This is the first Hisao vignette, from a few months before his graduation from Yamaku.
It takes place in my post-Lilly-neutral-end mosaic, 'After the Dream'.
Completed major arcs:
Shizune | Lilly | Emi | Hanako | Rin | Misha — Main Index
Completed minor arcs:
Miki | Rika | Mutou | Akira | Hideaki
The Main Index contains the different parts in chronological order, along with other fragments.
Hisao 1: A Walk In The Park (T -16)
It’s been a few months now. I think I’m getting used to the idea that she’s probably gone for good. Used to the idea, that is, but not the fact. I’ve never been so close to someone, and it seems I’ve never been so far away either.
The guys have been kind, in the bro way—they give me space, and also try to be funny. My classmate Akio even taps me on the shoulder and says, “Welcome to the Satou Heartbreak Club, man. You can be President if you like.” Haruhiko grins and stage-whispers, “Go for a double, try the Ibarazaki Sidetrack Club.”
That line earns him sniggers all round, but also a glare from Miki. The girls, well, they’ve been more than kind. I don’t know. Maybe they’re appalled at how badly everything turned out. Girls are more sensitive that way, I guess. For some reason, their efforts at helping seem more… coordinated(?) than what the guys are doing.
I don’t really mind. I have some sort of life. Wake up early, avoid Kenji, go for a run with Emi, warm down, see Nurse, go to class, have lunch with whichever girl has decided to pity me, go to class, go to the library, have a meal or two somewhere, go back to my room and study, lights out. Wonderful. Better than being dead, surely.
Some days are a little different, things happen, and for a while I think maybe I have a destiny, that what’s happening is important for some reason. Then it goes away. I try to grab these wisps of destiny, but I catch nothing. One day I even get desperate enough to write to Iwanako. No reply.
Today’s a ‘different’ day. I’m heading early towards the track as usual, where Emi will try to raise my fitness levels while cheering me up. I try to help her, because it’s a little heartbreaking to be so sad when someone else is trying so hard to make you happy.
When I get there, it’s a ‘hey…’ moment for me. Emi’s already there, which is what I expect. What I don’t expect is that her friend Rin Tezuka is also here, and both of them are looking… guilty? … uneasy? It’s hard to tell with Rin, but Emi’s certainly a bit off this morning. I don’t know, with girls and their complicated emotions. It’s something I might explore if I have a future to explore that with.
I feel a momentary pang as I think of my bonny Scottish lass (or whatever she’d call herself) and my heart rate goes up a little steeply. I hold my breath a bit and walk over to the two girls, calming down somewhat.
“Hi, Emi! Hello, Tezuka!”
“Hey, Hisao,” Emi replies. She’s looking away from me, as she normally does when she doesn’t quite want to say something. “Rin’s back for the day to pick up some stuff for her work in Tokyo.”
“Hell-o. Need to walk. Need to talk. Emi doesn’t want to come. She says you will.”
Wha-at? I don’t know Rin Tezuka that well, although I can imagine another world in which I’d spent more time loafing around the Art Room (no, actually, I can’t).
“Uh, okay… ? Emi, do you want to run a bit first?”
“Nah, it’s all right. You need a change of pace. It’s not only running that can make you healthier, y’know. Rin wants you up that hill.”
She grins evilly, but I sense a trace of some other strong emotion behind it. Maybe I am getting better at this. Continued exposure does have its effects.
“I don’t want him up that hill. I want us to walk there, and we can’t walk together if he’s up the hill while I’m still here.”
“Right! Well, you kids enjoy yourselves, and I’ll do my run, and if you’re really quick, I’ll still be here. Actually, you probably won’t make it. See you at lunch? Usual place? I’ll bring food!”
I wonder what she’s hiding. But Rin’s already started the long walk back up towards the school and to the park behind.
It’s a perspective I’ve never had before. Rin has a strangely majestic posture. It’s as if she’s wearing a corset. Her glutes (a term I picked up from Emi) are tight and firm, beneath the brown trousers she’s wearing. Those brushes must be a darned sight heavier than they look.
Without turning round, she says, “It’s okay to look. You can tell me about it.”
“About what?” I say a little too rapidly, feeling silly.
“About my behind. I can’t see it because my eyes are in front. Mirrors don’t help me sketch my spine well. I can only see up my ass with those.”
My vision blurs and for a moment I think I am having another attack. But it’s only confusion, and something that’s not lust, but… animal craziness? The thought of looking up… Argh. We’ll be climbing the hill.
“Errm. Okay. You have a very straight spine. And symmetrical muscles. Emi would say you have tight buns.”
I mentally facepalm. Didn’t mean to say that at all.
“Hmm. When you say that I see raisin buns. Many of them six-packed and squeezed together crying out for air. Sometimes they have crosses on them. And lemon peel.”
I’m losing it. If Rin were my girlfriend, I’d never understand a thing.
“I need to talk. But you can listen. You can say things too.”
“Okay, Tezuka.”
I’ve really not had much contact with her, so I’m not sure what the correct form of address would be. Then again, if I’d met Lilly for the first time, I’d go for Satou-san. My heart twinges again.
“Call me Rin. It’s easy. Besides, family gets in the way of thinking.”
“Right, Rin.”
“No, we go left here.”
“Ah.”
She leads me behind the dormitories to the small black wrought-iron gate at the back of the school, pausing momentarily to grab its latch with her right foot and tease it open. Although the gate looks unused, she opens it with suspicious ease.
“Close it behind you. You can look at it if you like, but I prefer not to look backwards when walking forwards. Sometimes people leave it open. I don’t like that. Gates are meant to be closed.”
