dreamy, Path of Least Resistance, Project Blue Curtain, and more!)
Old poetry: Google Drive Collection
Re: Crafty's One-Shots (Dec 25th, 2021: Disconnection)
What a brilliant, challenging and complicated piece! No surprises there considering, but man, that got particularly dark. I’m not sure I would have taken the quite dramatic turn you did in the end there, particularly because I think Kenji just realising that Miki is capable of being so apathetic towards Daizo (which of course, she isn’t, it’s a defence mechanism) is enough to show Kenji’s distrust and resentment starting to grow. (And having Miki behave in such a disgusting way sort of seems to confirm Kenji’s weirdly “incel” behaviour too…).
I mean, thematically it’s brilliant having Daizo sort of stand as a replacement (precursor) to Hisao, and I think it works for the most part - though I expect logistically the school wouldn’t set the next kid with a heart condition on him after that.
Anyway, the middle section really captures the beauty of a budding romance and oddly enough it got me hungry for more COMpromise, because my god do you do the lovey stuff well! The little language games they play is a touch of brilliance, and I adore the character of Elise and the accompanying bitter sting that the one person Kenji’s trusts, who (in his head betrayed him once) will betray him again by leaving. Ouch!
Brilliantly done and a fantastic take on the prompt!
I mean, thematically it’s brilliant having Daizo sort of stand as a replacement (precursor) to Hisao, and I think it works for the most part - though I expect logistically the school wouldn’t set the next kid with a heart condition on him after that.
Anyway, the middle section really captures the beauty of a budding romance and oddly enough it got me hungry for more COMpromise, because my god do you do the lovey stuff well! The little language games they play is a touch of brilliance, and I adore the character of Elise and the accompanying bitter sting that the one person Kenji’s trusts, who (in his head betrayed him once) will betray him again by leaving. Ouch!
Brilliantly done and a fantastic take on the prompt!
My Molly Route
Ekephrasis and Other Stories
Ekephrasis and Other Stories
- CraftyAtomI hate when people ruin perfectly good literature with literary terminology.
-
Mirage_GSM
- Posts: 6153
- Joined: Mon Jun 28, 2010 2:24 am
- Location: Germany
Re: Crafty's One-Shots (Dec 25th, 2021: Disconnection)
Well, logistically the school never would have put boys and girls in the same room in the first place, but little that could be done about that, since it was in the prompt.Feurox wrote: Wed Dec 29, 2021 8:53 pm I mean, thematically it’s brilliant having Daizo sort of stand as a replacement (precursor) to Hisao, and I think it works for the most part - though I expect logistically the school wouldn’t set the next kid with a heart condition on him after that.
Emi > Misha > Hanako > Lilly > Rin > Shizune
My collected KS-Fan Fictions: Mirage's Myths
My collected KS-Fan Fictions: Mirage's Myths
Sore wa himitsu desu.griffon8 wrote:Kosher, just because sex is your answer to everything doesn't mean that sex is the answer to everything.
-
Craftyatom
- Posts: 374
- Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 11:38 pm
- Location: Washington, USA
Re: Crafty's One-Shots (Dec 25th, 2021: Disconnection)
Honestly, I like to think of my secret santa entries as toeing the line between crackfic and drama. They're all a little nonsense, but in a somewhat suspenseful and logical way. It's satisfying to make something off-the-wall feel a bit more normal, or at least understandable. In that sense, I'm actually really glad that I got this prompt!Mirage_GSM wrote: Sun Dec 26, 2021 9:11 am I have to say with that prompt I would never have considered writing anything but a crackfic (and considering what happened the last time I tried to write one it wouldn't have been pretty...).
You took it and wrote a character drama instead.
I know what you mean about the end getting a bit dark, and I was actually a little worried about it - not that it would be too gritty, but that it would leave the wrong taste in one's mouth (despite that being the intended place to leave Kenji). In the end, I felt that the reader's perception of Kenji as a potentially unreliable narrator would help soften that blow, especially given the paranoia he exhibits throughout the framing. I hadn't thought of using Miki's grief handling as a way of irking Kenji, but in retrospect, perhaps I should've; I assumed that his indifference towards Miki's relationship with Daizo (and Daizo's interaction with girls in general) at the beginning of the story would carry through, but Kenji undergoes a lot of changes, so there's no reason that couldn't change as well. An interesting idea for a different take on the ending.Feurox wrote: Wed Dec 29, 2021 8:53 pm What a brilliant, challenging and complicated piece! No surprises there considering, but man, that got particularly dark. I’m not sure I would have taken the quite dramatic turn you did in the end there, particularly because I think Kenji just realising that Miki is capable of being so apathetic towards Daizo (which of course, she isn’t, it’s a defence mechanism) is enough to show Kenji’s distrust and resentment starting to grow. (And having Miki behave in such a disgusting way sort of seems to confirm Kenji’s weirdly “incel” behaviour too…).
I mean, thematically it’s brilliant having Daizo sort of stand as a replacement (precursor) to Hisao, and I think it works for the most part - though I expect logistically the school wouldn’t set the next kid with a heart condition on him after that.
Anyway, the middle section really captures the beauty of a budding romance and oddly enough it got me hungry for more COMpromise, because my god do you do the lovey stuff well! The little language games they play is a touch of brilliance, and I adore the character of Elise and the accompanying bitter sting that the one person Kenji’s trusts, who (in his head betrayed him once) will betray him again by leaving. Ouch!
Brilliantly done and a fantastic take on the prompt!
Daizo being like "the cooler Hisao" was kind of just a joke that only lasted for the first paragraph of narration, but I enjoyed making it a big part of Kenji's personality, which adds weight to his later interactions with Hisao. In canon, Hisao constantly feels like Kenji is too friendly (as I read it), as if mistaking him for someone else - and I wanted Daizo to be that someone else, with all the associated traits. Logistically, putting Hisao there is a great idea. Ethically or emotionally, perhaps not so much. :P
The middle romance section was the one I planned the least for, and the one I made the most cuts from, probably because I originally wanted to add a bunch more moments to solidify the bond between Kenji and Elise. This was exacerbated by it being a whirlwind romance, so to speak: from the reader's perspective, it feels like there's not much time between them meeting and them having sex - because there isn't! But I'm glad I got the ideas and emotions across, because writing good romance is a skill I'd like to have, even if it's an insane romance like this. Oh, and no promises. ;P
Elise was a joy to write. As with so many of my plot points, it started off as a joke, and then got me really interested in the mechanics. I'm not really big on Japanese, but I've picked up bits and pieces over the past year, and I have a little background in linguistics, so the idea of writing an exchange student's dialogue actually seemed really interesting. In the end, I didn't use most of the really neat ideas I had for depicting the idiosyncrasies of a French speaker's Japanese in English (sentence order, excess pronouns and articles, attempted extra tenses, and maybe - no idea how I would've done this - pitch accent?) due to time constraints, but hopefully I made it noticeable without being overbearing (the way some half-baked second-language speakers are written). Also, I've learned that coming up with names for fictional songs, bands, and shows is even more fun than coming up with chapter titles.
Oh, and I forgot to mention in my original post: I don't know French, so I enlisted my friend Razoredge to proofread those segments for me, and I'm super grateful for his help! And thanks to all of you for the kind comments - nothing's more satisfying than seeing others enjoy your work <3
Main route: COM(promise)
One-shots: Crafty's One-Shots (Dark Winter Sky, Dreamy, Path of Least Resistance, Project Blue Curtain, and more!)
Old poetry: Google Drive Collection
One-shots: Crafty's One-Shots (Dark Winter Sky, Dreamy, Path of Least Resistance, Project Blue Curtain, and more!)
Old poetry: Google Drive Collection
-
Craftyatom
- Posts: 374
- Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 11:38 pm
- Location: Washington, USA
Re: Crafty's One-Shots (Dec 25th, 2021: Disconnection)
It's (just a bit after) Christmas, and you know what that means: It's time for another writers' secret santa! This year's secret santa got off to a bit of a late start, and I was busier than usual as well, so I couldn't meet my usual self-imposed December 25th deadline. But I powered through anyways - it gave me something to worry about during the otherwise boringly peaceful holidays :P
But anyways, enough whining, let's get into the (hopefully) good stuff! My prompt this year was: Due to unfortunate circumstances (renovations, water damage etc.) Yamaku students are temporarily forced to room together in the time leading up to Christmas. (Any pair - or several - except the obvious ones (Hanako/Lilly, Emi/Rin, Misha/Shizune, Hisao/Kenji); OCs permitted/encouraged), from long-time fellow writer Mirage_GSM!
Now, if you've read my stories before, you might be thinking, "hang about, this prompt seems familiar", and indeed it does. But that's okay! My M.O. when it comes to prompt-driven fics is breaking the mold, which means there's not a chance in hell I'd end up telling the same story twice. After all, a great me once said:
(Also huge thanks as always to me mate Feurox for proofreading <3 )
But anyways, enough whining, let's get into the (hopefully) good stuff! My prompt this year was: Due to unfortunate circumstances (renovations, water damage etc.) Yamaku students are temporarily forced to room together in the time leading up to Christmas. (Any pair - or several - except the obvious ones (Hanako/Lilly, Emi/Rin, Misha/Shizune, Hisao/Kenji); OCs permitted/encouraged), from long-time fellow writer Mirage_GSM!
Now, if you've read my stories before, you might be thinking, "hang about, this prompt seems familiar", and indeed it does. But that's okay! My M.O. when it comes to prompt-driven fics is breaking the mold, which means there's not a chance in hell I'd end up telling the same story twice. After all, a great me once said:
So, no matter what you're expecting, prepare for subversion, in Worlds Apart! It's only a Journey reference if you want it to be.Craftyatom wrote: Mon Jan 03, 2022 2:19 amHonestly, I like to think of my secret santa entries as toeing the line between crackfic and drama.
(Also huge thanks as always to me mate Feurox for proofreading <3 )
Last edited by Craftyatom on Thu Dec 29, 2022 12:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Main route: COM(promise)
One-shots: Crafty's One-Shots (Dark Winter Sky, Dreamy, Path of Least Resistance, Project Blue Curtain, and more!)
Old poetry: Google Drive Collection
One-shots: Crafty's One-Shots (Dark Winter Sky, Dreamy, Path of Least Resistance, Project Blue Curtain, and more!)
Old poetry: Google Drive Collection
-
Craftyatom
- Posts: 374
- Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 11:38 pm
- Location: Washington, USA
Worlds Apart (1/4)
Worlds Apart
As One
A young girl with long brown hair, messy but clean, plodded up to the sink and turned it on. Her eyes were half-closed, and she didn’t bother looking at herself in the mirror. She wanted to wash her hands with as little brain power as possible, since as soon as she was done she’d be going back to bed, and dreaming about the upcoming holiday vacation.
The water coming from the tap was frigid, since it was now properly winter, but trying to find a balance between the hot and cold taps was far too much effort for this time of night. Besides, before long, she had finished with the soap and water, and reached for a towel. She closed her eyes completely as she dried her hands, since the bright bathroom light was irritating. Indeed, it only seemed to get brighter and brighter, until-
A loud noise accompanied the brightest moment, seemingly attacking her from all directions, but soon fell to a low hum and glow, and a few seconds later both the light and noise were gone. She opened her eyes again, not quite sure what to expect, but the bathroom looked unchanged. She wondered briefly what had happened, but quickly decided not to waste any more thought on it, since it would only keep her from sleep longer.
She pushed through the bathroom door, then ambled down the hallway, opened the door to her room, and stepped inside. She didn’t notice anything different for the first few steps towards her bed, but as she looked a bit closer to make sure she could fall directly into it, she noticed something strange: a human figure lying where she had been mere minutes ago.
Her brain, only just becoming aware that it might not be able to go to sleep yet, began to think. Why was there someone in her bed? Well, maybe it wasn’t actually her bed. Maybe she had accidentally gone into the wrong room? Her only hallmate was on the other side of the hall, but how certain was she that she had turned left instead of right? It was the middle of the night, after all.
The figure suddenly groaned. “Ugh... Hello?”
Her hallmate definitely didn’t sound like that. That was a rough male voice - and there shouldn’t’ve been any boys in the building at this hour, let alone in her room. Something was very wrong. She backed away, almost stumbling as she reached the lightswitch, but managed to catch herself against the wall and turn on the lights. When she turned back around, blinking to try and adjust to the sudden increase in light, she saw exactly what she had feared: a teenage boy, dressed in only boxer shorts, rubbing his eyes as he sat up.
She shrieked. “Who- What are you doing here?”
The boy, his brown hair matted and ruffled - almost as if he had been sleeping there all night, despite the fact that he couldn’t’ve been there for any more than a few minutes - groaned. “This is my room. What are you doing here?”
“Wha- No! This is my room, and this is an all-girls school, so you shouldn’t be anywhere near here! Especially not in just your underwear!” She looked down and realized that she wasn’t exactly well-dressed herself, but that was besides the point.
“An all-girls... Wait, wait, no, this is my room, and we’re at Yamaku Academy.”
“Yes, Yamaku Academy, the all-girls school!”
The boy seemed to wake up a bit more upon hearing that, but his expression wasn’t comforting. “That’s not good.” He turned to look at the girl. “What’s your name?”
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry, my name is Hisao Nakai. What’s your name?”
Before she could formulate the beginnings of a tirade about how this was not the time to get to know each other, something struck her as unusual. “... I’m Nakai. Hisayo Nakai.”
The boy - Hisao - groaned again, then turned to look out the window. “Oh boy.”
“What?”
“Well, whatever’s happening, the barrier got activated.”
“The- The what?”
“Here, look.” He got up and moved to one side, beckoning for Hisayo to look out of the window.
Not entirely sure that it was a good idea, she stepped forward anyways, and was surprised to see a dim blue glow coming from all around. It was the dead of night, and the pathways were only lit by the lamps dotted around the campus, but every line of sight beyond the school’s buildings seemed to pass through some sort of transparent blue membrane; presumably, this was the ‘barrier’.
Something else was off. “The snow...” There was snow all over the ground, but none in the air - until Hisayo looked up, and saw snow falling from above. Or, rather, there was snow above her, but it wasn’t falling. It was suspended in midair, completely motionless, as far as the eye could see.
Her stomach turned over. “What the...” She backed away from the window, and her breathing became heavier, then faster. “This is- This isn’t real.” Hisao reached out to reassure her, but she recoiled away. “Don’t come near me, you- whoever, whatever, you-” She backed away, gasping for air, but tripped over herself, and fell to the floor. Pain shot through her chest, and her vision grew red, but she could still see the boy rush over to her, his hands outstretched, causing her even further panic.
He rolled her onto her back, and as her heartbeat pounded in her ears, she was certain that he was about to kill her. He put his hands onto her chest, and she became convinced that he was about to do something even worse. He closed his eyes, and she closed hers, terrified of whatever might come next, and then...
Silence.
She was still panicked, but it didn’t quite feel like it. Her heartbeat was still fast, but no longer deafening, and less erratic. Her breathing was heavy, but it no longer felt like she was gasping for air. She felt Hisao’s hands leave her chest, and opened her eyes; he was smiling, though he still looked like he had just woken up, which he had. “Deep breaths. Don’t try to get up too fast.”
It took a moment for Hisayo to realize what had happened - or rather, to realize that she had no idea what had happened. Her throat refused to cooperate, but she mouthed “What?”
“Your heart was acting up.” That much had been obvious. “I know because mine’s the same.” He grabbed a glass of water, and helped her sit up to drink from it.
As the water touched her lips, she realized just how thirsty she felt, and she downed the whole glass before stopping to take a breath. Her voice was still scratchy, but she was able to ask proper questions again. “But what did you do?”
“Oh, I just stabilized your atrial rhythm and breathing. Like I said, I have a lot of experience with this.”
“Okay, but... how?”
Hisao looked like he wasn’t quite sure how to answer that. “I, uh... I mean, I just worked with your energy tags. You must’ve interacted with those before - actually, didn’t they teach you how to do all of this when you got your heart condition?”
Hisayo’s face somehow contorted to express even further bewilderment. “What the fuck do you mean?”
Hisao’s eyes went wide. “Uh oh. Do you guys not have that?” Not entirely sure what he was asking, she shook her head anyways. “Do you at least have, like, a leyline?” Still no understanding graced her face. “Okay, this is going to be one hell of a shock, then. We need to talk to the staff.”
As he stood up to think about the best way to do that, a pleasant voice seemed to radiate from all around. “Apologies for waking you, but all students, please report to the auditorium. I repeat, all students, please report to the auditorium as soon as you are safely able. We will explain more once you’re all gathered.”
“Well, I guess that covers that. C’mon, we should get going before it gets packed.” He held out a hand, and Hisayo grabbed it, slowly getting up and making sure she could stand. “I guess we should get dressed, too.”
“Oh, right, right.” Blushing, she walked over to the closet and opened it up, only to see something unusual: the clothes there were a mixture of hers - green skirts, white blouses, a few bits of casual clothing - and dress pants and shirts, which she knew were technically part of the uniform but almost none of the girls wore. Plus, there were some strange sleeveless sweaters over to one side.
“Well that’s convenient. I wasn’t looking forward to wearing a skirt.” Hisao grabbed some of the strange clothes and began putting them on; the pants and button-down shirts fit him perfectly, and he even dug out a warm coat, which reminded Hisayo to do the same. Even if it wasn’t snowing out there for... whatever reason, it was probably still going to be just as cold.
