Katawa Shoujo Forums

Out the cafeteria door, through the hallway, into the main lobby, out the front doors, around the corner. We look at each other like two convicts escaped from Alcatraz, and then we burst out laughing.

I’ve never seen Emi like that. That expression she made when she first saw us is only getting more hilarious the more I think about it. That was perfect. That was the best prank I’ve ever pulled on someone, and all it involved was a few words and then walking away in a timely manner. It was like we had rehearsed it beforehand.

More importantly, Molly is doubled over, clutching her stomach as she laughs. Ten minutes ago, seeing Molly laugh was something I never could have expected. There her braids go, swinging by her face like pendulums again, the left one straining against the two red clips pinning it to her temple as she leans against the brick wall of the school. Eventually, shortly after my own, her laughter slows.

“Oh,” she sighs, “if that isn’t the best thing I’ve done this week.”

“I’ve never seen Emi like that.”

“Did you see her face when she saw us?” she asks. I nod. “That was gold.”

“The whole bit was gold,” I chuckle. I wonder how much of what she said was true. “I am actually planning to take a walk down to the convenience store. Do you really have something you need to get?”

“I’ll come with, if that’s what you’re asking, but no, I’ve got nothing I need.”

“Really? Then you don’t have to-”

“Hisao, Hisao, you need to stay committed to the act, don’t you know? You’re in the theater club now,” she scolds, grinning. “I’m in too good of a mood to waste it in my room, anyway. I might even be able to be sociable for a change. Let’s go drop off our bookbags at the dorms, I’ll meet you outside.”

That’s true, I don’t want to carry my bag all the way to town. The two of us walk to the dorms and split off to the boys’ and girls’ ones without a goodbye. I run in, throw my bookbag on my desk and grab my wallet. My eyes are drawn to the rows of bottles standing on my bedside table, all of varying sizes, splayed out like the buildings of a city skyline.

I walk over to them and start stuffing them into the drawer, not really thinking why. Maybe I want to prevent another incident like yesterday, or maybe I just want them out of sight, out of mind.

In any case I’m back out within a few minutes, and Molly is nowhere to be found, so I wait outside. She comes out soon enough, nods at me, and we get to walking.

I’ve fulfilled my duty to Nurse, if anything. He asked for walks and here: a walk. It’s smack in the middle of the day, and the sun is beaming down at us from so high that our shadows occupy a pool extending little more than a few inches past our feet, which just adds to the suffering. That’s the point of exercise, right? Suffering? Emi would probably disagree, but Emi is Emi.

We make our way past the parking lot and down the hill, and it starts to get hard to ignore how swelteringly hot it’s getting. We walk on the side of the road with the most shade, but it doesn’t do much good. The scenery around the school is pretty nice, I note. Lots of large trees, the impact of civilization kept to a surprising minimum. Off in the distance, the roofs of the houses in town reflect specks of light like tiny diamonds, gleaming at a corner and disappearing as your perspective changes, only to be replaced by another somewhere else.

“So,” I say, “you have history with Emi?”

“Who doesn’t? If you haven’t talked to her, she’s bowled you over in the hallway.”

I laugh. I wonder if Molly knows of the little incident the two of us had, or if she’s speaking from experience.

“She’s really something, isn’t she?”

“Yeah,” Molly says, looking almost forlorn, “she is,” and she trails off.

It’s a long moment before she speaks again.

“Sorry. Thinking back to when she tried to get me on the track.”

I lean in, interested. I’ve heard this story somewhere else, mainly because it happened to me. Who knows, I might also find out why she was looking so guilty earlier.

“She was prescribed to you by Nurse? That’s what happened to me, anyway.”

“Something like that.”

“Can you really run in those?” I ask, then immediately rush to correct myself. “I mean- Sorry. It’s just that yours go above the knees. So I thought-”

“No, not in these. Wheelchair. I was still in a wheelchair for my first year at Yamaku.”

I exhale, relieved that she’s not upset. “Really? But you don’t have any… I mean you walk very…”

“I don’t have a limp?”

“Yeah, sorry.”

“Stop apologizing. Just lots of practice,” she replies, tracing her eyes over the horizon. “I don’t want to give Emi the credit and say that she was the one that pushed me to switch to prosthetics, because I hate giving people that kind of power over me. But she made me aware of how much more independent I could be if I had them.”

“I see.”

I’m surprised that Molly would admit something like that.

“You do, do you?” she says, her tone playfully sharp with reprimand. “What are your parents like?”

I shake my head at the sudden change of topic, smiling. She’s done this before, and it didn’t precede anything very nice. I’ll play along, though.

“They’re…” I start, then stop to think, kicking a stone down the street as we walk, “...nice. Both my parents work, so I didn’t see them all that often, even before I came here.”

She seems to be distracted by this for a moment, but she quickly returns to what she was planning to say.

“Have you called them, since you’ve arrived?”

I pause. “I haven’t.”

“Do they know you like staring at girls’ legs? A lot?”

Blink, Hisao. Eyes up.

“I didn’t-”

“Kidding,” Molly says, flatly. She’s overtaken me by a few steps, and she capitalizes by twirling on a metal heel to stand and watch me.

She grins, suppresses it, frowns. Her eyes shoot off to the side, then come back to me. She shakes her head and looks up at the sky and the wide, wave-like clouds rolling through it, as the sun brightens her face. Her eyes are a very dark brown, not black, I finally notice. When the light passes through them, I can see layers of striated lines converging at the center of her iris, or perhaps radiating outwards.

Something shoots through my thoughts, alien and unusually clear, as if sent by some higher power specifically to color the moment:

She’s beautiful.

“Follow me,” she calls, heading for a bench by the side of the walkway, underneath a tree. When we get to it, she sits a little shakily, the tiniest hint of her being tired, and I flop down ungracefully on the other end, not trying to be so subtle.

She swings her legs around, off the corner away from me, and begins unfastening something. Before I can say anything, she suddenly turns back around and hands me a leg.

“Bon appétit,” she says, impersonally, like a waitress handing me a meal.

My face burns with embarrassment, and I accept the prosthetic awkwardly.

“I, uh…”

“Take a look. Come on.” She grins.

Holding the leg up, I compare it to my own. Even accounting for the fact that she’s shorter than me, it looks like it goes up pretty far. How much does she have left, exactly? The idea of examining under her skirt to find out does wonders in upgrading my tomato red to that of a beet.

It’s made of an elegant silver metal, and is surprisingly light despite not feeling hollow. The knee joint is loose, but moves awkwardly, and I can’t get it to bend intuitively in the position I’m holding it. It attaches to a wide black cup made out of plastic, but with what looks like rubber on the inside, where her leg is supposed to fit in. Considering I’ve never held or even observed a prosthetic leg closely, I don’t really know what I’m looking at, but I do notice that there aren’t any buttons or clasps.

That confuses me, a little.

“How does it go on?”

Molly raises an eyebrow at me. It takes me a moment to notice she’s doing it suggestively.

…What did I just ask?

“You don’t have to hike up your skirt and show me!” I cry. “...Just, there aren’t any buttons.”

“Suction, mainly, but there’s a pin lock on the inside.”

“And, uh, why do you wear shoes?”

“Traction, durability, cleanliness. The feet are slippery, would wear out, and are difficult to clean.”

“Ah,” I say, tentatively declaring myself done and the leg thoroughly inspected. I hand it back to her. “Well, thanks.”

“Anytime,” she says, turning around to reattach it. After a moment, I stand up and offer her my hand, which she accepts. Dusting her skirt off, she sets back down the walkway, and I fall in step beside her, a little less tired after our short break.

Did she just say ‘anytime?’ What’s that supposed to-

“Now, in exchange, can you tell me about something?”

I would normally expect a situation like that, in this context, to follow with a question about my disability. Taking a deep breath, I prepare for the interrogation about to follow.

“Sure,” I reply.

“What happened between you and Shizune?”

…

“Uh oh.”

On our way down the rest of the hill, I manage to explain to Molly the bulk of what happened between me and the dynamic duo that resulted in Shizune’s current mood. I talk about coming back from my tiring run with Emi, then having them barge into my room. I talk about them noticing the bottles on my desk, then go over, as impartially as I can, my frustration over their prodding that led to me yelling at them. I never go into detail about what, exactly, I take the pills for, but I think it goes without saying that the reason I have to take them is the same reason that I’m currently at this school, so Molly doesn’t ask.

For the most part, Molly stays quiet and listens while I rant, offering a concerned “hmm” every once in a while. When I’m finished, we’re already in town, and I automatically pilot towards the small grocery store I had already gone to with Lilly.

As soon as we enter, both of us are silent, moving automatically while I grab some snacks, writing utensils, and a ruler. Molly doesn’t take anything, instead just following me, watching me around my shoulder, seemingly unconcerned with how long I take to select my preferred brand of chips. I pay for my stuff and get it bagged while the cashier pretends he’s not trying to figure out what’s wrong with me. He passes over Molly surprisingly quickly, despite the fact that her appearance should draw far more attention than mine, being dark-skinned with an obvious disability; completely unconcealed prosthetic legs.

Once we’re outside, a question comes to my mind:

“So, why did you want to know?”

“Many reasons.”

“Care to reveal some of them?” I press.

Molly tilts her head, intent on avoiding my questions. “Didn’t Oscar Wilde say that a woman without secrets has no charms at all?”

“Oscar Wilde was gay,” I retort.

Molly’s eyes widen as she looks at me.

“That was pretty good. You can be funny, Hisao,” she says. It’s strange how praise from a person that normally doesn’t dish it out can make you feel warmer than usual, even if it is delivered as part of a sarcastic quip. Or not. Again, I can’t really tell, so I’m forced to either scrutinize everything she says or just take it at face value. I’ve decided to choose the former.

She hums, grinning. “He was probably bisexual, actually. Maybe there just weren’t enough secretive women around him.”

I laugh, and Molly doesn’t seem to want to elaborate on her aforementioned secretive reason. At some point while we were walking, we took a turn off the path that leads back to the school, and I don’t recognize our surroundings. I decide not to question it, since Molly probably knows the town better than I do.

Eventually, she relents.

“I can’t let a piece of gossip so obviously exploitable pass me by. I have a reputation to uphold,” Molly begins. Exploitable… how? She moves to remove a hair clip, adjusting its position and reattaching it. “And in any case it was obvious something had happened between you two. You were sulking more than you usually do; Shizune suddenly felt the need to avoid every question I asked her by changing the subject entirely, so of course it was about you.”

I sort through what Molly’s just told me. “What do you mean I was sulking more than I usually do?”

“You’re always sulking. It’s your… rather permanent affectation.”

I frown. “That’s upsetting, that I seem that way.”

“Do you feel that way?” she asks, and it’s oddly intimate.

I think for a moment. “...Sometimes.”

“Then you’ll show it.”

The way she says that makes me feel like she’s speaking from experience, which saddens me, but her tone is ambiguous as to what should be done about it; does she want me to stop feeling that way, or just to stop showing it?

“...And why would Shizune avoid a subject because it was related to me?” I ask.

“Oh, wow,” Molly starts, taken aback. She puts her hand to her chin, and I can practically see her attempting to structure her reply before she shakes her head and decides to dispense with the formalities.

“She has a crush on you.”

Okay, maybe I would’ve liked some formalities.

“What?”

“Maybe I should change it to ‘had.’ She had a crush on-”

“No, no, I got that part, but- I-” I sputter.

I try to watch her, looking for some reaction. When she gives me none, I sigh. “…Are you messing with me?”

“Yes. No. Maybe. Why do you think I would be?”

“Don’t make me answer that. Why would she have a crush on me?”

“Now that’s a question worth asking yourself. I can’t describe someone else’s values. Well, I could, but you wouldn’t like it.”

Molly isn’t a flatterer, that’s for sure. The way that she almost glares at me makes me feel she has something more to say on that matter. It’s not a very fair question, so she’s responded with an unfair answer. It hurts, of course. Every word Molly says usually hurts in some way or another, but if I really try and think about it from a neutral perspective, she’s right. To use her words, I’ve basically been sulking for the past four months. It did do wonders for my self-esteem, being in that hospital.

The hospital wasn’t the cause, though. I like to pretend it was, and it didn’t make anything better, but it wasn’t the cause.

“You know how she likes board games?” Molly asks, suddenly changing the topic.

“Yeah?”

“But only ones that involve an inordinate amount of luck? Like Risk, where you have to roll dice every turn?”

I think for a moment. “True enough.”

She frowns, an overly serious expression on her face.

“Maybe she finds the way you roll dice sexy.”

…

I’m too confused by Molly’s red herring to laugh immediately, so my face kind of hangs in a half-smile for a second, before I look up and realize that Molly has planted her feet, and we’re standing on the doorstep of the Shanghai, the strange architectural mixture of Japanese Shoji and European wooden furniture hanging over us in a set of overlapping eaves. Molly tilts her head to look in through one of the windows and dusts off her skirt before turning around to face me.

“Why are we-”

I see them now, Shizune and Misha sitting at a booth by the window, both having a nice slice of pie and a cup of either tea or coffee in small china cups. Shizune holds her cup with the tips of her fingers and blows across the top to cool it.

“Oh.”

In less than five seconds, I see Shizune look up and spot the two of us. She looks at me with a confused, perhaps a little sad, expression, and then turns away, crossing her arms and frowning grumpily.

I turn back to Molly.

“So,” I begin, annoyed, “you want me to go in and apologize.”

“No, but you can do that. What I want is to force the issue.”

I frown. “What do you mean?”

“I wasn’t involved. I don’t know who’s to blame, and frankly, I don’t care. But I hate interactions like this where two people are locked in limbo, unable to do anything. The reason I brought you here is to force the issue, because if you choose to walk away now, Shizune will have seen us, the two of us, intentionally choose not to enter a store because you saw her inside. It won’t be impossible to reconcile afterwards, but she will always wonder why you made it my issue, on top of your own. So it’s your choice whether you want to go in and apologize, but it’s just that: now you have to make a choice.”

This is the second time I’ve walked into a prank, if you could call it that, that Molly has devised. This time quite literally. She said it herself; she wasn’t involved. She shouldn’t be interjecting herself into my life. In a way, she’s doing exactly the same thing Shizune and Misha did.

