Miyuki Ishida - Lost and Rendered (II)
Jin Amachi, 16. Shiga Prefecture. Class 1-D, Moriyama High School.
Miyuki taps a red pen against Jin Amachi’s file and stares down at his picture, trying to picture him carrying a gun, trying to picture the smile on his face as a look of panic instead. It’s not easy to do-it’s never easy to imagine a child killing another child until you’re actually watching it happen.
Certain lines in the file are highlighted.
... father was sent to a work camp five years prior after he was caught dispersing anti-nationalist flyers.
… been known to made radical statements while on school property.
... has two brothers, age five and ten.
This kid is fucked. She can tell just by reading those three lines. Regardless of what she or anyone else marks down on this file, at the end of the next school year he’ll be waking up on the floor in some abandoned building with the rest of his class, confused and scared, and within three days he’ll be dead. A kid like that would never be allowed to win the Program, not in a million years. Even if the selection board doesn’t want this particular kid’s entire class, they’ll figure out some way to transfer him to a class they do want.
It’s all a little sickening, but Miyuki can’t let herself feel sick about it.
After all, this kid is sixteen. He’s old enough to know better than to be saying incriminating things about his beliefs at school. And his younger brothers-they’ll get the shit scared out of them, most likely, and won’t cause a problem later. But even so, someone will be keeping an eye on them, making sure.
She’s never understood how people can be so stupid about this kind of thing. When Jin Amachi’s father went around passing out those flyers, didn’t he realize that he was incriminating his entire family? And now his oldest son is going to die. More than that, there will be kids in his class who’ve never spoken a word against the government in their lives, and they’ll die too. All but one of them.
Sometimes it’s better not to think too much about all of it. So she just puts her head down and does her job.
It’s a simple job. She’s given a pile of student files, a deadline, and then she’s left to her own devices until the deadline is up. And as long as she does the work and doesn’t fuck up, nobody really talks to her, nobody gets involved in her personal business, and nobody talks about their personal business in return.
Every student becomes a number and each number has its own place in a formula. And turning them all into numbers and working through the formula and seeing a concrete answer makes it all less human, less distressing, for everyone involved. She knows intellectually that she’s categorizing people, that in her own small way, she’s helping to choose the class for the next Program. But it’s not like it’s her decision-each time she looks at a file, she knows that dozens of other people are looking at the exact same one, making their own projected results and sending them off to someone else. And even after all that, it’s still up to the selection board to make a final decision.
It’s not like she’s sending these kids off to die. She’s just a tiny cog in a machine so immense that trying to decipher her own individual impact is completely pointless.
She’s blameless.
Even so, she has to remind herself on a constant basis why she’s there in the first place. She’s there because for some reason having a job like this has convinced her father that she’s not going to try to kill herself again. It’s an excuse not to have to live with him or with her mother. It’s money that she’s earning by actually doing work, not by having her face plastered all over trading cards and newspapers. It’s time spent productively instead of sitting and thinking for too long.
It’s just a job. A decently paid, easy job.
She marks Jin Amachi’s file with a little star and reminds herself: Easy job. Important job.
She’s not sure who she’s trying to convince anymore.
“Hey, Miyuki?”
She rolls over, staring wordlessly at Raina, who’s standing by the door, one hand resting against the doorframe. Raina gives a slightly concerned smile. “Are you feeling okay? Mami told me the door was unlocked.”
Miyuki swallows and doesn’t say anything. For some reason, Raina, one of her best friends, seems like a total stranger standing there. “Um,” she says, surprised at how tired her own voice sounds. She feels like she’s been sleeping for hours already. “I guess I’m just coming down with a cold.”
“Are you coming to dinner?”
“Dinner?” Miyuki says, trying to muster some enthusiasm and failing miserably. “I don’t know-I don’t think so.”
“I saw Seikou on my way in,” Raina says hesitantly. “And he, um, asked if maybe you were sick or something? He said he hasn’t seen you in like two days.”