As they got dressed, not having much time to feel very embarrassed about doing so in front of each other, another pleasant announcement occurred. “To any students who didn’t get the content of my first message, please report to the auditorium as soon as you are safely able. We will explain everything once you are gathered.”
As Hisayo put her arms through her blouse and began to button it up, she wondered aloud “Where is that coming from?”
“Oh, that’s just Nurse - I’m actually glad she’s still on shift, I thought she'd’ve gone home by now.” A moment later he realized that that wasn’t what was being asked. “Oh, right, uh, she’s just sort of... broadcasting her voice to us? But it’s actually just in our heads, doing it by sound would be problematic.”
“Into our heads?”
“Yeah.” Another pause. “That probably sounds weird to you.” Hisayo nodded. “Okay, well, I, uh... I promise it makes sense to me. You’ll have to take my word for that until we get to the auditorium, I guess. Nurse can probably do a better job of explaining it.”
Figuring that any further questions would probably end up with similar answers, Hisayo focused on getting dressed, her last hopes of being able to return to sleep vanishing into the past.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Alright, alright, can I have everyone’s attention please!” The voice from earlier was just as pleasant in person, though Hisayo wasn’t sure it was entirely natural. The woman it came from - thin, with a purple bob cut and a white lab coat - was addressing the entire auditorium without a microphone. Was her voice still going directly to the students’ heads? It didn’t seem quite as ethereal as before, at least.
The students themselves were just as interesting: here and there some larger groups had formed, such as the bulk of the student council Hisayo knew, as well as what she could only assume was the equivalent student council among the boys, but in general individual girls and boys were sticking with their... counterparts?
It was hard to describe, but she did feel some sort of deep connection with Hisao. They had so much in common that it was easy to trust him: his thoughts couldn’t be that far from her own. Or at least, that’s what she hoped; given the strange nature of everything that had happened, maybe she should’ve been less trusting, but it was still the middle of the night, and everyone was rather tired - including the purple-haired woman up on the stage, and the purple-haired man standing next to her, whom Hisayo knew as Nurse, and who began addressing the crowd with a megaphone.
“I know most of you are confused about what exactly is going on. I, too, have many questions about what’s happening and why. But after talking with this woman - you can all refer to us both as Nurse - I can assure you that we have a plan to return things to normal as soon as possible.” He motioned to the woman next to him. “So, Nurse, if you would?”
She grinned. “Certainly, Nurse. To the students who know me, some of this will be review, but I trust you understand the need for explaining everything to your new comrades.” Her face immediately became serious again. “Less than an hour ago, something caused a collapse in the universal manifold - the potential energy gap between a pair of universes disappeared, causing them to fuse. Put simply, two whole universes merged together.”
The other Nurse nodded. “One of those, of course, was the one which included me and the students I treat, who attend the Yamaku Academy for Disabled Girls.”
“And the other, of course, included the Yamaku Academy for Magically-Talented Boys.”
A wave of murmurs swept through the crowd, and Hisayo gasped. “Magically-talented?” She turned to Hisao, who met her gaze, and nodded. He was... magical? That would explain the insane happenings of the past hour, but also raised plenty more questions.
Once the rumblings from the students had died down, the woman continued. “Now, I know that will raise many questions from the girls. I can’t cover everything - and, in the end, it’s not that important to understand it all - but I’ll do my best to give you a broad overview.”
“The world we come from features a number of magical wellsprings, called leylines. Some people in our world can tap into their power - we call these people magicians, and they can perform otherwise impossible feats using this magic. These abilities are most potent at birth, but lose power as the magician ages. As such, academies of magic are vital, both to harness the power of these students before it fades, as well as to prevent them from getting hurt.”
Her tone turned somber. “You will have noticed that, while our Yamaku is not for ‘disabled’ students, most of our students do indeed have some form of disability. These are, in general, the result of magical accidents during their early years; especially since it’s currently impossible to gauge magical potency prior to its usage. The first sign of their potential is almost always some sort of self-inflicted wound, which tends to be permanent.”
The other Nurse held up his megaphone again. “This touches on another important point that many of you may have wondered about: magic cannot heal these permanent wounds.” He paused to let that sink in, but there was little response from the crowd; Hisayo had figured that would be the case, and it seems most of the other girls had had similar thoughts. “However, this magic can temporarily mitigate symptoms, which for many people is more than enough. This will be an important part of our plan going forward, as Nurse will explain.”
“Yes - but that will require a little more background.” She cleared her throat. “Although I said before that two universes collided, they haven’t actually collided yet - at least, for the most part. When a merge like this happens, it releases an incredible amount of energy - so much that it would likely destroy both universes in the process.” There were a number of gasps from the crowd.
“Fortunately, the school’s automated defenses identified the potential danger, and enacted a temporal barrier, stopping time in the outside world. For now, the merge has only occurred within this bubble, and that relatively small energy release was properly dissipated, resulting in the combined student body we have here.” She sighed. “However, this also clearly poses some problems.”
“First and foremost, it falls to us, within this school, to reverse the merge - otherwise, the outside world will be in great danger. And of course, we will have to manage this without any help from outside: no supplies, no sunlight or weather, and no extra personnel... including your teachers and administrators, who had gone home for the night. The nursing staff will do our best to fill their roles, but please understand that we will be spread rather thin.”
The other Nurse jumped in: “For those of you worried about the supplies, I have been assured that the students with magic will be able to procure all of the basics needed to keep us alive. They may not be able to conjure the more complex medications we generally rely on, but they’ll be performing direct treatment instead; I’ll be the one overseeing the logistics of that, so if you have any problems, or if you’re free to help, please come to the administration or nursing buildings, where we’ll be handling all of that.” With that, he lowered his megaphone and bowed.
“I, on the other hand, will be overseeing the other important task: undoing the merge, or as we call it, ‘forking’. It will take an incredible amount of energy to un-fuse these universes, but it’s not impossible. We have some of the most potent magicians on the planet here, and although their instantaneous power output is far too low, by storing that energy in a device - called a 'capacitor' - and then releasing it correctly all at once, we should be able to fork these universes and return to the way things were.” She bowed too, but then spoke again. “Questions?”
A number of hands went up across the auditorium, but a short girl near the front seemed to be the most anxious. “Yes, you in the front?”
“When will this be over?”
Nurse smiled. “Straight to the point, but a good question. There’s some uncertainty in the schedule, but we expect to fully charge the capacitor in about a week, at which point we can fork. Next?” Hands went up again, including Hisao’s - and Nurse noticed. “Yes, Nakai?” Hisayo jumped before realizing she wasn’t the Nakai in question.
“What will happen after we fork?”
Nurse chuckled. “Well, I’m sure you know, but thank you for the reminder. Due to the nature of universes as bundled worldlines on high-dimensional manifolds - and here I was hoping this wouldn’t get too complicated - merges happen forwards in time, and forks happen backwards; at least, according to the prevailing theory. So once we perform the fork, the merge itself will never have happened, meaning this time bubble will never have happened either. None of you will have any recollection of this week - it will be as if none of this ever happened.”
A tan-skinned girl in the back shouted the next question before anyone else got a chance. “You mean nothing we do here matters?”
“Not quite. It’s very important that we make absolutely no worldline changes, since any changes large enough to affect your worldline would travel backwards in time with the fork. Of course, that’s assuming we manage to fork at all; even the smallest worldline changes would unbalance our universes and dramatically increase the amount of energy needed to fork. Now, to change a worldline like that would require a catastrophic event, such as death, so it’s unlikely, but still, be careful with yourself and others. Speaking of which, Nurse?”
“Ah, of course, how could I forget. Since we've been merged into the same campus, we’re going to have to house twice as many students as usual in these dorms. For simplicity’s sake, to avoid moving hundreds of students around, we ask that you use the same room you normally do, which will mean having your counterpart as your roommate.”
His face hardened. “I’m sure you’re all aware that this will mean sharing a room with someone of the opposite sex. If that’s unacceptable to you, we have a few extra rooms, but they’re in short supply, so we’re asking that you do your best to accommodate each other. You should be similar enough to get along, but if there are any concerns at all, please raise them to either of us. It should go without saying that any failures to respect each other will be met with extremely harsh repercussions.”
That seemed to cow the student body, and before long the Nurses wrapped up, releasing everyone back to their rooms, where for the moment they tried desperately to catch up on the sleep they had missed.
As One
A young girl with long brown hair, messy but clean, plodded up to the sink and turned it on. Her eyes were half-closed, and she didn’t bother looking at herself in the mirror. She wanted to wash her hands with as little brain power as possible, since as soon as she was done she’d be going back to bed, and dreaming about the upcoming holiday vacation.
The water coming from the tap was frigid, since it was now properly winter, but trying to find a balance between the hot and cold taps was far too much effort for this time of night. Besides, before long, she had finished with the soap and water, and reached for a towel. She closed her eyes completely as she dried her hands, since the bright bathroom light was irritating. Indeed, it only seemed to get brighter and brighter, until-
A loud noise accompanied the brightest moment, seemingly attacking her from all directions, but soon fell to a low hum and glow, and a few seconds later both the light and noise were gone. She opened her eyes again, not quite sure what to expect, but the bathroom looked unchanged. She wondered briefly what had happened, but quickly decided not to waste any more thought on it, since it would only keep her from sleep longer.
She pushed through the bathroom door, then ambled down the hallway, opened the door to her room, and stepped inside. She didn’t notice anything different for the first few steps towards her bed, but as she looked a bit closer to make sure she could fall directly into it, she noticed something strange: a human figure lying where she had been mere minutes ago.
Her brain, only just becoming aware that it might not be able to go to sleep yet, began to think. Why was there someone in her bed? Well, maybe it wasn’t actually her bed. Maybe she had accidentally gone into the wrong room? Her only hallmate was on the other side of the hall, but how certain was she that she had turned left instead of right? It was the middle of the night, after all.
The figure suddenly groaned. “Ugh... Hello?”
Her hallmate definitely didn’t sound like that. That was a rough male voice - and there shouldn’t’ve been any boys in the building at this hour, let alone in her room. Something was very wrong. She backed away, almost stumbling as she reached the lightswitch, but managed to catch herself against the wall and turn on the lights. When she turned back around, blinking to try and adjust to the sudden increase in light, she saw exactly what she had feared: a teenage boy, dressed in only boxer shorts, rubbing his eyes as he sat up.
She shrieked. “Who- What are you doing here?”
The boy, his brown hair matted and ruffled - almost as if he had been sleeping there all night, despite the fact that he couldn’t’ve been there for any more than a few minutes - groaned. “This is my room. What are you doing here?”
“Wha- No! This is my room, and this is an all-girls school, so you shouldn’t be anywhere near here! Especially not in just your underwear!” She looked down and realized that she wasn’t exactly well-dressed herself, but that was besides the point.
“An all-girls... Wait, wait, no, this is my room, and we’re at Yamaku Academy.”
“Yes, Yamaku Academy, the all-girls school!”
The boy seemed to wake up a bit more upon hearing that, but his expression wasn’t comforting. “That’s not good.” He turned to look at the girl. “What’s your name?”
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry, my name is Hisao Nakai. What’s your name?”
Before she could formulate the beginnings of a tirade about how this was not the time to get to know each other, something struck her as unusual. “... I’m Nakai. Hisayo Nakai.”
The boy - Hisao - groaned again, then turned to look out the window. “Oh boy.”
“What?”
“Well, whatever’s happening, the barrier got activated.”
“The- The what?”
“Here, look.” He got up and moved to one side, beckoning for Hisayo to look out of the window.
Not entirely sure that it was a good idea, she stepped forward anyways, and was surprised to see a dim blue glow coming from all around. It was the dead of night, and the pathways were only lit by the lamps dotted around the campus, but every line of sight beyond the school’s buildings seemed to pass through some sort of transparent blue membrane; presumably, this was the ‘barrier’.
Something else was off. “The snow...” There was snow all over the ground, but none in the air - until Hisayo looked up, and saw snow falling from above. Or, rather, there was snow above her, but it wasn’t falling. It was suspended in midair, completely motionless, as far as the eye could see.
Her stomach turned over. “What the...” She backed away from the window, and her breathing became heavier, then faster. “This is- This isn’t real.” Hisao reached out to reassure her, but she recoiled away. “Don’t come near me, you- whoever, whatever, you-” She backed away, gasping for air, but tripped over herself, and fell to the floor. Pain shot through her chest, and her vision grew red, but she could still see the boy rush over to her, his hands outstretched, causing her even further panic.
He rolled her onto her back, and as her heartbeat pounded in her ears, she was certain that he was about to kill her. He put his hands onto her chest, and she became convinced that he was about to do something even worse. He closed his eyes, and she closed hers, terrified of whatever might come next, and then...
Silence.
She was still panicked, but it didn’t quite feel like it. Her heartbeat was still fast, but no longer deafening, and less erratic. Her breathing was heavy, but it no longer felt like she was gasping for air. She felt Hisao’s hands leave her chest, and opened her eyes; he was smiling, though he still looked like he had just woken up, which he had. “Deep breaths. Don’t try to get up too fast.”
It took a moment for Hisayo to realize what had happened - or rather, to realize that she had no idea what had happened. Her throat refused to cooperate, but she mouthed “What?”
“Your heart was acting up.” That much had been obvious. “I know because mine’s the same.” He grabbed a glass of water, and helped her sit up to drink from it.
As the water touched her lips, she realized just how thirsty she felt, and she downed the whole glass before stopping to take a breath. Her voice was still scratchy, but she was able to ask proper questions again. “But what did you do?”
“Oh, I just stabilized your atrial rhythm and breathing. Like I said, I have a lot of experience with this.”
“Okay, but... how?”
Hisao looked like he wasn’t quite sure how to answer that. “I, uh... I mean, I just worked with your energy tags. You must’ve interacted with those before - actually, didn’t they teach you how to do all of this when you got your heart condition?”
Hisayo’s face somehow contorted to express even further bewilderment. “What the fuck do you mean?”
Hisao’s eyes went wide. “Uh oh. Do you guys not have that?” Not entirely sure what he was asking, she shook her head anyways. “Do you at least have, like, a leyline?” Still no understanding graced her face. “Okay, this is going to be one hell of a shock, then. We need to talk to the staff.”
As he stood up to think about the best way to do that, a pleasant voice seemed to radiate from all around. “Apologies for waking you, but all students, please report to the auditorium. I repeat, all students, please report to the auditorium as soon as you are safely able. We will explain more once you’re all gathered.”
“Well, I guess that covers that. C’mon, we should get going before it gets packed.” He held out a hand, and Hisayo grabbed it, slowly getting up and making sure she could stand. “I guess we should get dressed, too.”
“Oh, right, right.” Blushing, she walked over to the closet and opened it up, only to see something unusual: the clothes there were a mixture of hers - green skirts, white blouses, a few bits of casual clothing - and dress pants and shirts, which she knew were technically part of the uniform but almost none of the girls wore. Plus, there were some strange sleeveless sweaters over to one side.
“Well that’s convenient. I wasn’t looking forward to wearing a skirt.” Hisao grabbed some of the strange clothes and began putting them on; the pants and button-down shirts fit him perfectly, and he even dug out a warm coat, which reminded Hisayo to do the same. Even if it wasn’t snowing out there for... whatever reason, it was probably still going to be just as cold.
As they got dressed, not having much time to feel very embarrassed about doing so in front of each other, another pleasant announcement occurred. “To any students who didn’t get the content of my first message, please report to the auditorium as soon as you are safely able. We will explain everything once you are gathered.”
As Hisayo put her arms through her blouse and began to button it up, she wondered aloud “Where is that coming from?”
“Oh, that’s just Nurse - I’m actually glad she’s still on shift, I thought she'd’ve gone home by now.” A moment later he realized that that wasn’t what was being asked. “Oh, right, uh, she’s just sort of... broadcasting her voice to us? But it’s actually just in our heads, doing it by sound would be problematic.”
“Into our heads?”
“Yeah.” Another pause. “That probably sounds weird to you.” Hisayo nodded. “Okay, well, I, uh... I promise it makes sense to me. You’ll have to take my word for that until we get to the auditorium, I guess. Nurse can probably do a better job of explaining it.”
Figuring that any further questions would probably end up with similar answers, Hisayo focused on getting dressed, her last hopes of being able to return to sleep vanishing into the past.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Alright, alright, can I have everyone’s attention please!” The voice from earlier was just as pleasant in person, though Hisayo wasn’t sure it was entirely natural. The woman it came from - thin, with a purple bob cut and a white lab coat - was addressing the entire auditorium without a microphone. Was her voice still going directly to the students’ heads? It didn’t seem quite as ethereal as before, at least.
The students themselves were just as interesting: here and there some larger groups had formed, such as the bulk of the student council Hisayo knew, as well as what she could only assume was the equivalent student council among the boys, but in general individual girls and boys were sticking with their... counterparts?
It was hard to describe, but she did feel some sort of deep connection with Hisao. They had so much in common that it was easy to trust him: his thoughts couldn’t be that far from her own. Or at least, that’s what she hoped; given the strange nature of everything that had happened, maybe she should’ve been less trusting, but it was still the middle of the night, and everyone was rather tired - including the purple-haired woman up on the stage, and the purple-haired man standing next to her, whom Hisayo knew as Nurse, and who began addressing the crowd with a megaphone.