Why am I not as upset with her as I was with them, then? Intentions? Shizune and Misha ran into my room just to sate their curiosity. Molly's reasons for doing this are beyond me, but she is trying to get me to make up.

I’m tired.

Is that natural? My entire life’s been upended, and I still haven’t wrapped my head around the idea that I probably won’t see forty. I feel bad for my old friends. I feel bad for my parents. I feel bad for… Iwanako. Most debilitatingly of all, I feel bad for myself. Every person I see in this school reminds me of where I am, and why I had to be sent here. I need to shake this attitude, or I’ll never get anywhere. Learning to actually apologize for once, without putting it off forever… could be a good first step.

It’s no use thinking in private next to Molly. If anyone in this school is psychic, it’s her, not me. I feel like she can see my thoughts printed out on my forehead in full digital display. I can see them reflected back at me in her flickering eyes.

“You know why I’m nervous, don’t you?” I ask.

Molly doesn’t answer.

I continue. “You said she has… had a crush on me?”

“I did. Is that why?”

“No.”

“Smooth. Why, then?”

“...What if it goes wrong? What if she hates me, or rejects my apology? It’s all these ‘what if’s’ in my head that I can’t get rid of.”

“Oh, well then you can come back after you’re done and yell at me about how wrong I was.”

I raise an eyebrow. “You’d let me do that?”

“No, of course not,” she says, tilting her head as if it was obvious. “You wouldn’t have to.”

I look back over to Shizune. She’s still facing the other way, avoiding us.

Me. Avoiding me.

Turning back to Molly, I find her looking at Shizune with a wide grin on her face.

“Because, Hisao, I’m never wrong.”

Wooden chairs, paper walls. The Shanghai is busier than it usually is. Half the tables are full of elderly couples, the only exceptions being Shizune and Misha, at the far south-east corner, in a booth next to the window. The bell above the door rings as I enter, but I don’t spot Yuuko anywhere. Molly watches me enter through the window, then turns and leaves, back the way we came.

I take wide steps over to Shizune and Misha while I collect myself.

“Oh, Hicchan,” says Misha, as I approach. She looks as if she’s about to cry. Shizune, across the table from her, looks up and cocks an eyebrow before crossing her arms. The gesture ends up being pointless, however, as within a few seconds she has to uncross them to sign to Misha, who ping-pongs between the two of us frantically.

“Come to plead your way back into the Student Council, Hicchan? Why? Realize your life is boring without- Shicchan, that’s not very nice. Shicchan, I know... But… Shicchan…”

Misha is speaking awkwardly, in a hesitating tone clearly foreign to her. I don’t think she’s used to being an intermediary on top of an interpreter. I steel myself.

“I would like to apologize,” I say.

Shizune, surprisingly, signs nothing. She waits, looking at me, leaning into the foam backrest of the booth. I shake my head and enter a ninety-degree bow, narrowly avoiding slamming my head into the table.

“Yesterday morning I was unnecessarily rude when you came to my room. I had no right to yell at you as I did. I felt uncomfortable talking about the subject. There were many other, better ways I could have addressed the situation. I’m sorry.”

Misha doesn’t say anything for a while, so I remain in my bow while I listen to the small flutters of fabric indicating the two of them are talking in sign. When Misha finally speaks up, I’m unable to see if she’s speaking for herself, or if Shizune is signing to her.

“We accept your apology.”

I raise my head, Shizune is looking out the window, and I can’t see her face.

“We think that you were right in being upset, because Shicchan says she should’ve ‘taken the hint,’” Misha says, regaining her normal, upbeat voice. “But we think you could’ve been a little nicer~!”

I look at the table and the two cups of tea they have placed between them.

“Can I pay for your drinks?”

Shizune turns around, a confident smile on her face. Her signing is playful but accusatory.

“Hicchan, the tea we’re drinking is veeeery expensive~. The leaves are only grown inside active volcanoes, and they have to train monkeys to harvest them~...”

Table of Contents

Next Chapter >>>

Act 1: Life Expectancy

Scene 4: Match and Set

The splash of cold water against my face jolts me into consciousness.

I don’t know if I could really have been called conscious, as I made my way over to the showers in a bleary dream-state. My subconscious definitely knows how to wake me up, though. I press my back against the tiles of the equally cold shower stall, trying to avoid the stream. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, it begins to warm up.

I think back to the events of the previous day.

I feel bad about not walking Molly back to the school. She said she didn’t need any help, but I should have insisted, or asked her to come inside with me. I think I saw her wobble a little bit as she walked away, even if she was trying to hide it.

I never made any plans with her for the festival, either.

I spent the rest of Saturday evening with Shizune and Misha, helping them put the last couple of signs onto backing boards. Then they made me promise to spend some of the festival with them. I don’t know why I needed to promise. Do they really think I’m that untrustworthy? Well, they’re right, because I completely forgot I said I would spend some time with Hiroshi, too.

They can get along, right?

Drying myself off, I get dressed and look at myself in the mirror.

My eyebags have mostly gone away. I think I might’ve gained a pound or two, now that I’m not eating hospital food anymore. My hair still won’t stay flat.

You’re always sulking.

No matter how I stare at myself in the mirror, I can’t see what she saw. Maybe she meant my mannerisms, more than my appearance? As I lean in to look at my face, I realize I’ve subconsciously clutched at the fabric in front of my chest, trying to pull it away from my scar.

Hmm.

That’s disconcerting. Have I been doing that, without noticing?

I shake my head and grab my stuff as I head back to my room, thankful that I don’t run into Kenji on the way.

The spot on my bedside table where my bottles used to be stands out. Most surfaces in my room are covered with books, except for this one. This morning, I just put them right back into the drawer after I finished my helping of plastic-tasting pills. If the dynamic duo plans to pick me up, I definitely don’t want a repeat of Friday. Not like I think it would happen again, but you can never be too careful. I don’t want them to feel guilty.

Okay, come on, Hisao. You made plans, remember? Grab your stuff and move.

The instant I do, walking over to the door of my room and swinging it open, I hear a loud thud and realize I’ve given someone a probable concussion. Misha, now leaning against the wall opposite my door, gripping her head and groaning in pain, was just about to knock. Shizune crosses her arms and levels a death-stare at me from right beside her.

Uh oh.

“Aim higher, Hicchan~!”

“Thanks for the advice,” I retort, straining as I clench my teeth. “But I do have eyes, you know.”

Shizune and Misha are standing behind me as I try to shoot a couple of aluminum cans off a ledge with a cork gun. I load another shot, take aim, and miss again as my cork goes veering off to the left.

“Shicchan says she’s not so sure~!”

The stand, supposedly run by the theater club, is wild-west themed. I should’ve expected a stand run by the theater club to feature exaggerated costumes; the girl running the stand, off to the side grinning as she watches me, is wearing a cowboy hat and some sort of poncho. She should really have a mustache, too. I directed Shizune and Misha here because I was hoping to find Molly, but in the end I was disappointed by her absence.

“Why can’t you guys give it a try, if you want a prize so badly?”

“Shooting is not ladylike!” Misha exclaims, attempting to capture some of the prideful derision in Shizune’s signing. She fails, instead just speaking louder as she plants her hands on her hips.

“Sorry, Hicchan, but Shicchan says no, and I don’t know how to load the gun~!”

“I could teach you in about ten seconds.”

“I’m not as smart as you, Hicchan! You don’t know how long you’d be stuck with me~. A long, long time! By then you could have won the prize already~!”

Leaning down on the wooden bar at the edge of the stand with my elbows, I attempt to steady my shot. It works, somewhat, and I graze the edge of the can but don’t knock it down. I curse under my breath; I only have two shots left. Two shots for two cans.

“I think,” I begin, straightening up and pointing at Shizune dramatically, “you just don’t want to embarrass yourself when you miss.”

Shizune gets a glint in her eyes and looks at me over the rim of her glasses.

“Oh, really, Hicchan~? Are you sure you’re not just pro-jec-ting?” Misha challenges, stumbling over the last word a little.

“Are you sure you’re not projecting that I’m projecting?”

“Are you sure you’re not projecting that we’re pro-jec-ting that you’re- Woah~!” Misha reels and begins massaging her temples. “Ahahaha! Sorry, Shicchan, but my head’s getting fuzzy.”

I glare at Shizune, point at my own two eyes and then at her, turn around, and miss both of my remaining shots.

“Huh.”

Misha bursts into laughter, recovered from her headache, and Shizune shakes her head as she smiles. I return my cork gun to its place on the table and shrug at the girl with the cowboy hat, who glances over me impassively while scanning the crowd for her next hundred-yen victim. Sighing, I join the dynamic duo as we continue down the path of the festival, elbowing our way through crowds, my nostrils filled with the smell of fried food and sweat. This sun has no idea when to let up.

If I’ve joined the dynamic duo, does that make us a trio? But ‘dynamic trio’ doesn’t work. I need to find an appropriate adjective beginning with ‘tr-’ to modify the trio to convey our dynamism, but the only word I can think of is trigonometry. I don’t want to think of trigonometry.

What maniac holds a quiz the day after a festival? A sadist, that’s who. It appears the faculty is full of sadists.

Misha carts me off to another takoyaki stand, where I’m forced to foot the bill again. It took a lot of apology towards her to get Shizune off my back after clocking Misha in the forehead with my dormitory door. After a bit of examination, we determined she was alright, and didn’t need to go see the nurse. I demonstrated the depths of my guilt by buying her some grilled squid balls, which quickly backfired into me paying for all the food, no matter whose stomach it was headed towards. It annoys me a little that Shizune won’t even pay for her own stuff, considering the hints she’s been dropping that her family’s loaded, but I decide to take it with grace. I’m pretty sure she’s bluffing, anyway.

“You don’t want any, Hicchan?”

“No thanks,” I say, checking my watch. “This is the third time we’ve gotten food in less than two hours, I’m good.”

“Teenage boys should eat more! You have to maintain a healthy appetite~!”

“There’s nothing healthy or appetizing about another helping of squid balls, thank you. It’ll make my muscles all flabby.”

Shizune rolls her eyes. There’s about ten seconds of signing and some pointing at my arms and wrists before Misha eventually responds, giggling.

“Shicchan says your muscles are nothing to write home about. Wahahaha!”

I raise an eyebrow, wondering why that took ten seconds of discussion. “How rude.”

Does Shizune have a crush on me? Was Molly just messing with me? Currently, I’m leaning towards the latter, but really I have no way to tell. You’d think that I’d learn to be an expert at this, if only for self-preservation, considering four months ago a girl having a crush on me nearly sent me on an early trip to the afterlife.

This is nerve-racking, searching someone for a reaction that might not even be there.

After Shizune and Misha get their food, two medium-size cardboard trays of takoyaki, we walk around looking for a park bench to sit at while they eat. Of course, all the benches near the heart of the festival are full, owing to the generous crowds the school has been blessed, or cursed, with. I have to follow them halfway across the school before Shizune finds a bench she’s pleased with, a search that takes a solid five minutes. By then, with the extra walk and them waving their food right under my nose, I’m suddenly hungry.

Not that hungry; I’d only have one, but when I reach across the table to grab one from her plate, Shizune bats my hand away all the same.

“Just one,” I groan. Shizune juts her chin upward in pride and signs something.

“Wahahaha! Shicchan says you have to say please~!”

“I paid for it!”

“You still have to say please~!”

“Okay, now you’re just being sadistic. You guys are tyrants, you know that?”

“We’re being perfectly diplomatic, Hicchan! Consent is the essence of a proper relationship~.”

I squint and stare at Shizune.

“I paid for it. Technically, it’s mine. I loaned it to you for temporary safekeeping.”

“Temporary safekeeping… in our stomachs~! And now you’re not going to get it back, because you don’t want to say please!”

I hear something, and look over at the next table to find a group of people, two girls and two guys, snickering at us. God, I wish Misha would learn some volume contr-

I catch a glimpse of a branching scar and a wide smile pulling at the corner of a mouth. Hiroshi sits at the bench on the far side, facing me. His head is propped up by his hands, his elbows resting on the table. Aya sits beside him, pretending she isn’t watching me just as intently as he is. The other two, a guy and a girl I don’t recognize, sit across from them.

“Woah, what’s that!?” I say urgently, pointing in their direction, over Misha’s head.

“What’s what~?” she asks, turning around, and I seize the opportunity to snatch a takoyaki from her dish. Oldest trick in the book.

I pop it into my mouth, looking Shizune right in the eyes while she stares at me incredulously. She tries to get Misha’s attention, but Misha’s busy scanning the horizon for whatever I pointed at.

I leave and walk towards Hiroshi as his entire table erupts into laughter. Aya bends over and covers her mouth, giggling, while the guy I don’t know just drops his head into his hands. The other two make up most of the noise, as both Hiroshi and the girl across from him are howling.

I finish chewing and swallow, patting my chest as I address the table. “Very funny. Har har.”

“D-dude!” Hiroshi squeals, trying to catch his breath. “You’re a… a legend!”

I cough. “You mind helping a legend out?”

I turn around to face the dynamic duo as they approach. Shizune stomps towards us, leaving Misha to pack up the takoyaki and run over. This immediately creates an issue, because she can’t sign while carrying the two cardboard trays they came in. I suddenly get a very, very funny idea.

“Would you like me to carry those for you?” I ask, holding out my hands. Only Aya seems to get it, and she has to turn away to hold her laughter in.

“Oh, thank you, Hicchan!” Misha begins, before being cut off by Shizune aggressively making an ‘X’ with her arms and shaking her head vigorously. “But, Shicchan… how will I…”

Shizune points at the table we’re standing next to. Misha looks at me and the rest of the table suspiciously, as if trying to check if we’ll steal the trays if she leaves them unattended. I raise my hands in innocence.

“Wahahaha! Okay, Shicchan,” Misha says, setting the food down.

Hiroshi promptly reaches over to grab some, but Shizune snatches his hand out of midair and gives him the evil eye. He pouts and returns his hand to his lap.

