Girls Blue part2

I wasn’t the Yoshimura Riho with the small, one-lidded eyes anymore, but I had become someone that I thought was bold and beautiful, and I was satisfied.

I agree. Showered by the natural light pouring in through the classroom windows, the me with the caked on makeup wasn’t pretty at all–to the contrary, I just looked gaudy.

At any rate, back in my caked-makeup days, I stopped by the supermarket one day while walking home from school. It was a large chain store that had stores nationwide, and it had everything from clothes to general goods to food. Misaki and Ayana were with me. I don’t even remember anymore what it was that I wanted to buy. Every shelf and row were lined with stuff, and it was overflowing with goods. We were going around the clothes and general goods sections of the store even though we didn’t plan to buy anything from those corners, and we were laughing and making a bit of noise.

“Hey, don’t you get this feeling like someone’s watching us?”

Misaki asked whether I felt someone watching us. I looked around us, and my gaze clashed with the gaze of the person who was watching us.

“She’s watching to make sure we don’t try to take anything.”

“No way, don’t those things work? So what, the old lady employees have to do the surveillance?”

I don’t know why, but Misaki winked at me. Ayana’s cheeks puffed up.

“Ayana, you don’t use a word like ‘think’ for something like that.”

“You’re supposed to say that they’re ‘suspicious’ of us.”

While Ayana was being impressed, the middle-aged lady continued to watch us with shifting eyes. It wasn’t really obvious. She pretended to be organizing the goods on the shelves, and while moving around the boxes of hair dye, she watched us. It wasn’t obvious, but it was pretty funny. It’s laughable. It makes me laugh more than make me pissed. Misaki shrugs.

“What? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“If they could spot the shoplifters from the face and uniforms alone, then they wouldn’t have to work so hard.”

When we got to the snack section, I was hungry. I was really planning on getting something. I grabbed a bag of potato chips, and I looked around me to catch a glimpse of the middle-aged lady. She was hiding half her body with a shelf, and she was peering over at us. Like a kid watching each customer that walked through the door, she silently, but unwaveringly watched us. I’d reached my limit. Even before that though, we were already drunk with laughter. We were practically rolling with laughter even though it wasn’t that funny. Everyday was just fun for us like that. Even if it was just someone falling on their ass, or someone’s octopus-shaped sausage from their lunch rolling onto the floor, or the goat that the farming division had been raising escaping and running around the school grounds, we found it all hilarious. It made us laugh our asses off. The same went for this middle-aged lady with the perm hair who was peering over at us intently with her body half hidden by the shelves. It easily crossed over the minimum limit of what we’d consider funny.

“This is so funny, I’m about to pee myself.”

The one who was able to return back to normal the fastest was, of course, Misaki. Wiping the tears of laughter from the corners of her eyes, her face returned to a serious one as if she’d never even laughed in the first place, and she pulled out a small camera from the inside of her pocket of her school uniform.

She readies the small camera. Misaki loves cameras. She’s always carrying around this camera that she’s dubbed “Mr. Pocket.” It’s not that she loves being in pictures–it’s just that she loves taking them.

At any rate, thanks to Misaki, I’ve got piles and piles of my daily snapshots, and it’s a perfect documentation of my growth.

“All righty.”

“Excuse me, but can I take a photo of you?”

“Thank you very much!”

“Geez.”

“We’re not THAT immature that we’d shoplift.”

I add. Shoplifting is something that bored, immature brats do. We’re not that immature, nor are we that bored.

“They always pressure roles onto us that match our outer appearance.”

Kei-kun threw away the package from his bread and his cigarettes onto the ground. Suu-chan got mad at him. I would’ve been mad too. I wouldn’t want my boyfriend to be throwing away his yakisoba bread packaging on the ground like that. That’s so lame. But Kei-kun bent to pick up the packaging without arguing, and he even picked up a coke can along with it.

Now that he mentioned it, the grounds around the train station are always really dirty. My room is usually pretty messy too, but I make sure to thoroughly clean it once a month. The clean freak in me was triggered in an instant. I started gathering together the cans rolling on the ground, and brought it over to the trash can.

The title read “The Heart-Warming Teenagers Whom I Saw at The Train Station.”