Miyuki rolls in the opposite direction so she’s facing the window. She pulls her blanket up and over her shoulders, twisting it around one hand so it covers the lower half of her face. “I’m fine. I’m just tired. Go ahead to dinner. Tell Seikou I’ll see him tomorrow in class.”
Raina hesitates again, as if she’s not sure whether she should leave or try to press some more information out of Miyuki. Finally, she sighs. “Okay. I hope you feel better.”
She knows she should leave.
Hideo’s hands are under her shirt, his skin too warm on hers, and his tongue is in her mouth, slimy and tasting of smoke. She cringes away from him without meaning to.
He pulls back, his breathing heavy. Even in the near-darkness of the room, she can see the redness of his eyes, the hungry, glazed look in them. “What?”
“I…”
She doesn’t want to be here, that’s all. She’s never had any dumb, unrealistic expectations about sex, but-she doesn’t want it to be like this, with a guy she only met two weeks ago, someone she doesn’t even know or like.
She tries to wriggle back up to a sitting position and gives up half propped against one of the pillows. “I just-”
His hand closes around her wrist and squeezes. She suddenly realizes how much larger Hideo is compared to herself. How much stronger. “Come on, Miyuki.” There’s exasperation in his voice. “You agreed to this.”
The door clicks behind Raina as she leaves, presumably to go tell Seikou that Miyuki hasn’t locked herself in the dorm and died. Once Raina is gone, the room is silent and dark once again. The quiet should be comforting, but somehow it just makes everything worse.
She feels bad for ignoring her brother, but she can’t talk to him, either. Not about this. She doesn’t like to lie, but she can’t tell the truth, either.
So Miyuki just stays in bed, thinking. If she keeps her eyes closed, she can almost pretend she’s back in Nagoya, not in Fukushima at all. It’s amazing how fast Haramichi changed in her eyes. Barely two months ago it was full of promise, a place for starting over.
Only she didn’t start over, she just worried more, and now it’s just one more place she feels watched all the time. There are things expected of her here and she has to work twice as hard to achieve them. It’s stupid, but for a few short minutes she even preferred being in Hideo’s apartment to being at school.
Hideo’s place. It’s dirty. It smells like smoke and sex. She knows she’s imagining it, but she thinks she can still smell it on her clothes and hair.
She wants to throw up.
She has nowhere to go now but back and forth between places she hates.
She never says yes, but she never says no, either.
She doesn’t make any sound at all, her mouth pressed up against Hideo’s collarbone, the skin there slick and hot against her lips. She stares at the ceiling, at the broken light fixture and the dim lightbulb hanging there. She can’t even close her eyes and pretend this isn’t happening.
It is happening.
It doesn’t feel good-it’s uncomfortable, it hurts, rough and fast and she bites down on her bottom lip to keep from crying out. Hideo doesn’t care that he’s hurting her.
But she knows he would have stopped if she’d said no to him. She’s sure of it.
And it’s that, a fraction of her life that never actually happened but could have so easily, that replays itself over and over in her mind while she stares up at the ceiling. Saying no and leaving with her dignity intact, not willing to let herself hurt like this over a bunch of stupid pills.
Miyuki rolled to one side, watching Ryouta sleep. In this position, the tips of her fingers just barely rested against the side of his chest. She could feel, or imagine feeling, the slight expansion of his ribcage every time he breathed in. She was suddenly filled with a sense of regret so potent that she took a sharp breath in, as if she’d been hurt in some physical way.
It was always like that. Every time. With Ryouta or anyone else.
During sex, she was emptied of such a long-held anxiety. But after, lying there in the dark, she always felt it coming back to her, magnified and multiplied until she felt like she was drowning under the weight of it. It was a punishment for letting herself forget, even momentarily, about why she was there in the first place. Desperate and almost drunk off her desperation, needing to be close for just a few minutes, to remind herself that she was human, then recoiling from those same touches later because it was just-too much.
