Rin and The Overcoat

[cardinal_kiril]

Classes were nearly over at Yamaku for the day. Rin, her final class thoroughly skipped, sat at the steps beside her mural, the motley, amalgamated mass of flesh and face staring frozen and shameless before the school’s corpus. When she was supposed to have entered her classroom, Rin caught in the corner of her eye a large bird flying through the diameter of the hallway window she was beside. She rushed to the glass and turned to look out at an angle that would give a clearer view of the animal, the black neck and black tailfeathers just barely visible as it perched on a far-off tree branch. It was then that the closest thing imaginable to determination overtook Rin and she abandoned what was left of her scholarly duties and flew through the hall and down the stairs, her sandals making loud, uncharacteristic and unadjusted clops with every trepidatious bound she took, her limp sleeve rubbing against the handrail all the same, as if to remind her what could and could not pass if she were to miscalculate and lose her balance. The door to the main entrance was already open, and she entered the murky heat of the outside, only slightly disoriented and calculating where the bird should be relative to the abandoned vantage point a moment ago.

That was an hour ago. The mystery bird was gone without a trace, and Rin found herself at the mural where she assumed the thing must have been, disappointed in her defeat and uncomfortable in her sweat yet all the same resolute in not turning around or taking a step back to her class. It was there she sat when the bell rang as a black chronograph of bird with so many cabinet card frames repeated behind her eyelids and opened her groggy eyes to see a boy standing before her.

“Rin?”

It was the voice that stirred her, the slowly focusing figure that made her awake, and the familiar face that made her sit upright. Had this moment lasted longer, Rin would have smiled and she would have forgotten all about the bird. But Hisao’s face was muddled by his ever-present frown, his lips taking their routine pursing position at the very bottom corners of his jaw, and the mood drained from her before she could even realize it was there. Her eyes finally adjusted and met his.
“Hello.”

And the lips, for a split second, pursed even further, Hisao’s frown turning in on itself and she became almost painfully aware of the twin dimples that flickered on the boy’s cheeks, and she could feel her mood changing again, and she remembered the bird, and how it disappeared before she could truly enjoy it, and she wanted them, bird, dimple, and something else that she never saw before but knew was there but didn’t know how to find.

“I didn’t catch you after class. Were you just sitting here this whole time?”

“I saw a crow outside and wanted to go paint it.”

“Okay… but you don’t have any paint or anything on you.”

“Oh. I suppose that’s true.”

“And are you sure you saw a crow? I think those are really rare here.”

Rin felt that the last comment was superfluous and shrugged her shoulders.

“It was crowey to me.”

“So, are you just going to sit there?”

Rin looked about her and turned toward the sky. No crow. She frowned and wondered if she looked like Hisao.

“I suppose it would be asking too much to expect it to return, wouldn’t it. But still. Rude.”

“Well, if you’re not doing anything else, want to come with me to the library? I have some books to return.”

The boy cradled between his palm and armpit a large stack of books, his hip awkwardly cocked to help support the weight while his other arm held lamely his tiny backpack.

She smiled. “You look like one of those naked lady sculptures. Here to imbue a lost soul with ancient knowledge.”

Hisao readjusted, opting to hold the stack in both hands, chin pressing down from the top to ensure structural stability.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you read a book. It would do you some good. Come on, let’s go find something for you to read.”

“I don’t like books.”

But she stood and followed the boy anyway, wordlessly making their way back to school.

A healthy amount of students were at the library, some reading and some studying quietly at desks. Hisao waddled his way over to the front desk and began the return process. He turned back to his companion.
“Is there any kind of book you might be interested in? I’m pretty sure there are some books about art on that aisle over there.”

Rin was deadpan. “Pass. Learning about art through words is like learning to smell chicken without a nose.”

“I wonder if that’s how you feel during one of Nomiya’s art lectures. But, fair enough. Start with some general fiction I guess. I’m sure there’s at least something you might like here, there’s a pretty decent collection.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. What if I get lost and have to spend the night here because I got locked in? Who’s gonna help me take off my pants?”

Hisao would have been caught off guard by this remark had he not been spending the bulk of his afterschool time with the girl. Only slightly fazed, he ignored the looks that the peripheral people made in their direction and went back to face the equally startled librarian.

“I’m sure Emi and I can get a search party to find you. Just look. I’ll be over there soon.”