“Hicchan,” Misha begins again, wagging her finger with a playfully scolding tone, addressing me and the rest of the table, “don’t you remember that you promised to spend your day with us? Sorry, friends~, but Hicchan’s taken.”

Interesting wording, there.

I grimace. “I don’t remember signing myself onto an exclusive contract.”

“Yeah!” Hiroshi chimes in. “He’s a bone-fried member of the theater club now!”

We all stare at him.

“...Bona fide?” I ask.

“Yeah, that’s what I said.”

“No, you said-” I start, then shake my head, sighing, and turn back to Shizune. “Nevermind. Yeah, I’m a member of the theater club now. Don’t you think I should be spending time with them, so that I can build some camaraderie?”

“We could go and play Risk, if you don’t want to have fun at the festival~. Are you going back on your promise~?”

“I never ‘promised’ anything beyond spending some time with you guys. I never said the whole day. Anyway, I don’t need your permission to talk to other people in this school.”

Shizune tosses her head back in a voiceless ‘hmph!’

“Interesting, Hicchan, that you’re so dedicated to the theater club, but not to the Student Council~!”

Okay, she’s pissed me off now. I’m not her property. I don’t have the time for this to descend into a full debate like the ones she has with Lilly every time they meet.

No, blowing up at them isn’t going to do anything. I learned that last time.

“Shizune,” I say, trying to put some assertiveness into my voice. “I’m putting my foot down. This isn’t funny anymore.”

She frowns, raising her hands, prepared to rebut me again. Backing down isn’t in Shizune’s blood, but when I hold eye contact with her, she slowly realizes that I’m not going to either.

Shizune glares at me, but her expression is more paranoid than angry. After taking a moment to look over Hiroshi’s group, she waves her hand, turns with a flourish, and walks away. Misha avoids my eyes.

“Sorry, Hicchan,” she says, scooping up the cardboard trays and running after Shizune.

…

That… went surprisingly well. Maybe she did learn something. Finally, some conflict with someone that I don’t immediately feel sinking into the pit of my stomach. I don’t think I’ll regret this when I go to bed today, which is a pretty big accomplishment. Only time will tell, though. It’s both comforting and discomforting to see Shizune lose her usual possessiveness. I feel like it’s one of her defining traits. It’s kind of like seeing Emi without her enthusiasm, or Rin without her… Rin-ness.

I feel strangely proud of myself, though. No, that’s not quite right. Proud of both of us.

I’m startled from my thoughts by Hiroshi slapping his hand onto my shoulder as he stands up.

“Anyway!” Hiroshi shouts. “You have people to meet. Here.”

He turns around and gestures to his friends as the three of them stand up.

“Aya Matsuda. You guys already met.”

Aya waves at me. Her hair has been pulled up into a pair of giant buns shaped like roses, skewered by two bright pink pins. Somehow, she’s managed to one-up her hairstyle from yesterday. The sleeves of her uniform seem to continue indefinitely, and I realize she’s wearing small, eggshell-white gloves. I question the logic of wearing gloves in weather as hot as this, but by now I can take a hint; it’s probably not something she wants to talk about, and she almost definitely has her own reasons.

“Hi,” she says, almost whispering.

Hiroshi proceeds to point towards the other two people currently present.

“Tsuru Okasaki and Jun Ueda, meet Hisao Nakai. Tsuru’s another lead actress, and Jun is… also another actor, but he’s also our art club liaison so he helps out with art stuff, sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” Jun repeats, with an annoyed tone. “I paint all you guys’ flats, dude.”

Tsuru is only slightly shorter than Aya, but she has a pretty slouched posture. That, combined with Aya’s over the top hair, makes their height difference look like more than it really is. She has short cropped, obviously dyed blonde hair and a round, friendly face, and is peering at me through a pair of oval-shaped pink glasses. She stands very close to Jun, who has his hand around her shoulder.

He, on the other hand, is perhaps the tallest guy my age I’ve ever seen. Now that he isn’t sitting down, I can see that he’s easily a head taller than Mutou, and I already considered Mutou to be above-average in height. He has small, pinprick black eyes, stark black hair shaved into what is effectively a buzz-cut, and he seems to be composed entirely of vertical lines. His proportions appear perfectly normal, dispelling my immediate thought of some sort of gigantism, but his height, surprisingly well-muscled build, and perpetual frown make him look pretty intimidating.

I know he’s not always like that, considering just a few minutes ago he was chuckling at my stolen takoyaki stunt. Nevertheless, he avoids my eyes and watches the crowd flow between the stalls.

The five of us exchange some brief greetings and then get to wandering around the grounds, Hiroshi leading in front, sometimes even walking backwards, while the rest of us walk side-by-side behind him.

“So, Hisao, you’re new? You’ve joined the drama club?” Tsuru asks.

“I have, I’m… going to be running lights and sound, I think.”

“Ooh, wow,” Tsuru smiles, listening to me intently. She squeezes Jun’s hand on her shoulder absentmindedly. “Is Molly going to be teaching you?”

“Think so. I heard the previous guy had to leave because of health issues.”

Tsuru frowns. “He did. Isamu was great. I’m sure you’ll live up to his memory.”

I furrow my eyebrows at her wording, hoping I haven’t ruined the mood. Well, that’s his name, apparently. Isamu. I notice she steals a glance at Hiroshi. Why Hiroshi? He doesn’t seem to notice.

Jun tugs on Tsuru’s ear. She looks up at him, he seems to mouth something to her, and then she turns back to me with a start.

“Sorry! That made it sound like he’s dead. He’s not dead! People don’t die all the time at this school. It’s actually really rare!”

Jun’s shoulders bounce in muted laughter as he facepalms, his head turned away from her. Tsuru glares at him, winds up, whirls, and slaps him on the ass. He jumps half his height into the air.

“Hey!”

My eyes widen, and I’m startled when Aya giggles on the opposite side of me, covering her mouth with her gloved hand. She seems to have a knack for fading into the background without anyone noticing; a strange quirk for a supposed lead actress. From the front of the group, standing with his hands on his hips, Hiroshi is looking at me with raised eyebrows and a smile.

It says: look what you’ve gotten yourself into.

I laugh. This is going to be interesting.

Another couple hours go by, running around the festival, following Hiroshi while Tsuru and Jun tease each other. We talk a lot about things that don’t matter at all. I learn about other teachers, the best restaurants in town, good places to visit within a few hours’ bus ride. We find the second stand run by the theater club and get some tea from a bunch of girls that scold Hiroshi; apparently he’s skimping on his shift.

Molly was there, I gather. She helped set it up and ran the first hour of the shift and it’s been going since the beginning of the day without issue.

I wonder if making friends has always been this easy; at first glance, I slot into the group as if I’ve always been there, as if I were a node in a web that’s had everything weaved around it. Tsuru and Jun are dating, obviously, and I learn that Tsuru has something called auditory processing disorder. Apparently it makes it hard for her to tell what people are saying when she can’t read their lips, among other things, so my primary takeaway is that I should face her when I’m talking to her. She tells me that Jun has the life-threatening condition of being a massive softie. She gets another tug on the ear for that.

Yet despite all the entertainment, I still find myself coming back to the same thought:

Where’s Molly?

It’s not like people are intentionally excluding her; no-one seems to be avoiding the topic, it just never comes up. If Shizune were the leader of a club as big as the theater club, she would insert herself into everything she possibly could, and club members wandering around on festival day would be no exception. Molly gives the air that she is utterly in control of everything related to her club, down to an even more fundamental level than Shizune, and yet she’s nowhere to be found. Maybe I misread her?

Of course, she could just be somewhere out of sight, working to get the stage set up. I heard the band was going to do a performance this evening.

A few hours later, I find myself throwing horseshoes at stakes as the sun starts to go down. Hiroshi, Jun, and Tsuru are all busy throwing ping-pong balls at cans, trying to get them to topple over. I know from first-hand experience that it’s a fool’s errand. Momentum is determined by velocity and mass, and a ping-pong ball has hardly any mass to speak of.

I don’t know why I go back to playing games. I got my fill earlier. To tell the truth, I feel a little anxious walking behind the lovebirds and Hiroshi; Aya and I just kind of along for the ride, not really talking about anything. I felt I had to do something, or I would get anxious again. In any case, something must have awakened in me, because while I was perfectly average at every game I played with Shizune and Misha, I’ve just hit my third successive horseshoe on the same stake.

“So… what do you do for fun?”

I look up from the game I’m playing and eye Aya and her awkward expression. Her outrageous hairdo contrasts with her stance, rubbing one gloved hand up the sleeve of the other arm. She seems to be confused at her own attempt at small talk, which has contorted her face into a sort of half-grimace, half-grin. She taps her foot against the cement walkway nervously.

“Do I not look like I’m having fun?” I say, partly out of wry humor and partly to evade the question.

“No!” Aya answers, jumping. “That’s not what I meant… um. Well, I know you know that’s not what I meant, but…”

I blink, shooting her a puzzled glance, and then turn back to the game. The kid at the counter, probably a first or second year, seems to want me to stop stalling and get on with it. I can stop now and accept my medium prize or double my buy-in, and if I hit another two out of three horseshoes I get a large prize instead. I would go for a large one with the luck I’m having, but the truth is I’ve noticed a painful stinging in my chest, and I don’t want to push my luck.

“Do you want a cat, a dog, or a… what is that?”

“A fox,” Aya answers.

“Okay,” I say, and I point at it and grab the fox from the kid at the counter. It’s about the size of a soccer ball; easily held in one hand, but large enough to hug without feeling like you’re crushing it.

Turning around to hand it to Aya, I realize my mistake. Aya was just indicating what it was, not that she wanted it. I look at her and examine the changes in her expression. She’s a little disappointed, maybe, but she’s doing a good job of hiding it, and she doesn’t look like she’s going to complain. Mainly, she’s just shy.

For some reason, the first thought that comes to my mind is that Molly and I would never have this kind of miscommunication.

Aya accepts the fox anyway, her face coloring a little. I shake my head and join the flow of the crowd again, with Aya quickly following me. The other three must’ve rounded a corner, because I don’t see them anymore.

“Do you not know what a fox is?” Aya asks, and I almost respond automatically with a sly answer before stopping myself to examine her expression. It’s a genuine question, not one intended to insult my intelligence or start some banter.

“I know what a fox is,” I say, a little annoyed, “this plushie just takes an… abstract approach to depicting one.”

I certainly don’t think I’ve ever seen a purple and yellow fox before, nevermind the fact that my knowledge of animals tells me that foxes don’t usually have glitter in their oversized eyeballs.

Aya nods, staring down at the fox in her arms. “You didn’t answer my question, before.”

About what I do for fun? I thought I avoided it well enough. Guess not.

“Mainly reading. It was the only thing I was able to do in the hospital. That or watching TV, so I suppose I became a bit of a book addict once I got tired of reruns.”

“Oh…”

She’s going to apologize. Goddammit. I should’ve kept my stupid mouth shut.

“I’m sorry… I didn’t know,” she concludes, and I grind my teeth.

“It’s fine, you didn’t know,” I say automatically. Yes, of course she didn’t know. She just said that, Hisao.

Why am I angry? I close my eyes, straightening. There’s no point in getting angry, but I don’t want to be pitied. I don’t want to be treated like I’m made of glass anymore than I want to treat other people like they’re made of glass; but that’s what I was doing when I kept staring at Molly’s legs. I was pitying her, against all observable evidence suggesting she had no need or desire to be pitied. Why do I hate being on the receiving end when I am the first to dish it out? Is that what Molly was talking about when she mentioned my being inconsistent?

Oh.

Oh.

Aya looks like Iwanako.

“I don’t read much anymore. I used to read all the time as a kid, but nowadays I’m too busy.”

I tilt my head. “With the play?”

She nods. “Studying, too. I want to try and get into a good university.”

“What for?”

Aya laughs awkwardly and interlaces her gloved hands around the fox, fidgeting.

“I don’t really know. I get good grades in math. Maybe engineering?” she says, like a question asking for my approval.

“I don’t know what I want to do, either. I always liked science, though.”

“Okay.”

The conversation peters out. The two of us turn a corner and finally spot Hiroshi and the others off in the distance.

I sigh, for no particular reason.

“Are you alright?” Aya asks.

“Yeah, I’m fine, never better. Just a little tired.”

Aya looks towards the others, their silhouettes filtered through the river of people, and then she turns back to me.

“Are you… do you have anything you want to ask?”

“Yes, actually.”

I look at her. She meets my eyes with a kind, if nervous, smile.

“When do the fireworks start?”

Aya furrows her brows in thought. “An hour, maybe less.”

“I’ve got to get going then. Do you know where Molly is?” I ask.

“Oh…” Aya says, looking down at her feet with a sad expression. She takes a deep breath.

“You guys looked close, and that… is really rare with Molly. I’ve been trying to get her to… join us and have some fun, but she always finds a way to refuse. Very politely, so I’m not upset, but it would be nice if you could get her out sometime… I think she’s just anxious in crowds, like you.”

I don’t think Aya knows Molly as much as she thinks she does. I can’t imagine Molly nervous.

“Alright. So… do you know where she is?” I repeat.

“She’s probably in her room. One twenty… seven? Are you going to go get her?”

“I’ll try. No guarantees.”

“Does she…” she trails off. She looks at me and blushes and looks away from me again.

“Oh, you want to…” she trails off again.

I have no idea what the hell she’s thinking of, but it probably has nothing to do with reality. I wait, expecting her to say something, eventually.

“Hiroshi…” she begins, “got Tsuru and Jun together, about a year ago, when we were all in second year. He does that a lot. It’s his hobby, being a matchmaker. He says when he gets Molly together with someone he’ll… eat his shirt.”

I raise an eyebrow. Against my better judgment, I chuckle and feel my face getting hotter.

She continues. “I have two thousand yen resting on… beating him to it. I’ll split it with you, if you… um.”

Really?

She can’t be serious.

I burst out laughing.

“What?” Aya asks, looking around nervously at the people eyeing us as they walk by. “What? What’s so funny?”

I wheeze and step to the side, leaning onto a stall as I double over. I see Aya’s brows furrow, but it just makes me laugh harder.

“Are you serious?” I heave, clutching my stomach.