Don’t forget.
But even her memory was starting to fail her.
Memories were unreliable now. They were biased and they had faded with time until there was little more than a jumble of instinct and emotion… And emotions weren’t reliable, either. So what was the truth? Certainly the three days she had experienced were radically different than the three days her father had watched play out on the television screen. And his perception was probably different from her mother’s. And her mother’s was different from Kaiyo’s. How many people had watched the Program that year? There had been a nurse, some nurse at the hospital the day she’d won, who’d been almost scared of her. What did that woman remember now, if anything? How many people remembered things being said or done that hadn’t actually happened? How much did she remember falsely?
Whose perception was right and whose was wrong?
Maybe no one was right anymore. Maybe nobody really remembered.
Maybe the only way to remember was to watch.
Would watching those tapes bring back something she had missed, the final puzzle piece, the closure she needed so desperately? Or would they just ruin her a little bit more, make her doubt her own memories? She wasn’t sure. And she thought it might be better not to ever find out. Better to feel this way forever than to risk feeling worse. There was always some way to feel worse, if you weren’t careful.
She shifted on the bed and Ryouta stirred, draped one arm over the warm, bare skin of her stomach. Seconds later, drifting out of sleep, he removed it and slid away from her, close to the wall. “What’re you doing?” he asked hoarsely.
She averted her eyes. Even in the dark, it was a habit she couldn’t break. Never making eye contact with people, trying not to let them look at her too long.
“Nothing,” she whispered. “Just thinking.”
She slides sideways, looping her legs over his, running her fingers over his ribs, one by one. Lying like this, huddling close to the warmth of his body, she feels like she can drift off to sleep and just stay like this for a long time.
“What’s this one from?” Itsuo asks, running one finger along her lower stomach. The sensation takes a few seconds to catch up with her, but when it does, she squirms and laughs, pressing her forehead against his chest.
“My appendix,” she tells him, her voice scratchy and slow, drugged. “I was thirteen… I think.”
“What about this?” He moves his hand to her back, resting his palm just below her shoulder blade. “It’s a big scar.”
“Mm…” She pauses to think. Not that she can’t remember what the scar is from, just that she’s having a difficult time forming any coherent words at the moment. Partly sleepiness, partly pills, partly the fact that Itsuo running his hand up her back is very distracting. “I don’t know?”
“I get it.” She can hear him smiling. “It was an alien abduction thing.”
“Mmhm.”
“Really, how’d you get that?” he asks again.
She rolls over onto her back and looks over at him, one eyebrow quirked. She tries to make herself sound less stoned, with limited success. “Um… I had some problem with my lung, or something. That’s all.”
“Ohh.” He pulls her closer again. “I’m glad you’re okay now.”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Despite her calm lethargy, she feels herself blush and ducks her head against his chest again. “It was a long time ago.”
They lie in silence for several minutes. Miyuki is almost fully asleep, can’t bring herself to care about walking back downstairs to her room before Ryo gets back, when Itsuo speaks again. “What was wrong with you?”
She snaps awake. “What?”
“With your lung. Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.” He runs the palm of his hand down her side again, a soothing motion.
She pauses, biting at her bottom lip for several moments while she thinks back, trying to remember. “I don’t actually know. I don’t think anyone knew.”
“You had surgery but you didn’t know what it was for?”
“It’s just-” She cuts herself off, searching for the right words. In her slow, sedated state, she finally sighs, “My mom has… problems.” The words, spoken out loud, are flat and quiet, seemingly unimportant.
“Right…” Itsuo, chastened, lowers his voice. “I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she lies.
Sometimes, around Itsuo, she’ll mention her mother. Only vaguely, never any real details. She’s not sure why she does it, because she doesn’t like to talk about her mom, really, not even with Seikou. The self-critical part of herself that isn’t affected by the drugs she takes, wonders if she’s testing Itsuo. Seeing if he’ll still like her even though her family is fucked up. Even though she is fucked up.