This reminded Rin of an old American movie she saw when she was barely old enough to start painting, and brief delight shone on her face as she did her best to recreate the word and cadence of the man she didn’t know was John Wayne: “We gotta gather a right pretty posse there, pillgrummmm…” But Hisao ignored her, catching up with Yuuko and chit chatting about one of the books she recommended him. Her smile faded, and Hisao did not see her downcast glance. She went to explore.

There were many shelves and many halls formed from the spaces between them. She wandered through, experimenting with how many corners she could turn before she would end up at a shelf she had already seen. Her still-inspired imagination unsatisfied that Hisao did not react to her cowboy impression, she pretended that the rows and rows of books on either side of her were like wooden saloon doors, and she with cowhide slacks and revolvers on her waist strutted through each one, spurred bootheel first. She was at the end of the literary studies section when the paradox of her having revolvers but no hands to use them factored into her provisional reality, and by the time she realized that not only would she make for a useless cowboy at a shootout who would probably die before setting off a single round, she would also likely never become a true cowboy no matter how well she could ride a horse or fix a barn, she plunged into a permissive depression, heartbroken before the shards of her shattered dream. She looked up from her sandals and she incidentally caught a glimpse of a thin journal and read her first title during her entire five minutes of being in this library: "PIP" AND "PROPERTY": THE (RE)PRODUCTION OF THE SELF IN "GREAT EXPECTATIONS" by Gail Turley Houston. She rode on.

She came to a clearing, herds of beanbags grazing while her fellow students straddled them. Among them at a farther and more secluded corner of the lounge were Hanako, reading a book, and Lilly, sitting above and to her left on a high chair at a wooden table, her fingertips brushing left-to-right over a completely white mesa of Sefer-like plastic.

Deciding that she was bored, Rin went towards the pair. As she came closer, she could see that Hanako’s nose was deep in her book, and her eyes glued and her mind elsewhere. Lilly’s face, so often emitting a glowing warmth through her small smile and wandering, untroubled eyes, sat with a blank stare, her brow twitching as her fingers continued down the page. Then her brow raised suddenly, and her lips parted and her fingers moved more, and she traced down all the way at the end of a paragraph and finally chuckled, modestly stifling herself so as to not pull the attention of anybody who may be around her.

“Oh, oh my. Oh dear oh dear oh dear…"

Rin’s amusement at watching Lilly emote into the void drew her closer and closer to the two, her shadow slinking over the occupied Hanako. The dimming of her precious-little reading light routed her attention and she looked up. Recognizing that, not only was the grinning figure before her not Lilly but was also none other than that crazy art girl from the class next door, Hanako cowered and buried herself deeper into her bean bag, giving a squeal and hiding her face behind the book.

Lilly tore herself from her book and immediately snapped her head to where she knew her friend should be. A real and genuine concern warbled her voice.

“Hanako? Hanako, what’s wrong?”

“It…! It….! It’s…!”

“What? Hanako, please speak up, I can’t hear you.”

“Hello.”

When she connected voice to name, Lilly froze at her spot before letting a steady inhale of breath through her nose help her regain her composure. A tiny smile of polite hesitancy twisted her face just slightly.

“Ah, Rin, it’s you. Hello. Is there something you needed?”

“What are you reading there?”

Rin pointed at Lilly’s Braille using her toes and foot.

And Lilly exhaled that breath slowly, her shoulders slacking and comfortable with the assurance that Rin asked a perfectly rational, pleasant question, and her raised guard was fortunately unfounded. She closed her eyes and smiled.

“This? It’s an English book I ordered a while ago. Poldark. Have you heard of it?”

“Eh? Polack? Isn’t that a slur?”

Lilly’s eyes shot open, her mouth was agape, her back straightened as if electrocuted. Memories from many miles away swam through her jumbled head. Years ago, while she lived in London for one summer, she and a local friend explored the streets of Ealing, settling in at a boutique tea store with a lighted patio when suddenly the calm of the chic street broke as the first drunken barfight of the early-evening commenced right next door. Lilly, still too young to fully understand the nature of things in England, asked her friend what had transpired. She explained that a fan of one football had called a fan of a different football team a ‘Polack,’ thus ensuing the fight before them, and she explained the word and its hateful connotation and Lilly gasped and became depressed and wondered why anybody would say such a horrible thing. And here she was, in Japan, in a school for disabled children, being accused of saying a word that she never would have expected to hear again and never wanted to either, too at a loss for words to defend herself or find a way to regain her long-lost composure. And it was here that a deep and dark creature of resentment began to bubble and form to life from the placid loch of Lilly’s mind, for Rin’s honest misunderstanding and blunt remark unwittingly brought the former down to her knees. The thousand injuries the world forces Lilly to bear have long ago shaped a strong young woman. Unable to swallow a life dominated by disability, Lilly was wise beyond her eighteen years and by all metrics perfectly suited for the path ahead, so long as she remembered to take life one step at a time, which she always did, a fact that she cherished and was incredibly proud of, although she did not realize this, and this silent, benign hubris was what caused her to completely drop her guard, right in time to get hit by what was possibly the most ludicrous, unbelievable, out of left field accusations she had ever heard in her entire life.