“Well, that’s what you meant, right?” Aya says, irate, becoming increasingly red with a combination of embarrassment and rage. “You want to date her?”

“No!” I manage, then immediately regret it.

My laughter slows and I exhale, coughing. I rub my brow, calming down.

“I’ve known her for three days. I think it’s a little early to be deciding on something like that.”

“Oh.”

Aya shrinks, her shoulders dropping.

“Did you want me to date her? You think we’re a good match? I don’t know what to think about that.”

Aya’s eyes widen. “That’s…” she looks down at the fox again. “That’s not what I said.”

I shake my head, still a little out of breath from my laughter, and decide I should probably be leaving.

“Anyway, thanks for telling me her room number.”

“Oh! You’re… welcome.”

“I’ll go check up on her. Tell the others I had a good time.”

Aya mutters something to the effect of ‘sure,’ and I turn around and wave at Aya as I head to the girls’ dorms.

Entering the dorms, I immediately feel out of place in the same way that men feel out of place in the women’s underwear section when accompanied by their mother and about eight years old.

Thankfully, there’s no-one present to witness my embarrassment, the entire building empty on account of the festival.

The festival I’m now trying to coax a girl out of her room to attend.

I run through what I want to say when I get to her, but I can’t think of anything past the basics. Dumbass. Didn’t you just have this whole dramatic internal monologue about how you were going to get your act together?

I walk through the lobby, past the common room, past the elevator, to the stairs. They spit me out on the next floor at one end of a long hallway with a brown carpet that’s only slightly a different shade from the boys’ dorm. Scanning the walls as I walk past, I search for room one twenty-seven.

I find it.

Okay, Hisao.

I knock.

“Hello? You home, Molly?” I ask, trying to be loud enough for her to hear me inside.

No answer, just silence. A long, long silence. I shake my head and move to knock again.

“...Yes?”

Her voice is muffled through the door.

“It’s Hisao.”

“Hello,” she replies.

…

Why does she do that? Why does she say ‘hello’ and then nothing? I would rather she ignore me than acknowledge my comment and implicitly state that there’s no need to reply to it.

Of course, it wasn’t a question, but still.

Anyway, I’m speaking to the door and I can hear my own voice echo back at me, down the hallway. It makes me nervous. I don’t want everyone in the school to know I made a visit to the girls’ dorms.

“May I come in?”

Another long pause, and I wonder if she’s heard me.

Huh, I’ve just asked to be let into a girl’s room.

Hisao, you sly dog.

I can’t tell whether Molly doesn’t care, and is just pausing for dramatic effect, or if she’s actually snickering her head off behind the door. Either way, I hear the shuffle of feet inside the room, and then the ratcheting of a lock. I step back and Molly opens the door.

Inside I can see the light of a lamp on the far desk, on which are spread a wide array of papers, probably schoolwork, but otherwise the room is shrouded in darkness, on account of the windows being covered with a black curtain. I see a flash of posters against various walls but I cannot discern their contents. Molly steps forward and closes the door behind her while facing me, her expression its usual blank, unreadable stare.

I sigh. “Yes, I am aware of what I just said. I realized as soon as it left my mouth.”

Molly tilts her head. “What are you talking about?”

“I asked to be let into your room.”

“Oh. That. What about it?”

“I just… assumed you would tease me about it, because, well, I just asked to be let into a girl’s room. And…”

Molly blinks.

“...I’m a guy,” I finish, successfully embarrassing myself where Molly has failed.

Her eyes widen as she seems to understand what I’m getting at.

“I see. No, I don’t really care.”

“You don’t care? I thought…” I shake my head. I thought girls cared about this sort of thing. “You’d just let anyone into your room?”

“I didn’t say that. I’ve never thought about it before. It would be dependent on how well I know them. Isn’t that obvious? Why should I waste time thinking about it? Whether I let someone into my room would be decided on a case by case basis.”

A case by case basis…

“Would you let me in? Hypothetically?”

“No.”

I wince. God, I wish she was doing that intentionally, but I don’t think she is.

I avoid asking her why, because I can see the answer written in her eyes: I’ve known you for three days, Hisao.

“Anyway,” I say, changing the topic, “I came to check up on you. Don’t you want to spend some time around the festival? Get some food or something? The fireworks start in less than an hour. Maybe if we go now we could get some decent seats in the park.”

Molly thinks for a moment.

“Sure. Just a couple questions, first,” she says, surprising me. It’s not like she looked enthused.

“Ask away.”

“Who gave you my room number? Shizune? Aya?” she pauses. I swear I don’t react, I don’t even blink, but after a moment she continues. “Okay, Aya it is. Why?”

“Because I asked?” I say.

Molly facepalms with an audible slap.

“Why do you always assume the worst in people? I just wanted to check up on you, honest.”

“Sure, sure. Let me get my things.”

“Things?” I ask, before she can turn back around. I don’t know why I asked, since it’s not really my business, and it made me sound a little desperate. Maybe I’m afraid she won’t come back out.

“Money,” Molly states, pinching her thumb and forefinger together. I see her raise an eyebrow as she gets an idea.

She puts a hand over her heart and leans against her door in a surprisingly feminine gesture. “Oh!” she swoons. “Why Hisao, you’re offering to treat me! How noble! I’m flattered that you would-”

“No, no, don’t let me stop you. Go and get your things, I don’t mind.”

Molly freezes in her act, rolls her eyes, and turns back to her door with a grin. I think I managed to conceal my blush well enough. I’m getting better at it.

“I figured the Student Council would’ve cleaned you out,” she says.

“H-how would you know about-” I start, but am interrupted by her door being slammed back in my face. I chuckle to myself. Maybe, just maybe, she knows these things because I give them away.

It’s then that I notice a small white square of paper, folded on itself, now crumpled on the carpet. It looks like it was meant to be slipped under the door, but whoever was assigned the task did it pretty poorly, and when the door was opened it was crammed into the corner. Now it rests right at my feet, dragged along unknowingly by Molly’s door.

The misshapen white square seems to be mocking me.

I know it’s wrong to peer at people’s mail…

Buuuuuut…

I drop to my knees and pick it up, listening to the sounds coming from Molly’s room to ensure I don’t get caught. It’s crumpled pretty badly, but it’s still legible, not that there’s much to read. All it says is ‘come see me,’ quadruple underlined. By comparison, a fairly daintily scribed ‘yours, Nurse,’ hangs at the bottom of the page. The contrast is hilarious.

That girl has made an art out of avoiding me.

Why? Why would she be avoiding him? What does she have to avoid? I know Emi doesn’t like getting her prosthetics checked either, but that’s because she’s so overzealous about running that she can’t stomach the thought of having to slow down. Even then, Nurse can somehow wrangle Emi back to the checkup room. Is he really that incapable of doing the same to Molly?

Think, Hisao. How does he get people to show up when they don’t want to? With Emi, he guilts her, but it seems Molly is immune to guilt. With me, he doesn’t need to do much, because ultimately I do value my life, and my medication and treatment are crucial enough that if I were to avoid him, he could claim I was endangering myself and probably have me dragged to his clinic by force. For Molly to be avoiding him means that her condition, whatever it is, is tame enough that it doesn’t pose any immediate danger, but serious enough to warrant checkups, or the refilling of medications, or something else. No matter how I see it, if Molly’s only problem is her amputations, it still wouldn’t justify the nurse’s worry, and the trouble he’s going through to get her to show up, especially since Molly doesn’t run, like Emi.

I’m interrupted by the sound of the knob turning again, and I stuff the piece of paper into my pocket.

“Where to, then?” Molly asks, locking her door.

“I have some ideas.”

(continued…)

It’s already dark outside, and the crowds have thinned. Half of the games have been packed up, but the food stalls are still running. We don’t end up getting anything. Even though Molly brought money with her, she never mentions being hungry. I’ve only ever seen her eat that single bowl of miso soup. She eats like a bird. A bird with metal legs.

The festival’s really pretty, at night. Call it the sentimentalist in me, but paper lanterns have a certain ambiance that nothing else can really imitate. Now that I don’t have to worry about bumping into someone every ten seconds, I can really take it in.

Speaking of crowds, I guess most of the people came from the town down the hill. That, and all the relatives of the students here. The times I’ve been down to the Shanghai, I saw mostly elderly couples populating it. As we walk, I find myself wondering if there’s something in Molly’s gait that I don’t notice, or that I’ve grown used to. What does the crowd think about the foreign girl with the braids and no legs? Can they see something in Molly’s face I can’t? Did Molly pick the knee-length dress again, for that reason?

Mostly, we don’t talk. When we walk past the stage I realize we missed the performance the dance club gave. I ask Molly why the theater club didn’t give one.

“What would there be to perform about?” she responds.

“I don’t know. You could do a little pseudo-performance. The first couple scenes from the play, to try and drum up some interest. Don’t they do that kind of thing in… Macbeth? One of Shakespeare’s plays, anyway. There’s a play within the play and then they do a summary of the events before it… I think it’s called a… ‘dumb play?’”

“There’s a play within a play and then before the play within a play they do another play?”

I snort.

“...Something like that.”

Molly tucks a braid behind her ear. “No thanks. Our advertisement for this play was the previous one. We hit record numbers.”

“You did? What are record numbers?”

“Just under three hundred tickets sold.”

My eyes go wide.

“The maximum capacity of the theater hall is two hundred, so we did two show nights.”

“That’s… really impressive. What were previous years like?”

Molly raises her head and stares at a swaying paper lantern, thinking. “About a hundred and fifty for winter, and two hundred and twenty for the spring.”

“Wow.”

“I’m going to blow it up this season. We’re selling four hundred tickets.”

I laugh. Molly’s odd displays of passion are hard to predict. I know she cares a lot about the play, but it’s strange how she doesn’t seem to care that much about the actors. I’m not saying she’d throw them under the bus at the first opportunity, but her primary concern is definitely the play as a whole. I guess that’s a good quality to have, as a director, but I figured the people most passionate about theater would be the people acting.

“Why do you like theater so much?” I find myself asking.

Molly doesn’t answer immediately, and she adjusts one of the red clips at her temple, thinking.

“Why do you like to read so much?” she retorts.

“...Good point.”

“No, it’s a very bad point,” Molly reprimands. “I should have a reason, but I don’t.”

“We don’t need to have a reason to like the things that we like.”

“Why not?”

Now it’s my turn to be stumped. I swing my arms loosely as I walk, staring at my feet.

“It’s just one of those things that can’t be explained.”

“That’s stupid.”

I’m caught off guard by the bluntness of her response.

“...Why is that stupid?”

“Because if we can’t choose the things we like, that means we don’t have free will.”

“That’s… stretching it a little. Why is that so much of an issue? It’s not like we know if we have free will or not.”

Molly looks at me like I’ve just said the dumbest thing she’s ever heard in her entire life.

“What?” I ask.

“I’d love to discuss this at length with you, but right now I don’t care to. It’d bog down this festive mood we have going,” she says, gesturing with a hand towards the stalls we’re walking past. The supposed ‘festive mood’ hasn’t shown through in her voice.

“Ah, there’s one of our stands,” she points out, suddenly entering a more businesslike tone.

I spot the shooting gallery I got my wallet cleaned out at this morning, still being run by the same girl, and we walk over to it. The girl with the poncho and cowboy hat spots me, raises an eyebrow, and then notices Molly. Her eyes go wide. That’s right, I grin, I’m a member of the theater club too, and I have connections.

“How was the turnout?” Molly asks, stepping behind the counter before the girl can comment. Molly kneels down and grabs a clipboard from underneath the register and starts flipping through it.

“Pretty good,” the girl says, still keeping her eyes on me, “I think you were right about the costume being good at drawing attention.”

“I knew it would. I didn’t see any other stands preparing costumes, and we practically have a monopoly on the supply.” She traces something on the clipboard with a finger. “Tendo subbed in midday? No issues?”

I mouth ‘I know you rigged the gun’ to the girl, and she turns back to Molly with a start.

“No issues.”

Molly nods, returns the clipboard to its place beneath the counter, and walks around the counter to stand in front of me.

“You can probably take a half-hour break to go watch the fireworks. I’ll cover for you.”

“Thanks, but…”

She notices me shaking my head furiously.

“I’m fine for now,” she continues, “I have a pretty good view from here, and I’m not tired.”

Molly shrugs. “Up to you.”

With another nod, we turn and continue in the direction of the park. Once we’re out of earshot from the stand, Molly grins at me.

“We make a pretty good team,” she says.

I raise an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“I mean with her being freaked out that you know me. I guess you went to that stand earlier today? It’s not quite a good cop, bad cop routine, but it’s similar. If you hadn’t been looking at her like that, she probably would’ve taken the break offer.”

I sigh. “You noticed?”

“You thought I wouldn’t?”

“I thought you would be polite enough to pretend not to notice.”

Molly rolls her eyes. “I already pretend not to notice a lot of things. Less out of politeness and more so they have a greater impact later.”

Ominous, as always. I know Molly enough to know that she isn’t bluffing, either.

Funny; that girl, being a member of the theater club, knows Molly, too, just enough to be afraid of her. And yet Aya thinks Molly’s afraid of crowds. For a girl that hates hypocrites, Molly is surprisingly contradictory. Aya said that Molly hanging out with people is rare enough to warrant bets, but all I had to do was ask, and now we’re walking around a festival at night.

Hmm.

“What was that about having a monopoly on the supply of costumes?” I ask, to make conversation.

“Well, we do, don’t we? We have racks of them, so we don’t have to spend any extra money. Put together some decent costumes, don’t let any other stalls borrow them, and voila, we stand out.”

“All of this for what? To raise money to buy more costumes?”

“No, no. Have you ever noticed all my skirts have pockets? We all have to do a little bit of money laundering, occasionally. Anyway, then we use the costumes to put together plays that people have to pay money to attend. Next time I’ll pick a play with a play within a play and a dumb play before the play within a play and I’ll charge… what? Triple? Bonus: I don’t have to pay the actors.”

“That sounds like child labor,” I say, shaking my head. “How does the school allow it?”