Because she doesn’t love herself, most of the time. She finds it hard to believe that anyone else could.
Kaiyo’s sitting on the steps of her apartment when she gets home from work, headphones on, a duffel bag next to her on the bottom step. She glances up and blows her bangs out of her eyes when Miyuki stops in front of her.
“Hey,” Miyuki says. “I wasn’t sure when to expect you or I would have left the key somewhere…” She glances around, but really, there isn’t anywhere she could have hid a key. Giving Kaiyo a copy of one is the most logical solution, but her sister won’t take a key-she barely visits as it is. Before this, the last time they saw each other was a year ago.
Kaiyo yanks one of her headphones off and stares up at her. “Huh?”
“… Nothing. Hi.” She sighs inwardly.
“Hey, Miyuki.”
Kaiyo gathers her things and follows Miyuki through the lobby and to the elevator. Once they’re inside, the silence gets awkward. In fact, the only sound she can hear is the humming of the elevator and the tinny music blasting out of her younger sister’s headphones. Kaiyo stares back at her whenever Miyuki glances over, her expression blank. Whereas Miyuki’s mother likes to pretend that everything is, and has always been, good between them, her little sister stands in the opposite corner, never letting her forget about all the unresolved tension between them.
It’s exhausting, and Kaiyo’s only been there for five minutes. She doesn’t even want to think about how it’s going to be by the time Monday rolls around.
“So… How are you?” Miyuki finally asks as they get off the elevator on the fourth floor. “It’s been a while for you and me,” she adds, completely unintentionally sounding like their mother, then frowns when she realizes it.
“Yeah, no kidding,” Kaiyo shoots back, the grudgingly shrugs and says, “I’m fine.”
Miyuki takes her cue to shut up and the two of them enter the apartment without speaking. She watches her sister as she slides out of her shoes and drops her duffel bag by the front door. It’s been so long since they’ve seen each other and Kaiyo looks so grown up, suddenly. Her face is thinner, she’s taller-instead of cute, the word Miyuki wants to use is pretty. And yet still, underneath that, she can still picture her sister the way she was a long time ago, as a child, when she had looked to Miyuki as a substitute for their mother-and Miyuki, full of self-loathing and too caught up in what had happened to take care of anyone, even herself, had decided it was better if Kaiyo just didn’t see her at all. So she moved out, barely spoke to her sister for years, and now-
Now they’re practically strangers.
“Okay, so,” Kaiyo says brusquely, crossing her arms and standing in the center of the room. “You got rid of all your sleeping pills and cigarettes?”
“Yeah.”
“Your crack pipes and meth spoons?”
“Wow, you’re hilarious,” Miyuki snaps, crossing her own arms.
To her surprise, Kaiyo actually smiles, and even though it’s not quite sincere-there’s a hint of aggression to the expression-it’s better than nothing. “Chill out, Miyuki,” she says. “I just really don’t want you to have a crack baby.”
Not knowing quite whether to take the statement at face value or to write it off as a joke, she rolls her eyes. “Well, thanks, I think.”
“So have you told Mom yet?” Kaiyo asks, raising her eyebrows.
“No,” Miyuki admits. Obviously, Kaiyo has no recollection of what kind of person their mother is. Why should she? But Miyuki is going to wait as long as humanly possible to let their mother find out about this, thank you very much. “And you didn’t tell Dad, right?”
“I’m not an idiot. I can keep secrets, too, you know.” For just an instant, Kaiyo’s expression reverts back to ‘excluded child’. She never mentions it, but Miyuki is acutely aware that she’s spent almost her entire childhood-the parts of it where Miyuki was actually around, anyway-playing second fiddle to her dead older brother. She was the first person Miyuki told when she figured out she was pregnant two months ago, the one she entrusted the secret to, but Kaiyo would never have been Miyuki’s first choice if Seikou was still alive, and they both know it. Even Kaiyo’s victories are somehow losses. And Miyuki can’t really blame her for being bitter about that.
