- Act 1
Scene 7: Newsroom Engage (Again)
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The next morning sneaks up on me, pulling the darkness from my eyes and tossing it out of the window, replacing it with a shrill alarm and a batch of freshly agitating sunlight.
I slip out of last night's clothes, groaning audibly as I pull on the old soccer uniform. The exercises are Doctor's orders, so it's hard to just... skip them.
I pull my pills from their bottles, downing them without a second thought and coughing on the taste without water. Locking my door, I step out of the dorm building and into the dull morning light.
By the time I make it to the track, Emi is already stretching out on the asphalt.
Wordlessly, I make my way over and start stretching as well.
"Morning, Hisao~! I'm glad you could make it a second day, you lazy bones!" She lilts, pushing her "feet" back and rolling her shoulders.
I nod, dropping a grunt in agreement.
"Tired, I guess? We'll run that right out of you, then!" She pushes up from the dirt and bounces on the fake legs casually, hands behind her back. I pull my leg back a bit, before standing. I feel like every bone in my body is simultaneously creaking.
"Let's get going then~!" She steps over to the starting line, bursting off it and quickly reaching speeds I could never imagine.
I jog from the line, increasing my pace ever so slightly until I reach a point where my legs feel like jello.
I continue running, but maintain my pace, just a touch longer than yesterday. By the time I feel my legs giving out, I had reached the starting line.
Emi comes by, finishing her innumerable sprints, patting me on the back as she grins wider than her face can seem to account for. "That was great Hisao! You'll be doing better in no time! Now I feel like I really do owe you that lunch~!" She drops to the side of the track with a ploof, stretching a bit before standing back up again.
"You head on to the nurse, I'll stop by in a bit..." Her voice is mildly strained, but she still holds a smile, playing with the paper clip prosthetics, as I walk away.
I step into the nurse's office, the trip to the building described by a single word: uneventful.
Sitting down in the chair, the nurse glances at me, "So, your exercise going well?"
"It, well, it mostly is."
"Mostly?"
"Having Emi as a partner is confusing. She's so unreachable as a goal, but so easy to strive for."
"Don't go getting any ideas, lover boy~." The nurse laughs boisterously, waving a hand idly in the air at his own joke, before pushing a strand of his hair from in front of his eyes, "I know what you mean, though. Emi is a wonderful girl and an even better runner. Having to run beside her would be rather... taxing. I assume you're not overexerting yourself again?"
I shake my head, "No, no... I couldn't see myself doing more than what I'm doing."
"Well, you'll reach a point where you can naturally run without too much effort. You'll need to increase the distance you run eventually. But in your first week? No, no." The nurse pulls my file from the nearby cabinet, marking down a few notes and grinning again, "Have you talked to your parents, told them how the year is going?"
"I don't really talk to my parents much. Even when I wasn't dealing with my heart problems, I was excessively independent. They both worked nights."
"So, I'll take that as a definite 'no.'" He says, grinning slightly.
"Yeah, a definite no."
"Alright, on to our favorite part of the day; lift your shirt for me?" He says, winking as he does so.
I shiver at the off-putting humor, but lift the sticky shirt from my chest anyway. He places the cold steel on my chest, probing it three times, then letting it drop back around his neck.
"Great, great! Your heart is beating fast, but the beats are not… too erratic; you indeed did exercise, and didn't just get your shirt wet. That's happened before."
I shrug, letting out a slight grin, as I let my shirt drop back down, "Is there anything else then?"
"Just keep it up, and good luck at lunch today." He winks again, laughing boisterously as he stands from his desk. "I'll get the door."
I step out of the office, and leave the building, casually walking over to the dorm.
My clothes are laid out on the desk, pre-placed from last night. I take them and my shower supplies along to the bathroom. Devoid of any freaks and failures, my shower goes peacefully. When I get back to my room, I glance at the clock and note that I have a bit of extra time before class starts.
Deciding to make use of it, I head to the main building and make my way to the cafeteria. I shuffle through the line, getting a plate of breakfast at random. I end up with a bowl of miso soup, an apple, some rice, and a piece of dry toast.
I sit down at a small booth in the corner of the cafeteria, eating without a word.
I stand to toss my trash in the bin, meandering to it through the now growing crowd of sleep-deprived students.
I slide the garbage into the bin, placing the tray and the bowl on top and turn to exit the cafeteria, heading to my first class of the day.
