Re: Reliable Narrators
Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2016 9:02 am
by Umber
After an unexpected, month-long trip to the Philippines with practically no internet, I bring chocolates and apologies. Hope I didn't miss anything...?
6 students
6 writers
1 story
Reliable Narrators
by Oddball, Munchenhausen, Brythain, Strange Desire, Blank Mage, and of course Umber
______
The story according to Keiko
Part One:
I was sitting on the stairs of a basement with my knees drawn to my chin, next to a red-haired boy whose name I didn’t know, who had a walking stick on his lap. It was relatively quiet between us, but neither he nor I seemed to mind that too much. It didn’t bother him that we'd hardly looked at or spoke to each other in the past five minutes. It didn’t bother me, either. He gave no indication that he wanted to interact with me in any way, so I did the same - it was as effortless as sleeping.
It wasn't so much that we didn't want to, but we didn't need to. In that acceptance, we shared a small bubble to ourselves on the stairs' steps. It was a tiny, quiet, comfortable bubble, floating atop stone-cold levels of cement, yet anchored around us like an invisible shroud or blanket, as if a child had dipped a bubble wand into some slick mixture of silence and solace and somehow we were caught inside. Uncharacteristically of a bubble, it didn’t pop from the occasional external prodding of sound from people nearby, or show any signs of doing so. I was glad it didn’t.
I could hear a few voices from outside the bubble. But they went in one ear, and out the other. They weren’t too definitive. From where exactly, I didn’t know either, since it was hard to tell. On observation, they all had different tones, but were running the same theme. They were lost and confused. Just a little bit of both, but they were there.
They all sounded the same, a collective well of voices with different messengers calling out the same message. Or messages, rather.
“She’s still stuck in there.”
“Three days?”
“Anyone wanna break the door?”
“What should we do?”
That sort of thing.
They were all real, but I wasn’t paying attention. My eyes were still kinda wet. The others might have given up on me, and I didn’t blame them if they did. I hadn’t been helping at all. I was that uncomfortable weight that no one talked about, the invisible air of awkward hovering about behind everybody.
My skirt was frayed just so slightly on its edges. I’d been wringing it like a towel just a few moments ago. It was a nervous habit that kicked in when I got stressed, and a few of my skirts had the telltale wrinkles of this habit if you looked closely enough. Had I the closet from my dorm, I could probably read a few memorable points in my life, like exams or holiday trips, much like how a palm-reader read hands for a living. But I would usually catch myself before it got out of hand, although the awareness of the habit sometimes made things worse. I’d notice how my hands were gripping the fabric, how my throat would close up slowly, how often I needed to swallow or blink for no reason whatsoever. It was an unpleasant experience however I went about it.
So, yeah - I never really liked knowing I was nervous. It didn’t help me, or anyone else around me, but particularly me. I wasn’t a very good nervous person. Or very good under pressure. I think everyone knew that right now, the way I had been bawling my eyes out, for however-long it's been so far. Maybe that’s why the boy sat down next to me? To comfort me? I don’t know. He hadn’t said anything. I was starting to think he fell asleep.
The room I was in was an unsettling size. It was spacious enough to make you believe you could walk around or breathe or stretch, but had just enough objects and mindless clutter in the way that you’d immediately want to sit back down again. The maze of debris and inexplicably arranged furniture was a depressing array that gave little impetus for sightseeing, like a Victorian architectural marvel with all its decor removed, leaving behind something of an empty haunted house. And if or when you looked around, you wanted to get back up. But there wasn’t a desire behind it, just an urge. Though, the cycle in its entirety was unfulfilling, while the act of disregarding it was equally so. Therefore, torture.
Not to mention that it was kinda dark - the light bulb looked like it was about to short out. Its telling, amber glow seemed to recede more and more each second, luster fading so unnoticeably slow.
There were four others that were all trapped in the same predicament as the boy and me, stuck inside this basement. The door to this room had locked behind us without warning, and, unfortunately, none of us had bothered to bring a key - and whose fault that was, we didn’t care. The fact was that as of now, and however-long it would remain so, this locked door left us isolated from the outside world for what we figured would be three days, cut off from all of society and contact, without restrooms, water, or anywhere to sleep other than the ground beneath us. There also wasn't much reprieve outside of staring at the ceiling or watching the nonexistent paint dry. And I didn't think I would be able to handle watching nonexistent paint for three days.
Three days was the length of the school break. Everyone else had since left campus for the holidays, so until then, no one would come and help us. Our phones couldn't make a connection, either, this far beneath the school, so we couldn’t contact anyone outside.