Finally, her sister heaves a sigh. “I’m going to make some dinner, okay? Want some sukiyaki?”
Surprised at the abrupt change in subject, Miyuki frowns. “I guess…? You don’t have to cook, I’ll do it.”
“No, I don’t care, it’s fine.” Kaiyo turns and walks off toward the kitchen. Her last words, spoken casually over one shoulder, are laced with the smallest bit of scorn. They’re an assurance that Miyuki never forgets exactly what she did by leaving Kaiyo, a child, alone with their father, who works so much he’s barely ever home; one last jab to make sure that Miyuki knows that this is her fault, that in her abandonment of Kaiyo, she’s practically no better than their mother. “I can take care of myself, Miyuki. I’ve been doing it for years.”
There’s a picture on Mr. Kawashima’s desk, and Miyuki keeps looking at it, her eyes drawn to it over and over again as she sits there next to Ryo, both of them silent. An ugly picture frame with seashells glued on, like a souvenir from some lame beach trip, and inside the frame, the smiling faces of a small boy and a woman with long, glossy hair. She doesn’t want to look at them for too long, their happiness just making her more miserable, and yet she has nothing else to look at.
Ryo sighs and leans forward, hunching his shoulders up as if he’s cold. “They’re probably going to expel me,” he announces, sounding apathetic about the idea.
“Good,” Miyuki snaps. The back of her head is throbbing in time with her pulse, and she resists the urge to rub at it.
“Would you be happy if I got expelled, Miyuki?” Ryo asks, sounding honestly curious.
After several seconds, Miyuki risks a glance at him. She doesn’t get Ryo at all, the way he can be so furious and hostile one second and so needy and lonely the next. She’s still furious at him, but at the same time, she can’t hate him. It’s obvious that Ryo has some issues, but then again, so does everyone else in this world; most people are just better at hiding theirs.
“Miyuki.” The voice, low and familiar, makes her cringe. Ryo Ikeuchi.
Fucking perfect. She leans further forward over her history notes, hoping he’ll take the hint and leave her alone. Ryo might be Itsuo’s charity case, but he’s sure as hell not hers.
No such luck, of course. Ryo pokes her in the back. “Hey, Miyuki.”
She turns her head-barely-and hisses, “Leave me alone.”
There’s a moment of silence, and then Ryo leans forward, casually, like he thinks they’re friends or something. She feels her face start to heat up in anger. “I heard you have pills on you,” Ryo whispers.
“I…” She fidgets in her chair, feeling almost embarrassed over the prospect of admitting this. “I guess I wouldn’t be happy…”
Ryo swallows audibly and nods his head the tiniest bit. It’s barely a movement, but it’s the closest thing to an apology she’ll get from him.
“Look,” Miyuki says in a rush, “if you need someone to talk to-”
But before she can finish her sentence, the door to Mr. Kawashima’s office swings open and the man himself walks In, his expression severe, and seeing him-the headmaster of their boarding school-just reminds Miyuki why, exactly, she’s sitting in this room with Ryo and why, exactly, she should be furious at him.
“Mr. Ikeuchi, Miss Ishida,” Mr. Kawashima says as he takes a seat behind his desk, “I just had a long conversation with your history teacher about why you’re in my office today, and let me tell you both right off the bat that I am so disappointed.”
Miyuki wants to die.
“This sort of behavior,” he continues, staring at both of them, “is completely unacceptable. What do you have to say for yourselves?”
She sits there, horrified and embarrassed and completely silent. Ryo, for his part, shrugs.
“She started it.”
Ryo pokes at her again, and it’s the insistent, painful jabbing that’s getting on her nerves even more than his voice. “Miyuki, let’s cut a deal. I have cash.”