It was a fine piece of writing. But it was also hilarious. The lady who submitted the piece, and the newspaper that published this–they’re both worth a laugh. We weren’t ‘cleaning up silently’. We just picked up some cans. If we hadn’t been wearing school uniforms from Inanohara High, I don’t think the old lady who submitted this piece would’ve been as touched. It’s the same for the middle-aged lady who worked at the supermarket. She probably wouldn’t have kept a watch over us hiding half of her body with the shelves. As it turns out, the picking up of trash by female teenagers who totally look as if they’d shoplift or prostitute themselves makes a touching, heart-warming story. Everyone loves stories like that. They love kind, tear-jerking, courageous, beautiful stories like that.

For Mutsuki, it’s the role of the player who promises victory to the departed coach, for us, it’s the role of the youth who’ve yet to lose their big-heartedness despite their inability to exceed in their studies, for the students who’re in university prep-oriented schools, it’s the role of the exhausted elite who spends day-in-day out in an exam and grade war–we won’t be able to escape from these roles. I don’t want to be restrained by these roles. I don’t want to act the role expected of me. I want to expand the role of the main character. I want to do everything from the directing to the script to the acting. I want to kick to the wayside all those who shove roles onto me and order me to act a certain way. I don’t want to live my life being in someone else’s story.

“Hello? Oh, I’m…ah, yeah. Okay, I’ll be there right away.”

“Who was that from?”

He gave a wave to Suu-chan, and after bowing deeply to Kisaragi, Kei-kun left.

Misaki commented to Suu-chan without looking at her.

“I can’t believe he’d choose his friends over his girlfriend though. I think that’s just disgusting, don’t you think so too, Riho?”

“Well, before you and Takurou-kun broke up, you snapped at him too, remember? Saying stuff like how he’s always hanging out with his friends instead of you. He probably dumped you because you were ragging on him too much about it.”

“Why don’t you? I warned you that if you complain too much, the guy’s gonna make a run for it.”

“That’s what I meant by being annoying.”

“Huh, but for someone with that kind of attitude, you sure were racking your head over your relationship. Enough to get a stomach ache from it.”

Kisaragi stands up waveringly. He let out a deep sigh as he held the bill in his hand. Misaki smiled thinly.

“The five minute penalty was the cincher, I think. You lost a close game.”

“Kisaragi-kun, you’ll have other chances in the future.”

In our town, the summers pass with break-neck speed. Even though the summer break had yet to begin, the sky today reminded me already of Fall.

Suu-chan asked on a whim. I don’t know who she meant the question to be for. We were walking along the stone pavement of Shiroyama. There are no castles here. The only thing left are the stone walls covered in moss.

“Are you going to go on to university? Or are you going to find a job?”

“What about you, Suu-chan?”

“I don’t know.”

“Suu-chan, you could advance to university since you’re smart.”

Suu-chan’s family runs the Nagahara factory, I heard that a long time ago, they made more than one hundred types of screws. They even had around twenty employees. Now, there are only Suu-chan’s parents and a man named Imai-san left.

“Work’s gonna be out too, you know.”

“It’s super tough for high schoolers to find full time jobs these days. Especially from our school–no company even comes to recruit at our school. I heard that students going to university or technical school are flooding into the jobs that high school graduates used to do. There are lots of people who graduated this year who’re just lazing around and doing nothing because they couldn’t find jobs.”

“But Suu-chan, you’re the top scorer of our grade. I think you’ll be able to find a job somehow.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like I have a dream or anything. There’s nothing really that I want to become, and it’s just a big hassle to be told stuff like ‘find a job.’ If only I could stay a student of Inanohara forever…”

Sometimes, I seriously wish for that. At the same time though, I wish I could leave it all. Leave this town for somewhere far beyond, and find a me that’s completely unlike the me that exists now. I think that too. I wonder if there’s a spell that could grant me a way of making such complete opposite wishes possible to have at the same time?

I wonder how it is for Misaki?

“What about you, Kisaragi?”

“Me?”

“Sure, I have. Lots.”

Misaki and I’ve been talking about how one day, we should hold Kisaragi down and re-dye his hair, foam up his entire face, and give him a good washing.

“Well then, we’d love to hear it.”

“Well, it’s not really that big of a deal that’d warrant telling somebody ‘bout it.”

I stood beside Kisaragi and whistled. Being surrounded by three girls, Kisaragi tries to step backwards. Putting a hand on his shoulder, I pull him forward.

“What are you planning on doing with me? And anyway your face was never anything to brag home about in the first place. Now, spit it out. What’ve you been thinking?”

“Mutsuki?”