Accused by Rin, who already shifted her attention to the cowering girl with bangs and book obscuring her face.

“Hello.”

“H… hello… T-Tezuka…”

“Whaddya reading?”

Hanako gulped and turned her head toward Lilly, looking for some kind of emotional support. Yet the steadfast pillar of calm she knew her friend to be was not there. Instead, the blonde girl’s face was red, and her mouth was still agape, a shaking hand holding her fingers-first by the forehead. It was then that Hanako knew that she was truly trapped in this nightmare.

Hanako was not scared of Rin. She was instead scared of what happens whenever Rin appeared before her. Nearly three years of relative proximity with the armless girl taught Hanako the value of avoiding contact with her at all costs, and yet she frequently still somehow found herself face to face with her one way or another, whether it be while trying to enjoy tea at the Shanghai, or bumping into each other in the school hallway, or colliding face-first on her way out of the girls’ bathroom, which was when Rin bluntly asked her how many times she had gone to the bathroom during this period and correctly guessed five.

Hanako glanced at her book and chewed on the title “The Catcher in the Rye” in her mind and decided without concrete evidence but with resolve all the same that no, telling Tezuka the title of the book she was reading would lead only to ruin. It was then that Hanako saw an opening she could take advantage of, if only she could utter her old stand-by in a way that could ensure her a smooth escape. Hands trembling in the understanding that one misstep would be fatal, Hanako did her best to calmly shut the book and shelve it behind her, before standing up.

“N-nothing. Excuse me Rin, I… I have to go do something.”

Lilly heard that time-tested phrase, and this brought her to the present. Regaining her words and knowing that now was the perfect opportunity to escape, she put her bumped book away and retrieved her still-collapsed white cane from her bag. But the assailant was too quick and already queried something to the extent of whether Hanako needed to use the bathroom again and deduced that the burn victim must of course be trying to set a new world record for amount of trips taken, forcing Lilly to shock yet again, dropping her cane pitifully on the floor.

“You dropped your cane. I got it.”

And Lilly wished that it was Hanako who said that as Rin lassoed the compact pointer betwixt her toes, hoping to foot it back to the blind girl, but not realizing that the retractable was a new design, accidentally pressing the silver button that caused the thin metal shafts to shoot outward to their fullest extent, just enough hit Hanako in the middle of her forehead, causing her to tumble back down into the bean bag chair, leaving the intense introvert in a shivering wreck.

“Oops.”

Lilly stood quickly and with far less grace than she would have preferred. Using the table to guide and leverage her, she reached out to the air, hoping and failing to make contact with her friend.

“Hanako?! Hanako, what happened, are you alright?”

But Lilly did not know that Rin had already dropped the full-length cane on the ground in her surprise, and the blind girl’s feet tripped over that very same cane she trusted to guide her as she took her first and only step in her futile journey to rescue Hanako in the sheer blackness before her eyes. Lilly fell, landing uncomfortably perpendicular to Hanako.

Hisao rounded the corner, his books returned and in search of Rin. He saw before him the ruins of Lilly helplessly trying to untangle herself from her friend, and the petrified Hanako, eyes shut tight, hoping that if she willed it hard enough, she would disappear from the face of the Earth. And it was Rin who stood above them, as if she were a glassy-eyed khan basking unwittingly before the enemies she destroyed without even trying.

“Oh my God. Lilly, Hanako, are you okay?”

Hisao helped them up, Lilly clinging to his arm for dear life. Her face was even more red than it was before as her embarrassment came to a crescendo upon realizing that it was none other than Hisao who bore witness to her humiliating defeat. She did not answer the boy’s questions about what had happened, why she was on the floor, if she was alright, and what Rin was doing, but snatched the seeing-cane from his hands when he handed it back to her and wasted no time in helping her friend up. Not saying another word, the blind girl tapped her way out of the library, Hanako barely in tow, who wondered why, why this should happen, and deciding to keep a countdown of when she could finally graduate Yamaku and never cross paths with the artist-girl ever again.