The classroom is empty, save for one kid in the opposite corner of the classroom, drooling over a textbook casually. I slide into my chair, pulling out my notebook for science and start flipping through the notes I had taken yesterday.
Naomi steps in soon after, missing her other half. She waves to me as she sits down in her desk, mirroring my motions of pulling out the notebooks and supplies.
"Where's Natsume?" I ask, breaking through the silence in this corner of the room.
"She stayed home today, she had an, ah, flare up. Because of me." She frowns slightly, peeking through her notebook in varying motions.
"..Flare up?"
"She has arthritis, a lot of it, to be simple about it."
That's… Well, that explains things. A lot of things. Basically all the questions relating to Natsume at least, I sputter out my thoughts to fill the awkward silence, "...Oh. That, uh.. Sorry."
"Yeah." She nods to me once, turning back to her book, mumbling something: Whether it was to me or to no one in particular is debatable.
The morning classes go by at a strangely slow pace. I find myself looking out the window repeatedly, checking the clock and my watch periodically only to realize a mere minute or two has passed.
When the lunch bell rings, I fish out the phone from my pocket as I step out of the classroom. When I open it, I'm greeted with a text from an unknown number.
- "hi hisao! this is emi
remember that we have lunch today
meet me and my friend up on the roof
Ive got lunch and stuff all ready to eat so dont worry about that
seeya soon!"
I awkwardly slide the phone back into my pocket, peeking around the buzzing nooks and crannies of the 3rd floor hallways.
How'd she even get my number?
Eventually I find a stairwell, aptly labeled "Roof Access." I make my way up the flight of dimly lit stairs, arriving at the door at the top. A broken padlock is lying down on the ground next to the door, and the door itself is hanging loosely open, sunlight pouring through the crack and into the stairwell.
When I open the door, I’m greeted by two people sitting on the opposite side of the roof, at an out of place picnic table.
Emi calls out, waving me over to the table, “Come on~! I’ve got your food over here!”
She pats the spot next to herself, and points at the boxed lunch. The second I acknowledge her, she sets to picking apart her lunch with the fervor of a ravenous animal, dissecting fresh prey.
I take my seat next to her, pulling open the bin and pulling the contents out, from their individually boxed packages. When I look up, the person across from me has their… feet positioned above the box lunch, eating contentedly... with their feet?
"Uh...?" I glance to Emi, snapping the chopsticks down the middle and holding them over my lunch as I try to make sense of the situation.
"Wha- Oh, right~! Hisao, this is Rin! Rin, this is Hisao!" She grins, a piece of rice plastered to her bottom lip. She flicks her tongue out, pulling the loose rice back into her maw, turning back to her food right after, in proper, full force.
Rin drops the chopsticks, nodding to me, "Hi." I inspect her frame, noticing a distinct lack of… arms.
Which would explain the feet, I suppose.
"...Hi?" I respond, picking up the chopsticks again.
...She…? doesn't respond, simply tending to her lunch once more. She plucks at the boxed lunch, not eating most of it. I pull a piece of chicken from the box, slipping it into my mouth and grinning at the flavor. The rooftop lunch passes very quietly, only filled with the occasional sigh of relief or inhaling of air from Emi.
When the lunch bell rings across the campus, Emi pulls over our boxes and frowns into Rin's.
"If you don't eat your lunch, you're going to fade away!" Emi chastises Rin.
Shrugging in response, Rin slides out from the table. "Would that really be so bad?" She says to the air, walking to the staircase and downstairs to class, I think. Maybe she's off to do more drugs.
I say more because she is too mellow to not be on... something.
Emi picks up the boxes of lunch, tossing them into her bag, "Was it good, Hisao~?" She leans forwards on her... legs, hands behind her back.
"The food was great! Did you, ah, did you make it yourself?"
"I did!" She grins widely, "Hopefully Rin didn't, like, scare you off or something. She is a bit weird, but she's great once you get to know her. The staff thought it would be funny to make a whole."
"A whole?"
"Y'know... I don't have legs, she doesn't have arms; put us together, and you've got a suit~! Plus, she ah, needed help getting dressed a lot of the time. Shirts aren't her friend."
"I could've figured... I'll be off now though, so I don't miss class. I'll see you around." I wave over my shoulder as I make my way to the door.