“I know most of you are confused about what exactly is going on. I, too, have many questions about what’s happening and why. But after talking with this woman - you can all refer to us both as Nurse - I can assure you that we have a plan to return things to normal as soon as possible.” He motioned to the woman next to him. “So, Nurse, if you would?”
She grinned. “Certainly, Nurse. To the students who know me, some of this will be review, but I trust you understand the need for explaining everything to your new comrades.” Her face immediately became serious again. “Less than an hour ago, something caused a collapse in the universal manifold - the potential energy gap between a pair of universes disappeared, causing them to fuse. Put simply, two whole universes merged together.”
The other Nurse nodded. “One of those, of course, was the one which included me and the students I treat, who attend the Yamaku Academy for Disabled Girls.”
“And the other, of course, included the Yamaku Academy for Magically-Talented Boys.”
A wave of murmurs swept through the crowd, and Hisayo gasped. “Magically-talented?” She turned to Hisao, who met her gaze, and nodded. He was... magical? That would explain the insane happenings of the past hour, but also raised plenty more questions.
Once the rumblings from the students had died down, the woman continued. “Now, I know that will raise many questions from the girls. I can’t cover everything - and, in the end, it’s not that important to understand it all - but I’ll do my best to give you a broad overview.”
“The world we come from features a number of magical wellsprings, called leylines. Some people in our world can tap into their power - we call these people magicians, and they can perform otherwise impossible feats using this magic. These abilities are most potent at birth, but lose power as the magician ages. As such, academies of magic are vital, both to harness the power of these students before it fades, as well as to prevent them from getting hurt.”
Her tone turned somber. “You will have noticed that, while our Yamaku is not for ‘disabled’ students, most of our students do indeed have some form of disability. These are, in general, the result of magical accidents during their early years; especially since it’s currently impossible to gauge magical potency prior to its usage. The first sign of their potential is almost always some sort of self-inflicted wound, which tends to be permanent.”
The other Nurse held up his megaphone again. “This touches on another important point that many of you may have wondered about: magic cannot heal these permanent wounds.” He paused to let that sink in, but there was little response from the crowd; Hisayo had figured that would be the case, and it seems most of the other girls had had similar thoughts. “However, this magic can temporarily mitigate symptoms, which for many people is more than enough. This will be an important part of our plan going forward, as Nurse will explain.”
“Yes - but that will require a little more background.” She cleared her throat. “Although I said before that two universes collided, they haven’t actually collided yet - at least, for the most part. When a merge like this happens, it releases an incredible amount of energy - so much that it would likely destroy both universes in the process.” There were a number of gasps from the crowd.
“Fortunately, the school’s automated defenses identified the potential danger, and enacted a temporal barrier, stopping time in the outside world. For now, the merge has only occurred within this bubble, and that relatively small energy release was properly dissipated, resulting in the combined student body we have here.” She sighed. “However, this also clearly poses some problems.”
“First and foremost, it falls to us, within this school, to reverse the merge - otherwise, the outside world will be in great danger. And of course, we will have to manage this without any help from outside: no supplies, no sunlight or weather, and no extra personnel... including your teachers and administrators, who had gone home for the night. The nursing staff will do our best to fill their roles, but please understand that we will be spread rather thin.”
The other Nurse jumped in: “For those of you worried about the supplies, I have been assured that the students with magic will be able to procure all of the basics needed to keep us alive. They may not be able to conjure the more complex medications we generally rely on, but they’ll be performing direct treatment instead; I’ll be the one overseeing the logistics of that, so if you have any problems, or if you’re free to help, please come to the administration or nursing buildings, where we’ll be handling all of that.” With that, he lowered his megaphone and bowed.
“I, on the other hand, will be overseeing the other important task: undoing the merge, or as we call it, ‘forking’. It will take an incredible amount of energy to un-fuse these universes, but it’s not impossible. We have some of the most potent magicians on the planet here, and although their instantaneous power output is far too low, by storing that energy in a device - called a 'capacitor' - and then releasing it correctly all at once, we should be able to fork these universes and return to the way things were.” She bowed too, but then spoke again. “Questions?”
A number of hands went up across the auditorium, but a short girl near the front seemed to be the most anxious. “Yes, you in the front?”
“When will this be over?”
Nurse smiled. “Straight to the point, but a good question. There’s some uncertainty in the schedule, but we expect to fully charge the capacitor in about a week, at which point we can fork. Next?” Hands went up again, including Hisao’s - and Nurse noticed. “Yes, Nakai?” Hisayo jumped before realizing she wasn’t the Nakai in question.
“What will happen after we fork?”
Nurse chuckled. “Well, I’m sure you know, but thank you for the reminder. Due to the nature of universes as bundled worldlines on high-dimensional manifolds - and here I was hoping this wouldn’t get too complicated - merges happen forwards in time, and forks happen backwards; at least, according to the prevailing theory. So once we perform the fork, the merge itself will never have happened, meaning this time bubble will never have happened either. None of you will have any recollection of this week - it will be as if none of this ever happened.”
A tan-skinned girl in the back shouted the next question before anyone else got a chance. “You mean nothing we do here matters?”
“Not quite. It’s very important that we make absolutely no worldline changes, since any changes large enough to affect your worldline would travel backwards in time with the fork. Of course, that’s assuming we manage to fork at all; even the smallest worldline changes would unbalance our universes and dramatically increase the amount of energy needed to fork. Now, to change a worldline like that would require a catastrophic event, such as death, so it’s unlikely, but still, be careful with yourself and others. Speaking of which, Nurse?”
“Ah, of course, how could I forget. Since we've been merged into the same campus, we’re going to have to house twice as many students as usual in these dorms. For simplicity’s sake, to avoid moving hundreds of students around, we ask that you use the same room you normally do, which will mean having your counterpart as your roommate.”
His face hardened. “I’m sure you’re all aware that this will mean sharing a room with someone of the opposite sex. If that’s unacceptable to you, we have a few extra rooms, but they’re in short supply, so we’re asking that you do your best to accommodate each other. You should be similar enough to get along, but if there are any concerns at all, please raise them to either of us. It should go without saying that any failures to respect each other will be met with extremely harsh repercussions.”
That seemed to cow the student body, and before long the Nurses wrapped up, releasing everyone back to their rooms, where for the moment they tried desperately to catch up on the sleep they had missed.
-
Craftyatom
- Posts: 374
- Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 11:38 pm
- Location: Washington, USA
Worlds Apart (2/4)
Here Today
Hisayo was woken up by the sound of her phone vibrating, and slowly sat up to read the message. It was still dark; who could be texting her so early?
It was from Shizune: <Urgent student council meeting today. Come as soon as you can.> What, now? In the middle of the night? Bewildered, she checked the time on her phone: 9 o’clock.
Wait. 9? In the morning?
Her eyes darted up to check her alarm clock: it was off. The power must’ve been out, hence why it hadn’t gone off at the usual time. But how was it still so dark at this hour? She turned to look out of the window, and saw a dim blue glow surrounding the school, with falling snow frozen in place beyond it. “No way...”
Had that not been a dream? And if so, then-
“Ugh. Morning.” Sure enough, a raspy voice croaked from the floor of her room.
“Hisao?”
“Yup, that’s me.”
“Sorry, I just... I wondered for a moment whether that was a dream.”
He chuckled. “I can’t blame you. Our worlds seem pretty different.”
Hisayo offered a hand to the boy below her, who used it to pull himself up from his futon. She looked him over as she got out of bed, still not entirely used to the idea of having a doppelganger who was also a boy. And who also had magical powers. “So they really call you guys ‘magicians’?”
“Well... yeah.” He picked up on her tone. “Does it sound weird to you?”
“Sort of. I guess it just means something different in our world.”
“Really? It doesn’t mean someone who does magic?”
“No, I mean, it does, but since our world doesn’t have actual magic, it refers to somebody who pretends to do magic.”
Hisao was confused by the idea. “But if you don’t have magic, why would they pretend? If you know it can’t actually be magic, then what’s the point?”
Hisayo had never really thought about it in such depth. “It’s an entertainment thing, I guess. They try to do something in such a way that their audience can’t tell how they actually did it. And if the audience can’t explain it, then it seems like magic, even if they know it’s not.”
“Huh.” Hisao chewed on that for a moment. “You know, I think I’m beginning to understand just how strange this feels to you.”
Hisayo laughed. “Welcome to the club.” She remembered the text she had just gotten. “Speaking of clubs, does your Yamaku have a student council?”
“Yup. I’m actually the rep for class 3-3.”
“I should’ve known - that makes two of us. Shizune says we’re having a meeting. Presumably we're going to discuss our role in all of this merging universe stuff."
“Shizune, huh? Don’t tell me - president of the student council, and rep for class 3-1.”
“Exactly. Do you know her counterpart?”
“Oh yeah, you’ll meet him, he’s... Well, you’ll meet him.” He grinned.
“Only if we actually show up - come on, let’s get ready.”
For a pair of students from different universes who had only met a few hours ago, Hisayo thought, they sure seemed to get along well.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hisayo wasn’t quite sure what to expect when she walked into the student council room, but at first glance, everything seemed pretty normal: Lilly, the class rep for 3-2, was talking to Misha, Shizune's translator. Every now and then the direction of the conversation would swap, sometimes in a rather heated manner, but that was par for the course with those three.
It took a moment longer for Hisayo to realize that a similar scene was playing out on the other side of the room, between three boys. A tall boy with smooth golden hair, which covered his eyes, was talking to a broad-shouldered boy, whose pink hair rose stiffly on one side of his parting, but fell into a number of small braids on the other. The pink-haired boy’s hands moved as he listened, and a relatively short boy with a blue buzz cut and a thin pair of glasses watched intently.
It wasn’t hard to tell who was rooming with who, but more detailed introductions were definitely in order. Then again, it probably wasn’t worth starting until-
The door swung open halfway, then paused, then was pushed all the way open, and a frail-looking girl in a wheelchair rolled into the classroom. Her long black hair - naturally brown, but dyed since sometime last year, if Hisayo remembered correctly - framed her pale face, which seemed to shrink away once she noticed how packed the room was.
“Yuika!” Hisayo made a point of trying to make her feel welcome. Of course, as class 3-4’s rep, she was obviously welcome, but sometimes her shyness got the better of her, so it was worth giving her a warm smile when the opportunity presented itself.
She smiled back, but then hurried to vacate the doorway and let another student follow her: a skinny boy with black hair, who seemed even more shy than the girl who had preceded him as he rolled his own wheelchair in.
Rather than smiling at him, however, Hisao seemed surprised by this boy’s appearance. “Yuichi, you made it in person?”
Both the blonde boy and the pink-haired boy perked up upon hearing this, evidently just as surprised as Hisao had been. Still, they waited for the new arrival to talk.
“Ah, yeah, Yuika was showing me her wheelchair, and it seemed kinda cool, so I thought I’d try one out. It’s been nice, getting to go around campus like this... even if my arms are pretty sore now.”
“GYAHAHAHA~!” The rest of the room flinched at the roar of the pink-haired boy’s laughter. “Yuichi, you know we don’t mind if you join meetings from your room - don’t push yourself just to come see us in person!”
“No, really, I just wanted to see what it was like... At least they already cleared all the snow. Yuika said it’s really tough trying to use one of these otherwise.” Hisayo knew from experience that Yuika would sometimes be late when it was snowy out; still, she insisted on coming every time. Maybe that attitude had rubbed off on her counterpart.
“Well, then,” Lilly gestured to the students around her, “since all the representatives are here, shall we start?”
Shizune and her counterpart nodded, and began signing to their respective translators, only realizing after a few seconds that they had been ‘talking over’ each other. After a brief exchange, Shizune seemed to cede to the other boy, who instructed the pink-haired boy to begin.
“Alright, so! Welcome to this special session of the student council - it’s pretty obvious that we have a lot to discuss, but before that, we should probably perform some introductions. Would the ladies like to go first?”
Shizune nodded, and began signing, which Misha quickly translated. “Hello everyone, I’m Shizune Hakamichi, student council president and representative for class 3-1. It’s a pleasure to meet you all.” Shizune finished signing, but Misha kept going. “By which I mean, she is! I’m Misha, her translator, also from class 3-1! I hope we all get along!”
“Hey, wait a min-” the pink-haired boy began to interject, a broad smile on his face, but he was cut off by the blonde boy, who shushed him as Lilly prepared to speak.
“I’m Lilly Satou, the representative for class 3-2. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” She bowed, and Hisayo went next.
“Hello everyone, I’m Hisayo Nakai, representing class 3-3. Nice to meet you all.” She turned and nodded to Yuika.
“I’m, uh, Yuika Yamamoto. I’m class 3-4’s rep. Hey.”
A brief silence hung in the air afterwards, but the blue- and pink-haired boys were quick to fill it, as they began signing and translating respectively. “Good morning to you all, I’m Shinsuke Hakamichi, student council president and representative for class 3-1, specializing in cognition magic. I’m looking forward to working with you all.”
‘Cognition magic’? Hisayo wasn’t quite sure what to make of that - none of her classmates were ‘specialized’. She decided not to worry about it too much, and turned her attention back to the pink-haired boy, whose calm expression gave way to a grin. “Of course, he’s actually Shinsuke, and I’m his translator, Misha!” He shrugged at the pink-haired girl across from him. ”Sorry, Misha.”
Misha laughed with her characteristic “Wahaha~!”, but didn’t say anything else, letting the tall blonde boy go next.
“Well, I’m sure that won’t get confusing at all. Regardless, I’m Louis Satou, the representative for class 3-2 and a specialist in magical communication. I’m excited to work with you all.” He finished with a bow, then turned to Hisao.
“Hello, I’m Hisao Nakai, representative for 3-3. I specialize in the magic of stability. Nice to meet you.” He motioned to the black-haired boy in a wheelchair.
“I’m Yuichi Yamamoto, rep for 3-4. I don’t really have a specialization, but I try to help out anyways.”
After a brief pause, Shizune made some signs to Shinsuke, who began signing to Misha, who began to speak. “With that out of the way, let’s get down to business. To start, I’d like to go over some of the responsibilities us boys will be dealing with: Nurse left me a list, but if you think of anything that should be added, speak up.”
Shinsuke pulled out a sheet of paper, and placed it on the table before reading it off. “Food and water are the obvious ones. Oxygen generation and carbon dioxide scrubbing should be handled by the protections built into the barrier, but we’ll need to monitor them carefully, given their importance. Waste management is also crucial - we have some students inspecting the systems to make sure they’re functional after the merge, but they’ll need attention regardless. The girls use a lot of electrical power in lieu of magical power, so we’re working with some of them on the best way to provide that. And finally, of course, any leftover time you have should be spent charging the capacitor. The sooner we fork, the less work we need to do. Shizune?”
Shizune nodded, and started signing her own half of the proceedings. “While the boys are focused on running those systems, we’ll be tasked with the logistics. For one, most of those requirements exist 24 hours per day, which means we either need students working on round-the-clock shifts, or some way for them to store their work and release it over time. We need ways to measure how well these requirements are being met, and ideally, some sort of warning system if they’re not. When in doubt, try to improve the work your counterparts are doing, but be ready to switch your focus if something comes up, or another student asks for your help.”
“Speaking of which,” Lilly added, “we need to keep an eye on student morale as well. This is a rather difficult situation, and my guess is that most students will have some trouble coping. We need to make sure that they’re staying positive, and that they have someone to talk to otherwise.”
Shizune nodded. “I trust you’ll be willing to spearhead that effort?”
“Certainly. I’ll start gathering some more students to help with that once we’re done here.”
Something crossed Hisayo’s mind: “Speaking of morale, boys, is there some way you could make, like, an artificial sun? The path lighting is fine for walking around, but constant nighttime is a little depressing.”
“Plus it means low vitamin D levels”, added Yuika.
Yuichi quickly volunteered. “It should be pretty easy to get something like that set up - just a bright light with the right spectrum, floating above for 12 hours a day. Could even add some redness in the morning and evening to make it more realistic.”
They carried on assigning duties, making sure that each issue had someone assigned to it, before adjourning for the day. It would be a lot of work, but at least they had a plan.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hisao exhaled deeply, clearly winded from his first stint charging the capacitor. It was a massive construction: a multifaceted brick-red crystal, 3 meters in diameter and 10 meters tall, surrounded by black scaffolding and bright white chains, with large hoses extending from the bottom, all placed right in the center of the courtyard. It had been a group effort to put it together, but he had done a lot of the work to make it stable, since that was his specialty.
Multiple students stood around its base, channeling their energy into the hoses to charge it. Even more boys hung around nearby, either recovering from a session, waiting to have a turn, or both. Hisao, however, had had enough for the day, by the look of it.
He walked over to Hisayo, who had been waiting for him to finish - they had accomplished the rest of their duties, and she had wanted to know what this magical capacitor looked like in action. It was impressive, certainly, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to spend any longer watching boys stand around straining themselves.
Still, without anything else lined up for the rest of the day, all that was left was to relax. “Say, Hisao, want to go for a walk?” She noticed his breathing was still a bit heavy. “If you’re not too tired, that is.”
He chuckled. “Oh, don’t worry - being tired from magic is different. Like how something can make your body tired without making your brain tired, or vice versa.”
“I guess that makes sense. So you’re okay walking and staying awake, but you don’t want to do any more magic today.”
“Exactly.” They turned onto a nearby path and fell into step beside each other. “It also means that I don’t have to be very careful about magic messing with my heart, which is nice.”
Hisayo sighed. “Sounds like a dream come true, to be honest. I wish I could do more stuff without worrying about my heart.”