“They’re in on it, they call them ‘clubs’ and authorize them to ‘raise school spirit,’ so long as they get a cut.” She pinches her thumb and forefinger together again. “The beauty of capitalism. You know what I mean? I’ll scratch my back, you scratch mine.”

“Don’t you mean, ‘I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine?’”

“You don’t know what I mean,” she says, longingly.

I chuckle. I miss quite a few of Molly’s jokes, if they are jokes. She doesn’t treat each conversation like a linear sequence of prompts and responses. It’s more like a circle, with me lost somewhere in the center, trying to figure out which way is up.

Any other person would hear her words as sarcasm, but I think I’ve learned to decode Molly’s speech better than the average person. I remember thinking that her flat tone forces you to either scrutinize everything she says or to take it at face value. Now, I realize that the average person would choose the latter, not willing to devote so much energy just to listening to her. They find no malice in her body language, so it becomes easy to project feelings onto her. I don’t know if she does this intentionally, or if it’s just a natural part of her character that she’s aware of, but I do know that she’s aware of it. It’s because of this fact that she’s so good at getting people to do what she wants: people let their guard down surprisingly easily around her, and she always, always, takes advantage.

I’m not so easy, however.

I think.

“Do you want to find the others?” I ask, when we round a corner, the park in sight, off in the distance. “To watch the fireworks.”

Molly turns to look at me, but doesn’t answer. I wonder if she’s heard me. She’s looking out across the festival, her gaze tracing the horizon. The sun having gone down means the temperature’s dropped, and the light breeze that’s rolled in makes my hair stand on end.

I repeat the question, but Molly just grins.

“No,” she mouths. “We’re late.”

The sound of an explosion makes me jump.

A stream of lights rocket over the stalls, green and blue mixing with the bright orange of their little paper lanterns.

Gold stars splay their arms across the sky, then fade out, crackling like popcorn. They come up in pairs, then trios, then all in sequential order as if fired out of a machine gun. I look around for someplace to sit, and spot an empty bench off in the distance. I turn back to Molly to show it to her, and she looks at me, pointedly ignores me, and goes back to watching the fireworks. So there we stand, in the middle of the walkway.

Five minutes go by, neither of us moving, myself itching awkwardly for the first few minutes with the desire to stop standing so blatantly, my legs aching, in the middle of things, my anxiety as if I were stuck in traffic in the busiest street of Tokyo. Then I wonder why. Why do I care? There’s no-one walking around. Molly stands perfectly still, entranced or encased in ice, I can’t tell, and I’m unwilling to move without her or to break our silence. I realize I’m watching the fireworks reflected in her eyes more than I am watching the real thing, and I wrench my head away.

Another ten minutes. The dead fireworks burn out and leave trails of smoke hanging in the air. The trails disappear, carried away by the wind, then light up again with the next round of fireworks, and another trail of smoke follows them. The pace of the rockets begins to slow down.

There’s a pause, then what must be twenty fireworks explode all at once, dotting the sky with a dozen different colors.

Silence.

It’s my turn to catch Molly watching me. Thing is, when I do, she doesn’t look away.

They say to follow your heart. I don’t like where my heart’s leading me.

Trust your gut? My gut’s full of pills.

“Anything else?” Molly asks, trotting along behind me, seemingly pleased with herself. “Where to now?”

I try to make it look like I’m wandering around, not really paying attention to where I’m going.

“We could get something to eat,” I suggest.

“Go ahead, but I’m not hungry.”

“Really? Have you even eaten anything today?”

“Oh?” Molly hums, tilting her head. “Is this a leadup to asking me about my weight? Bad idea, Hisao.”

I don’t answer, letting the subject pass in conversation, but not in my mind. This, right here, is the wall I always hit when I try to ask anything about Molly’s personal life. She always finds a way to avoid answering. Occasionally, she’ll grace me with a tiny nugget of information, and then promptly shut down any further probing.

Didn’t Oscar Wilde say that a woman without secrets has no charms at all?

As good as I like to pretend I’ve gotten at reading her, I can’t tell if she’s being this way just to mess with me, or because she genuinely doesn’t want to talk about it. Probably a bit of both. In the end, it’s not like I’ve told her about my own elephant in the room. She’s never asked. If she did, I don’t know what I would say.

It’s a little unfair, walking around with something hidden like a heart condition, next to a girl that’s practically half metal. On the surface, the level of information we have about each other is unbalanced, especially since Molly’s foreign, which gives me the opportunity to deduce a few additional things about her. For some reason I don’t feel rushed to correct this imbalance, mainly because Molly’s got it covered. I don’t really know anything about Molly’s condition, either. I don’t know how she lost her legs, or if she was born without them.

I don’t know why Nurse needs to check up on her.

“It wasn’t, and you know it,” I say. “But I know what you’re talking about, and I’m fine if we don’t do anything about it. I haven’t told you much about myself, either, and I’m fine with that.”

She frowns, as if I’ve taken the fun out of the situation. Now that the fireworks are over, people are starting to stand up and leave the parks, a small trickle of people already filtering out through the gate.

I break off of the main pathway all the stalls are lined up along, looping back around the school in the direction of the park again. Molly follows behind me, but, when I turn to look at her, I find her trailing behind. Maybe I was walking too fast. I slow and wait for her to catch up again.

She’s wearing a strange sort of smile on her face. It’s a little more than a grin, and it looks like she’s on the verge of bursting into laughter, or like she’s in pain.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing.”

And then I plant my feet, and Molly looks up and sees that we’re standing in front of the medical building. I reach into my pocket and pull out Nurse’s note, flattening it and holding it out to her.

“This was at your doorstep. Someone did a bad job slipping it under.”

She swipes it from me and scans it for a second before crumpling it up and tossing it back at me, surprisingly crudely. I scramble to catch it, miss, and it drops in between my feet. I stoop over and pick it up, cursing myself for not being as smooth as I’d hoped.

Molly watches me blankly.

“You know?” I begin, frantically explaining the joke. “When you dropped me in front of the Shanghai yesterday, you did something like this. You even assumed a stance similar to this one. I think I’m getting it right, right? Did you cross your arms, too?”

“So,” she begins, avoiding my question, “you want me to go in and say hi to Nurse?”

“No, but you can do that. What I want is to-”

“Oh, shut up. How do you know he’s in, and not out enjoying the festival? It’s pretty late, and he was probably watching the fireworks.”

I freeze, tilting my head in thought. She’s right about that. What exactly was I planning here? A little bit of getting back at Molly for the stunt she pulled yesterday, a little bit of genuine concern. I have enough faith in Nurse to believe that he wouldn’t pester someone without due cause, and I never got the impression that Molly hates him. I don’t really get the impression she hates anyone. I thought with a little poking and prodding from an external party, she’d go along with my suggestions. I should’ve remembered that a little fight with friends and something related to a medical condition were fundamentally different issues. But wasn’t my fight also related to my medical condition? My brain’s getting scrambled.

“Crap. I don’t know, actually. I should’ve planned this better, but I was rushed for time and I’m not too good at improv. Why don’t you go in and check?”

“No thanks. Well, I can’t help but admire your effort, but if you were trying to copy me, you’re missing a few things. One, this isn’t far enough from the dorms that it would feel awkward to walk back if I were to turn away and ignore you. Two, you haven’t had the subject, in this case the nurse, spot me, which would increase the amount of guilt I would feel if I were to turn away. Three, and this is really an extension of the second, I’m not like you, so guilting me is useless. Four, you’re missing the little monologue I gave you about some sort of higher moral, and copying mine doesn’t count. Five, you aren’t posing dramatically enough.”

I adjust my stance and plant my feet wider. This is getting a little hard to hold.

“I do try,” I say.

Molly ignores me and continues. “You have nailed the part about the other person feeling bad that you would spend time with them only for the purpose of achieving a goal, though.”

I frown, leaving my not-dramatic-enough pose and returning to a slouch. “Is that true? You only spent time with me to get me in front of the Shanghai with Shizune and Misha?”

“Who knows, but that’s what you thought, wasn’t it?”

My frown deepens, but in the end I’m forced to nod.

“...It was.”

There’s a hint of that strange pained smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“Should I try puppy-dog eyes?” I bargain. “Those seem to work for Emi.”

“Do you think you look like a hurt puppy? Or like Emi?”

“You can be the judge of that,” I say, and I give it my best shot, quivering lips and all.

Moly stares at me, then grimaces and waves at me.

“Stop, stop. Don’t do that again, please.”

I hang my head in futility. When I look up at Molly, she just looks disappointed. Like she’s expecting something more. Some sort of additional performance. I wonder if this is how she stares at people when she runs auditions.

“I’m sorry. This was stupid,” I say, resigned.

“It is.”

“It is stupid. I just… wanted to know why you were avoiding Nurse. I know I don’t have the right to pry, this is exactly what-”

“Shut up about what you have a ‘right’ to do,” Molly exclaims, startling me. “Everyone is constantly talking about having the ‘right’ to do something. You don’t even know what that word means. What are you talking about?”

I exhale, worried. This is the first time I’ve seen Molly angry, or at least worked up, and I can’t even hold eye contact with her. Is this what keeps that girl at the booth and others like her in line? Not knowing what to say, I scratch the back of my head.

“I’m going home.”

“Not yet, you’re not!”

The two of us whirl around and look down the steps to see a familiar figure coming our way, his face pulled into a wide grin, breathing heavily, likely from jogging a short distance. He isn’t wearing his usual white coat, but instead has a neat plaid dress shirt and jeans on. I could’ve walked right past him without recognising him.

Nurse.

He bends over, panting.

“Phew! For all my advice to Emi- Ha!- I’m pretty out of shape! Give me a second, here.”

I watch Molly carefully, expecting a retort about comparing her to Emi, but it doesn’t come. I step aside so I’m no longer interposed between Molly and the door.

Having caught his breath, Nurse straightens and locks eyes with Molly.

“How about you and I have a little chat, huh, Miss Kapur?”

“About what?” Molly asks, and Nurse pauses.

His eyes jump over to me, and he smiles awkwardly. I suddenly become very aware of my presence in a normally private conversation.

“You didn’t get my note?”

“Nakai here delivered it to me,” Molly answers, innocently, and her usage of my last name makes me squint. “But it doesn’t say anything about what you want to talk about.”

Oh, is this what Molly’s after? Just to show Nurse that he can’t help people unless they want to help themselves? Getting him to awkwardly explain something in front of me that should be private is one way to do that. It’s petty, overly complicated, and puts her health in danger, but it’s working. I can’t help but get the feeling that’s not the point of this, though.

Nurse frowns. “Why don’t we talk about this inside? You understand…”

Molly’s blank stare doesn’t seem to understand anything, and Nurse exhales sharply.

“Your… medication. I’ve been worried that you haven’t been taking your medication. You should be way past due for a refill.”

Molly watches him. Nurse looks at me, again, apologetically, and I tense up.

“And your doctors wanted you to get more exercise.”

Not knowing what to expect, I brace myself for Molly’s reaction, but instead, she just nods and enters a deep bow. I shake my head, shocked. It’s not all that different from when I apologized to Shizune and Misha.

“Thank you for always being concerned about me,” she replies. “It seems I’ve caused a lot of trouble for you.”

“No… problem,” Nurse answers, cautiously. “Lesson learned. Just… please don’t do this again.”

Molly straightens, and when she turns around and looks at me, I know why she isn’t mad at Nurse. The calm, kindly smile she’s giving me now contrasts eerily with her earlier anger, and I instinctively take a step off the sidewalk.

“You know this is war, right?” she says.

I grin stupidly, inching myself along the grass. “On what front?” I ask.

“All of them. Were you thinking of a particular one? I’m never letting you live this down.”

“That’s fine. I think I can live without living… this down.”

Molly hums. She spins around and puts one hand against the door of the medical building.

“Good luck on the test tomorrow.”

That’s not a very pleasant reminder to leave off with. She enters and disappears behind the doors, Nurse hot on her heels. He winks at me as he follows after her, most of his usual upbeat attitude regained.

And in the end, I’m left standing out in the cold and dark, the doors still swinging in front of me. I put my hands to my hips in bewilderment. Off in the distance I can still see some of the food stalls glowing with their orange paper lanterns. I guess I’ll finish the day off with something to eat, before I go to bed.

I’m exhausted.

I never got my questions answered, but I guess that’s just how it goes with Molly. I would be a fool to think I could’ve gotten them out of either Molly or Nurse easily. She takes medication and needs exercise, the latter of which I already knew about, and the former I had already guessed.

Her medication has to be refilled…

All medication has to be refilled, Hisao. I facepalm and continue racking my brain. ‘Lesson learned?’ My best guess is that there were issues with her medication before that got Nurse on Molly’s bad side, but I can’t come up with anything.

And then she ended up apologizing? Was she being genuine? Molly is like a walking and talking rebuttal to social norms; the brazen physical embodiment of the phrase ‘know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.’ Aya thinks she’s shy, Shizune and Misha think she’s respectful and responsible, Tsuru thinks she’s kind, Hiroshi doesn’t seem to think of her at all, and Emi thinks she’s a fear-mongering, scheming, power-hungry drama queen, which… is more or less accurate. Who knows what Nurse thinks, but I figure he’ll get over this pretty quickly.

Me? I’ve got ideas, none of them very plausible. I still… want to know more about her. God, I’m such a sucker.

First things first, though, I need to arm myself. If I want to learn anything about Molly, I need to play by her rules.

I’ve got a war to fight, and the first battle starts with acing tomorrow’s test.

Table of Contents

Next Chapter >>>

Apologies for taking so long with this one, my perfectionist streak really took hold of me, and even then I had to force myself to just post before I spent the rest of my natural lifespan trying to get all the details right.

With that, we end Act 1, and finally enter the meat-and-potatoes of any route. Hope you folks enjoy.

Good luck with the test Hisao! Wonder what's up with Molly anyway?

‘Twas a pleasure editing this act for you! I’m super pumped for Act 2…

This is brilliant! Lots of fun interactions, a nice wind-up to potential drama, and some really expressive conversations with great descriptive language. I like this almost mastermind-esque take on Molly.

Fantastic work, Piro! Looking forward to mote!

Hah. Molly, Molly, a riddle to solve.