Lily Ogawa, who’s been sitting nearby and pretending not to hear anything Ryo’s saying, finally swivels around in her seat and snaps, “Ryo, shut up.”
At the front of the classroom, Mr. Oshinari pauses in his lecture and clears his throat. “Is there a problem back there?”
Miyuki scowls down at her notes while the entire class turns to stare at her. Screw Ryo. Doesn’t he get that there’s a time and a place for this kind of thing, and that time and place is definitely not history class? More than likely, he does get it, he just doesn’t care, and that just makes this whole thing more annoying. If she might have entertained the possibility of selling to him before, she’s certainly changed her mind now.
“There’s no problem,” she says, refusing to look up.
Mr. Oshinari shrugs and turns back to the board, continuing his lecture on the Battle of Shantung. A few seconds later, just when she’s beginning to relax again, Miyuki feels another poke, this one hard and in the center of her back.
“Don’t ignore me.” Ryo sounds angry now-he’s making less of an effort to be quiet. “I have the money on me right now.”
If Miyuki could turn around and jab her pencil into his eye without getting into serious trouble, she wouldn’t even hesitate. “Ryo, fuck off,” she hisses. “I’m serious, just leave me the fuck alone.”
“I did not start it,” Miyuki snaps. “I didn’t even do anything!”
“Regardless of who started what, both of you were in the wrong. Disrupting class time, disrespecting your teacher and having the nerve to start a physical fight…” Mr. Kawashima sighs and leans forward, staring at the two of them. “This isn’t the first time you’ve been sent to my office for fighting, Mr. Ikeuchi. And hitting a girl?”
Ryo shrugs, staring defiantly back at the man. Miyuki’s only just beginning to feel vindicated when Mr. Kawashima turns on her. “And Miss Ishida, I expect better from you. Is it so hard to just be the bigger person and turn the other cheek?”
“Yeah, so he could punch me there, too?” she mutters.
She can hear someone-Mai or Kinuka-giggling from somewhere behind them, followed by Sakura’s unmistakable sigh of irritation. But other than that, nothing.
She’s just starting to believe that Ryo has finally given up when he springs forward, one clenched fist hitting her in the back of the head, so hard she’s knocked forward. Hot, surprised tears spring up in her eyes.
“I said don’t ignore me,” Ryo snarls. “Bitch.”
Before she even knows what she’s doing, Miyuki gets to her feet, whirls around and kicks him in the shin. “What the fuck is wrong with you?!” she nearly shrieks. “Get the hell away from me!”
He shoves her backwards, hard, and she stumbles back into someone else’s desk, shocked and pissed off almost to the point of laughter.
“Ryo, what the hell is your problem?” Itsuo’s voice, from off to her left, angry-it doesn’t suit him somehow-and she just barely has time to feel embarrassed on top of everything else when Mr. Oshinari reaches them. She’s never seen him look so furious before, and suddenly, she’s not angry anymore, just horrified and close to tears, like someone’s flipped a switch.
“I-I don’t even know what to say,” the teacher sputters. “Both of you, out of my classroom-now.”
Miyuki reaches down to pick up her bag, then freezes when Mr. Oshinari snaps, “Leave it.”
“It’s okay,” she hears Seikou murmur. “I’ll get it later.”
She can barely manage a nod, turning to follow Ryo as he stalks out of the room, still cursing under his breath. She can’t look at anyone while she makes her way out of the classroom, but she knows they’re all staring at her, annoyed or amused.
She wishes Ryo would go die a horrible death. That he’d never been born.
He’s leaning against the wall in the corridor when she leaves the room, waiting, looking none the worse for wear.
“Bitch,” he says idly as she walks by.
Mr. Kawashima stares back at them for several long seconds. He doesn’t relax, exactly-but he seems to suddenly become resigned to the fact that Ryo is not going to apologize, and that as long as Ryo refuses to, so will Miyuki.