“It’s not that different, honestly - I still can’t run any more than you can.”
“But you can use magic instead, right? Just teleport yourself to where you need to be.”
Hisao’s eyes went wide. “Woah! No no no, that is not how that works. Teleportation is super dangerous, and can cause huge problems. Not only do you have to specialize in it during high school, you have to go to university for it, and then you have to get a license, which needs to be renewed every year. Definitely not just something I can do instead of running.”
Hisayo rolled her eyes. “Fine, no teleporting, but what about flying? Or even just using magic to move your legs instead of using the muscles?”
“Eh... Flying’s doable, but takes a lot of magic, so it’s not great for anything other than short bursts. And moving your legs would work, but is kind of a pain relative to just... walking.” He scratched his chin. “Then again, Yuichi has done that kind of stuff sometimes when he needed to.”
“Ah, right.” That reminded her of something. “Did I hear him right, that he had never used a wheelchair before?”
“Yup. We don’t really have those, as far as I know.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“... What do you mean, what do I mean?”
“It’s literally just a chair with wheels, surely someone in your universe has invented it!”
“Oh, yeah, probably. But it’s not really that useful to us. We can use magic if needed, and most of the time we don’t even need to - Yuichi attends most of his classes and stuff remotely, just listening in through magic, so he doesn’t have to spend as much effort.”
“Huh.” One of those words caught Hisayo’s attention. “When you say ‘us’, you mean magicians?”
“Yeah.”
“How many of you are there?”
“Well, at birth, about 1 in every 100 children have some sort of magical ability.” He sighed. “Of course, over time, that power fades, so by age 40 most of those don’t have much left, and by age 60 it’s almost entirely gone from everyone.”
“So they use their power up?”
“Hah! If only. No, that power fades whether we use it or not. Which means we had better use it as much as possible while we still can.”
“And you can’t give that power away to others?”
Hisao grimaced. “Oh no. Trust me, people have tried, and tried very hard... there’s some pretty dark history involved.”
Dark history? “I didn’t expect you guys to have much of that.”
"You didn't?"
"Well, I thought magic would make all that stuff pretty moot. You know, since you can conjure all the resources you need, and treat injuries, and stop time... You can literally un-merge universes, why would you ever need to fight a war?"
Hisao sighed. "I know that magic must seem like a cure-all to you, but it really just causes as many problems as it fixes. It has plenty of limits, like with teleportation, or with how long it'll take to fix this merge. Plus, magicians are still people, and they have the same desires and vices, so it's commonplace to find magic being used to break the law, not just uphold it. And then, of course, there's age."
"Age? What's the problem with age?"
"Like I said, magic is strongest in young people, and fades as you grow older."
"I got that, but... so what?"
Hisao sighed. "Magic is so powerful that society has been shaped around it. But that has also led to huge societal issues - like with age - that don't have easy solutions. Assuming people want to solve them at all."
Hisayo could tell that Hisao was saddened by what he was saying, but she was simply too intrigued to let it go. "If you don't mind, could you... explain those issues?"
Hisao was quiet for a few seconds, his expression remaining dark, but eventually he acquiesced. "Well, basically, society runs on magic, but magic needs talented young people. So there's a huge push to train kids as fast as possible. We have to specialize early, so that we can start working as soon as possible, regardless of how we feel or how ready we are, even in important roles like healthcare - which is a mess in and of itself. Louis could tell you more about that: he considered it early on, but left in a hurry once he got a taste."
"Worse, it's not just training kids, it's having them, too. There's a lot of societal pressure on women to have kids, so that those kids can power the ever-more-demanding world. In more-developed countries, there are huge universal subsidies for having and raising children; in less-developed countries, many women just have as many kids as they can manage, hoping to hit the lottery with a magician who can support them."
He pursed his lips. "But you can see where this is going. Have more kids to support yourself. Those kids grow up and lose their magic. Then they need to have more kids to support themselves. Every generation keeps going further and further into magical debt. If it stays that way for long enough, one day it's just going to collapse. But old people assume that it won't happen in their lifetime, and young people don't have much of a choice."
Hisayo was stunned. "I... I'm sorry. I didn't-"
"It's okay." Hisao smiled wryly. "I do think there's hope - I just don't think the odds are in our favor. We'll make it through, but it probably won't be pretty." He sighed.
There was another uncomfortable silence. "Well, if it's any consolation, I think that if anyone can do it, you can. Looking at how everyone's handling this whole ordeal, it seems like you guys could do anything, if you set your minds to it."
Hisao exhaled sharply through his nose, and smiled a bit more. "I'm not sure I agree with you, but thanks nonetheless."
The weight of that conversation still pressing down on them, neither one of them said anything for a while, instead taking in the beauty of the campus under its new artificial light. However, as they walked towards the edge of campus and into view of the barrier, something bright caught Hisayo's eye.
At first, she was merely curious, but as she looked more closely, a sickening realization came over her. “Oh... Oh no. Oh shit.”
“What?”
She pointed towards a speck of bright pink just beyond the barrier, which was attached to the figure of a broad-shouldered boy, frozen in midair.
“Holy shit... it’s Misha.”
Once the initial astonishment wore off, Hisayo broke into a sprint toward the motionless boy.
“Hisayo, wait! Stop!” She didn’t even hear Hisao’s words, too focused on racing to provide help-
Until she felt something catch her hands, and then her feet, and then her torso.
She looked down and saw that she was wrapped in glowing white chains, anchored into the ground - Hisao’s magic.
She shot him a fiery glare. “What are you doing? Let me go!”
“No, Hisayo, you can't-”
“Let me go, damnit!”
“Hisayo, listen to me! If you accidentally cross the barrier, you’re going to end up just like Misha, frozen in time! You have to stay here, okay?”
It took a second for the gears to turn in Hisayo’s head, but she finally nodded. “Sorry, you’re right, I... I just wanted to-”
“It's okay.” The magical chains melted away, and Hisao put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m going to contact Nurse, and she should get here any second.”
Hisayo looked up at Misha again, and noticed something even more disturbing: his expression, now in clear view, was one of abject terror. His eyes were wide open, as was his mouth, like he was screaming. Something was very wrong.
Seconds later, with some strange sounds, Nurse suddenly appeared, breathing heavily. “I’m here, what’s the emer-” She looked up and saw Misha’s still body. “Oh boy.”
Hisao began to explain: “We were on a walk, and just noticed him frozen there - I have no idea what happened.”
“Whatever it was, he looks terrified.” Hisayo added. “Is he going to be okay?”
After a few deep breaths, Nurse nodded. “Yes, he should be okay. The barrier has protections in place to prevent any damage when something - or someone - crosses it. That said, there’s no way to get him back now. He’s going to be out there until either we fork, or the bubble collapses.” She turned to Hisayo. “There’s nothing else to be done.”
While Hisayo was glad Misha wasn’t hurt, it was still chilling to think that he was... gone. In both of the cases Nurse described, she would never see him again - and, indeed, might never have seen him in the first place.
“I never got to say goodbye.”
Hisayo was woken up by the sound of her phone vibrating, and slowly sat up to read the message. It was still dark; who could be texting her so early?
It was from Shizune: <Urgent student council meeting today. Come as soon as you can.> What, now? In the middle of the night? Bewildered, she checked the time on her phone: 9 o’clock.
Wait. 9? In the morning?
Her eyes darted up to check her alarm clock: it was off. The power must’ve been out, hence why it hadn’t gone off at the usual time. But how was it still so dark at this hour? She turned to look out of the window, and saw a dim blue glow surrounding the school, with falling snow frozen in place beyond it. “No way...”
Had that not been a dream? And if so, then-
“Ugh. Morning.” Sure enough, a raspy voice croaked from the floor of her room.
“Hisao?”
“Yup, that’s me.”
“Sorry, I just... I wondered for a moment whether that was a dream.”
He chuckled. “I can’t blame you. Our worlds seem pretty different.”
Hisayo offered a hand to the boy below her, who used it to pull himself up from his futon. She looked him over as she got out of bed, still not entirely used to the idea of having a doppelganger who was also a boy. And who also had magical powers. “So they really call you guys ‘magicians’?”
“Well... yeah.” He picked up on her tone. “Does it sound weird to you?”
“Sort of. I guess it just means something different in our world.”
“Really? It doesn’t mean someone who does magic?”
“No, I mean, it does, but since our world doesn’t have actual magic, it refers to somebody who pretends to do magic.”
Hisao was confused by the idea. “But if you don’t have magic, why would they pretend? If you know it can’t actually be magic, then what’s the point?”
Hisayo had never really thought about it in such depth. “It’s an entertainment thing, I guess. They try to do something in such a way that their audience can’t tell how they actually did it. And if the audience can’t explain it, then it seems like magic, even if they know it’s not.”
“Huh.” Hisao chewed on that for a moment. “You know, I think I’m beginning to understand just how strange this feels to you.”
Hisayo laughed. “Welcome to the club.” She remembered the text she had just gotten. “Speaking of clubs, does your Yamaku have a student council?”
“Yup. I’m actually the rep for class 3-3.”
“I should’ve known - that makes two of us. Shizune says we’re having a meeting. Presumably we're going to discuss our role in all of this merging universe stuff."
“Shizune, huh? Don’t tell me - president of the student council, and rep for class 3-1.”
“Exactly. Do you know her counterpart?”
“Oh yeah, you’ll meet him, he’s... Well, you’ll meet him.” He grinned.
“Only if we actually show up - come on, let’s get ready.”
For a pair of students from different universes who had only met a few hours ago, Hisayo thought, they sure seemed to get along well.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hisayo wasn’t quite sure what to expect when she walked into the student council room, but at first glance, everything seemed pretty normal: Lilly, the class rep for 3-2, was talking to Misha, Shizune's translator. Every now and then the direction of the conversation would swap, sometimes in a rather heated manner, but that was par for the course with those three.
It took a moment longer for Hisayo to realize that a similar scene was playing out on the other side of the room, between three boys. A tall boy with smooth golden hair, which covered his eyes, was talking to a broad-shouldered boy, whose pink hair rose stiffly on one side of his parting, but fell into a number of small braids on the other. The pink-haired boy’s hands moved as he listened, and a relatively short boy with a blue buzz cut and a thin pair of glasses watched intently.
It wasn’t hard to tell who was rooming with who, but more detailed introductions were definitely in order. Then again, it probably wasn’t worth starting until-
The door swung open halfway, then paused, then was pushed all the way open, and a frail-looking girl in a wheelchair rolled into the classroom. Her long black hair - naturally brown, but dyed since sometime last year, if Hisayo remembered correctly - framed her pale face, which seemed to shrink away once she noticed how packed the room was.
“Yuika!” Hisayo made a point of trying to make her feel welcome. Of course, as class 3-4’s rep, she was obviously welcome, but sometimes her shyness got the better of her, so it was worth giving her a warm smile when the opportunity presented itself.
She smiled back, but then hurried to vacate the doorway and let another student follow her: a skinny boy with black hair, who seemed even more shy than the girl who had preceded him as he rolled his own wheelchair in.
Rather than smiling at him, however, Hisao seemed surprised by this boy’s appearance. “Yuichi, you made it in person?”
Both the blonde boy and the pink-haired boy perked up upon hearing this, evidently just as surprised as Hisao had been. Still, they waited for the new arrival to talk.
“Ah, yeah, Yuika was showing me her wheelchair, and it seemed kinda cool, so I thought I’d try one out. It’s been nice, getting to go around campus like this... even if my arms are pretty sore now.”
“GYAHAHAHA~!” The rest of the room flinched at the roar of the pink-haired boy’s laughter. “Yuichi, you know we don’t mind if you join meetings from your room - don’t push yourself just to come see us in person!”
“No, really, I just wanted to see what it was like... At least they already cleared all the snow. Yuika said it’s really tough trying to use one of these otherwise.” Hisayo knew from experience that Yuika would sometimes be late when it was snowy out; still, she insisted on coming every time. Maybe that attitude had rubbed off on her counterpart.
“Well, then,” Lilly gestured to the students around her, “since all the representatives are here, shall we start?”
Shizune and her counterpart nodded, and began signing to their respective translators, only realizing after a few seconds that they had been ‘talking over’ each other. After a brief exchange, Shizune seemed to cede to the other boy, who instructed the pink-haired boy to begin.
“Alright, so! Welcome to this special session of the student council - it’s pretty obvious that we have a lot to discuss, but before that, we should probably perform some introductions. Would the ladies like to go first?”
Shizune nodded, and began signing, which Misha quickly translated. “Hello everyone, I’m Shizune Hakamichi, student council president and representative for class 3-1. It’s a pleasure to meet you all.” Shizune finished signing, but Misha kept going. “By which I mean, she is! I’m Misha, her translator, also from class 3-1! I hope we all get along!”
“Hey, wait a min-” the pink-haired boy began to interject, a broad smile on his face, but he was cut off by the blonde boy, who shushed him as Lilly prepared to speak.
“I’m Lilly Satou, the representative for class 3-2. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” She bowed, and Hisayo went next.
“Hello everyone, I’m Hisayo Nakai, representing class 3-3. Nice to meet you all.” She turned and nodded to Yuika.
“I’m, uh, Yuika Yamamoto. I’m class 3-4’s rep. Hey.”
A brief silence hung in the air afterwards, but the blue- and pink-haired boys were quick to fill it, as they began signing and translating respectively. “Good morning to you all, I’m Shinsuke Hakamichi, student council president and representative for class 3-1, specializing in cognition magic. I’m looking forward to working with you all.”
‘Cognition magic’? Hisayo wasn’t quite sure what to make of that - none of her classmates were ‘specialized’. She decided not to worry about it too much, and turned her attention back to the pink-haired boy, whose calm expression gave way to a grin. “Of course, he’s actually Shinsuke, and I’m his translator, Misha!” He shrugged at the pink-haired girl across from him. ”Sorry, Misha.”
Misha laughed with her characteristic “Wahaha~!”, but didn’t say anything else, letting the tall blonde boy go next.
“Well, I’m sure that won’t get confusing at all. Regardless, I’m Louis Satou, the representative for class 3-2 and a specialist in magical communication. I’m excited to work with you all.” He finished with a bow, then turned to Hisao.
“Hello, I’m Hisao Nakai, representative for 3-3. I specialize in the magic of stability. Nice to meet you.” He motioned to the black-haired boy in a wheelchair.
“I’m Yuichi Yamamoto, rep for 3-4. I don’t really have a specialization, but I try to help out anyways.”
After a brief pause, Shizune made some signs to Shinsuke, who began signing to Misha, who began to speak. “With that out of the way, let’s get down to business. To start, I’d like to go over some of the responsibilities us boys will be dealing with: Nurse left me a list, but if you think of anything that should be added, speak up.”
Shinsuke pulled out a sheet of paper, and placed it on the table before reading it off. “Food and water are the obvious ones. Oxygen generation and carbon dioxide scrubbing should be handled by the protections built into the barrier, but we’ll need to monitor them carefully, given their importance. Waste management is also crucial - we have some students inspecting the systems to make sure they’re functional after the merge, but they’ll need attention regardless. The girls use a lot of electrical power in lieu of magical power, so we’re working with some of them on the best way to provide that. And finally, of course, any leftover time you have should be spent charging the capacitor. The sooner we fork, the less work we need to do. Shizune?”
Shizune nodded, and started signing her own half of the proceedings. “While the boys are focused on running those systems, we’ll be tasked with the logistics. For one, most of those requirements exist 24 hours per day, which means we either need students working on round-the-clock shifts, or some way for them to store their work and release it over time. We need ways to measure how well these requirements are being met, and ideally, some sort of warning system if they’re not. When in doubt, try to improve the work your counterparts are doing, but be ready to switch your focus if something comes up, or another student asks for your help.”
“Speaking of which,” Lilly added, “we need to keep an eye on student morale as well. This is a rather difficult situation, and my guess is that most students will have some trouble coping. We need to make sure that they’re staying positive, and that they have someone to talk to otherwise.”
Shizune nodded. “I trust you’ll be willing to spearhead that effort?”
“Certainly. I’ll start gathering some more students to help with that once we’re done here.”
Something crossed Hisayo’s mind: “Speaking of morale, boys, is there some way you could make, like, an artificial sun? The path lighting is fine for walking around, but constant nighttime is a little depressing.”
“Plus it means low vitamin D levels”, added Yuika.
Yuichi quickly volunteered. “It should be pretty easy to get something like that set up - just a bright light with the right spectrum, floating above for 12 hours a day. Could even add some redness in the morning and evening to make it more realistic.”
They carried on assigning duties, making sure that each issue had someone assigned to it, before adjourning for the day. It would be a lot of work, but at least they had a plan.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hisao exhaled deeply, clearly winded from his first stint charging the capacitor. It was a massive construction: a multifaceted brick-red crystal, 3 meters in diameter and 10 meters tall, surrounded by black scaffolding and bright white chains, with large hoses extending from the bottom, all placed right in the center of the courtyard. It had been a group effort to put it together, but he had done a lot of the work to make it stable, since that was his specialty.
Multiple students stood around its base, channeling their energy into the hoses to charge it. Even more boys hung around nearby, either recovering from a session, waiting to have a turn, or both. Hisao, however, had had enough for the day, by the look of it.
He walked over to Hisayo, who had been waiting for him to finish - they had accomplished the rest of their duties, and she had wanted to know what this magical capacitor looked like in action. It was impressive, certainly, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to spend any longer watching boys stand around straining themselves.