This may end up being even harder for Hisao than living in the Rin's route, and this is quite a high bar for his... dunno, ability to act sensibly?

Will it be the taming of the shrew?

Act 2: Mimesis

Scene 1: Break a Leg

Estimate the speed of the Earth as it orbits the Sun. Explain your thinking. If you use them, make specific reference to Kepler’s laws.

Wonderful. It’s always the short questions that nail you, huh? I’m assuming I can’t just write a number down and call it a day, considering the question is worth ten marks.

Fast.

…is what I would write, if I wanted to finish the quiz twenty minutes early, and didn’t care about my grade. It says estimate, right? I can make some assumptions here. Let’s say the mass of the Earth is negligible compared to the sun, and that the orbit is perfectly…

…circular.

Molly’s stretching, both arms above her head, one hand gripping the elbow of the other as she strains and makes a sound of relief. A perfectly innocent gesture, except a piece of fabric on the arm of her blouse is caught on the corner of her chair, and the stretch pulls the rear neckline down just enough for me to see the strap of her bra.

They’re white.

I drop my eyes down to my desk in alarm, my heartbeat suddenly sounding in my ears as I feel my face getting hotter. Was I meant to see that? It’s fine, Hisao. Calm down. You’ve seen skin before. It’s just skin. That’s all it is. I’m not a high-society noble from Pride and Prejudice that gets his knickers in a twist from seeing a bare ankle. I’m a healthy teenage boy, no? It’s fine, right? To be checking out girls occasionally? I don’t make a career out of it, but I can’t be blamed for stealing a few red-faced glances when, say, Misha pulls back her blouse to fan down her stomach with a piece of paper on a hot day. I’ve held Molly’s leg, for god’s sake, and I got over that pretty quickly.

I stare a hole through my page and press my hands against my temples, trying to force my attention back to the test at hand. Just as I’d guessed, a previous question had given the radius of the Earth’s orbit, so I don’t have to estimate that. Since I can find the circumference from the radius, the actual work is fairly trivial. Just a couple unit conversions, and… there we go. Last question.

Molly’s yawning, resting her chin on one hand as she looks outside, presumably at the trees. Her test is flipped back to the first page, placed neatly at the corner of her desk. Is she done already? We’ve still got fifteen minutes left. She twirls her pencil once, twice, then sets it down on top of the test; her movement, even in idleness, still with its usual punctual touch. I watch her reach up to her temple and, one hand holding the braid in place, remove the two red clips pinning it there. She eyes them, snapping them back and forth a few times, and then moves to put them back.

One of them, seemingly by accident, goes flying. It jolts from her hand and ricochets off the corner of her desk with a tiny ping before splaying itself out on the floor, next to the front left leg of my desk.

Molly turns around, a hand over her mouth as she breathes an “oops.”

I glance at Mutou and see him practically nodding off in his chair. He looks comatose, which is better than about a third of the class. Careful not to make too much noise, I reach down and pick the clip up before handing it back to her. Molly rolls her eyes, but accepts it nonetheless.

Now, what was that eye roll for? I squint and stare at the back of Molly’s head for a few seconds, but then I look up and see eight minutes on the clock, and realize I still have one more question to do. I haven’t even checked my answers.

When the bell signifying the end of the day rings and Mutou makes his rounds to collect the quizzes, I pack up in a hurry and jog after Molly, finding her just about to round the corner of the hallway. Because she finished early, she didn’t take the time she usually does to wait for the crowds to pass, and I end up having to fight through the crowd of students to catch up to her.

“You fight dirty,” I say.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Molly replies, her braids swinging like pendulums and her arms held behind her back.

“You were trying to distract me.”

“How so?”

Ah, that’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? I didn’t even realize there was a corner to paint myself into, but Molly’s found it. If I mention her blouse-mishap stunt, that’ll be tantamount to admitting what I saw.

“The… hairclip,” I offer, hesitantly. “You did that on purpose.”

“Did I?”

Playing dumb, huh, Molly?

“What was that eyeroll for, anyway? And don’t go and pretend you didn’t do that, either.”

Molly turns and locks eyes with me. There’s a dull glow in them I don’t usually see, and I can make out those little striations that radiate out from her iris again.

“No, I did do that, and I’ll tell you why.”

We reach the elevators, and I press the button as I watch her suspiciously.

“You will? Okay. Why, then?”

“You should have looked at the clip a little closer,” she says, her tone flat and mysterious.

I go over the incident in my brain, trying to figure out what I missed. It’s true. I didn’t look at the clip all that closely. My eyes jump over to where they sit in her hair. They’re such an innocuous, yet distinct part of her, it’s almost strange to remember they can be removed. I’ve never seen her without them. There’s always two, and they’re always in the same place.

The elevator bell chimes and the two of us step inside.

“How do you think you did on the quiz?” Molly asks.

“I think I did very well, despite what you tried to pull.”

“What I tried to pull? Why, you ungrateful sop,” she begins, shaking her head in mock anger. “I was encouraging you. Oh, whatever. In the end, it’s fine if you did well. It wouldn’t be a good start for you to build up a reputation as Mutou’s star student, and then blow it all on the first quiz.”

“You’re changing the subject,” I say, crossing my arms. “Did I miss something? Was there something on the clip I was supposed to see?”

Molly tilts her head and runs a hand through her hair, loosening her braids slightly, before removing one of the clips. I take it from her, delicately, and hold it up to closer inspection.

It’s a small metal and plastic thing, composed of two opposing toothed combs held together by a hinge, not all that unlike a clothespin. The name ‘beak pin’ comes to mind, but I might be wrong. I examine it from top to bottom, but find nothing out of the ordinary.

Then I flip it over, and am confronted with something written in permanent marker. The broad, exaggerated characters stare up at me:

Like what you see?

…

I stare at it.

…

My face flushes red, but all I can think of is white.

Molly watches my reaction with a curious look on her face, like a tourist observing an enclosure at a zoo. I don’t know what she’s seeing, considering I know I’m doing an awful job of hiding my blush. With my brain short-circuiting, she looks down at the hairclip I’ve wrapped my hands around with a frown, wondering how she’s going to get it back. When the elevator doors finally open and I startle into consciousness again, I hold the clip back out to her and she snatches it from my hand.

That’s when I decide that I’m going to get Molly back, and I mean really get her back. My attempt yesterday at the festival ended up working only out of dumb luck. I’ve never been much of a prankster, but it shouldn’t take too long to learn. Molly must’ve come up with this one overnight, and she executed it almost flawlessly, her only mistake being that her initial preparation didn’t make the punchline clear enough. I don’t think I’ll be able to come up with something as fast as her, but I will sure as hell try.

I’m reminded of the fact that I have joined a club when we arrive in front of the theater hall. Hiroshi, who had been waiting outside, chatting with a collection of second-year girls, bolts towards us to grab me and asks if I can help him quickly with something involving great amounts of physical labor that he was tasked to perform. Tasked by whom? Molly glares at him and the blood seems to drain from his face. The girls at the door were not members of the theater club, and they split into two halves when Molly walks towards them and enters through the Kei Matsumoto Theater Hall’s swinging double doors.

The girls disperse like particles diffusing in a vacuum upon Hiroshi’s removal. The fact that they were not club members makes me question Hiroshi’s pure intentions.

“No, no, they’re just friends, I promise,” he scrambles, walking with stuttered steps as he leads me somewhere across the school.

“You seem to have a lot of friends.”

“I do. You gotta problem with that?” he says, sticking his tongue out at me.

“...Lots of younger female friends.”

“What are you… I’m increasing our ticket sales!” Hiroshi shrieks vehemently.

“You’re extorting them, too?”

“No!” he cries, bursting into laughter.

He leads me to a room near the office on the first floor of the main building, where two small but surprisingly heavy cardboard boxes have been stacked atop one another and taped shut. Hiroshi grabs the one on top and heaves it into his arms, and I squat down and get the second. Walking all the way back across the school with the boxes proves to be quite difficult, and I end up having to stop halfway there as I huff and puff, much to Hiroshi’s amusement.

“Hut!”

We enter the theater hall, and Hiroshi drops the cardboard box onto the floor with a crash. I follow behind him and place my own box down much more gently. What’s in these to make them so heavy, anyway?

“Come one, come all!” Hiroshi bellows, using his hands as a makeshift loudspeaker. “Script distribution is now in session!”

Ah, that makes sense. Giant stacks of paper.

The theater hall is dotted with club members, most of them arranged into groups of four or five. Cliques within the theater clique, I suppose. I rip the tape off of my box and fold the flaps open. Sure enough, organized into their own neat little black folders, are about a dozen scripts. I take one and crack it open, realizing I still haven’t been told what the play’s about.

It’s about a hundred pages long, but the font size is much larger than a normal book. At the first page is a quick paragraph about the writer, someone from Tokyo that I don’t really care about, as well as a list of all the roles.

Maid. Butler. Cook.

Huh?

“It’s a murder mystery!” Hiroshi exclaims, turning around when he notices my confusion, his ever-present smile still tugging at his scar. “In a mansion! Molly gave us the first couple scenes for the auditions, and now we have the full thing. All three acts! The school’s never done a full three act play before. It’s always been two, because with a two act play you could keep it under an hour and a half if you cut out a couple scenes.”

“So how long will a three act play take?” I ask absentmindedly, leafing through the script.

“About three hours, counting the two ten-minute intermissions in between acts.”

My eyes widen. “That seems really long, isn’t it?”

Hiroshi shakes his head in disapproval. “It goes by like that,” he says, and he snaps his fingers for emphasis. He doesn’t get his snap quite loud enough, so he tries again a few times, concentrating increasingly harder. After about four or five tries, he either forgets and gets distracted, or declares his last snap satisfactory, I can’t tell.

I look around the theater hall, wondering if there’s a staff member I’m going to have to introduce myself to, sometime.

“Is there a teacher anywhere?”

“Nope!” Hiroshi says, then hops away to go find a group to talk to. I would’ve liked a bit more information, but I guess I’ll just ask someone later.

Strangely enough, the average member of the theater club doesn’t have pink drills or wear rainbow polka-dots. The majority are completely normal. Except, of course, Jun’s height and Aya’s bun, and Hiroshi’s general weirdness. Oh, and that guy in a wheelchair. I briefly wonder how someone could act in a wheelchair before realizing that it would be the same as acting without a wheelchair, just, in a wheelchair.

Normal, huh? Who defines normal, anyway?

Inside the theater hall, the stage has been set up by a few dudes standing around, who are pointing at each other as a few others move a couch. The stage currently has a square table on the left side, with three chairs arranged around it, one for each side except for the space closest to the audience. The couch is being moved to the right side, behind a small oval-shaped coffee table. An elaborate wooden archway sits at the back center of the stage, the curtains on either side pulled close to create a third entrance.

As a whole, it certainly emulates the appearance of a mansion’s living room, but there’s one thing wrong: the flats, at the back of the stage just in front of the curtains, are painted with a lush green landscape; trees and flowers, as if the set were outside in a garden. It’s an incredibly realistic display, and I can’t deny how beautiful they look, even without getting up close to examine them, but it obviously doesn’t match the rest of the set.

I find Jun, an easily identifiable landmark, standing in a circle with Tsuru and Aya, all flipping through their scripts. Aya’s still wearing her gloves, I note. Or, rather, I’ve never seen her without them. I catch Jun’s eye and gesture to the stage with my chin, an eyebrow raised.

He slouches. “Yeah, sorry. I still need to paint those. They were the ones from the last play.”

“They’re amazing,” I say, honestly.

Jun abruptly frowns and furrows his thick eyebrows, turning away from me as he mutters a thank you. This causes Tsuru to giggle and poke him in the side. She nods at me, giving me a clearer thanks than Jun. Instead of reading off of her own script, she holds hers behind herself and reads over… under his shoulder. This only serves to make him flush more.

Flipping my script closed, I head for the booth. One panel of the window is opened, slid over to the side. I imagine it serves to allow the people in the booth and the main hall to talk to each other without shouting or having to leave the door open. The lights are already on.

Molly’s standing inside, one hand thumbing the power switch of the deck. She already has a script, but the folder is a different color; red, instead of black.

“Hi,” I say, trying to keep my tone neutral.

Molly looks up from her script and briefly meets my eyes before looking back down.

“Welcome back.”

“...so, what now?”

“I told the others I’ll give them ten minutes to read the first scene and highlight their lines. They’ve read it before, though, unlike you. I recommend you skim through it and highlight any mention it makes of lighting changes. I don’t plan to get sound set up until much later, because it’s too distracting during early rehearsals. I’ll guide you through it as we go, but I’ll give you a quick crash course.”

“Got it.”

Molly sets her script down and leans onto the table with one arm, over the machine, pulling the chair out for me to sit down. I do, and she hovers over my shoulder.

“The lights are arranged into channels. We have shortcuts for spotlights and floods, represented by these rows here,” she says, pointing. “But really they’re all the same. For spotlights, there are five dials controlling five sets of lights: left, center-left…”

Molly explains the operation of the deck with great detail. As I expected, half the buttons are duds, and the operation of the actual lights is much simpler than I expected. I did not, however, expect for Molly to be such a thorough, composed, and frankly excellent teacher. It’s a lot to remember, and it will definitely take a while before I can do this without staring at the board for ten seconds before each press of a button or turn of a dial, but I think I can do this.

“...so as we’re going through rehearsals, your main job is to write down your cues, which I will point out for you, and to keep detailed notes on whatever I tell you to keep notes on. The lighting cues will change dramatically from what the script indicates, based on what we come up with. You don’t have to keep track of everything I tell the actors and actresses, I’ll do that. Otherwise, you’re basically my secretary. Are you up to the task?”

“I am,” I answer, nodding.

“How do you feel about being my secretary?”

“Doesn’t sound too bad.”

Molly straightens up, and I realize from the coolness of the air against my shoulder just how close she had been standing next to me. I see her prepare to say something, then swallow it. I can guess the general nature of what she was going to say: some vague innuendo about other, more difficult ‘secretarial’ duties to prepare for. I can see why she stifles it: she thinks it’s too obvious. It’s a bit of a compliment. Just a few days ago I was clueless about half the things going on in her head, and now she knows just how far I’ve caught on.