“What does Mutsuki’s contract have to do with you?”

“About what?”

“When did you make that promise?”

That reminded me. Back when we were in elementary school, Kisaragi and Mutsuki were both in the local Sports Boys’ Scouts. Mutsuki was crazy about baseball even back then. Kisaragi played soccer. I remember now. On the school grounds, Kisaragi showed me his lifting. The soccer ball was bouncing around on his shoulder and leg as if it were alive. It was almost sunset.

“Mutsuki isn’t one to break his promises, so I think he’ll definitely split that contract money with me. So using that $500,000 as my funds…”

“I’m thinking of going on an adventure trip. What do you think?”

“Well, I have lots of stuff planned, but I guess I’ll start off with a ‘Great Journey.’”

“I’ve heard of that. That’s the show that has this doctor who’s also an explorer spending years trekking and cycling from South America to Africa, right? Something about going backwards of the route that humans made since first appearing on the Earth…am I on the right track?”

“Bingo! We shouldn’t have expected any less from the top scorer of our grade! That’s right, it’s a gigantic journey. A 50,000 kilometre journey. Sounds cool, don’t you think?”

“ ‘Pallid imitation’…? Riho, you’re really old school, you know that? No high schooler today would use a term like that. That’s what you get for being a Granny’s girl.”

“Just drop it, all right? I was asking you a serious question. What’s so ‘gigantic’ about that?”

“How old are you anyway? Can’t you be a little more realistic?”

Misaki lets out a snap with her fingers. It sounds better than when Kisaragi did it.

“Misaki, this isn’t a bus. You can’t just hop on like that.”

Suu-chan stretched her hand into the air as if grasping for something.

“Whoa, Riho. You’re such a realist. You really should watch out for that.”

“If you’re too focused on the reality of things, then you’re gonna get crushed. With our school being the school that it is, it practically rules out being able to advance to university, and we don’t even know if we’ll be able to find jobs. It’s not like we’re particularly stunning in looks either. We don’t have any ambitions, and we hate putting effort into things. In other words, we’re stuck on a sinking ship. If you really face the facts, you’ll get depressed and feel like dying.”

“These branches are the perfect size to hang yourself from, Riho.”

“Hey—listen to my ‘Great Journey’ plans, will ya? That’s what we were talking about originally anyway. I’ll start from Patagonia. It’ll be 50,000 kilometres from there to Tanzania in East Africa. 50,000 kms.”

Me being the realist that I am, I honed in on the part of the story that was the closest to reality.

Misaki holds up three fingers. Even though she doesn’t admit it, Misaki’s a realist too. She knows that we’re not the residents of some la-la dream land.

“Make a what?”

“A reverse harem. I’m going to gather together the hottest guys and have them wait on me. What do you think?”

Misaki shakes her head in distaste.

Suu-chan pats her stomach with a slap.

“How many $10,000 piles would 3 mill make?”

“Are you guys listening? It’s pure white! It’s white all along the horizon.”

“Ah.”

“It’s a rainbow.”

“It’s a double rainbow.”

Maybe I should let Mutsuki know?

“The rainbow’s appeared. Something good might happen.”

“All righty.”

Splash!

Summer’s approaching. I should go and get a tan. I should expose my skin to the sun as a way of commemorating the summer of my 17th year. I’ll spray water as I run along the beach. I don’t care if my skin begins to peel from the sun exposure. I don’t even care if I can’t prevent wrinkles because of it. As for the future? Well I’ll just throw it to the wayside for now.

I thrust out a fist.

Suu-chan was the first to react. She bumped fists with me.

Kisaragi slapped my fist with an open hand.

Misaki turns around slowly. She has a face void of blood like that of a doll’s.

And while continuing to gaze at us, she takes a step backwards. Behind her is a downward slope with thick grass. And at the bottom is a row of roofs of people’s houses. It’s a pretty steep hill. Misaki’s loafer digs into the summer grass. The grass, wet from the rain, is a dark green. Suu-chan gulps.

Pushing aside me with my outstretched hand, Kisaragi springs forward. Grabbing her arm, he pulls her forward. Misaki’s bag went tumbling down from her hand.

Misaki clings onto Kisaragi. Misaki with her thin body, fits easily in Kisaragi’s arms, and I couldn’t help but think that it looked as if she might disappear into thin air. She leaned her head against Kisaragi’s shoulder, and closes her eyes. For only a brief moment though. After that brief moment, she recovers, and she pushed herself away from the arms that held her. She picks up her fallen bag. She nods towards the slope with her jaw.