Still, without anything else lined up for the rest of the day, all that was left was to relax. “Say, Hisao, want to go for a walk?” She noticed his breathing was still a bit heavy. “If you’re not too tired, that is.”
He chuckled. “Oh, don’t worry - being tired from magic is different. Like how something can make your body tired without making your brain tired, or vice versa.”
“I guess that makes sense. So you’re okay walking and staying awake, but you don’t want to do any more magic today.”
“Exactly.” They turned onto a nearby path and fell into step beside each other. “It also means that I don’t have to be very careful about magic messing with my heart, which is nice.”
Hisayo sighed. “Sounds like a dream come true, to be honest. I wish I could do more stuff without worrying about my heart.”
“It’s not that different, honestly - I still can’t run any more than you can.”
“But you can use magic instead, right? Just teleport yourself to where you need to be.”
Hisao’s eyes went wide. “Woah! No no no, that is not how that works. Teleportation is super dangerous, and can cause huge problems. Not only do you have to specialize in it during high school, you have to go to university for it, and then you have to get a license, which needs to be renewed every year. Definitely not just something I can do instead of running.”
Hisayo rolled her eyes. “Fine, no teleporting, but what about flying? Or even just using magic to move your legs instead of using the muscles?”
“Eh... Flying’s doable, but takes a lot of magic, so it’s not great for anything other than short bursts. And moving your legs would work, but is kind of a pain relative to just... walking.” He scratched his chin. “Then again, Yuichi has done that kind of stuff sometimes when he needed to.”
“Ah, right.” That reminded her of something. “Did I hear him right, that he had never used a wheelchair before?”
“Yup. We don’t really have those, as far as I know.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“... What do you mean, what do I mean?”
“It’s literally just a chair with wheels, surely someone in your universe has invented it!”
“Oh, yeah, probably. But it’s not really that useful to us. We can use magic if needed, and most of the time we don’t even need to - Yuichi attends most of his classes and stuff remotely, just listening in through magic, so he doesn’t have to spend as much effort.”
“Huh.” One of those words caught Hisayo’s attention. “When you say ‘us’, you mean magicians?”
“Yeah.”
“How many of you are there?”
“Well, at birth, about 1 in every 100 children have some sort of magical ability.” He sighed. “Of course, over time, that power fades, so by age 40 most of those don’t have much left, and by age 60 it’s almost entirely gone from everyone.”
“So they use their power up?”
“Hah! If only. No, that power fades whether we use it or not. Which means we had better use it as much as possible while we still can.”
“And you can’t give that power away to others?”
Hisao grimaced. “Oh no. Trust me, people have tried, and tried very hard... there’s some pretty dark history involved.”
Dark history? “I didn’t expect you guys to have much of that.”
"You didn't?"
"Well, I thought magic would make all that stuff pretty moot. You know, since you can conjure all the resources you need, and treat injuries, and stop time... You can literally un-merge universes, why would you ever need to fight a war?"
Hisao sighed. "I know that magic must seem like a cure-all to you, but it really just causes as many problems as it fixes. It has plenty of limits, like with teleportation, or with how long it'll take to fix this merge. Plus, magicians are still people, and they have the same desires and vices, so it's commonplace to find magic being used to break the law, not just uphold it. And then, of course, there's age."
"Age? What's the problem with age?"
"Like I said, magic is strongest in young people, and fades as you grow older."
"I got that, but... so what?"
Hisao sighed. "Magic is so powerful that society has been shaped around it. But that has also led to huge societal issues - like with age - that don't have easy solutions. Assuming people want to solve them at all."
Hisayo could tell that Hisao was saddened by what he was saying, but she was simply too intrigued to let it go. "If you don't mind, could you... explain those issues?"
Hisao was quiet for a few seconds, his expression remaining dark, but eventually he acquiesced. "Well, basically, society runs on magic, but magic needs talented young people. So there's a huge push to train kids as fast as possible. We have to specialize early, so that we can start working as soon as possible, regardless of how we feel or how ready we are, even in important roles like healthcare - which is a mess in and of itself. Louis could tell you more about that: he considered it early on, but left in a hurry once he got a taste."
"Worse, it's not just training kids, it's having them, too. There's a lot of societal pressure on women to have kids, so that those kids can power the ever-more-demanding world. In more-developed countries, there are huge universal subsidies for having and raising children; in less-developed countries, many women just have as many kids as they can manage, hoping to hit the lottery with a magician who can support them."
He pursed his lips. "But you can see where this is going. Have more kids to support yourself. Those kids grow up and lose their magic. Then they need to have more kids to support themselves. Every generation keeps going further and further into magical debt. If it stays that way for long enough, one day it's just going to collapse. But old people assume that it won't happen in their lifetime, and young people don't have much of a choice."
Hisayo was stunned. "I... I'm sorry. I didn't-"
"It's okay." Hisao smiled wryly. "I do think there's hope - I just don't think the odds are in our favor. We'll make it through, but it probably won't be pretty." He sighed.
There was another uncomfortable silence. "Well, if it's any consolation, I think that if anyone can do it, you can. Looking at how everyone's handling this whole ordeal, it seems like you guys could do anything, if you set your minds to it."
Hisao exhaled sharply through his nose, and smiled a bit more. "I'm not sure I agree with you, but thanks nonetheless."
The weight of that conversation still pressing down on them, neither one of them said anything for a while, instead taking in the beauty of the campus under its new artificial light. However, as they walked towards the edge of campus and into view of the barrier, something bright caught Hisayo's eye.
At first, she was merely curious, but as she looked more closely, a sickening realization came over her. “Oh... Oh no. Oh shit.”
“What?”
She pointed towards a speck of bright pink just beyond the barrier, which was attached to the figure of a broad-shouldered boy, frozen in midair.
“Holy shit... it’s Misha.”
Once the initial astonishment wore off, Hisayo broke into a sprint toward the motionless boy.
“Hisayo, wait! Stop!” She didn’t even hear Hisao’s words, too focused on racing to provide help-
Until she felt something catch her hands, and then her feet, and then her torso.
She looked down and saw that she was wrapped in glowing white chains, anchored into the ground - Hisao’s magic.
She shot him a fiery glare. “What are you doing? Let me go!”
“No, Hisayo, you can't-”
“Let me go, damnit!”
“Hisayo, listen to me! If you accidentally cross the barrier, you’re going to end up just like Misha, frozen in time! You have to stay here, okay?”
It took a second for the gears to turn in Hisayo’s head, but she finally nodded. “Sorry, you’re right, I... I just wanted to-”
“It's okay.” The magical chains melted away, and Hisao put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m going to contact Nurse, and she should get here any second.”
Hisayo looked up at Misha again, and noticed something even more disturbing: his expression, now in clear view, was one of abject terror. His eyes were wide open, as was his mouth, like he was screaming. Something was very wrong.
Seconds later, with some strange sounds, Nurse suddenly appeared, breathing heavily. “I’m here, what’s the emer-” She looked up and saw Misha’s still body. “Oh boy.”
Hisao began to explain: “We were on a walk, and just noticed him frozen there - I have no idea what happened.”
“Whatever it was, he looks terrified.” Hisayo added. “Is he going to be okay?”
After a few deep breaths, Nurse nodded. “Yes, he should be okay. The barrier has protections in place to prevent any damage when something - or someone - crosses it. That said, there’s no way to get him back now. He’s going to be out there until either we fork, or the bubble collapses.” She turned to Hisayo. “There’s nothing else to be done.”
While Hisayo was glad Misha wasn’t hurt, it was still chilling to think that he was... gone. In both of the cases Nurse described, she would never see him again - and, indeed, might never have seen him in the first place.
“I never got to say goodbye.”
-
Craftyatom
- Posts: 374
- Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 11:38 pm
- Location: Washington, USA
Worlds Apart (3/4)
Flies
Hisayo watched, feeling rather helpless, as the girls in front of her hugged. Misha was clearly sad, but it was more of a quiet sorrow - she had had almost a week to come to terms with things. Ibarazaki, on the other hand, had only just experienced it, and was sobbing into her friend’s shoulder.
“It’s okay, Emi. He’ll be okay.”
“I know, I know.” She spoke through sobs. “But I’m going to miss him. Eiji understood me, he understood... everything.”
“Yeah. Misha was-” she sniffed, on the brink of tears herself- “he meant a lot to me, even if I only knew him for a day. I wish I could talk to him again.”
On the other side of the room, Tezuka was impossible to read. Yuika was trying to talk to her, but she seemed distant. That was often a problematic sign, but for this particular red-headed girl, it was hard to tell.
Both Tezuka and Ibarazaki had just lost their counterparts - both boys were found frozen outside the barrier, the latest in a string of such incidents over the past week. This one was worse, though; there had never been two at once before.
By now the pattern had long been understood: whoever - or whatever - was behind all this had been targeting some of the most powerful magicians on campus. None of the girls had been targeted, but the boys were falling like dominos. After Misha, Shinsuke had been furious, vowing to find the culprit. They had found him frozen the very next day.
Louis had followed fairly shortly after; he had managed to get a brief message out before leaving the barrier, but unfortunately it only said “She”. The only two possibilities anyone could think of were that the culprit was a girl - which wouldn’t make sense, since they had almost certainly used magic - or that he was talking about Shinsuke, who was already frozen by that point.
Since then, Hisao and Yuichi had been on high alert, knowing full well that they were obvious targets, as the only remaining boys on the student council. For a day or two, everything had been quiet, and they had wondered whether it was over, despite rumors swirling among the students. But now it was clear that that had simply been wishful thinking.
As part of their precautions, Hisao and Yuichi had been sticking with their counterparts - and since Hisayo and Yuika were both focusing on helping the affected girls, the two boys sat off to one side. Since Hisayo didn’t actually have much to do at the moment, she walked over to join them, just as Hisao started to talk about a new topic.
“Say, Yuichi, have you noticed your magic being... different around your counterpart?”
“Oh yeah, definitely. I feel stronger when Yuika’s around.” He shrugged. “Then again, I don’t know whether that’s an actual magical difference, or just because I’m usually in a better mood when she’s around. Could be either.”
Hisao shook his head. “Nah, it’s real. I haven’t been able to quantify the difference yet, but Hisayo definitely increases my power output. I’m wondering whether that’s why the capacitor is charging faster than expected, despite us losing some of our top students.”
“Hmm. Maybe. You think it’s related to the proximity of our worldlines or something?”
“I don’t know, to be honest. I haven’t really had much time to think about it. I’d mention it to Nurse, but, well...”
“Yeah. She’s got bigger things to deal with.”
Hisao sighed. “Yeah.”
Hisayo decided to chime in: “Well, if nothing else, I guess that means it’s even more important that we stick together. If I can help you avoid getting thrown out of the barrier, I definitely want to.”
The boys nodded, and Yuichi agreed. “Yeah, I’m staying as close to Yuika as I can. Even so, I’m not sure I have much of a chance against... whatever’s attacking us.”
“All we can do is hope, I guess.”
The conversation paused, but only for a moment. “This is going to sound weird, Hisao, but... does any of this make you want to stay?”
“Stay? What do you mean?”
“Well, all these students keep being thrown out of the barrier, but we still don’t know why. And the moment we fork, everything we know gets lost. Whatever happened, it’s going to have to happen all over again in order for us to notice - and then we won’t even have the extra power from our counterparts to help us investigate!”
Hisao rubbed his chin. “Ehhh, I see what you mean, but I’d rather have the whole outside world helping than just a bit of extra power.”
“But that also means they have the whole world to hide in! Whatever’s happening here, at least it’s happening here.”
“True, but what would we even do if we figured it out? Like you said, we can’t just take that knowledge with us.”
Yuichi sighed. “Yeah. I guess I just feel like it’s better to take our time, so that we don’t miss anything. I know everyone wants to go home as soon as possible, but... what’s to stop us staying? The barrier’s stable, and we have all our resources taken care of - so what’s the difference between forking in a week and forking in a month?”
“It’s a gamble. The longer we wait, the greater the chance something damages a worldline, which might make it impossible to fork. And if we can’t fork, then eventually - even if it takes millenia - the barrier will fail, and our universes will tear themselves apart during the merge.” He smiled. “Hisayo is the best friend I could ever ask for, and I’m sad that I won’t remember her, but that’s a small price to pay for the safety of everyone and everything we’ve ever known.”
Yuichi hung his head. “You’re right. We’re always going to want more time, but... in the end, we can’t take that risk.” He wiped a tear from one eye. “I wish it wasn’t like this.”
Hisao put one hand on his shoulder.
“Me too, man. Me too.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As Hisayo shuffled through the crowded auditorium, trying to find a pair of seats for herself and Hisao, flashes of red here and there caught her eye: upon closer inspection, some students were wearing strange scarlet masks. At first she thought that it might’ve been something the boys did for large gatherings like this, but then she realized that some girls were doing it too - indeed, it seemed like they were only worn by pairs of counterparts. Still, the search for a seat kept her distracted, and by the time she sat down, Nurse and Nurse were beginning to address the students.
The Nurse with long hair spoke first: “Alright, if I could have everyone’s attention, please.” She surveyed the crowd, which seemed to take a bit longer than usual, but once the students had quieted down she continued. “First and foremost, I’d like to thank you all for your efforts. Thanks to you all, we’ve had a fairly smooth week, and the capacitor was charged right on schedule. As soon as we’re done here, we’ll begin the process of forking - however, I wanted to give you the chance to ask any lingering questions prior to that.”
Many students raised their hands, but Nurse pointed to a girl near the front. “Do we know how those boys got thrown out of the barrier?”
“Unfortunately, no. We’ve investigated as much as we can, but forking takes priority. Besides, once the fork is complete, our investigation will be moot anyways.”
The next student to be called on was a boy near the middle. “How do we know this merge won’t happen again?”
Nurse chuckled. “Well, the truth is, we don’t. Since each fork makes it so that the respective merge never happened, we have no way of knowing how many merges have been forked. That said, our best guess is that merge events are rare, based on our limited understanding of the universal manifolds involved.”
Before Nurse could pick another student to call on, she was interrupted by a boy in a scarlet mask, who yelled his question at her: “What if we don’t want to fork?”
She was taken aback. “I’m... not sure why you wouldn’t want to, but-”
This time it was a girl in a red mask who interrupted. “Maybe we don’t want to go back to our world!”
Nurse sighed. “Well, the rest of us do, and we can’t exactly leave you behind.”
“Then let us choose which world we go back to!”
She rubbed her temples. “Unfortunately, that’s not how that works. We need to make sure that both universes are balanced, so that we have enough energy to-”
“Then let us swap with our counterparts!” At this suggestion, all of the students in the red masks cheered, though Nurse only grew more frustrated.
“You can’t just leave your lives behind like that, you-”
“But we won’t even remember them!”
“So you don’t even know what you’re going to get! You have no way of knowing, and besides, we don’t have-” Nurse was finally drowned out by a cacophony of voices.
“It’s worth the risk!”
“Who gives a shit about this world?”
“We have as much time as we need, why are you rushing us?”
“You could never understand what it’s like for us!”
“Go fork yourself!”
The masked students began to chant that line, over and over, until-
“ENOUGH!”
The entire auditorium covered their ears, hurt by a shout that had been amplified by a megaphone.
“I may not know much about magic, but I know plenty about unruly students. You will be returning to your own worlds, and that’s final.” Nurse lowered his megaphone and exited the stage, with his counterpart quickly following.
Hisao and Hisayo knew that that was their cue, and they quickly made their way for the exit to the courtyard - they were met by Yuichi and Yuika once they arrived there, all four of them slightly out of breath.
“Man, Hisao, I wish you could tell those guys what you told me.”
“It doesn’t matter now, come on.”
They quickly walked over to the capacitor, which had turned bright yellow over the past week, where they were joined by both Nurses. “Alright, just like we practiced, everyone. Let’s get this over with.”
As they took their positions around it, however - each magician acting as one point of a triangle, and their counterparts standing next to them - a crowd of masked students erupted from the auditorium, and began marching towards the capacitor.
“Shit.” Nurse moved from her position. “Hisao and Yuichi, you focus on getting it going. I’ll try to keep them from interfering.” The boys nodded, their eyes remaining closed in concentration, as she walked over to meet the throng of chanting students.
Luckily, she noticed that unmasked students were also now coming to see what was up. “So, those of you who want to swap - are you prepared to fight your fellow students who want to go home?”
The chanting stopped, and they murmured among themselves, until a girl near the front grabbed the hand of the boy next to her and raised it into the air in defiance. One by one, the pairs of students followed, holding hands and raising them into the air, where they began to glow red.
“Is that a yes?”
“I think it’s a no.” said a deep, warbling voice from behind her. “I think they want to resolve this without violence. What a shame.”
She spun around to see who it was - but wasn’t prepared for what she saw. A dense cloud of black smoke, upon which floated a large red mask, loomed between Nurse and the capacitor.
“And just what are you supposed to be?”
“I am the will of the people.”
“Uh huh. But let me guess: only the ones wearing those stupid masks?”
“The masks merely let them speak without being repressed. Those without them still hold this desire in their hearts.”
“Repressed? I literally just got done letting everyone speak.”
“And yet you did not listen. Perhaps now, that will change.”
The cloud of smoke shifted, warped, grew, and in a split second reached out and grabbed Hisayo, lifting her into the air. She screamed, and was about to yell for Hisao’s help, before realizing that he needed to stay focused on the capacitor. The only thing that mattered now was forking - once that was done, this would all be fixed. She closed her eyes, and prayed that she was still close enough to be helping him.