I raise an eyebrow, and Molly sighs.

“I wasn’t like this with the previous guy,” she says, in response to the unspoken dialogue we had.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I reply.

Molly grins at me.

She stands up and dusts off her skirt. “We better get started. I’m working now, so don’t bother me.”

“Of course.”

Molly stops in the doorway to look at me. If I’m going to be a secretary, I’m going to be the cheekiest secretary alive.

She steps out.

“Alright, everybody,” she says, her voice filling the hall. “Beginners for act one, scene one. Let’s get this show rolling.”

ACT ONE
SCENE ONE

It is late at night in the Whitney mansion. The fireplace is lit. The lights come up as EMILY, the maid, enters the archway on the right side, carrying a tea set.

Tsuru walks onstage, holding an empty tray. She turns and sets it down on the dresser, facing away from the audience. I suppose Molly isn't eager to risk an actual, fragile tea set this early.

MISS BELL ENTERS through the door UP LEFT. She is a harsh woman, a nurse, and wears a light blue nurse’s uniform.

Another club member, a girl with long hair and what I think are hearing aids, enters from a door behind the fireplace on the right side of the stage, startling Tsuru. No nurse uniforms, unfortunately.

EMILY: Miss Bell, you frightened me!

BELL: Oh, please, Emily! You know Mr. Whitney is asleep, just past that doorway. (She gestures UP LEFT). You can’t be making so much noise.

Tsuru and the other girl speak to each other. Tsuru is a little better at projecting, but they’re both clear enough that I can hear them, all the way from the booth. The two of them have evidently read over their lines quite a few times.

EMILY: Yes, ma’am, I’m sorry. I guess I’m just a bit on edge, with the weather and all.

BELL: It is a rather tempestuous evening.

There's a note to flicker the lights off and on as thunder sounds. I reach for one of the switches, hearing it click and clack as the stagelights flash and dim in a rather poor approximation of a lightning-induced power outage. It’s still the first rehearsal, though. With a bit more practice, I'm sure I'll be able to make it more convincing.

BELL: (Stepping around her, dismissively). Have the guests all been shown to their rooms?

EMILY: Yes, Miss Bell. Well, all except Mr. Whitney’s granddaughter, Miss Miriam. It’s a long drive from London, and… with this storm…

BELL: Hmph! I hope we can start without her. Mr. Whitney needs his rest, and it’s already past his bedtime.

The long-haired girl frowns at Tsuru, then crosses over to the coffee table. She wipes it with a finger, as if checking it for dust. It’s a rather dainty movement, a little undercut by the fact that she’s holding a script in her other hand.

AINSWORTH, the butler, enters from the archway, and looks at MISS BELL impassively.

Jun saunters onstage and stands in the archway, a little left of Tsuru, and I reach for a dial, raising the lights for the left side of the stage to half brightness.

AINSWORTH: The room is clean, Miss Bell. I had Mrs. Carson check it twice.

BELL: I certainly hope so! Mr. Whitney’s condition makes the tiniest speck of dust potentially lethal.

I lean over and give the lights another dramatic switch on and off. Molly stands up from her spot in the audience and walks to one side of the stage, and then the other, as if triangulating the movement of the play.

AINSWORTH: I’ve been here far longer than you have, Miss Bell. As has Mrs. Carson, and even Emily. We don’t need you to tell us how to do our jobs. (He turns to EMILY). You’ve put out the tea?

EMILY: It’s right here on the table, Mr. Ainsworth.

Jun as a butler is… interesting. His personality and height both allow him to look very professional when he wants to, not to mention imposing. Frankly, he’s not the best actor. He doesn’t read his lines with much inflection, nor does he really change how he carries himself, but the truth is that him being himself is close enough to the role that he doesn’t have to. It’s… really good casting, honestly.

AINSWORTH: Very good. Now go and help Sarah with the rest of the refreshments.

EMILY: Yes, sir.

Tsuru skips around Jun and leaves through the archway, the way she came. Jun follows her after a second-

Molly’s voice, calling from the audience, stops the actors in their tracks. They turn to face her.

“That was pretty good, but let’s run it again. Let’s see. Mai, I want you to wait a beat before entering. Make sure you don’t cut off Tsuru. When you’re exiting, you need to say your lines louder since you’re facing away from the audience, but we’ll work on that more once we get to lines. Jun, when you enter, take the long way, going wide, around the table downstage. Don’t crowd the center by standing in the archway. Exactly, like that. Hisao?”

“Yes?” I call from the booth.

“The right lights snapping on only when Miss Bell enters is jarring. Turn them on right at the start, when Emily enters.”

“Like this?”

The lights from the center all the way to the right dim, and then rise in unison. Molly watches the lights without turning to face me, but I see her nod.

“Perfect. Okay, from the top.”

(continued…)

I don’t know how many scenes we go through, or how many times we repeat them. Two hours go by. ‘Like that,’ as Hiroshi said. It’s surprisingly fun, hopping between the machine and my notebook and my script, examining Molly’s every move, trying to write down every word she shouts to me from wherever she happens to be in the room at the moment, annotating my script as I go along.

Molly never stays in the same place for more than a scene or two. She hovers around, everywhere at once. It’s rough, with people forgetting where they’re supposed to move or stuttering lines they’ve never said before, but the scenes go by fast, and every run is better than the one before.

Somehow, it doesn’t even feel like she’s there; like she’s an aspect of the furniture, or the room, or the weather. Once in a while she’ll compliment someone, and no matter who it is, whether it’s the bubbliest girl or the quietest guy, their eyes will gleam, and they’ll run their next scene with renewed vigor.

“It’s called blocking,” Molly tells me, when she enters the booth in between two scenes.

“What is?”

“What we’re doing. We’re not working on lines, just the movement of the scenes in general. We have to map out the gestures people make, where they stand, where and when they enter from.”

“And lighting.”

“And lighting. I’ve learned that if you do the blocking well enough, people learn their lines pretty much automatically, which reduces the trouble we have to go to later. This’ll last a week or two, and then we can start working on lines.”

The play is a murder mystery. The elder Mr. Whitney, a wealthy nobleman, is inviting his relatives over for dinner, to discuss changes he’s making to his will. Both the staff and the aforementioned relatives are in a bit of a panic, given that the previous will already provided for each of them fairly generously. The staff and the relatives all think, even though they have no proof, that the new will would give an unfair amount of Mr. Whitney’s fortune to his third wife.

This, combined with the fact that Mr. Whitney is halfway through death’s door, results in him being murdered during the night. The overall tone of the play is comedic, but there are quite a few dramatic parts. Despite the cliché premise, I’m surprised by the quality of the writing and the depth of the characters. It’s good. It’s really, really good. I’ve never seen a play in my life, but I think it’s good.

It doesn’t give any damn instructions on lighting, though. Not beyond ‘lights go on’ and ‘lights cut out.’ Molly comes up with most of that on the spot, then fine-tunes it as we go along.

Hiroshi is the playboy great-nephew of Mr. Whitney. The script has him flirting with every woman he speaks to, married or unmarried, usually with little effectiveness. Now I know what he meant when he said he’s increasing ticket sales. He’s basically comic relief, but he’s not a joke-cracking comic relief; it actually requires him to deliver a very sleazy, used-car salesman kind of performance, and he absolutely nails it. I crack up every time he opens his mouth.

There are lots of parts in the play that I think are supposed to be exaggerated parodies of English culture. They’re funny enough, but I can’t help but wonder if they’re at all accurate. Is this why Molly chose this play? Isn’t she…

She’s British-Indian, right? I guess I’ve never asked. It would make the most sense. ‘Kapur’ is an Indian name, and ‘Molly’ isn’t.

When we’re done, I lean back in my chair, shut down the deck, and watch most of the club funnel out through the door as I wind down from the adrenaline. A couple of groups stay around to hang out or ask Molly a few questions, and the three stagehands run around tucking chairs away and moving the couch and table behind the curtains.

In the booth, with all the lights turned low and the dozens of buttons and levers in front of me, I feel like I’m piloting an airplane, or some kind of submarine. I think I need a foghorn. And a sailor’s hat and a pipe. There must be a pipe somewhere around here, in one of the prop boxes, surely…

“Hisao?”

I jump. I’ve got a hand buried elbow deep in a prop box. I rip it out and spin around, my hands held guiltily behind my back.

Molly is watching me.

“You can go through the boxes, it’s fine. So long as you put them back afterward and don’t break anything. What are you looking for?”

I turn back to the boxes, chuckling. If you can’t dress up in the theater club, you can’t dress up anywhere.

“I was looking for a pipe and sailor’s hat. I feel like I’m manning a submarine when I run this thing.”

I don’t know how Molly reacts, because I’m turned away from her, but it takes her a second to respond.

“We have a pipe or two at the bottom of the third box, top shelf. I’ll find a hat.”

I rummage around in the box for a minute, and I can hear Molly doing the same behind me. Sure enough, I find a clay pipe shaped exactly as cartoonishly as I had hoped. I turn around and find Molly examining two hats, holding them up in line with my head to see how they look on me.

“Here, try this,” she says, giving me the hat in her right hand.

I put it on and adjust it, then hold the pipe in my mouth, in between two fingers. I give her my best imitation of a sailor, which really involves turning my chin up and squinting as I look off into the distance.

“How do I look?”

Molly tilts her head, blinking.

“Not very convincing. You’re holding the pipe like a cigar.”

She’s right. How do you hold one of these? Maybe you cradle your hand around the bottom of it, instead of holding it between your fingers? I examine the pipe, noting the smoothness of the brown clay and its slightly earthy smell.

I look up to find Molly leafing through my notes.

“What do you think?” I ask, walking up beside her.

She doesn’t answer, returning to the first page. I watch as her eyes scan it, reading it over and over. She flips to the next page, reading it over and over. We’re silent for a long time, her going through my pages of notes and me standing beside her, waiting. I guess I would like it if she approved of them.

“...These aren’t bad. They’re very good, actually, for your first time. You can trim them down a bit.”

“Are they better than Isamu’s?” I ask, without thinking.

Molly looks at me. I can see she’s wondering who told me his name.

“No, but he had been doing this for two years. I’ll get you some of his so you can take a look.”

I guess I can appreciate the honesty, but now I’m wondering where she keeps his notes, if she has them on hand, but not in the theater hall. The only other location I can think of would be in her room. Why would she have someone else’s notes in her room?

“What happened to him, anyway?”

Molly closes my notebook and stacks it on top of my script. She furrows her brows and looks at me, her expression telling me I shouldn’t have asked so carelessly.

“Severe asthma. His parents decided that living near the ocean, with clearer air, would be better than Yamaku, even if they have to give up the medical facilities.”

“Ah, I see.”

“Now, you are going to shut up about him. Especially around anyone in this club. Okay, Hisao?”

“Alright, alright,” I say, backing down.

Molly turns to exit the booth, but she stops at the doorway. She waves her red folder at me.

“By the way, my script is different from yours. It’s a director’s copy, and has more details on stage setup. Ask Hiroshi to get one for you.”

She leaves me in tonal whiplash, and I watch her walk out.

I guess that marks the end of that conversation. Unfortunately, the only thing she’s done is pique my curiosity.

StilI awkwardly wearing the sailor’s hat, I replace it on top of one of the boxes while I wonder what to do with the pipe. I suppose it would be more sanitary to wash it before putting it back. I’ll do that later. I stuff it into my bookbag and leave the booth, shutting the lights off and closing the door.

Molly waits around in that spot in the corner she caught me in, before. She’s talking to a few of the actors who’ve come around to inquire about the club’s schedule. I watch her talk to them as I drift towards Jun, Tsuru, and Aya. If she was going to say anything interesting that I shouldn’t hear, though, she doesn’t, because she notices me watching pretty much immediately, and I cough and wrench my head away.

I’m hungry. Again, I didn’t have lunch today, this time because I was cramming for the test we had. I’m gonna go get something to eat, ideally with someone that won’t disappear on me before we even get to the cafeteria, so I nod along when Aya suggests I come along. If it were just Jun and Tsuru I wouldn’t want to be a third wheel, but since Aya’s with them I’m actually a fourth wheel. Last time I checked, four wheels aren’t all that out of the norm.

“Exactly! I just need a leather jacket, and, like, a goatee or a mustache, and some really, really shiny shoes, and I’ll have the playboy look nailed.”

Hiroshi has slapped himself on as a fifth wheel, and now my metaphor doesn’t stand. I’ve never seen anything with five wheels.

“No goatees, unless you’re going to grow one yourself. Fake ones always look awful,” I say.

He contemplates this, frowning and running a hand down his scar. “Dammit, you’ve got a point there. I can’t grow anything with this, it never grows right.”

I wince, but none of the others seem to mind, probably used to Hiroshi mentioning it. I don’t want to imagine what it took to get a scar like that.

“A mustache would give you too much power, anyway,” Jun jokes, “I’m already terrified of having you flirt with my… girlfriend onstage.” He stumbles a bit when he addresses Tsuru, causing her to poke him and giggle again.

The five of us, mostly following Hiroshi, find a table and sit down. Jun and Tsuru next to each other on one side; myself opposite them, and Aya and Hiroshi on the flanks.

“This role is awesome, dude!” Hiroshi exclaims. “I got so tired of being a goody-two-shoes last play.”

“You said the exact same thing at the start of that one, but you were tired of being comedic relief,” Jun says, lifting his bowl of soup.

“Last time you were the flirt, remember?” his girlfriend interjects, turning to Jun with a devilish grin.

“My character wasn’t a flirt,” Jun replies, rolling his eyes, “he was a romantic, and only with you, honey-cakes.”

“Honey-cakes?” Tsuru repeats, eyes wide.

“...I’m teasing you,” he clarifies, and she bursts into laughter.

He watches her, his face reddening like a cartoon thermometer. He turns away, grumpily. “Alright, that’s it, I’m calling you honey-cakes from now on.”

“Honey-cakes!” Tsuru repeats again, clutching her belly. Jun attempts to shush her, but that only makes her laugh harder.