In short, we were stranded. And lost. Confused, scared, and panicked. Just a little bit of everything here and there.
It was a very definite, gripping feeling.
“Stop crying, would you?”
“Leave her alone. You’re not helping anyone.”
“Neither is she, just sitting there!”
In one ear, out the other. Their voices dissipated somewhere nondescript. Tonight was not a very good night. But, at least the bubble made it a little easier - just a little bit of space for me, myself, and I, while I tried to forget that everything was happening. That probably wasn’t helping anyone much, though.
I wonder what Aoi would do, if she were here. Maybe tell me to stop crying, and take a deep breath, and solve the problem and be a hero.
I was sort of working on that last bit.
The boy next to me had his hands in his pockets. We were less than a foot apart - basically touching, like lovers in a park bench. Normally, I’d be a little nervous, or self-aware, but it didn’t seem to be that much of a problem, for him or for me. Compared to the panic I had when the door locked, being inches away from a boy wasn’t unnerving in the slightest. Even though I was horrible with them, I figured, there were worse things in life, and a boy was not one of them right now.
He was, admittedly, a little handsome, sure. But he looked like the kind of person you’d find in a library with some popular, ‘adult contemporary’ novel tucked underneath his arm, trying to impress people (and failing, I’d imagine). The way he stood himself behind some self-imposed, metaphorical rostrum for his opinions was inspiring, but not too attractive, although he probably wasn’t trying to be. His eyes, too, had this sense of laziness that just emanated from them at a spectacular rate, like he was predisposed at birth to not giving two cents about anything. But he had manners, which was commendable.
The one thing that I found that I held onto, though, was the fact that he was the most sensible person in the room. His composure hadn’t been swayed at all despite the stress that everyone else was having, which made me feel better that, at least, there was someone calm to anchor myself to amidst the so-far uncertain night. The cane in his lap even made me think he was a sage, or one of those old Yamabushi ascetics looking for existential answers on top of mountains, even though he wasn’t one, obviously. I wasn’t sure why that was a comforting thought.
From the corner of my eye, I saw him glance at me sitting still, balled up on the step beside him. He asked, “Have you thought of a way out?”
I hadn’t noticed I’d stopped crying a little while ago.
“No,” I said, drying my eyes with my sleeves. They were now a damp grey. Had it been rain, they would have been a beautiful shade of grey. The nice kind of wet you found drizzled all over gold-leafed sidewalks in the autumn. But it wasn’t. “Not yet. I... I haven’t had a viable thought all night. As you can tell.”
My voice cracked in a few places, but it was otherwise fine. The boy didn't seem to notice.
“Well, me neither. I'd thought about trying to break down the door, but we all might just get hurt that way. And that wouldn't help us much, really,” he said.
I looked behind us. He was right. To break down the door would mean to have at least two or three of us hurling our weight against the reinforced wooden slab, but with the stairs preceding them, it was out of the question. None of us were physically strong enough to break it open ourselves (in some cases, physically unable to even attempt it), and the door was too sturdy - you could tell by the way it sounded when you knocked on it. No one seemed to be in the mood for cooperating, either. They were all glum, or sulking, and quiet.
And one of us was stuck in a vent.
I looked at the cane in the unnamed boy's lap. “Are you sure you would be able to help that way?”
“No. That’s another reason why I didn’t suggest it.” His eyes wandered briefly across the room. I couldn’t see whatever interested him. “It wasn’t a very good plan,” he said.
“It was an alright plan. Just... not an efficient one. Maybe try to come up with something that everyone else isn’t thinking of, it might give a new perspective on something. Like, um... oh, I don’t know.” I smiled sheepishly. It was kind of pathetic. But that was my middle name at this point. A really sad middle name. “I, um. I know I shouldn’t be giving advice. Or trying to, rather. It’s not doing me any well, either.”
“You might think that now, but give it a few minutes. I think that’ll change sooner than you expect.”
“You think so?”
He nodded and closed his eyes, and stayed that way for some time.
After a while, I secretly hoped that he didn’t fall asleep, so deep in his thoughts. It would be embarrassing if I had to wake him up from that. But for what, I didn’t know. Probably not our freedom anytime soon.
“What’s your name?” he asked suddenly, peeking at me through one open eye. It took me a while to come up with the answer.
“Keiko.”
“Keiko. I’m Akio. Nice to meet you.” He closed his eyes again. Likewise, I thought.