The boy and girl were alone. Hisao turned to Rin with a confused look, and she returned it with the same silent, blank expression she almost always greeted him with. They rode on.

The pair made their way through the aisles, the boy scanning the titles and genres before him, hopeful in his ambition to get his strange friend a book that she would enjoy. Rin said nothing and allowed Hisao to take the lead but did not join the boy in his quest. In fact, none of the suggestions that Hisao voiced roused Rin’s curiosity at all, although he did occasionally pull a tome with a unique cover, which the girl would occasionally comment on in that jumble of word and apostate thought he had grown to expect from her.

The minutes folded onto each other and the pair had found their way to the very ends of the library, not having found a single thing that interested Rin enough to warrant more than a deadpan comment or unfounded conclusion. Disappointed, Hisao was just about ready to give up, chalking up this failure as yet another painful brick that formed the wall of separation between him and the artist girl he did not know he loved, when she stopped before a small bottom corner of a discreet shelf. She crouched and read the paper genre-marker that stuck out between two sections of book. The handwritten mark, denoting a collection of nothing more than a handful of odd titles, read, simply, “Russian Literature.” Hisao took Rin’s silent studying as a sign and gazed with her at the meagre anthology.

“See something you like?”

Rin did not answer immediately but pointed at the label.

“I’ve been there.”

“You’ve been… You mean you’ve been to Russia?”

“Yes. I mean no. But yes. That’s a difficult question.”

“It’s a pretty simple question…”

Rin shook her head, like a teacher whose student made a common mistake on a math problem.

“My parents go there sometimes. My dad’s friend lives there. But not Russia Russia. Japan Russia. Or the Japan that thinks it’s Russia. Those islands. Don’t you see?”

“Wait, ‘those islands’? Are you talking about the Kuril Islands?”

“If that’s what you call them. Iturup.”

Hisao scratched his head, only slightly flabbergasted that Rin of all people would have spent time in the middle of the largest territorial dispute between their homeland and the former taiga empire. But soon enough he concluded that if anybody he knew were to have gone there, it may as well have been Rin, and instead of calculating probabilities, he used this tidbit of trivia to lure the girl into that pleasant, literary trap that he had learned to call home since his first heart attack.

“Okay! So you’re interested in Russia?”

“Not in particular. But they talk funny.”

“Good enough for me. Can’t say I’ve read anything from there, but let’s see what we’ve got.”

The selection was very low on the shelf and awkward to reach by both hand and foot. He pulled its entirety and stacked them into a spikey column on the ground. They looked through the books one by one and laid them aside, ignorant of what heroes and what times they passed, unknown titles anomolised to the roadside. He checked her reaction in the corner of his eye each time he set a book down.

The last book in the stack was also the thinnest. The nearly untouched, glossy, cheap paperback cover held what Hisao deduced by its length must be a short story of some sort. He read the title, “The Overcoat,” and on its center was a black and white illustration that looked like graphite smeared on white paper, depicting a meek-looking middle-aged man writing on a desk.

She regarded the book and regarded the man on it. She sounded the title and said the name of the author, who was called something like ‘Nikorai Gogori’ in Japanese but was clearly called something else in his native tongue.

“Know him?”

“No. But he looks sad.”

“I don’t think that’s him. That’s probably just a character.”

Rin turned her head to appreciate the cover in a new angle and turned it again in the opposite tilt.
“He still looks sad. This could very well be the saddest book cover I have ever seen.”

Strangely, that was the closest thing to a positive reaction Rin had to any of the books set before her. Hisao swore he saw that look that Rin only gives when her attention was fully captured. A shift in her cloudy eyes, a shut jaw. A memory flashed before him of when he was eleven and managed to catch an incredibly big fish with his father, and if he was living in 2021 he would have totally said ‘same energy’ out loud on accident.

“Okay! Want to check this one out?”

Rin did not confirm nor deny Hisao’s question, but silently followed him to the check-out desk after replacing the unwanted books back into the shelf. A fresh pile of literature awaited them there, already checked-out under Hisao’s name, which he scooped into his hands after getting Rin’s selection scanned. He placed The Overcoat at the crown of his pile and leisurely balanced his way out of the library and the school with his companion. At the courtyard, where the paths to the boys’ and girls’ dorms diverged, he caught the book between his fingers and pointed it to Rin, who unceremoniously equipped it snugly under the armpit of her knotted stub-sleeve.