By this point Nurse was out of patience. She focused on the cloud of smoke, and beams of light erupted from her hands, racing toward it - and then passing right through it. She pouted, focused harder, and the smoke seemed to undulate in response... but remained in place.
“It is strange that you choose not to negotiate, given that you also lack the power to meaningfully fight.”
“Trust me, the second my backup arrives, you’re toast.”
“If you mean the fork, then unfortunately, I don’t have that much time. But, if it will help, I can discharge that capacitor much faster than your lackeys.”
Before anyone could react, a tendril of smoke wrapped around one of the capacitor’s hoses, hoisted it off of the ground, and thrust it into contact with Hisayo’s back.
“NO!”
Pain shot through Hisayo, but she was distracted from it by visions of incredible things - of what was, what had been, what could be, in every universe, all at once. It became impossible to distinguish the burning sensation in her body from the glorious, powerful feeling of having magic at her fingertips. It poured into her, its weight tugging at her soul, stretching her consciousness thin. She could see all of her worldlines, streaming off into infinity, most in directions she had never been able to point before.
One by one, they snapped - and, finally, so did she.
As quickly as it had arrived, the cloud of smoke disappeared, revealing a capacitor which was now a dull brick red again, and dropping Hisayo to the ground.
Yuika was the first to reach her, wheeling over as fast as possible, then throwing herself from her wheelchair onto the ground next to the lifeless girl. “Hisayo, Hisayo, please!” Tears welled up in her eyes as she received no response from her friend. “Not like this, Hisayo, please...”
Hisao and Yuichi, the energy of the capacitor having been torn out from under them, lay on the ground in a daze, which made the Nurses the next ones to reach Hisayo. Unfortunately, they quickly realized that there was nothing to be done. “I’m sorry.”
As Yuika began to bawl, the Nurses’ attention turned to the crowd of students nearby - many of which were now fidgeting under their scarlet masks.
Hisayo watched, feeling rather helpless, as the girls in front of her hugged. Misha was clearly sad, but it was more of a quiet sorrow - she had had almost a week to come to terms with things. Ibarazaki, on the other hand, had only just experienced it, and was sobbing into her friend’s shoulder.
“It’s okay, Emi. He’ll be okay.”
“I know, I know.” She spoke through sobs. “But I’m going to miss him. Eiji understood me, he understood... everything.”
“Yeah. Misha was-” she sniffed, on the brink of tears herself- “he meant a lot to me, even if I only knew him for a day. I wish I could talk to him again.”
On the other side of the room, Tezuka was impossible to read. Yuika was trying to talk to her, but she seemed distant. That was often a problematic sign, but for this particular red-headed girl, it was hard to tell.
Both Tezuka and Ibarazaki had just lost their counterparts - both boys were found frozen outside the barrier, the latest in a string of such incidents over the past week. This one was worse, though; there had never been two at once before.
By now the pattern had long been understood: whoever - or whatever - was behind all this had been targeting some of the most powerful magicians on campus. None of the girls had been targeted, but the boys were falling like dominos. After Misha, Shinsuke had been furious, vowing to find the culprit. They had found him frozen the very next day.
Louis had followed fairly shortly after; he had managed to get a brief message out before leaving the barrier, but unfortunately it only said “She”. The only two possibilities anyone could think of were that the culprit was a girl - which wouldn’t make sense, since they had almost certainly used magic - or that he was talking about Shinsuke, who was already frozen by that point.
Since then, Hisao and Yuichi had been on high alert, knowing full well that they were obvious targets, as the only remaining boys on the student council. For a day or two, everything had been quiet, and they had wondered whether it was over, despite rumors swirling among the students. But now it was clear that that had simply been wishful thinking.
As part of their precautions, Hisao and Yuichi had been sticking with their counterparts - and since Hisayo and Yuika were both focusing on helping the affected girls, the two boys sat off to one side. Since Hisayo didn’t actually have much to do at the moment, she walked over to join them, just as Hisao started to talk about a new topic.
“Say, Yuichi, have you noticed your magic being... different around your counterpart?”
“Oh yeah, definitely. I feel stronger when Yuika’s around.” He shrugged. “Then again, I don’t know whether that’s an actual magical difference, or just because I’m usually in a better mood when she’s around. Could be either.”
Hisao shook his head. “Nah, it’s real. I haven’t been able to quantify the difference yet, but Hisayo definitely increases my power output. I’m wondering whether that’s why the capacitor is charging faster than expected, despite us losing some of our top students.”
“Hmm. Maybe. You think it’s related to the proximity of our worldlines or something?”
“I don’t know, to be honest. I haven’t really had much time to think about it. I’d mention it to Nurse, but, well...”
“Yeah. She’s got bigger things to deal with.”
Hisao sighed. “Yeah.”
Hisayo decided to chime in: “Well, if nothing else, I guess that means it’s even more important that we stick together. If I can help you avoid getting thrown out of the barrier, I definitely want to.”
The boys nodded, and Yuichi agreed. “Yeah, I’m staying as close to Yuika as I can. Even so, I’m not sure I have much of a chance against... whatever’s attacking us.”
“All we can do is hope, I guess.”
The conversation paused, but only for a moment. “This is going to sound weird, Hisao, but... does any of this make you want to stay?”
“Stay? What do you mean?”
“Well, all these students keep being thrown out of the barrier, but we still don’t know why. And the moment we fork, everything we know gets lost. Whatever happened, it’s going to have to happen all over again in order for us to notice - and then we won’t even have the extra power from our counterparts to help us investigate!”
Hisao rubbed his chin. “Ehhh, I see what you mean, but I’d rather have the whole outside world helping than just a bit of extra power.”
“But that also means they have the whole world to hide in! Whatever’s happening here, at least it’s happening here.”
“True, but what would we even do if we figured it out? Like you said, we can’t just take that knowledge with us.”
Yuichi sighed. “Yeah. I guess I just feel like it’s better to take our time, so that we don’t miss anything. I know everyone wants to go home as soon as possible, but... what’s to stop us staying? The barrier’s stable, and we have all our resources taken care of - so what’s the difference between forking in a week and forking in a month?”
“It’s a gamble. The longer we wait, the greater the chance something damages a worldline, which might make it impossible to fork. And if we can’t fork, then eventually - even if it takes millenia - the barrier will fail, and our universes will tear themselves apart during the merge.” He smiled. “Hisayo is the best friend I could ever ask for, and I’m sad that I won’t remember her, but that’s a small price to pay for the safety of everyone and everything we’ve ever known.”
Yuichi hung his head. “You’re right. We’re always going to want more time, but... in the end, we can’t take that risk.” He wiped a tear from one eye. “I wish it wasn’t like this.”
Hisao put one hand on his shoulder.
“Me too, man. Me too.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As Hisayo shuffled through the crowded auditorium, trying to find a pair of seats for herself and Hisao, flashes of red here and there caught her eye: upon closer inspection, some students were wearing strange scarlet masks. At first she thought that it might’ve been something the boys did for large gatherings like this, but then she realized that some girls were doing it too - indeed, it seemed like they were only worn by pairs of counterparts. Still, the search for a seat kept her distracted, and by the time she sat down, Nurse and Nurse were beginning to address the students.
The Nurse with long hair spoke first: “Alright, if I could have everyone’s attention, please.” She surveyed the crowd, which seemed to take a bit longer than usual, but once the students had quieted down she continued. “First and foremost, I’d like to thank you all for your efforts. Thanks to you all, we’ve had a fairly smooth week, and the capacitor was charged right on schedule. As soon as we’re done here, we’ll begin the process of forking - however, I wanted to give you the chance to ask any lingering questions prior to that.”
Many students raised their hands, but Nurse pointed to a girl near the front. “Do we know how those boys got thrown out of the barrier?”
“Unfortunately, no. We’ve investigated as much as we can, but forking takes priority. Besides, once the fork is complete, our investigation will be moot anyways.”
The next student to be called on was a boy near the middle. “How do we know this merge won’t happen again?”
Nurse chuckled. “Well, the truth is, we don’t. Since each fork makes it so that the respective merge never happened, we have no way of knowing how many merges have been forked. That said, our best guess is that merge events are rare, based on our limited understanding of the universal manifolds involved.”
Before Nurse could pick another student to call on, she was interrupted by a boy in a scarlet mask, who yelled his question at her: “What if we don’t want to fork?”
She was taken aback. “I’m... not sure why you wouldn’t want to, but-”
This time it was a girl in a red mask who interrupted. “Maybe we don’t want to go back to our world!”
Nurse sighed. “Well, the rest of us do, and we can’t exactly leave you behind.”
“Then let us choose which world we go back to!”
She rubbed her temples. “Unfortunately, that’s not how that works. We need to make sure that both universes are balanced, so that we have enough energy to-”
“Then let us swap with our counterparts!” At this suggestion, all of the students in the red masks cheered, though Nurse only grew more frustrated.
“You can’t just leave your lives behind like that, you-”
“But we won’t even remember them!”
“So you don’t even know what you’re going to get! You have no way of knowing, and besides, we don’t have-” Nurse was finally drowned out by a cacophony of voices.
“It’s worth the risk!”
“Who gives a shit about this world?”
“We have as much time as we need, why are you rushing us?”
“You could never understand what it’s like for us!”
“Go fork yourself!”
The masked students began to chant that line, over and over, until-
“ENOUGH!”
The entire auditorium covered their ears, hurt by a shout that had been amplified by a megaphone.
“I may not know much about magic, but I know plenty about unruly students. You will be returning to your own worlds, and that’s final.” Nurse lowered his megaphone and exited the stage, with his counterpart quickly following.
Hisao and Hisayo knew that that was their cue, and they quickly made their way for the exit to the courtyard - they were met by Yuichi and Yuika once they arrived there, all four of them slightly out of breath.
“Man, Hisao, I wish you could tell those guys what you told me.”
“It doesn’t matter now, come on.”
They quickly walked over to the capacitor, which had turned bright yellow over the past week, where they were joined by both Nurses. “Alright, just like we practiced, everyone. Let’s get this over with.”
As they took their positions around it, however - each magician acting as one point of a triangle, and their counterparts standing next to them - a crowd of masked students erupted from the auditorium, and began marching towards the capacitor.
“Shit.” Nurse moved from her position. “Hisao and Yuichi, you focus on getting it going. I’ll try to keep them from interfering.” The boys nodded, their eyes remaining closed in concentration, as she walked over to meet the throng of chanting students.
Luckily, she noticed that unmasked students were also now coming to see what was up. “So, those of you who want to swap - are you prepared to fight your fellow students who want to go home?”
The chanting stopped, and they murmured among themselves, until a girl near the front grabbed the hand of the boy next to her and raised it into the air in defiance. One by one, the pairs of students followed, holding hands and raising them into the air, where they began to glow red.
“Is that a yes?”
“I think it’s a no.” said a deep, warbling voice from behind her. “I think they want to resolve this without violence. What a shame.”
She spun around to see who it was - but wasn’t prepared for what she saw. A dense cloud of black smoke, upon which floated a large red mask, loomed between Nurse and the capacitor.
“And just what are you supposed to be?”
“I am the will of the people.”
“Uh huh. But let me guess: only the ones wearing those stupid masks?”
“The masks merely let them speak without being repressed. Those without them still hold this desire in their hearts.”
“Repressed? I literally just got done letting everyone speak.”
“And yet you did not listen. Perhaps now, that will change.”
The cloud of smoke shifted, warped, grew, and in a split second reached out and grabbed Hisayo, lifting her into the air. She screamed, and was about to yell for Hisao’s help, before realizing that he needed to stay focused on the capacitor. The only thing that mattered now was forking - once that was done, this would all be fixed. She closed her eyes, and prayed that she was still close enough to be helping him.
By this point Nurse was out of patience. She focused on the cloud of smoke, and beams of light erupted from her hands, racing toward it - and then passing right through it. She pouted, focused harder, and the smoke seemed to undulate in response... but remained in place.
“It is strange that you choose not to negotiate, given that you also lack the power to meaningfully fight.”
“Trust me, the second my backup arrives, you’re toast.”
“If you mean the fork, then unfortunately, I don’t have that much time. But, if it will help, I can discharge that capacitor much faster than your lackeys.”
Before anyone could react, a tendril of smoke wrapped around one of the capacitor’s hoses, hoisted it off of the ground, and thrust it into contact with Hisayo’s back.
“NO!”
Pain shot through Hisayo, but she was distracted from it by visions of incredible things - of what was, what had been, what could be, in every universe, all at once. It became impossible to distinguish the burning sensation in her body from the glorious, powerful feeling of having magic at her fingertips. It poured into her, its weight tugging at her soul, stretching her consciousness thin. She could see all of her worldlines, streaming off into infinity, most in directions she had never been able to point before.
One by one, they snapped - and, finally, so did she.
As quickly as it had arrived, the cloud of smoke disappeared, revealing a capacitor which was now a dull brick red again, and dropping Hisayo to the ground.
Yuika was the first to reach her, wheeling over as fast as possible, then throwing herself from her wheelchair onto the ground next to the lifeless girl. “Hisayo, Hisayo, please!” Tears welled up in her eyes as she received no response from her friend. “Not like this, Hisayo, please...”
Hisao and Yuichi, the energy of the capacitor having been torn out from under them, lay on the ground in a daze, which made the Nurses the next ones to reach Hisayo. Unfortunately, they quickly realized that there was nothing to be done. “I’m sorry.”
As Yuika began to bawl, the Nurses’ attention turned to the crowd of students nearby - many of which were now fidgeting under their scarlet masks.
-
Craftyatom
- Posts: 374
- Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 11:38 pm
- Location: Washington, USA
Worlds Apart (4/4)
Confession
“You have to believe me, I never wanted to hurt anyone!”
“Bullshit, Kenji.” Hisao’s face remained cold, thinly veiling his rage. “You got together with a bunch of other students who wanted to stop the fork, you all started casting magic, and then a construct just so happened to appear, wearing the same mask as you, and severed all of a student’s worldlines, unbalancing our universes and preventing the fork, just like you wanted.”
“I know it looks bad, and it’s not a coincidence, but I promise - I swear - we had no idea that was going to happen! We were just putting on a light show, not casting any sort of combat magic! And we just wanted to swap, not prevent the fork entirely!”
“What do you mean, ‘not a coincidence’?”
Kenji fidgeted behind his thick glasses. “The scarlet masks had a leader, an organizer. We never met him, but he appeared to us with a construct just like that - a cloud of smoke, wearing the mask.”
“And you never thought this mysterious leader was a problem? Even as students were being thrown out of the barrier?”
“No! Of course he wanted to stay anonymous - we all did! And even if he was behind that stuff, we didn’t mind, because nobody got hurt!” He shook his head. “This is completely different.”
Much as Hisao didn’t want to believe that story, it really did seem to be the truth. Multiple students, boys and girls, had corroborated it. There was little doubt that the masked students hadn’t committed the murder - or rather, that only one of them had.
“Fine. Go back to the cafeteria. We’ll come get you if we have any more questions.”
Kenji stood up to leave, but paused. “Hisao, man, I just want to say, I’m really sorry about-”
“GO.”
Everything had gone completely wrong. Hisayo’s death, as well as being mentally devastating for Hisao, had unbalanced the universes, so it would take hundreds of times as much energy to fork now - if it was even possible. The sheer amount of energy involved had also severed all of her worldlines, meaning that there was no way to balance things out. Most of the people who would normally have helped with this ordeal were frozen outside of the barrier. And despite digging as deep as possible into the only leads he had, he was really no closer to knowing who was behind it all.
He tried to go through it again in his head: what did he know?
The killer was probably also the one who had frozen the other students. But why freeze them at all? It was easier than killing them, sure, but harder than doing nothing at all. It did mean that they weren’t around to help with the fork or protect Hisayo - but could the killer really have seen that far in advance? The first freeze was almost a week ago! And none of this information had anything to do with Louis’s final message, either!
The killer was also almost certainly a boy - they had to have been on campus in the middle of the night when the merge happened, and they had to be a magician. Then again, how certain was he about that? How certain was he about anything?
Worst of all, how certain was he that any of this mattered anymore?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"It just doesn't make sense."
"Yeah. I'm stumped too." Yuichi's face was puzzled, in contrast to Hisao and Yuika beside him, who just looked empty. "Do you think we have much of a chance to figure it out any more? Or is it too late now?"
"I don't know." Hisao sighed. "I just don't know."
"But, I mean... you're going to keep trying, right? Not just for Hisayo, but for yourself - some of the students think that the only way to rebalance the universes would be to kill you!"
Indeed, Hisao had heard many rumors about students willing to kill him and restore the balance. It was the easiest solution, after all - even worse, he wasn't sure that there was a better one. "They might be right."
"But... You wouldn't let them do that, would you?"
"I don't know. I want to believe that there's a way to avoid it, but... if that's the only way, then that's what I'll do." He had heard some promising things from the scarlet mask members he had interrogated - they were close to being able to swap worldlines - but who knows whether they'd ever be able to patch up Hisayo's absence properly.
"Really? You're not... afraid to die?"
Hisao chuckled grimly. "I don't know anymore. But if I can help somebody else in the process, then maybe that's all I can hope for."
"Wow." Yuichi took a moment to think of what to say. "You're a braver man than I, Hisao. I couldn't be that selfless. Especially now that Yuika is here."