“Your homeroom class drives me crazy,” he says finally. “Both of you, meet me here after classes are over to discuss your punishment.” He gestures vaguely toward the door. “Dismissed.”
The two of them get up and leave the room. As soon as they’re out the door, Ryo turns to look at her. “What were you saying?”
“What?” she snaps.
“About talking?”
She rolls her eyes. “Forget it! Thanks a lot for blaming me for all this, by the way.”
“You could have just sold me the-” He freezes and lowers his voice. “You could have just done what I asked.”
“Fuck you,” she mutters.
She expects him to retaliate, even try to hit her again, maybe, but instead, Ryo reaches out and brushes a fingertip against the back of her head, where it still hurts. “Miyuki-I really am sorry I hit you.” He sounds contrite.
But that’s how Ryo is. He’ll sound sorry until the next time she makes him mad. Then he’ll go right back to calling her names and trying to punch her. She can’t believe she almost fell for it back there in the office.
“It’s too late to apologize,” she snaps.
“But I am.”
“You can’t have it both ways! You can’t just beat someone up and then apologize later! Just forget it and leave me alone!” She steps up her pace and leaves him standing there in the hallway.
It’s silent behind her. “Fine,” she hears Ryo snap as he turns and begins walking in the opposite direction, the one that will lead him to their dorm rather than back to class. “Be like that.”
She knew something was wrong before she got close enough to see the building. Red lights flashed, fast, on-and-off, in the distance. They grew brighter as she walked closer. The closer she got, the faster she walked, as if her own growing panic was propelling her forward.
There was a police car and an ambulance parked outside Ryouta’s building. The police car’s lights were flashing. The ambulance’s weren’t.
Miyuki slowed down several feet from the entrance, stopping entirely before she reached it.
“Some guy killed himself in there,” a young boy, maybe thirteen or fourteen, said. He’d been leaning over the gate of the apartment complex next door the entire time, a camera phone in one hand.
“Some guy?” Miyuki repeated, feeling sick. Her voice shook.
She knew it was Ryouta. She knew because there could be nobody else. Because Ryouta was even more fucked up than she was, something she hadn’t thought was humanly possible until she’d met him at work. He was older. Only a few years, but it was enough. He’d had longer to ruminate on winning, and he’d had nobody to go back to after he’d won. He’d just lived alone in that apartment, suffocating under the weight of his demons.
And it wasn’t like she’d loved him, or he’d loved her. That was the worst thing. They barely knew anything about each other. They’d just been fooling around when the loneliness got to be too much.
“I wonder how he did it,” the kid mused, talking to himself more than to her.
Miyuki could picture the pregnancy test she’d shoved into her bag before she took the train over. She’d brought it along as proof, because she didn’t like liars and she didn’t want him to think she might be one. She’d had this speech all prepared in case he tried to get her to leave, this guilt-tripping speech that included the lines This thing is yours, you need to take responsibility for it and You need to help me make a decision.
Her own words, left unspoken, kept repeating themselves as she took those agonizing steps forward, moving closer to the authorities who would only confirm what she already knew. That Ryouta was the one who had killed himself.
She felt completely lost.
Ryouta himself was no great loss, as horrible as it was to admit that. Selfishly, she just didn’t want to have to decide what to do all by herself.
She needed somebody to tell her to get rid of the baby. She needed someone to convince her to do it, because she didn’t think she could convince herself. Not after Kinuka.
“Get lost,” Kinuka Asano says, sounding bored. She and the other girls turn around and make their way back toward the cafeteria. Mai shoots an amused look over one shoulder and lets out a shriek of laughter.
Miyuki rolls her eyes and watches them go. Raina is still standing in the middle of the hallway, looking sort of shell-shocked, as if she can’t believe what just happened to her. Raina is nice-really quiet, but Miyuki can deal with really quiet people fairly well. And her room is right next to Miyuki’s room, and Miyuki has been spending the past two weeks hanging out with either Mami or with Seikou and his friends, who, while nice, are all guys. She and Raina were introduced yesterday, but they only talked for a minute, and with Mami and Sayuri there, too.