Kisaragi blinks, and slowly moves to peer down at the slope. He let’s out a small “whoa.” Suu-chan and I do the same thing. We peered down.

“There’s another one.”

“There’re…two dead.”

“I wonder if Misaki-chan’s gonna be okay? She looked as white as a sheet.”

Misaki’s super weak against shocks. Especially if it involves dead bodies. Even if it’s the body of a bug, she reacts in an excessive way. She’s fine when it comes to dogs that rear its sharp fangs in her direction, snakes that are coiled to strike at her, cockroaches, centipedes, and anything alive, but when those things die and stop moving, she becomes deathly afraid of it. Blood drains from her face, and she has to restrain her urge to gag, and she ends dry heaving like she just did. Even if it wasn’t Misaki though, that sight we came across earlier would’ve been enough to give anyone a fright. I was scared too. The cats with the bloody foam around its mouth– there’s no way that they died naturally. Someone poisoned it. I’m more scared of the fact that someone tried to kill it more than the carcasses itself. I’m scared of the intentions and the feelings of the person that did this. It frightens me.

This peaceful town called mini-Kyoto of the West that’s centered around the remains of ancient castles, is graced with a rainbow across the sky. And with the murdered cats swallowed up by the grass, the town attempts to welcome an evening like all the others before it.

Ever since we saw the carcasses of those cats at Shiroyama, she hadn’t been feeling that well. She got even thinner, and her skin remained bloodlessly pale.

Suzu-chan asked numerous times throughout the day.

He urged her many times. Misaki continued to refuse. The body temperature and commotion of 30 high school students, the hot and humid air, the floor littered with trash…you wouldn’t call this classroom pleasant by any means. It’s especially worse during the Summer season. Even the young with their tough and sturdy bodies gradually settle into exhaustion.

I told Misaki that while looking down at the chest area where you could probably feel her collarbone if you touched her from the top of her summer blouse.

“Well, I could say the same for staying at home.”

“I never thought you liked school this much.”

Misaki turns to the side. In a slightly weak voice, she adds:

“You mean, about the cats?”

It didn’t stop at just two cats being poisoned. It was discovered that an additional four, for a total of six, was discovered among the grasses, the dry riverbeds, and the ditches. Apparently, they all had red foam around their mouth area. I even heard that a stray cat was discovered dead in the same manner right near my house. I heard rumours that the police have started to spring into action. The adults near the area are all talking about it.

“Nope.”

“It’s just that being at school is slightly better than being at home.”

“What, you mean the cats?”

She sits down in her chair, and looking up at me, Misaki begins to slowly laugh again.

“Well, you hardly have any energy left. Once you use up what’s left, you’re going to die. You’re gonna pay for it if you underestimate school. It’s a place where you use quite a bit of energy.”

“You can’t reroute it because it doesn’t have a circuit.”

“That’s terrible. Then that’s an even worse use of energy. Are you sure there isn’t radiation spilling out from your brain, Riho?”

Misaki’s laughter gets even louder. The neck that she had bent downwards and thin shoulders shakes. The shoulders enveloped in a blouse that was carefully ironed, leaves a vivid impression on me.

Suu-chan plops down a plastic bag with ice cream inside. There’s a vanilla and chocolate ice cream cup. They’re the most expensive ones that they sold at the school kiosks.

Kisaragi winks at me, and twists his shoulder.

Suu-chan holds up two fingers.

“Geez. While the older brother’s aiming to the nationals in the sweltering heat, the younger brother’s off winning $200 at the pachinko parlor without even bothering to study for his entrance exams?”

“Which do you think is more impressive–winning $200 at the pachinko parlor, or making it to the nationals?”

“ ‘sup?”

“If that happens, I could spend that week going to play pachinko.”

“My energy’s filled up to the max.”

“You don’t want anymore?”

“Okay, then I’ll eat it…but are you sure I won’t get fat from this?”

“Yeah, probably. Lately, I’ve been finding my size E bra a bit on the tight side.”

“Yeah, too bad.”

“Suu-chan, that was because I was fast at running. This isn’t horse racing, so don’t say stuff like I won by a difference ‘of a breast.’”

“Well, no duh. It’d be really hard for them to run with bras on.”

I got another good laugh because Suu-chan asked that with a serious look on her face while pressing down her own chest.