Hisao considered talking about how he used to have Hisayo, but decided not to bother. He just kept silent, and the conversation died down for a bit as they approached the edge of campus, where Hisayo had first seen Misha frozen outside, what felt like forever ago.
Yuichi tried to start things up again - he was the only one of the three, it seemed, who felt like talking. "Speaking of students, have those scarlet mask guys given you any more trouble?"
"Nah, they've been pretty quiet since we interrogated them, though I think they're still trying to figure out how to swap worldlines. Why?"
"Well, I mean, you're kind of caught up in this forking debate they're having, so-"
"Debate? It's a debate now?"
Yuichi laughed. "Come on, you interrogated some of them, you must've seen how desperate they were to swap their worlds - that kind of desperation could lead them to do some pretty crazy stuff."
"I guess. But it seemed like they wanted to delay the fork - and like you said, me being alive is currently the single biggest thing holding it back."
"So maybe they're trying to keep you alive!"
Hisao laughed - his first proper, hearty laugh of the day. "What, you think the scarlet masks have a plot to get me to eat right?"
Yuichi smiled too. "Or to throw you out of the barrier."
Before he could fully process those words, Hisao felt an invisible force slam into him, knocking him up into the air, tumbling end over end. The dim blue glow of the barrier seemed to get brighter each time he saw it, and he instinctively reached out with both hands for stability.
Glowing white chains flew from his fingertips, and the one from his left hand made contact with the ground, anchoring itself in the soil. He focused on wrenching it taut, and it did manage to stop him - but in the process, he felt a sickening pop from his left shoulder, followed by intense pain, which caused him to scream.
That scream was cut short as he hit the ground, knocking the wind out of him and causing even more pain. He felt another powerful push, and tried his best to pull the chain in, clawing at the ground with his uninjured hand. He could feel his feet begin to go numb as the time differential ate at them, and desperately pulled himself forward; they regained feeling, and he opened his eyes to see his friend floating in front of him. "Yu... Yuichi?"
Something was terribly wrong. Hisao closed his eyes, and tried to ignore the pain, focusing on sending a message to Nurse - but he didn't get a response.
"Sorry, Hisao - not gonna work. Don't you think that's the first thing Shinsuke tried?"
Shinsuke - all of the others - Hisayo-
Another wave rammed into him, causing him to scream again as the pain got worse, but this time he was securely chained down to the ground, and didn't move an inch.
"I don't want to hurt you, Hisao. Just let go, and the pain can stop."
Hisao opened his eyes, breathing heavily, and looked up. "Eat shit, Yuichi."
As expected, another wave of magic coursed towards Hisao - this time a bright yellow flame instead of a blast of pressure - but he was ready for it. A smooth transparent shield surrounded him, glowing white as the fire washed over it. Still, it was incredibly difficult; Yuichi seemed stronger than usual. Part of that was probably because this wasn't a training skirmish, but part of it must have been-
Another burst of flames, eating away at Hisao's shield enough that he instinctively began to pump heat into the ground beneath him for thermal balance.
"I can do this all day, Hisao. And I know for a fact that you can't."
Knowing that he didn't need to put as much power into his shield while Yuichi was monologuing, Hisao took a potshot, throwing a few bright white arrows at his opponent from various directions - all were quickly blocked, but they gave him a bit more time to rebuild his shield.
Not as much as he had wanted, though - the next wave of flame still had him on the ropes. He needed a better stall to stabilize with, or else he'd never get off the back foot; Yuichi was simply too strong while he still had...
Yuika. Of course.
Hisao didn't have time to consider the ethics of throwing missiles at a non-magician - the moment he got a second to breathe, he fired another salvo, except with two of the arrows aimed at Yuika.
It had the intended effect: Yuichi easily blocked anything aimed at him, but had to split his focus to defend Yuika as well.
Unfortunately, Hisao's victory was a small one: the next attack was no longer a yellow flame, but instead a blue-hot jet. "Don't you dare put even a single scratch on her, Hisao."
Of course - she wasn't just augmenting his power, she was the reason he was doing all of this. And that made her an even juicier target. Hisao fired his entire next salvo at her, knowing it was the best shot he had.
Yuichi blocked everything, but before he could express his anger, Hisao rocketed towards him, hitting him square in the chest and knocking him backwards, the two of them tumbling to the ground.
As expected, Yuichi quickly positioned himself between Hisao and Yuika. Luckily, that also meant that he was between Hisao and the barrier - meaning Hisao didn't have to be as worried about keeping himself chained down. He used the energy that freed up to strengthen his shield, and stood up, ready to see what was next. Fortunately, Yuichi was giving him time to do so.
"You know, I don't need to keep you alive, Hisao. I can always kill another student to unbalance the universes again. Maybe one of the girls whose counterparts are already outside the barrier?"
Hisao tried not to think about that, and focused on handling the upcoming stream of fire. Not too bad - he was able to handle it with plenty of energy left for a spray of arrows. None of them connected, of course, but that was to be expected. Still, now that he had some stability, he needed to think about the long game.
Yuichi was right - with Yuika on his side, he could definitely outlast Hisao, and the shoulder injury was only making that worse. Hisao needed a way to end the fight before he ran out of time. Fortunately, there was an obvious way: Yuika. Unfortunately, that's exactly what Yuichi was expecting. Hisao needed a surprise.
After the next cycle of flame, he sent his arrows in every direction, each of them curving around to target Yuika. Yuichi easily shot them all out of the air, but it gave Hisao the opening he needed. He waited a split second longer than before, then launched himself toward Yuichi again.
Yuichi quickly swung to one side, and Hisao went flying past him, having to use his chains to keep himself from sailing right out past the barrier, though this time he was prepared, and had much finer control. Yuichi turned around, initially pleased to have dodged his opponent and get him closer to the barrier - but his smile quickly faded.
Hisao had landed right next to Yuika, pulled her out of her wheelchair, and chained her to him, using her as a human shield. "You know, Yuichi, maybe I will leave the barrier. You don't mind if I take Yuika with me, do you?"
"D-Don't, don't, you... Let's talk about this." Yuichi slowly descended to the ground, trying to look disarming, though he was clearly concentrating on finding an opening.
"That doesn't sound like the 'will of the people' I know - surely the time for words is over!"
"Hisao, please, you don't understand, I- Look, just call Nurse, and we'll put an end to this."
"Smart choice." Making sure not to loosen his grip on Yuika, Hisao concentrated on sending a message to Nurse. He didn't include much detail, simply asking for her to come help immediately.
Almost as soon as he had sent that message, Nurse rounded the corner in a flash, coming to a stop nearby. Moments later, tens of boys appeared, all dashing into position by her, looking ready for a fight. They must have been summoned to help apprehend Yuichi - but how had they gotten there on such short notice?
No matter. "Yuichi is the killer, and the one who threw those students out of the barrier."
"He's lying!" Yuichi's words caught Hisao by surprise. "Hisao is the killer, and was trying to throw me out of the barrier so that I couldn't tell anyone! That's why I called you as soon as I could!"
Hisao was dumbfounded. "What? No, I called for Nurse!"
Nurse eyed Hisao warily. "Yuichi called me first." So that's how she had gotten there so quickly.
"Only because he kept blocking my messages - I tried to contact you minutes ago!"
"Those are big words coming from the one holding a girl hostage."
Hisao couldn't believe this. "Of course I'm holding her hostage! If I let her go, he'll try to push me out of the barrier!"
"He's trying to use her as leverage - he killed Hisayo, and now he's going to kill Yuika! Please you have to-"
"SHUT UP!" Hisao couldn't abide that accusation. Fed up with Yuichi's games, he summoned another chain, and wrapped it around Yuika's frail neck. "You know damn well I'm no killer, Yuichi. But maybe losing Hisayo changed that. Want to find out?" He tightened the chain, and Yuika's breathing became labored.
"No, please!" He was almost in tears. "Somebody do something!"
"How about you do something, Yuichi? How about you tell the truth, and I'll let her go?"
"I am telling the truth! Hisao's behind all of this!"
Hisao tightened the chains further, and Yuika began to reflexively claw at them, tears falling from her eyes.
"Hisao, stop!" Nurse commanded, but Hisao kept the chains taut, slowly squeezing the life out of the girl in front of him, wondering just how far this standoff would have to go.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Yuichi broke, falling to the ground. "Alright! Alright, alright, I did it! I did it, so please, just don't hurt her!"
Hisao finally dissolved the chain around Yuika's neck, and she coughed violently before finally taking deep, gasping breaths. Still, Hisao kept the two of them chained together. "Tell us how you did it."
"I-I wanted to stop the fork. I tried to postpone it by tossing the most powerful magicians out of the barrier, then by gathering like-minded students, but it didn't work. So instead, while Hisao was trying to use the capacitor to fork, I discharged the capacitor into Hisayo, severing her worldlines and preventing the fork."
"Now do you believe me?" Hisao prayed that that had been enough.
Nurse took a few moments to think, then motioned to some of the students behind her. "Fine. Subdue Yuichi." They approached the boy lying on the ground and encased his hands in magical shackles.
Hisao breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you. Finally." He dissolved the remaining chains around Yuika, who fell to the ground in front of him.
"Now subdue Hisao as well."
It took a moment for Hisao to comprehend what Nurse had said. "What? You just got a full confession out of Yuichi!" He let another pair of boys cast their magic on him, but remained indignant.
"A forced confession. For all we know, he was lying to save Yuika."
Before Hisao could express his disagreement with that theory, a quiet, raspy voice jumped in. "No."
All eyes immediately fell on Yuika, who was weakly holding herself up with her arms.
"He's telling the truth.” She struggled to speak between coughs. “Yuichi and I... we killed Hisayo."
Nurse’s poker face finally fell apart. “You... what? Both of you? How? Why?”
“You don’t understand! Nobody understands!” yelled Yuichi. “From the moment we met, Yuika and I, we... We’re everything to each other! She’s not like anyone I’ve ever met, and I... I love her!”
Nobody dared to interrupt. “Ever since, everyone has been trying to pull us apart, to send us back to different worlds. But I refuse to return alone!” The magical shackles on his hands glowed dimly. “I will do anything to stay with her!”
“I... see.” Nurse thought that for a bit. “And Yuika, you feel the same?”
“Absolutely. He’s everything I ever wanted.” She sighed. “That’s why I performed the merge in the first place.”
Nurse’s eyes went wide. “You caused the merge?”
“I didn’t expect it to work. But what did I have to lose? I just wanted someone who understood me.” She smiled. “And it worked out. I wish it hadn’t caused all... this. But that’s the price we had to pay.”
Yuichi butted in. “See? We’re not villains! We never wanted to hurt anyone, but you kept trying to separate us! We tried everything we could to buy time, to find a way to swap... but in the end, we couldn’t do it. There was no way for us to return to the same world, and now there’s no way for anyone to return to their world.”
“You’re wrong.” Everyone turned to Hisao, surprised. “There is a way back, and one that lets you return together. If what the old scarlet mask members are saying is true, then I can swap worldlines with Yuika. That should be relatively balanced, and both of you would end up in the same universe.”
It took Yuichi a second to think about that, but eventually, he dismissed it. “Look, even if you were willing to do that, which I doubt you-”
“I am.”
“Oh. Well, uh, anyways, there’s still a huge deficit. It would take years for us to charge the capacitor enough - longer, since many of the most powerful magicians are frozen now.”
Nurse chimed in: “I might have a solution to that.” She pointed to Yuichi. “I had been thinking about how to punish the killer, since it would have to be done before the fork. Without being cruel or unusual, the only real option is some sort of prison - but the longer we keep them imprisoned, the longer everyone else has to wait for the fork; it’d be kind of like imprisoning everyone.”
“Luckily, we should be able to make a smaller version of the time bubble surrounding the school. It would only slow time outside, not stop it, but it would be more than enough to serve as a jail - and whoever was inside could also spend all of that spare time charging the capacitor.”
Yuichi’s eyes went wide. “B-But, if you did that, would you...”
“Given that Yuika was an accessory to the murder, I think it’s only fair that she serves that sentence too.”
“And her presence would help speed up the charging process”, added Hisao.
Yuichi turned to his counterpart. “Yuika, would you...?”
She smiled. “Of course.”
“We accept! The sooner we can get started, the better.”
Nurse chuckled. “Now, do keep in mind, you’ll need to be very careful in there - we can’t come save you, and if either of you have your worldlines damaged, this whole plan will fall apart. You’ll basically need to create a self-sustaining house of your own - on top of charging the capacitor.”
“Yes ma’am - we’d be glad to.”
The purple-haired woman sighed. “You could at least try to be a little remorseful about your punishment.”
Yuichi laughed, but Yuika’s face darkened. “I know. Hisayo was a close friend. I won’t forget why we’re in there.”
Yuichi’s smile disappeared. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“We’re sorry.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“You’re sure we can’t go a few more times?” The middle-aged man in a wheelchair smiled, as did the middle-aged woman in a wheelchair next to him.
“Sorry, Yuichi. The capacitor was already mostly done when you came out at 40, so I’ve already given you a bonus decade. Any more, and you might run into problems with your declining magic.
He sighed. “Fair enough. Ready to call it quits, dear?”
Yuika reached out and held his hand. “Of course.”
“In that case, let’s see what we can do about that fork.”
It had only been two days since the plan had been hatched, but it had worked perfectly. Students had worked to create a time bubble that lasted an hour on the outside, but a year on the inside. Within it were Yuichi, Yuika, a tent for them to live in, and the capacitor. After each year, one of the Nurses made sure they were healthy, checked that the capacitor was in good shape, and then gave the go-ahead for the cycle to repeat.
But finally, after 32 years, time was up.
Students from all over campus gathered to swap worldlines with each other as needed, making sure that they were going to the right universe. And, like before, Nurse, Hisao, and Yuichi approached the now bright white capacitor, their counterparts close behind them.
Hisao turned to Yuichi. “You know there’s a decent chance you two end up as brother and sister once you go back, right?”
“Yeah. That’s okay.”
Yuika nodded. “As long as we’re together, that’s all that matters.”
“Fair enough.” Hisao turned to the Nurses. “How are these schools going to handle having the worldlines of both boys and girls, anyways?”
The Nurse from Hisao’s universe shrugged. “Ah, that’s easy. They’ll probably just retroactively become co-ed.”
Her counterpart nodded. “Honestly, they probably should’ve been anyways. I, for one, will not miss an all-girls Yamaku.”
Nurse chuckled. “Amen to that.”
They said their last goodbyes, addressed the students one final time, and then took their places. Unlike the previous attempt, the capacitor quickly came to life, and after only a minute, its energy was released, breaking the barrier and flowing out into every corner of the universe, gradually levering the two distinct worlds apart again.
Finally, suddenly, long before any of this had never happened, Yuichi and Yuika smiled at each other in the school courtyard, hand in hand.
And not too far away, in a direction nobody could point, Hisao trudged through the snow, wondering who had managed to slip a note into his math textbook.
“You have to believe me, I never wanted to hurt anyone!”
“Bullshit, Kenji.” Hisao’s face remained cold, thinly veiling his rage. “You got together with a bunch of other students who wanted to stop the fork, you all started casting magic, and then a construct just so happened to appear, wearing the same mask as you, and severed all of a student’s worldlines, unbalancing our universes and preventing the fork, just like you wanted.”
“I know it looks bad, and it’s not a coincidence, but I promise - I swear - we had no idea that was going to happen! We were just putting on a light show, not casting any sort of combat magic! And we just wanted to swap, not prevent the fork entirely!”
“What do you mean, ‘not a coincidence’?”
Kenji fidgeted behind his thick glasses. “The scarlet masks had a leader, an organizer. We never met him, but he appeared to us with a construct just like that - a cloud of smoke, wearing the mask.”
“And you never thought this mysterious leader was a problem? Even as students were being thrown out of the barrier?”
“No! Of course he wanted to stay anonymous - we all did! And even if he was behind that stuff, we didn’t mind, because nobody got hurt!” He shook his head. “This is completely different.”
Much as Hisao didn’t want to believe that story, it really did seem to be the truth. Multiple students, boys and girls, had corroborated it. There was little doubt that the masked students hadn’t committed the murder - or rather, that only one of them had.
“Fine. Go back to the cafeteria. We’ll come get you if we have any more questions.”
Kenji stood up to leave, but paused. “Hisao, man, I just want to say, I’m really sorry about-”
“GO.”
Everything had gone completely wrong. Hisayo’s death, as well as being mentally devastating for Hisao, had unbalanced the universes, so it would take hundreds of times as much energy to fork now - if it was even possible. The sheer amount of energy involved had also severed all of her worldlines, meaning that there was no way to balance things out. Most of the people who would normally have helped with this ordeal were frozen outside of the barrier. And despite digging as deep as possible into the only leads he had, he was really no closer to knowing who was behind it all.
He tried to go through it again in his head: what did he know?
The killer was probably also the one who had frozen the other students. But why freeze them at all? It was easier than killing them, sure, but harder than doing nothing at all. It did mean that they weren’t around to help with the fork or protect Hisayo - but could the killer really have seen that far in advance? The first freeze was almost a week ago! And none of this information had anything to do with Louis’s final message, either!
The killer was also almost certainly a boy - they had to have been on campus in the middle of the night when the merge happened, and they had to be a magician. Then again, how certain was he about that? How certain was he about anything?
Worst of all, how certain was he that any of this mattered anymore?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"It just doesn't make sense."