She calls out quickly, "I've got a track meet, during the festival! You should come see it~! Don't blow yourself up on all the food, though - I'll know!"
“Oh, I think the Newspaper Club was already planning on going to that, I could be wrong,” I wave over my shoulder as I step out of the door and down to my afternoon classes. Those pass just as boringly as the rest, Naomi in a rut because of Natsume’s absence; those two really do depend on each other.
When the final bell hits, time seems to lurch back into motion, the classroom droll finally having suspended itself for another few hours.
Naomi and I make our way to the club room, slipping into the room silently. Ayao remains in the same corner as usual, writing away on whatever subject it is she... writes.
We both take a seat at a computer, but Naomi takes a pointedly obvious bit of special care to not watch much, “Ah, sorry. I forgot my glasses today.”
I guess the obvious is that she has those... seizures often. Often enough to stress about them, at least.
"Hey, Ayao, is this fine here?" I motion her to the computer, the final draft of the newspaper issue flat against the print preview screen.
"That will do, yeah." She pulls herself back up onto the nearby counter, diving back into the little black notebook.
Slotting the roll of paper from yesterday into the massive printer, I glance to Naomi who then glances to Ayao, "Start the printer for u-" Ayao pops down from the counter, quickly keying in the commands and parameters for the newspapers.
"There. That's all we really need to do."
Naomi and I both glance at the finished newspapers, watching as they roll off the printer into a stack.
“Here, Hisao, you take the first page.” Naomi smiles warmly, pulling it out from the stack and flipping it through the air.
The smell of freshly printed ink on paper fills the room with an acrid stench. Ayao continues working, a smile crossing her lips as she does.
I take the paper hesitantly, mumbling a “Thanks,” in response.
Naomi simply laughs, placing her palms against the top of the printer. We both silently watch the papers as they flop onto the pile.
When I push my hands into their pockets, Naomi pipes up in the somewhat discomforting silence. “Are you hyped for the festival?”
“I know I'm not,” Ayao calls out from the corner.
Naomi pulls a scrap paper from the table next to the printer, balling it up and tossing it across the room towards Ayao. Instead of letting it hit her, Ayao swipes it out of the air and smugly grins. She dives back into her notebook within moments of this exchange.
“As I was saying…”
I shake to attention. “Oh, yeah. It'll be interesting to see the fruits of everyone's labors.”
“That's great, great~!”
Thinking back to Natsume’s information, I add on, “Are we going to need anyone watching the stands or something?”
A solid thump followed by a sharp “Shit!” comes from Ayao’s corner; when I turn to glance at the source, Ayao has her hand still in the air, in mid fist pump.
“What?” Ayao blinks a few times. Naomi sighs, followed by Ayao throwing her other hand up in the air. “You got me, officer, on charges I could never disapprove of.”
“... What?” I blurt out.
Ayao grins, laughing at the air, “I was the one assigned to the stands for the beginning of the festival by default!”
Naomi sighs, “Just because Hisao asks a question doesn't mean you're off the hook.”
“... Right.”
“And besides, why would I make him watch the stand? This is his first week.”
“...... Right.”
“And why are you still celebrating?”
“......... Rig-Oh.” She drops her hands from the air, crossing them over her lap, “I, uh. I forgot. Oops.”
The printer begins beeping violently, Naomi pushes the off button quickly, pulling the now empty roll from the machine. Tossing it in the corner, into a small stack, she turns on her heel and grabs her bag.
“Ayao, organize the papers onto the rack for me, our job is done today~!” She nudges me in the side, “Let's go check on Natsume, before curfew hits.”
“Sounds great, just a moment though.” I grab my bag from the counter, holding the newspaper in my hand as I pull the bag over my shoulder, “Lead the way.”
As we step out of the room, the door shuts with a click, Ayao glancing out the side window as it does, “Ignore her, Hisao, she's hit a spout of… mania today…” She tilts her head back, counting the tiles in the hallway's ceiling under her breath.
When we reach the turn, she lurches her head forwards and rounds the corner with a casual heel turn.
“So, Hisao, what are you doing for the festival? Natsume, Ayao and I usually get together after the stall is settled and go to watch the track team, then we watch movies until it gets dark!” She purses her hands together in front of her legs, “You'll love it there… it's so great~.”
“I don't really have plans, mind if I join you guys?” We step up the short flight of stairs, turning to the girl's dorm.