She has nothing to lose, so she falls into step with Raina as the girl turns and starts heading in the opposite direction. “That girl’s just a bitch,” Miyuki offers as they walk. Raina gives her a nervous, embarrassed look. “That’s what I heard. She just likes to make other people feel bad. They all do.”
“She was really nice the other day,” Raina says, still sounding sort of shocked, but there’s more embarrassment lacing the words than anything else.
“Yeah, that’s how they are,” Miyuki sighs. “They’ll act nice to you when they’re alone, or they’ll just ignore you, but as soon as they team up, they turn into total skanks.” She shoots a dirty look over her shoulder, even though the other girls have disappeared from view. “I knew when I first saw them that they were bitches.”
“Mm.” Raina shrugs her shoulders, like it’s hopeless, like she’s used to people just ignoring her or being mean to her and she’s trying to act like it doesn’t bother her at this point, even though it does. It has to.
“Want to go get ice cream?” Miyuki asks. “I have to go back to my room and get money, but we should do something… You know, hang out.”
Raina glances over, surprised and a little skeptical. It’s the same expression Miyuki can’t help using whenever she’s introduced to someone in their class. Seeing it on Raina makes her grin. “You want to hang out?”
“Yeah, of course.”
Seikou is her brother, and she loves him, and of course they’re friends as well as siblings. And his friends-Kentaro, Raiden, Itsuo and those guys-they’re all okay. And Mami seems like she’ll be a good friend as well as a good roommate. But Miyuki always seems to fall short when it comes to friends who are just people she likes and not “my brother’s friend” or “my roommate that I happen to get along with.”
Raina smiles. A small smile, but it’s a smile all the same. “Okay,” she says. “I’d like that.”
Lying in bed later, Miyuki pictures her family. Kaiyo, asleep on a futon out in the living room. Her mother, alone in a house decorated to look just like the one they used to live in. Her father, alone in a house that looks nothing like the one they used to live in.
She tries to imagine Ryouta’s family, but she can’t. She doesn’t even know what they look like, or where they live. She doesn’t know if they miss him or if they just miss the person he used to be. She doesn’t know if they wish he was still alive or if they think it’s better this way. She has no address she can send a letter to. She doesn’t even have a name that she can address a letter to.
Hi, you don’t know me, but…
But nothing. Everything. She doesn’t know.
She twists the sheets around her body like a shroud. She feels more desperate than she has in years, but as always, it’s a quiet, closed-off desperation.
She can handle this herself. She doesn’t want to, but she can. She always does.
How can she justify bringing a child into a world like this? At the same time, how much longer can she keep herself from caring about another person?
Part of her thinks she’s doing this for the wrong reasons. Having a baby won’t bring any of them back. It won’t make anything easier or less depressing, and it won’t make her nightmares go away.
She knows that she has one choice left. She can clean herself up, stop focusing entirely on her past. She can try to rebuild a relationship with her parents, her sister. She can just… let it all go, all that fear and guilt. Or at least stop holding on so tightly.
Either that or she can just keep living her life the way she has been. Get rid of it. She can still get rid of it if she decides to do that.
Is love never worth the pain of loss? She’ll have to decide without ever finding an answer. The question will follow her until the day she dies.
But that won’t be for a long, long time.
That night, she has another dream.
It’s not guns and rain, it’s not a hospital, there’s no sense that she’s dying-just an overwhelming sadness, because what she’s seeing can never last. Through tragedy or simple, inevitable change, this will all eventually disappear.
It’s a school. Black and maroon colors and a badge with a rising sun. And a boy. When she reaches for him, he slips through her fingers like sand.
Just that.
render: tr.v.
1. to give what is due or owed.
2. to surrender or relinquish.
3. to cause or become; make.