"Yeah. I'm stumped too." Yuichi's face was puzzled, in contrast to Hisao and Yuika beside him, who just looked empty. "Do you think we have much of a chance to figure it out any more? Or is it too late now?"
"I don't know." Hisao sighed. "I just don't know."
"But, I mean... you're going to keep trying, right? Not just for Hisayo, but for yourself - some of the students think that the only way to rebalance the universes would be to kill you!"
Indeed, Hisao had heard many rumors about students willing to kill him and restore the balance. It was the easiest solution, after all - even worse, he wasn't sure that there was a better one. "They might be right."
"But... You wouldn't let them do that, would you?"
"I don't know. I want to believe that there's a way to avoid it, but... if that's the only way, then that's what I'll do." He had heard some promising things from the scarlet mask members he had interrogated - they were close to being able to swap worldlines - but who knows whether they'd ever be able to patch up Hisayo's absence properly.
"Really? You're not... afraid to die?"
Hisao chuckled grimly. "I don't know anymore. But if I can help somebody else in the process, then maybe that's all I can hope for."
"Wow." Yuichi took a moment to think of what to say. "You're a braver man than I, Hisao. I couldn't be that selfless. Especially now that Yuika is here."
Hisao considered talking about how he used to have Hisayo, but decided not to bother. He just kept silent, and the conversation died down for a bit as they approached the edge of campus, where Hisayo had first seen Misha frozen outside, what felt like forever ago.
Yuichi tried to start things up again - he was the only one of the three, it seemed, who felt like talking. "Speaking of students, have those scarlet mask guys given you any more trouble?"
"Nah, they've been pretty quiet since we interrogated them, though I think they're still trying to figure out how to swap worldlines. Why?"
"Well, I mean, you're kind of caught up in this forking debate they're having, so-"
"Debate? It's a debate now?"
Yuichi laughed. "Come on, you interrogated some of them, you must've seen how desperate they were to swap their worlds - that kind of desperation could lead them to do some pretty crazy stuff."
"I guess. But it seemed like they wanted to delay the fork - and like you said, me being alive is currently the single biggest thing holding it back."
"So maybe they're trying to keep you alive!"
Hisao laughed - his first proper, hearty laugh of the day. "What, you think the scarlet masks have a plot to get me to eat right?"
Yuichi smiled too. "Or to throw you out of the barrier."
Before he could fully process those words, Hisao felt an invisible force slam into him, knocking him up into the air, tumbling end over end. The dim blue glow of the barrier seemed to get brighter each time he saw it, and he instinctively reached out with both hands for stability.
Glowing white chains flew from his fingertips, and the one from his left hand made contact with the ground, anchoring itself in the soil. He focused on wrenching it taut, and it did manage to stop him - but in the process, he felt a sickening pop from his left shoulder, followed by intense pain, which caused him to scream.
That scream was cut short as he hit the ground, knocking the wind out of him and causing even more pain. He felt another powerful push, and tried his best to pull the chain in, clawing at the ground with his uninjured hand. He could feel his feet begin to go numb as the time differential ate at them, and desperately pulled himself forward; they regained feeling, and he opened his eyes to see his friend floating in front of him. "Yu... Yuichi?"
Something was terribly wrong. Hisao closed his eyes, and tried to ignore the pain, focusing on sending a message to Nurse - but he didn't get a response.
"Sorry, Hisao - not gonna work. Don't you think that's the first thing Shinsuke tried?"
Shinsuke - all of the others - Hisayo-
Another wave rammed into him, causing him to scream again as the pain got worse, but this time he was securely chained down to the ground, and didn't move an inch.
"I don't want to hurt you, Hisao. Just let go, and the pain can stop."
Hisao opened his eyes, breathing heavily, and looked up. "Eat shit, Yuichi."
As expected, another wave of magic coursed towards Hisao - this time a bright yellow flame instead of a blast of pressure - but he was ready for it. A smooth transparent shield surrounded him, glowing white as the fire washed over it. Still, it was incredibly difficult; Yuichi seemed stronger than usual. Part of that was probably because this wasn't a training skirmish, but part of it must have been-
Another burst of flames, eating away at Hisao's shield enough that he instinctively began to pump heat into the ground beneath him for thermal balance.
"I can do this all day, Hisao. And I know for a fact that you can't."
Knowing that he didn't need to put as much power into his shield while Yuichi was monologuing, Hisao took a potshot, throwing a few bright white arrows at his opponent from various directions - all were quickly blocked, but they gave him a bit more time to rebuild his shield.
Not as much as he had wanted, though - the next wave of flame still had him on the ropes. He needed a better stall to stabilize with, or else he'd never get off the back foot; Yuichi was simply too strong while he still had...
Yuika. Of course.
Hisao didn't have time to consider the ethics of throwing missiles at a non-magician - the moment he got a second to breathe, he fired another salvo, except with two of the arrows aimed at Yuika.
It had the intended effect: Yuichi easily blocked anything aimed at him, but had to split his focus to defend Yuika as well.
Unfortunately, Hisao's victory was a small one: the next attack was no longer a yellow flame, but instead a blue-hot jet. "Don't you dare put even a single scratch on her, Hisao."
Of course - she wasn't just augmenting his power, she was the reason he was doing all of this. And that made her an even juicier target. Hisao fired his entire next salvo at her, knowing it was the best shot he had.
Yuichi blocked everything, but before he could express his anger, Hisao rocketed towards him, hitting him square in the chest and knocking him backwards, the two of them tumbling to the ground.
As expected, Yuichi quickly positioned himself between Hisao and Yuika. Luckily, that also meant that he was between Hisao and the barrier - meaning Hisao didn't have to be as worried about keeping himself chained down. He used the energy that freed up to strengthen his shield, and stood up, ready to see what was next. Fortunately, Yuichi was giving him time to do so.
"You know, I don't need to keep you alive, Hisao. I can always kill another student to unbalance the universes again. Maybe one of the girls whose counterparts are already outside the barrier?"
Hisao tried not to think about that, and focused on handling the upcoming stream of fire. Not too bad - he was able to handle it with plenty of energy left for a spray of arrows. None of them connected, of course, but that was to be expected. Still, now that he had some stability, he needed to think about the long game.
Yuichi was right - with Yuika on his side, he could definitely outlast Hisao, and the shoulder injury was only making that worse. Hisao needed a way to end the fight before he ran out of time. Fortunately, there was an obvious way: Yuika. Unfortunately, that's exactly what Yuichi was expecting. Hisao needed a surprise.
After the next cycle of flame, he sent his arrows in every direction, each of them curving around to target Yuika. Yuichi easily shot them all out of the air, but it gave Hisao the opening he needed. He waited a split second longer than before, then launched himself toward Yuichi again.
Yuichi quickly swung to one side, and Hisao went flying past him, having to use his chains to keep himself from sailing right out past the barrier, though this time he was prepared, and had much finer control. Yuichi turned around, initially pleased to have dodged his opponent and get him closer to the barrier - but his smile quickly faded.
Hisao had landed right next to Yuika, pulled her out of her wheelchair, and chained her to him, using her as a human shield. "You know, Yuichi, maybe I will leave the barrier. You don't mind if I take Yuika with me, do you?"
"D-Don't, don't, you... Let's talk about this." Yuichi slowly descended to the ground, trying to look disarming, though he was clearly concentrating on finding an opening.
"That doesn't sound like the 'will of the people' I know - surely the time for words is over!"
"Hisao, please, you don't understand, I- Look, just call Nurse, and we'll put an end to this."
"Smart choice." Making sure not to loosen his grip on Yuika, Hisao concentrated on sending a message to Nurse. He didn't include much detail, simply asking for her to come help immediately.
Almost as soon as he had sent that message, Nurse rounded the corner in a flash, coming to a stop nearby. Moments later, tens of boys appeared, all dashing into position by her, looking ready for a fight. They must have been summoned to help apprehend Yuichi - but how had they gotten there on such short notice?
No matter. "Yuichi is the killer, and the one who threw those students out of the barrier."
"He's lying!" Yuichi's words caught Hisao by surprise. "Hisao is the killer, and was trying to throw me out of the barrier so that I couldn't tell anyone! That's why I called you as soon as I could!"
Hisao was dumbfounded. "What? No, I called for Nurse!"
Nurse eyed Hisao warily. "Yuichi called me first." So that's how she had gotten there so quickly.
"Only because he kept blocking my messages - I tried to contact you minutes ago!"
"Those are big words coming from the one holding a girl hostage."
Hisao couldn't believe this. "Of course I'm holding her hostage! If I let her go, he'll try to push me out of the barrier!"
"He's trying to use her as leverage - he killed Hisayo, and now he's going to kill Yuika! Please you have to-"
"SHUT UP!" Hisao couldn't abide that accusation. Fed up with Yuichi's games, he summoned another chain, and wrapped it around Yuika's frail neck. "You know damn well I'm no killer, Yuichi. But maybe losing Hisayo changed that. Want to find out?" He tightened the chain, and Yuika's breathing became labored.
"No, please!" He was almost in tears. "Somebody do something!"
"How about you do something, Yuichi? How about you tell the truth, and I'll let her go?"
"I am telling the truth! Hisao's behind all of this!"
Hisao tightened the chains further, and Yuika began to reflexively claw at them, tears falling from her eyes.
"Hisao, stop!" Nurse commanded, but Hisao kept the chains taut, slowly squeezing the life out of the girl in front of him, wondering just how far this standoff would have to go.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Yuichi broke, falling to the ground. "Alright! Alright, alright, I did it! I did it, so please, just don't hurt her!"
Hisao finally dissolved the chain around Yuika's neck, and she coughed violently before finally taking deep, gasping breaths. Still, Hisao kept the two of them chained together. "Tell us how you did it."
"I-I wanted to stop the fork. I tried to postpone it by tossing the most powerful magicians out of the barrier, then by gathering like-minded students, but it didn't work. So instead, while Hisao was trying to use the capacitor to fork, I discharged the capacitor into Hisayo, severing her worldlines and preventing the fork."
"Now do you believe me?" Hisao prayed that that had been enough.
Nurse took a few moments to think, then motioned to some of the students behind her. "Fine. Subdue Yuichi." They approached the boy lying on the ground and encased his hands in magical shackles.
Hisao breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you. Finally." He dissolved the remaining chains around Yuika, who fell to the ground in front of him.
"Now subdue Hisao as well."
It took a moment for Hisao to comprehend what Nurse had said. "What? You just got a full confession out of Yuichi!" He let another pair of boys cast their magic on him, but remained indignant.
"A forced confession. For all we know, he was lying to save Yuika."
Before Hisao could express his disagreement with that theory, a quiet, raspy voice jumped in. "No."
All eyes immediately fell on Yuika, who was weakly holding herself up with her arms.
"He's telling the truth.” She struggled to speak between coughs. “Yuichi and I... we killed Hisayo."
Nurse’s poker face finally fell apart. “You... what? Both of you? How? Why?”
“You don’t understand! Nobody understands!” yelled Yuichi. “From the moment we met, Yuika and I, we... We’re everything to each other! She’s not like anyone I’ve ever met, and I... I love her!”
Nobody dared to interrupt. “Ever since, everyone has been trying to pull us apart, to send us back to different worlds. But I refuse to return alone!” The magical shackles on his hands glowed dimly. “I will do anything to stay with her!”
“I... see.” Nurse thought that for a bit. “And Yuika, you feel the same?”
“Absolutely. He’s everything I ever wanted.” She sighed. “That’s why I performed the merge in the first place.”
Nurse’s eyes went wide. “You caused the merge?”
“I didn’t expect it to work. But what did I have to lose? I just wanted someone who understood me.” She smiled. “And it worked out. I wish it hadn’t caused all... this. But that’s the price we had to pay.”
Yuichi butted in. “See? We’re not villains! We never wanted to hurt anyone, but you kept trying to separate us! We tried everything we could to buy time, to find a way to swap... but in the end, we couldn’t do it. There was no way for us to return to the same world, and now there’s no way for anyone to return to their world.”
“You’re wrong.” Everyone turned to Hisao, surprised. “There is a way back, and one that lets you return together. If what the old scarlet mask members are saying is true, then I can swap worldlines with Yuika. That should be relatively balanced, and both of you would end up in the same universe.”
It took Yuichi a second to think about that, but eventually, he dismissed it. “Look, even if you were willing to do that, which I doubt you-”
“I am.”
“Oh. Well, uh, anyways, there’s still a huge deficit. It would take years for us to charge the capacitor enough - longer, since many of the most powerful magicians are frozen now.”
Nurse chimed in: “I might have a solution to that.” She pointed to Yuichi. “I had been thinking about how to punish the killer, since it would have to be done before the fork. Without being cruel or unusual, the only real option is some sort of prison - but the longer we keep them imprisoned, the longer everyone else has to wait for the fork; it’d be kind of like imprisoning everyone.”
“Luckily, we should be able to make a smaller version of the time bubble surrounding the school. It would only slow time outside, not stop it, but it would be more than enough to serve as a jail - and whoever was inside could also spend all of that spare time charging the capacitor.”
Yuichi’s eyes went wide. “B-But, if you did that, would you...”
“Given that Yuika was an accessory to the murder, I think it’s only fair that she serves that sentence too.”
“And her presence would help speed up the charging process”, added Hisao.
Yuichi turned to his counterpart. “Yuika, would you...?”
She smiled. “Of course.”
“We accept! The sooner we can get started, the better.”
Nurse chuckled. “Now, do keep in mind, you’ll need to be very careful in there - we can’t come save you, and if either of you have your worldlines damaged, this whole plan will fall apart. You’ll basically need to create a self-sustaining house of your own - on top of charging the capacitor.”
“Yes ma’am - we’d be glad to.”
The purple-haired woman sighed. “You could at least try to be a little remorseful about your punishment.”
Yuichi laughed, but Yuika’s face darkened. “I know. Hisayo was a close friend. I won’t forget why we’re in there.”
Yuichi’s smile disappeared. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“We’re sorry.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“You’re sure we can’t go a few more times?” The middle-aged man in a wheelchair smiled, as did the middle-aged woman in a wheelchair next to him.
“Sorry, Yuichi. The capacitor was already mostly done when you came out at 40, so I’ve already given you a bonus decade. Any more, and you might run into problems with your declining magic.
He sighed. “Fair enough. Ready to call it quits, dear?”
Yuika reached out and held his hand. “Of course.”
“In that case, let’s see what we can do about that fork.”
It had only been two days since the plan had been hatched, but it had worked perfectly. Students had worked to create a time bubble that lasted an hour on the outside, but a year on the inside. Within it were Yuichi, Yuika, a tent for them to live in, and the capacitor. After each year, one of the Nurses made sure they were healthy, checked that the capacitor was in good shape, and then gave the go-ahead for the cycle to repeat.
But finally, after 32 years, time was up.
Students from all over campus gathered to swap worldlines with each other as needed, making sure that they were going to the right universe. And, like before, Nurse, Hisao, and Yuichi approached the now bright white capacitor, their counterparts close behind them.
Hisao turned to Yuichi. “You know there’s a decent chance you two end up as brother and sister once you go back, right?”
“Yeah. That’s okay.”
Yuika nodded. “As long as we’re together, that’s all that matters.”
“Fair enough.” Hisao turned to the Nurses. “How are these schools going to handle having the worldlines of both boys and girls, anyways?”
The Nurse from Hisao’s universe shrugged. “Ah, that’s easy. They’ll probably just retroactively become co-ed.”
Her counterpart nodded. “Honestly, they probably should’ve been anyways. I, for one, will not miss an all-girls Yamaku.”
Nurse chuckled. “Amen to that.”
They said their last goodbyes, addressed the students one final time, and then took their places. Unlike the previous attempt, the capacitor quickly came to life, and after only a minute, its energy was released, breaking the barrier and flowing out into every corner of the universe, gradually levering the two distinct worlds apart again.
Finally, suddenly, long before any of this had never happened, Yuichi and Yuika smiled at each other in the school courtyard, hand in hand.
And not too far away, in a direction nobody could point, Hisao trudged through the snow, wondering who had managed to slip a note into his math textbook.
Main route: COM(promise)
One-shots: Crafty's One-Shots (Dark Winter Sky, Dreamy, Path of Least Resistance, Project Blue Curtain, and more!)
Old poetry: Google Drive Collection
One-shots: Crafty's One-Shots (Dark Winter Sky, Dreamy, Path of Least Resistance, Project Blue Curtain, and more!)
Old poetry: Google Drive Collection
Re: Crafty's One-Shots (Dec 29th, 2022: Worlds Apart)
Oh no what a glorious read. You should be Crazyatom, not Craftyatom! 
Post-Yamaku, what happens? After The Dream is a mosaic that follows everyone to the (sometimes) bitter end.
Main Index (Complete)—Shizune/Lilly/Emi/Hanako/Rin/Misha + Miki + Natsume
Secondary Arcs: Rika/Mutou/Akira • Hideaki | Others (WIP): Straw—A Dream of Suzu • Sakura—The Kenji Saga.
"Much has been lost, and there is much left to lose." — Tim Powers, The Drawing of the Dark (1979)
Main Index (Complete)—Shizune/Lilly/Emi/Hanako/Rin/Misha + Miki + Natsume
Secondary Arcs: Rika/Mutou/Akira • Hideaki | Others (WIP): Straw—A Dream of Suzu • Sakura—The Kenji Saga.
"Much has been lost, and there is much left to lose." — Tim Powers, The Drawing of the Dark (1979)