His expression was so unperturbed by the oddness of the situation that it looked like he’d just decided to take a nap, right then and there. There wasn’t a hint of desperation on his face whatsoever.
I couldn’t tell if he was a nervous person. But if he was, he was a very good one. And I didn’t mind being a little jealous about it - that sort of feeling was welcome compared to all the other emotions I’d burned through earlier through choked sobs and tears.
A yawn escaped my lips, a sad sort of yawn, and my mind drifted off somewhere. The bubble brushed against my shoulder.
I wonder how Aoi is doing.
* * *
There was a faint sound of crotales that no one seemed to be listening to - an instrument that, surprisingly, no one ever recognizes by name, but by sound. An unrecognized gem. A crisp little ringing that was out of place, in the tiny little janitorial basement we were in. The others weren’t making any faces about it, because there wasn’t anything to ignore. But the feeling was there, butterflies and all. It was surreal, to say the least.
Quietly, I ignored it for them. I was pretty good with sounds.
Elsewhere in the room, there was a boy named Takashi propped up against a wall with his arms crossed, grumbling to himself like a man left behind by a bullet train. Or a disgruntled coworker. Underneath the slack end of his beret, there was a bandage on his right ear, but for what reason, I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know, anyways - it didn’t seem too important, as interesting a reason it might have been.
We’d got into a number of arguments earlier. They varied in topic quite a bit, as much as a pachinko machine does in gamblers’ luck, though all of them were rather mundane, and pointless. I couldn’t remember most of them, but emotionally, they left a mark, like an axe lodged in the bark of a tree. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d got so mad at someone like that. I can’t even recall what for.
The crotales faded away, having been placed outside of my attention for long enough, deciding to fly off on their own accord. I sighed, relieved, and took the opportunity to make some small conversation. Listening to another voice other than my own would be a relief.
Akio was his name, wasn’t it?
“Um. Akio.” He looked at me. “What do you think of Takashi,” I asked him, sincerely. Without a question mark, for emphasis.
Akio’s shoulders rose and fell gently. The question didn't affect him that much.
“I dunno. He’s a bit of a dick, but I’d still call him a friend. He can get on your nerves real quickly if you let it happen, which you shouldn’t.”
“Why’s that?”
“He likes to stay on them.”
I nodded. I’d gathered that much, of course. But it was nice to see that someone else shared the same opinion. Sometimes I forgot that the third years here were all in the same class, but that didn’t matter too much.
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
“I’m sure. People usually do.”
“You don’t say?” I giggled softly. Akio just shrugged again. Ah, well.
I did say ‘small’ talk. I guess I meant it.
There was another girl present in the room, named Shizune. Most notably, she was deaf, and her blue hair and stern manner stood out like Haydn’s 88th at a Tokyo nightclub, but probably a bit less playful, and without any of the comic mannerisms that the composition seemed to be full of. I’d signed up for doing some volunteer work for her some number of hours ago, which I sincerely regret doing now (no offense to her, of course, although it was somewhat her fault we were stuck in this mess). Initially, when the door locked, she’d tried to communicate to us with what she probably thought were basic and coherent gestures, stubbornly focused on crossing the, um, glaringly obvious audio-linguistic barrier. She eventually became frustrated with everyone and tore the pages she’d written on into a trash bin.
The pages sat in there, busily gathering dust with the other pieces of forgotten garbage. They looked sad.
She hadn’t talked with anyone since then, although, Akio did have a short conversation with her on her notepad. But she’d ripped that up as well, and it didn’t look as though the talk had led to anything progressive. Shizune had then resigned herself to rummaging through a random stack of papers in the corner - for what reason, I didn’t know. Her priorities were all over the place since the beginning of this unsalvageable episode, like a bad sitcom on a near-defunct host network, but to each her own, of course. There was nothing wrong with that.
I sighed. Home. That’s where I want to be. Had I never taken up on the Student Council’s requests, I’d be on or getting off of a train ride with my brother back home. But it’s too late to change that now - I just have to go with the flow, however which way I managed to do that.
We might be here for three days. When I get back to my room, my phone’s probably gonna be blown up with voicemails. Mom, dad, Tengo, Aoi, everyone back home. I’ll have quite the story to tell them when I get back. Whenever that is.
Without knowing it, I’d closed my eyes, like Akio had. When I opened them again, one of the other volunteers, a girl with crutches, was lying on the floor, waving her arms around her, like those orange-vested airport people did to direct planes. But it was more abstract, like an art form, and it took me a while to remember that she had called this strange activity ‘dancing.’ It was obvious that I didn’t quite believe her.