Their journey together was complete, but they turned to face each other in a brief silence regardless.

“Saw Nomiya today. He asked me if I knew what your decision was for that art gallery downtown.”

“Oh.”

“Can I tell him yes, so he’ll stop bothering me?”

“I don’t know. I need time to think about this.”

“I know you do. But you’ve had a pretty long time to think about it. I don’t understand, isn’t this what you want?”

Rin hated it when Hisao said he did not understand, and she hated it more when that frown he always gave reappeared. But the frown caused his dimples to return, so she looked away and the shadow of melancholy overlapped her heart. She looked again and he was still frowning but the dimples were gone.

“What’s wrong?”

Rin wanted to say “I haven’t seen you smile a single time since I’ve met you,” but she already told him this and the fact that it was still true after all this time depressed her to the point where she couldn’t think, so she just shook her head and said something to the effect of needing more time and not wanting to talk about it and that it was time for her to go even though she stood perfectly still. Hisao frowned again.

“Okay. I’ll see you.”

He turned and went towards his dorm.

“Hisao.”

He pivoted without losing his book balancing act.

“Yeah?”

And frustratingly she did not answer him immediately and it was not apparent to either of them why she called his name, her blank ever-serious stare of curious expectation giving him only useless answers.

“I think I’m going to paint that bird.”

“Alright.”

“But I can’t remember what it looked like. You don’t have any bird books in that pile, do you?”
“I only read fiction. I don’t think I can help you.”

Rin did not reply yet still felt compelled to say something. But by the time she decided what that something should be, Hisao again turned and walked back to his dorm.

“I gotta go.”

She watched him turn smaller as he made his way up the building stairs. She made her way home, but not before catching Hisao shouting “enjoy that book!” to her from the crossing. She had completely forgotten it tucked away in her left armpit.

[cardinal_kiril]

This is just the first part btw lel

[Oddball]

So far it's been an amusing, almost cartoonish take on Rin. I'm curious to see what else you do with this.

[cardinal_kiril]

So far it's been an amusing, almost cartoonish take on Rin. I'm curious to see what else you do with this.

I've been lurking on these forums for years, all the way back to when I first finished KS when I was still a young lad in seminary. And I remember you, Oddball, frequently commenting on other people's works and giving support. It's crazy to see that now, after all this time, you are giving me that same support for my own work. It's an honor, and I'm so happy to see that your avatar hasn't changed at all. Godspeed, hope you like the next chapter when it comes out.

[Mirage_GSM]

Good start of the story.
One thing I'm not sure of is what kind of story you're trying to write. most of the time it is a quite typical story, but a few times (especially the scene with Lilly and Hanako and the brief 4th wall break towards the end) it wanders right into slapstick territory, and the difference between the two tones is a bit jarring.
Otherwise, god job and good luck going forward!

[cardinal_kiril]

Good start of the story.
One thing I'm not sure of is what kind of story you're trying to write. most of the time it is a quite typical story, but a few times (especially the scene with Lilly and Hanako and the brief 4th wall break towards the end) it wanders right into slapstick territory, and the difference between the two tones is a bit jarring.
Otherwise, god job and good luck going forward!

Thank you so much for reading and giving your thoughts! And I'm glad you found it jarring, that's practically my patronymic!

I'm not sure what you mean by brief 4th wall break. Could you point out the line/passage you're talking about? I appreciate it!

[Mirage_GSM]

I was referring to this line:

A memory flashed before him of when he was eleven and managed to catch an incredibly big fish with his father, and if he was living in 2021 he would have totally said ‘same energy’ out loud on accident.

4th wall break is not quite the right word, as he is not directly addressing the reader. But Hisao is referencing some kind of meme I'm not familiar with, which seems to originate in 2021 - which is over a decade after the story is set, so he exhibits knowledge from beyond the 4th wall.

[cardinal_kiril]

Ahhh I see. This is sort of a 4th wall break but delivered from the narrator instead of a character, you could say. I'm aiming to get my writing to be a bit more Gogol-esque, and that sort of this is definitely his style. Gonna experiment with it further in the next chapter, thank you for giving your thoughts! Hope it ends up working out then.