I open the door for Naomi, and she turns back before I let it close, “I wouldn't talk about my plans if I wasn't trying to get you to ask that question, of course you can join us!” She knocks on the door to Natsume’s room, opening it after a second tap, “Wait out here until I give you the signal, alright?”
Naomi steps in the room, flicking on the light and wading through the contents of the floor.
Numerous groans of displeasure and rattling covers float out from the room, until eventually Naomi whistles at an excessive pitch.
I step inside, a hand in my pocket and the other on the doorframe. "Hi, Natsume."
"Hi." She is leaning against the wall, a blanket pressed against her. Naomi is sitting on the desk chair, spinning it around in circles.
"Did you take your medicine?" Naomi turns herself around on the chair. She leans her head against the back of it, glancing at us as if she's looking over the top of a pair of invisible glasses.
"I took the medicine." Natsume is peeking out from the top of a blanket, her hands folded in her lap.
"Good~! Do you think you'll be fine to move around before tomorrow?"
"Probably." She tries to shrug, but can't and instead just repeats, with a lot more hesitation, "...Probably."
"If I have to drag you out of bed tomorrow, I will 'probably' fight you." Naomi tilts her head, drooping her glasses down and raising an eyebrow at her.
"I'll try. Did you bring food?"
"I've got bread in the bag." She pulls open her school bag and pulls free a store bag, labeled just "Have a Good Day!" Where'd she get that?
"Gimme gimme gimme." She says, starting to push forwards but almost tearing up. She slowly slinks back and points at the bag with puppy dog eyes.
I pull the bag up, and rip open the plastic wrapper containing the bread. She lifts her arm up, wrist rigid and swollen. I cringe and hand her the bread. It's hard to see someone in such a state, even if you barely know them.
She brings the wrist to her face, dropping the bread onto herself and holding it into place with her mouth, "Eheh.." She chuckles through the loaf of bread, pulling it in slowly. Naomi and I grin at the scene, but don't laugh. It just doesn't feel right.
When she finishes the bread, I pick up the juice pouch from the bag and put it down for Natsume. I poke the straw in and hand it to her. A few sips later, she speaks up, "This is probably one of the worst flare ups I've had all year..."
"Yeah, it doesn't look too great.. I called the nurse for you, by the way."
She rolls her eyes, "It's so hard to deal with him sometimes..." She glances to me, "You've had to deal with him for a good bit, with.. well, your heart. He irk you too?"
Natsume's speech is a lot more to the point when she's like this. It's jarring, in truth. Hard to deal with. She changes a lot when she's on a down day, it seems.
I slowly respond, "He's a bit jarring, but he means well I guess. Just a bit hard to laugh at some of the stuff he jokes around with."
"Exaaaaaactly." She points her finger at me, lifting her hand a bit more than the last few times, then dropping her hand to her face to scratch at it idly.
"Keep lifting that arm, Natsume~! I know you want to!" Naomi leans forwards towards Natsume, palms against the bed as she laughs, "You're not that bad, if you're not screeching in pain from lifting your arm for a scratch. Jeez. You faker."
Natsume ploofs back against the pillows, sipping out of the juice pouch and glaring towards Naomi with a sigh, "Implying that the Nurse would ever let me skip. I'm just so much better for little ol' you and Hisao. Sheesh."
"Ohohohoh. Whatever you say." Naomi slaps Natsume on the foot, before pushing off of the bed and turning to me, "Hisao, I assume you can find the way out?" Naomi steps out and leans on the door across the hall.
I nod once, turning on my heel, "Ah, yeah, seeya tomorrow, Natsume. Same to you, Naomi, sleep well.”
“Of course~! See you later, Hisao!” Naomi grins, waving to me as she slides into her room. Natsume makes some noise akin to a grunt of acknowledgement. Skillfully throwing something at the door, she manages to shut it before I leave.
I exit the girl's dorm, and enter the guy's dorm, stepping through the dimly lit halls.
I toss my bag onto the bed, pulling the paper from under my arm and flattening it against my desk. I pull a thumbtack from the top of my desk, and tap it into the wall next to my window. With the window open, it flutters lazily in the cold evening air, almost like a cape.
I pull out a book, pushing my bag from my bed as I lie down. I flip open to the marked page after turning off the light. The gentle breeze settles through the room, crawling through my chest and finding it's way deep inside.
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. I like this story and will read each updated chapter when it comes out 