She scared me into thinking she had a seizure or something, but it was relieving to hear that she was all right. Right now, she was just flat against the ground, humming, with her eyes closed and fondling the space above her. She looked like she was having fun. If anything at all she was a small glimpse of a human emotion otherwise absent from the room in our predicament..
Curious, I tried to catch the girl’s relatively muted humming with my ears, twisting my head to the side just slightly. One of her songs reminded me of my favorite childhood movies, the soundtrack of which had been composed by the adored and renowned Joe Hisaishi, though the title of the movie (or movies?) itself escaped me. It was playful, sad, and sweet in all the right places - if not in a different language. But music was universal, something that I learned early on in life.
The song she was singing was swept into the snowy mess of my head, brushing against different musical patterns of ups-and-downs until it became a different song entirely, a mixture of various tunes in an attempt to single out a single instance of harmonic memory. In my head, harps and chimes and violins were accommodating imaginary musicians all trying to fit the Hisaishi-shaped hole that I couldn’t quite recall, until finally, I did, and my shoulders dropped with relief. Like I said, I was good with sounds.
As she lay there and danced, my mind wandered into some unoccupied corridor and ran its fingers along some fletched, olive green paint, peeking into rooms and stumbling on talking shadows, flying girls, and buses made of animals. All of them were from those old movies. Her humming helped me walk further and further down this corridor, until eventually I found me - me, sitting there, except as a small, minuscule toddler with a white bib around its neck. I looked kinda cute.
I waved to me.
And ‘I’ waved back.
There was a black, refurbished 80’s television running some show from a VCR player. I think dad bought it when I was just a few months. Tiny little Keiko waddled and crawled, journeying across that living room floor in a polka-dot onesie, and was very gently picked up by a man I hadn’t noticed was also in the room. His innocuous presence had surprised me - the man bore the same old, patched, wizened face as my grandfather. When he smiled, I felt a surge of confusion and wonder flowing from my eyes and into my chest, as there was no way I was really at home - but the simulation was so lucid that I really felt as if I was there.
I breathed, the kind of first breath you find in a rainy Noir scene. Chilly and vividly sharp. When I swallowed, the air tasted like home. It was stale in the most perfect way, like a lungful of liquid stasis. The noises from the television bounced off the walls and back in the exact same way they did for years while my father and I picked apart fish bones on the floral print sofa that my grandfather was sitting on right now. I wanted to pick up tiny little Keiko and be with her, maybe pinch her cheeks and cuddle, and sit down next to my grandfather and talk for a while; to wait for my mom and dad to come home at the same time, because they always took the same six o’clock bus back, unless they bought groceries. I wanted to stay and enjoy the little piece of home that stuck inside my head, the place where I grew up as tiny little Keiko, the perfect way I remembered it.
I wanted to go home.
The girl on the floor kept humming.
I closed my eyes again, and drew my knees back closer to myself on the concrete steps. Tiny little Keiko, stuck in a room, all by herself. The girl on the floor was still humming something, but I didn’t care to listen this time. I was trying not to cry again - I could feel it coming in a few seconds.
Unexpectedly, a hand was placed on my back. I opened my eyes and saw Akio with his lips pressed into a fine line. I was wringing my skirt again.
“I don’t mean to interrupt,” he started, “but... I thought of something. How do you fare in your, let’s say, measurements?”
“Hm?”
“Your, uh. Measurements. You know what I’m talking about, right?”
I blinked.
“I…” The words were slipping from my mouth, in an unsure form. “I...don’t, no. Um, why...do you ask?”
A smirk grew on his lips - it was strangely sarcastic yet self-deprecating at the same time, like was scolding himself for some odd inside joke. “No reason,” he said, his gaze sweeping away from me.
I looked up, following his eyes. He was staring at the air vent.
* * *
“Ya know,” the girl with earbuds piped up, “you could say Keiko’s trying to vent her frustration, am I right?”
“Oh, shut up,” Takashi muttered. The girl with earbuds grinned, smirked, went back to dancing. Our small glimpse of human emotion wasn’t paying attention anymore.
“So why is she leaving, again?” Takashi asked, piping up. “Someone please tell me, before we get a second person stuck in the air shaft. Cuz this girl-to-guy ratio is dwindling real fast.”