I turn to the side and look between Aya and Hiroshi, leaving the lovebirds to their antics. “What was the previous play about, anyway?”

“It was a high school romance,” Hiroshi says, smiling widely.

“Oh god.”

“‘High school romance’ is a little… reductive,” Aya begins, “it was a drama about a girl trying to reconnect with her father after her parents’ divorce. It sounds… dark, I know, and we had a lot of the audience crying by the end of it, but it was really fun to do, and it had a really sweet ending. Tsuru was the lead, and Jun was her boyfriend. I wish you could’ve seen it, Hisao.”

“Huh,” I say. It sounds very different from the one we’re currently doing, but not necessarily… bad.

“Who picks these plays?” I ask.

Aya and Hiroshi look at each other. Hiroshi shrugs, and Aya turns back to me.

“Well, we think it’s Molly,” she says, “but Mrs. Imai probably gets final say.”

“Is she the drama teacher?”

Aya nods.

“Where is she, anyway? Is she ever going to show up?”

“She’s… it’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time.”

Hiroshi butts Aya aside and leans forward, eager to explain.

“Molly was sort of an apprentice student director from her first year here, even when she was on the Student Council. She used her position there to haggle for more funding,” he begins, grinning. “Then, about halfway through last year, Mrs. Imai had to take maternity leave, and we had a big party for her, but… uh…”

Hiroshi reaches a part of his story that he seems uncomfortable with. He looks at Aya for some sort of reassurance, but she avoids his eyes.

“...Mr. Nomiya took over, temporarily, while she was gone.”

At the mention of this ‘Mr. Nomiya,’ Tsuru and Jun snap out of their argument and grimace.

Aya shudders. She seems to shrink into her chair.

“Dark times,” she mutters.

“Mr. Nomiya? Who’s he?” I ask. I really, really don’t want to meet him, if he’s as bad as these two are making him out to be.

“He’s the art teacher, he doesn’t care about theater, like, at all,” Hiroshi continues. “Supposedly he’s alright for the art club, but he basically put the theater club in carbon freeze. It probably would’ve shut down until Mrs. Imai came back, if Molly didn’t wrestle it out of his hands. By some miracle, she managed to get some sort of ceasefire going where he would just… not do anything, and she would handle everything herself, but even then he made it impossible for Jun to get days off from the art club so he could paint our flats.”

“Wow. Is he that petty?”

“He’s way more petty than whatever you’re thinking of right now, I can tell you that. I guess that’s what indebted us all to Molly, her being able to get Mr. Nomiya off our case. I mean, besides the fact that she puts in ten times the amount of work than any of us.”

“I was wondering about that. Aya mentioned that Molly doesn’t hang out with you guys too much.”

Hiroshi frowns. “No, not really.”

Aya shakes her head. “Anyway, our year-end performance was very rushed. Mrs. Imai came back to the school a month ago, but she only takes half-days and she rarely has enough time to visit.”

“At least Nomiya isn’t in control of the club anymore, though, so that’s a plus,” Hiroshi interjects. “We don’t have to go over and jerk him off whenever we want to spend any of our club budget.”

Hiroshi accompanies his statement with an… appropriate hand gesture, and Tsuru snorts at his vulgarity. Aya rolls her eyes and drops her face into her hands.

“Well, actually, it was mostly Molly that had to do the jerking off, which is why…”

…

“Okay, I’ll stop with this analogy now.”

“That’s quite a story,” I say, changing the subject with a raised eyebrow. “I hope I don’t have to meet him.”

“You probably will, eventually, just-”

Hiroshi stops. He stares at me, realizes something, and his jaw drops wide open.

He jumps up and points at me.

“Wait a second! What the hell are we talking about?” he shouts.

Uh oh.

“You went out with Molly yesterday!”

Aaaand there it is. Now everyone in the bloody cafeteria knows. Aya looks away, guiltily, trying to pretend she wasn’t involved. Tsuru leans in.

“Really?” she asks, and Jun flicks her on the temple, then goes about explaining when they saw us yesterday, which she seems to have forgotten. So much for subtlety.

I suddenly realize that all the supposed confidence I’ve built up by talking to Molly is situational. Any mention of relationships with others returns me to my previous shy self.

My shy self from the hospital, trying to get people to stop questioning me about Iwanako.

I inch away, looking for someplace to escape to. I’d have to leave my rice behind, though. And my salad.

Not good. This is why they say not to tie yourself to material possessions.

“Do you know how long I’ve been trying to set her up? Talk about high standards, dude. There was this one time-”

“Hiroshi,” Aya scolds, gripping her plastic fork tightly.

“Okay, okay, I’m just trying to let him know how lucky he is, chill.”

“I feel so lucky,” I say, sarcastically, then wonder if my tone of voice was sarcastic enough. Talking with Molly does things to you.

“As you should!” Tsuru chimes in.

It appears the answer is no, not sarcastic enough.

“We’ve been in the same club for three years and we barely know anything about her!” she pouts.

That sounds more like Molly. I want to ask about Isamu. I really, really want to ask about Isamu, but I suppose I made a promise.

I don’t want Molly to stay this way, having no-one know anything about her. Molly spent two years cramped in a booth with a boy named Isamu, and all I know about him is his name. It’s got to be impossible for her to have avoided ever talking to him. I should be entitled to know something about him, as his replacement.

Replacement.

She wasn’t dating him, was she?

Chill, Hisao. Hiroshi said he’ll eat his shirt if he gets her to go out with someone, which means that they weren’t. Duh. Besides, do I really think that Molly, of all people, is the kind to have dozens of ex-boyfriends?

She might be the kind to have one, super awesome ex-boyfriend, though. Separated by tragic illness.

Yeah, right. Keep dreaming, Hisao.

“I don’t think I know any more about her than you guys do,” I say, my tone a little harsher than I expected. “Don’t get too excited, we just walked around the festival a bit.”

Jun sets his spoon down and looks me straight in the face for what must be the first time since I’ve met him.

“Listen, man. We’re just trying to say that we’re happy for both of you, even if nothing comes of it. Molly, because she never lets her guard down for anyone, and you, because it’s good to see someone new to the school having fun. We all know what it was like coming here, at first.”

He gestures with his spoon, and the other three nod.

“So we were thinking, since exams are coming up in a few months, that we would start a study group. The four of us, and maybe an extra if Aya ever gets her act together-”

“Kill me.”

“-and finds a date. So we want to invite you and Molly, if you can find some way to drag her with you.”

I stare at Jun and examine his expression as he speaks. Something that Jun said makes me think. An extra if Aya gets her act together. Why not Aya and Hiroshi? Now that I think about it, for all his matchmaker shenanigans, I don’t think Hiroshi has a date of his own. I knew fairly early on from the way that Hiroshi and Aya interacted that they were just friends, and weren’t dating like Jun and Tsuru. Nevermind the fact that I shouldn’t assume a guy and girl are dating just because they hang out together; something Hiroshi seems very intent on ignoring when it comes to my own situation. But if Hiroshi is dating someone, I have yet to meet her. I don’t know.

I do know that I am definitely overthinking all of this, but I think I need to learn how to tame that tendency, and not shut it down completely. Maybe I could even learn to use it.

Would a study group help me? If nothing else, I really do enjoy spending time with these guys, and it shouldn’t actively hurt my grades.

“Aya gets perfect grades in math, by the way. She got a clean hundred on the last test.”

“Shut up, please,” Aya whispers, shrinking some more.

Aya did mention being good at math, yesterday. I didn’t know good meant a hundred percent.

“Really?” I ask. “Well then, I’m in.”

“Glad to have you,” Jun says, and he holds out his lanky hand and we shake like two yakuza bosses proclaiming their brothership.

“Getting Molly to join, though… no guarantees about that. I’ll try my best.”

Jun sighs, his speech having exhausted him.

“Good luck. We’re rooting for you.”

I’m on my way back to my room, scuffing my feet along the brown carpet of the hallway, when I hear the loud unlatching of locks. Many, many locks. I wonder if I should just speedwalk the remaining stretch to my door.

I do, but I’m not fast enough.

I stop in front of my room, keys in my hand, and turn around to find Kenji’s face pressed into the two-inch crack he’s opened in his own door, like some kind of perverted priest at a confessionary. His spectacles are clouded over as if he had just been in the shower. I let go of the doorknob to my own room and turn to face him, judging the expression on his face as… studious. He has a studious expression.

“Hisao, man!” he shouts, and he suddenly bursts into a wide grin, opening his door fully and sauntering over to me. How he recognized me, considering his eyesight, is far beyond anything I can grasp.

I think of Hiroshi, and what he would think of Kenji. Kenji hates girls, and Hiroshi is both a real-life matchmaker, and is playing a playboy. I think if the two of them were to meet in a room it would result in some sort of explosion, matter and antimatter destroying each other.

“Kenji, man!” I shout back, emulating his tone of voice facetiously.

“What’s been up in the outside world?” he asks. “Any intel?”

“Absolutely. I’ve infiltrated.”

Kenji twitches, his expression intensifying. He inches closer to me.

“What? Really?”

“Deep, too,” I add. I decide, fighting against my instincts, not to turn this into an innuendo.

Kenji keeps inching closer, and I wish he wouldn’t. I take a step back preemptively before I get a whiff of garlic.

“You ever seen the school play?”

Kenji seems taken aback. He scans up and down the hallway, as if that’ll do anything, since I don’t think he can see more than about four inches in front of his face. Honestly, four inches might be generous.

Dammit, the innuendo happened anyway.

“No,” he breathes, shocked, “you’ve infiltrated the chocolate sea?”

“Chocolate sea?” I repeat, confused.

“She’s brown, man, like chocolate. And she’s got strings everywhere… it’s like a… a web.”

I raise an eyebrow, trying to figure out how I should respond to that.

I told her it was hardly professional for her to compare a person with dark skin to chocolate in a professional environment. As a joke, of course.

I cough. No comment.

“Or a sea?” I correct.

“I like ‘web’ better. It makes her sound like an evil puppeteer. That’s what they have to do, you know? The communist feminists are physically weak, but mentally and psychically powerful. They have to use puppets to get anything accomplished. They’re like little children piloting mechs, like in that show…”

Kenji strokes his chin, thinking. Didn’t he say something once about how he has puppets, in his room, as part of the supposed dioramas he has?

“Gundam?” I suggest, because he’s taking too long.

“No. Gundam is good. The men in it are manly. They’re not emasculated figureheads created to spread the feminist word. I’m talking about the one with the blue-haired girl and the red-haired girl. If I was in that one I would just blow everything up. Especially my dad.”

I blink. I pray to whatever gods exist that he hasn’t just accidentally revealed a part of his life. His real life. Whatever life doesn’t exist inside his head.

Kenji shakes his aforementioned head. “Anyway, this doesn’t matter. You’re getting your metaphors confused, man. First there was a chocolate sea, then a web, then a puppeteer, then mechs, and suddenly we’re talking about anime.”

“You are talking about anime,” I correct.

“Again, doesn’t matter. Well, what do you have on her? I’ve always suspected she was one of the feminist mafia’s top agents.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure. She’s ex-Student Council. Maybe there was a coup or-”

“No way!” he interrupts. “She left, huh? Or was she kicked out? Infighting… like the amazon and the pink drills. That’s big, dude. That’s big intel.”

Amazon and the pink…

Oh, he thinks Lilly and Misha are the ones fighting, not…

I sigh. Speaking of intel, maybe I could get Kenji to help me out here.

It’s my turn to look up and down the hallway. If there’s anyone in this school that I can trust not to squeal, I guess it’s Kenji.

That’s giving him too much credit. Maybe, if he were to be interrogated, the truth would be indistinguishable from his usual ramblings? Oh well, it’s not like she asked me to never talk about Isamu again. She just told me to shut up about him, which means basically the same thing.

I’m not jealous. I’m definitely not jealous. I don’t even know anything about their nonexistent nonrelationship. It’s definitely not like Molly’s so guarded that no-one knows about her personal life anyways, so she definitely could never hide a relationship from the incredibly watchful and attentive eyes of…

Hiroshi.

And Aya. Jun and Tsuru are too caught up in each other to notice much of anything, I think. The question becomes: how much faith do I have in Hiroshi and Aya? And my answer is, at least in the realm of social awareness, very little. Hiroshi is a fly bouncing off walls, barely attentive to the fact that the walls exist, and what little Aya has said about Molly doesn’t give me the impression that she knows her all that well.

“Kenji,” I say. “I need to consult your library of knowledge. I need info on a former agent. First name Isamu. He had infiltrated the chocolate sea, but he was taken out by the enemy a few months ago.”

Kenji puts his hand to his chin, then adjusts his glasses, pushing them up the bridge of his nose. They seem to glint with a mysterious flash of light.

“This is dangerous work, man. I think I might’ve heard of this… Isamu.”

Bingo. Throw in some more military terminology and I’ve got Kenji caught hook, line, and sinker.

“It needs to be conducted in absolute secrecy. No comebacks.”

Kenji looks up and down the hallway again, then turns around and walks back to his door. He salutes, assuming a straight posture that’s usually foreign to him.

“I’ll get back to you with this intel, even if it costs me my life.”

He drops his salute with a wave of his arm, backs into his room, closes his door, and gets started on latching shut his innumerable locks.

I hope he doesn’t actually mean that. I mean, I don’t think he does.

Right?

Hoping I haven’t shot myself in the foot, I push open the door to my room and throw myself onto my bed.

I lie down for a few minutes, surprised at how I don’t feel very exhausted at all. I’ve still got a few hours left before it’s time to go to bed. I guess I should catch up on my studying, so that I don’t feel rushed for the next test, too. We’re starting momentum, next, which I’ve always been fairly good at. I shouldn’t have any excuses not to ace it.

Hauling myself back up, I undo my tie and reach for my bookbag, opening it and dumping my physics notes onto my desk. Something hits the table with a clunk, and clatters to the floor.

I look down. The clay pipe I borrowed sits next to my foot, tipped over on its side.

I forgot to return it.

Table of Contents

For mods looking at the carnage that occurred here: I made some oopsies when posting this. I think everything's fine now, but either my internet shat itself or the forums did, and I made some extra posts. SORRY!