I follow her through and close the gate. Idly, I ask, “How about doors?”
“Doors are different. Meant to be opened.”
“But they’re the same kind of thing!”
“That’s like saying painting and drawing are the same kind of thing.”
I’m about to reply that they are, but realize that it might not be a wise thing to do if we’re going to get back in time for lunch. It’s also pretty cold in January, and this early in the morning, there’s frost on the ground. Rin doesn’t look like she’s feeling cold, but I’ll probably have to share my tracksuit jacket with her later if we’re up here too long.
The path we’re on leads deep into the forest. The trees have shed their leaves, and that allows some light in, but not that much, because they’re thickly clustered. I try to get some Biology revision in as Rin trudges on like a sleepwalker.
Japanese maple (
Acer japonicum), zelkova (a kind of elm,
Zelkova serratum). The tall trees hem us in, like some sort of animal run. Their trunks are brown and grey, showing startling beige and orange patches where bark has fallen off.
“If you’re not you, does it mean you’ve died?”
A classic Rin-type question, fired like a cannon over your battleship. You can let the ball splash where it falls, but sometimes it hits you in the middle and sinks you. I’m not sure about this one, and I take a bit of time to think it over.
“I suppose part of you goes away. The rest of you is still you, I think. Nobody can change completely just like that.”
I’m proud of my answer. But there’s no response for a while.
“I think my painting is inside me. When I put it outside me, it’s no longer me. What happens when it runs out?”
Mutou-sensei once said something like that. I suspect he was referring to Nomiya-sensei, although Mutou is always professional and disguises such allusions well. Here, I think Rin may be asking me for advice about her exhibition in Tokyo. Or maybe just being Rin.
“Well, people still remember the old Rin. Perhaps they’ll put you back together,” I reply, trying to lighten the mood.
However, this is Rin. She suddenly stops, at the edge of a glade, and turns round.
“I was going to the Worry Tree. But I think today we’ll go to the Sadness Tree.”
Worry Tree? Sadness Tree? I’m not sure what the Linnaean classification would be for those. Ah well, Biology isn’t quite my cup of tea. Tea. Blonde hair and blue eyes and… yeah, let’s go for the Sadness Tree.
“Hisao, will you put me back together if I lose me?”
Her eyes are huge in the gloom. Her breath puffs out in small visible gusts, curling away in the cold winter air. A faint gleam of sunlight shows me that her hair is really red-brown; where it is darker, it’s maybe purple-brown, and where the light hits it directly, it’s a warmer shade, like old copper foil.
Can I be honest with her? I don’t know her all that well.
“I can’t promise you that, Rin. I’m still trying to put myself together. If I could, I’d help you. But I can’t. I don’t know you well enough.”
“Okay.”
She turns back, and we walk in silence past a field of dandelion plants (
Taraxacum albidum), sad and sere. Nobody’s been here in ages, I think. Then I realize that there are some footprints. Moderately large ones, evenly spaced at the edge of the path, like those left by someone systematic and careful.
I’m beginning to feel a little fatigued. Rin’s got a lot more stamina than it looks, and beyond the field, we’re following the path as it turns up into higher hills on the flank of Mount Aoba.
“What exactly is a Worry Tree?”
“There are people who think that if you are very miserable, you should go to a particular tree to wallow in your misery. Except that I mean Rin when I say people, because I think Rin is people.”
“Ah. So you come to the Worry Tree and talk to it until your misery goes away?”
She stops again, and turns around to look at me with intense curiosity.
“What? No. You can’t talk to trees. What do you think I am, crazy?”
“No… I didn't mean it like that.”
“Or maybe you talk to trees? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that you were crazy. Even though you probably are if you talk to trees. People will think you are a weird person. Especially if trees talk back to you.”
“No, I… just forget it.”
Maybe I am going crazy. She herself looks mildly confused, for which I can’t blame her at all. She tilts her head a little to the side, like a mountain crane. As she focuses on my face, her features slowly return to normality.
“Sure. I’m good at forgetting things.”
She turns back and we continue walking. Now the path is steeper, and I don’t even know where on the mountain we are. I have this morbid vision of our two skeletons being discovered on the mountainside many years from now. They’ll probably conclude I ate her arms (and arm-bones) to stay alive when we were trapped by snow or something.
“Here. Sadness Tree.”
She’s come to a stop once more. Under the dim canopy, I can hardly see over her shoulder. We’re facing parallel to a steep side of the mountain, I think. The sun is on my left, so that must be east. It casts some light into a well-drained dell, formed by trees and rocks.
And at the end of the dell is a single very large tree, with… a tiny grave-marker?
I help her up a last incline and into the dell.
“Whose is that?”
“I don’t know. Someone else was sad here.”
In the shifting light, I try to make out the words carved into the stone. It’s surprisingly well-maintained, and not that old. My eyes get used to the shadows and I read: [
Haruki, son of Michiko and Akio | 2005 | Spring is the End of Winter ].
How strange, I think to myself. An illegitimate child? A student pregnancy?
“It’s been here as long as I have, almost. Or at least, it was already here when I first came here. If that was me. But that me was different from this me.”
Rin folds her legs gracefully and kneels, then sinks back onto her ankles and unfolds her legs out in front of her. She’s now leaning back against a rock.
“Somebody remembered somebody, so they weren’t really lost.”
She looks almost longingly at me, as if trying to say something that she can’t express. I think I understand, and I wish I really did. Who knows, with Rin?
*****
I lost track of Rin after that January. But I always wondered who would remember her. One day, I did indeed find answers, but those are for another story, and another time.
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