“To help Midori out and across the school,” Akio said. “Two sets of eyes are better than one. Unless, of course, you object, and prefer staying inside this room for maybe seventy-two hours. Since being stuck in a room with four girls is the most action you’ve seen in a while, Takashi.”
“Now that’s one hell of a lie, Hayashi. And you know it.”
“I’m sure. Unfortunately, I don’t care. Go masturbate in the corner to your practice sketches, for all I care - we’re busy being moderately resourceful.”
Takashi grumbled incoherently and stormed off five feet in the opposite direction.
Everyone was staring at me, staring at the vent. Akio and Shizune were next to me, like worried parents. Except not worried at all. Akio looked like he hardly cared, Shizune was near fuming, and I was still a little off-guard by the whole thing.
On my tiptoes, I peeked into the vent. The girl was still lodged in there - she’d been stuck for about five minutes already. The plan was thus: dislodge her, and follow her through the vents until we got outside. Shizune wanted her to go alone, but Akio insisted that someone followed her out there. You know, to keep her company.
It wasn’t my idea, but I’d agreed to it, complacent and accepting. Not because I had to, but because I wanted to. I was the only other person that fit in there, and it seemed reasonable that me and the track girl watch each other’s backs inside what should be an abandoned school. I was also starting to develop an unhealthy case of claustrophobia, a peculiar form of which made me nervous being in a locked room, yet longing reprieve through a cramped air duct. I did have my reasons, though. Namely, my family. But nobody else needed to know.
Akio had sorted it out with me prior to all of this happening before approaching Shizune about it.
“Shizune won’t want you to go,” he said, “because we’re liabilities. We’re her volunteers, therefore, her responsibility. The entire reason you’re here is because the Student Council needed help with paperwork, from people outside of her club. If anything happens to you while you’re out there, it’ll be her fault - as the head of the Student Council. She’s supposed to be watching over all of us, which is why she’s so opposed to having more than one person leave. But it could be necessary to have someone as backup in case something happens.”
“If something does happen at all,” I said.
“Yeah, exactly. The larger the group, the wider the safety net. But look, it’s not optimal to have you leave. You can still back out if you want to - because, you know, if there’s anyone out there without a janitorial key, they’re not getting in here. Makes sense if you’d prefer to stay. It’s a lot safer inside this room, since we know who’s inside.”
I shook my head at this. I had already been prepared to leave, when he asked - that other girl’s humming gave me reason enough.
“But at least,” he said, “please, try to keep an eye on Midori. It wasn’t my place to ask, so I don’t know what her disability is, but if it’s bad, you’ll want to stick together. I’d want someone to watch out for me, too, if I were out there.”
Akio tapped his cane on the ground. The sound of the stick knocking against the floor held a little longer than it should have - it reverberated throughout my body, and sat restlessly in my stomach. My head felt light. There was a faint, translucent mist swirling somewhere inside me, like a whirlpool of miasmic wind.
I swallowed. It’s really acting up today, I thought to myself, focusing on the saliva travelling down my throat. It had a peculiar sound, wet and silk-like, that washed away some of the noise from Akio’s cane, dampening it. I turned my attention back to Akio, who didn’t seem to notice my subtle qualms.
I took a deep breath. “Isn’t, uh, Midori on the track team? She shouldn’t have too bad a physical condition, being a runner and all.”
“I thought about that, yeah.” Akio scratched the back of his head. “Not so important now that you’re going either way, but anyway...thanks for agreeing to this. Listen, if anything does happen, I’m sorry. And if you can, also keep an eye out for any more of those papers. You know, the ones with the wrong dates, like the ones Orie was signing? Shizune checked each of the rooms on the way down here, and didn’t find any. So if you do, keep them with you. We’ll throw them all away together when you get back. If you don’t mind.”
“Um,” I started. I kind of did mind. “Are...are they really that important?”
He gave me a noncommittal shrug. “No. Not to me. They’re just papers with names, dates, and signatures. But to Shizune, yes. For reasons unknown, of course. Maybe it’s a legal thing for the school to get it all done as soon as possible - maybe we’re obsessive.”
“We?”
“I’m relaying the message. Attribution by association.”
“Ah.”
That was the only weird request he had, really, other than to jump inside a ventilation shaft. The papers hardly mattered to anyone right now, considering the issue at hand, and the ones I saw hadn’t looked particularly dangerous. Just some donations, local gathering approvals, stuff like that.
I was mostly wondering how debilitating a couple of old papers from 2005 could be. If they’d been forgotten for so long, they couldn’t have been too important, could they? About as remembered as a cloud in the sky, or last week’s lunch.
Like I said, it was weird. But what wasn’t, tonight?
“If I find any, I’ll make sure to get them back to you.” I paused. “But, um, no promises. I’m walking through an abandoned school in the dark. I won’t be paying much attention to gathering some misplaced paperwork, most likely.”
He nodded.
“Understandable. Well, it’s just a side thought. Brief - like beating an amber light. You forget about it as quickly as it happens. Don’t worry about it too much.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled.
Akio chuckled a bit at this. Then he took a deep breath, ran his hand through his hair, and exhaled.
“Well, anyway,” he said, “you can probably find a key somewhere near the front desk. Shizune says she borrows a few different ones every now and then for certain classrooms. Alternatively, you could try and break the door down from the outside, or, if you found a hacksaw… ?”
“I would prefer not to destroy school property,” I replied honestly. As much as the door deserved it, its death was not necessary, nor beneficial. I wouldn’t mind chipping it into splinters if I had the chance, though.
Akio shrugged again. For whatever reason, he looked genuinely disappointed. “Well, I’ll talk to Shizune about it now. Take a few deep breaths, relax, and think about what you’re gonna do when you get out there. Good luck.”
“Good luck?” My face scrunched up, felt like a cardboard box being stepped on. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing implicative,” he recovered quickly. “It was a poor choice of words - sorry.”
The expression of regret he made looked genuine as well. I let the topic drop before it got worse. And then he left to ‘talk’ to Shizune.
Soon after that, I was headfirst in the air duct, with the girl I now knew as Midori. Once I’d told her I was going to accompany her through the school, she and I shared a very brief conversation after I plucked her skirt from whatever protrusion it was caught on, which happened to be a tiny metal screw no larger than a sleeping pill, or a small coin.
“Thanks!” she said gleefully, shaking her hips to test her newfound motor abilities, now freed from her restriction. A sigh of relief echoed through the vent. “You don’t know how uncomfortable that was. Hey - if you’re gonna come with, you’re not gonna peek or anything, right?”
“What?” I sputtered. Why on earth would I be looking up another girl’s skirt? For a case study? “No, of course not! Er, not on purpose, at least.”
“Not on purpose, she says. Well, I may as well let you know now, they’re green - y’know, like, my name? So now you don’t have a reason to be curious.”
My cheeks were starting to warm up.
“I’m not curious!”
“I’m just sayin’,” said Midori, “because we’ve got a long ways to go in the vents before we get out, and you’re gonna be behind me for a while. We might as well be open, right?”
“Not too literally,” I grumbled.
“Oh, of course not. Tell me, what color are yours?”
“What?”
Midori laughed in reply.
We continued through the duct, the two of us, crawling through the inner workings of the school. Eventually, the chatter of the basement behind us faded, as we ducked further into a claustrophobic space with nothing and no one but each other in close, reliable proximity. The sounds of our bodies bumping against the vents rang hollowly in my ears; empty, metallic, and unnatural. All I could see was the darkness of the ventilation shaft, occasionally pierced by the moonlight seeping through the grates, and the soft folds of Midori’s skirt. I tried not to glance at her panties, but they were indeed a rather nice shade of lime that matched her hair. In the dark green skirt of the school uniform, they were like spring leaves hiding behind the pines of a shaded forest.
At least she was friendly about it, I thought to myself, averting my eyes whenever possible. But if ever I ended up stuck behind another girl in another ventilation shaft, I’d refuse to go in first. I don’t know how she can be so accepting of having my face less than a few feet of her underwear. Then again, the track team shorts are pretty short, so maybe she’s used to being exposed to a certain degree.
I shook my head, and followed Midori’s rear end slowly through the duct. I could still mostly move my arms and legs, so it wasn’t too uncomfortable. But it was strenuous. I had this other odd feeling as well - like a child experiencing new territory for the first time, traversing a grocery store with no concept of ‘crowds’ or ‘shelved products.’ I was exactly like that, cramped up in this vent. It was a new experience, and I was quickly learning that it was not a pleasant place to be. Perhaps when we got out, I would have a rejuvenated recognition for fresh air and open space. And maybe I wouldn’t hear so many sounds again.
But, somewhere, the mist in my head was turning into the strangest sensation, soundless and heavy. Like I was forgetting something very important in the basement I’d just left. No, not forgetting - leaving something behind.
Very nice piece, and I like how you started at a different point from everyone else's seems to have (mine included). I ain't gonna be able to top this 
I'll polish mine off and post it soon!