I really think so.

“Do you want to go and visit Misaki-chan?”

“Nah.”

“You’re not going?”

Suu-chan blinks. She had a look on her face as if she didn’t expect me to reply as I did.

She asked me again as she gave me back my notes.

“Why? You’re such good friends with her.”

If I went to see her, Misaki would just laugh at me. She might even burst into laughter if I brought her flowers and snacks. For Misaki, having to be hospitalized is like a regular event. It’s nothing to make a big uproar over.

“You’ve known her since back in pre-school. You and Misaki-chan are the best of friends, right?”

Misaki was lying down in a pure white bed inside an eerily white hospital room. The yellow liquid dripped inside an IV tube attached to a vessel. The 12 year old Misaki didn’t have a brown dyed shortcut. She instead, had long black hair. The blackness of her hair, and the crimson color of her lips highlighted the paleness of her face, and young girl buried amidst the whiteness all around her made it look as if she was a frail figure who might disappear at any moment.

“Morooka-san, we hope you get well soon…”

“I feel so sorry for you, Morooka-san.”

Tomosako-san sobbed convulsively saying that Misaki must be in pain having to endure it all. Even the teacher was tearing up, and stroking her head.

“Thank you. You’re very kind. But it won’t be for much longer. She’ll be able to go back to school from the second term, so please be nice to her.”

Tears, thoughtful words, the dignity of visiting a sick person, the words of thanks—it all passed through the inside of the clean, white hospital room, and after a certain point, we decided to take our leave.

When I tried to hurriedly leave the hospital room, Misaki opened her eyes, and called out my name in a weak voice. She called me with a “-chan.” The bad feeling I had turned into a confirmation, and I prepared myself.

Oh? But make sure that you don’t tire Morooka-san, all right? Riho-chan, I’ll give you a ride home later. Morooka-san, goodbye. We’ll be waiting for you, so hold in there, okay? Well then, I’ll see you off to the exist. No, that’s quite all right. Sensei, regarding the required attendance days…

Things couldn’t have taken a worse turn. I understood that, and I prepared myself before taking a big step toward Misaki’s bedside. Misaki got up.

Misaki didn’t even give me a chance to ready myself. With slap, my cheek burns. The sharp pain runs across my face. All I could do was brace my legs so that I wouldn’t stagger.

Misaki glares at me while breathing roughly. The IV tube wavered.

“I know.”

“I do!”

The folded cranes were okay. Even the letters and the flowers were okay. But Tomosaka-san’s tears wasn’t good. Misaki was pale with fury at being treated like a pitiful little girl. Even though she was furious, she held it in.

From Misaki’s eyes came tears. A moan slipped out from her lips that she had been biting down on.

People need to take a bit more care when they cry and feel sorry about another person. It’s okay to cry if you’re capable of helping them, of saving them, of having prepared yourself of supporting them through to the end. But as for Tomosako-san’s tears–that was just irresponsible. She just burst into tears, and told Misaki she felt sorry for her. She got all of that out of her system and left saying goodbye with a smile—how much more irresponsible could she get? Kindness that comes with a lack of responsibility is no different from pity. That was something that I learned from Misaki.

The sheets became stained with Misaki’s tears.

I muttered. I humiliated her too. Because I couldn’t refuse the role of the “kind friend,” I shamelessly came long with them. It was terrible what I did. I know that.

“Misaki, is this clean?”

I shove Misaki down onto the bed. I cover her face with the towel and wiped it down. I held down the shoulders that were not much more than skin and bones, and I put my strength into wiping it, because if I did, then at least it’d hide a some of the remnants of the tears. I didn’t want anyone to see Misaki crying. Even to her parents.

I don’t think Suu-chan would do what Tomosako-san did. We weren’t so young as to openly say a line like “I feel sorry for you” anymore. But even so, I’m still not going to go and visit her in the hospital.

“Oh…I’m going with Kei-kun….”

“Yeah, I know. It doesn’t get much more staple than that, huh?”

Suu-chan moved her mouth as if she wanted to say something, but she just gulped in a breath without saying anything. Wearing a yukata going to a summer festival with your boyfriend–for a topic fully loaded with fun like that, she seemed pretty gloomy.

If she wants to talk about it, she will. If she doesn’t want to talk about it, I’m not going to pressure her to. It’s up to her what she’s going to do with those words that she swallowed. I have two ears to me, so I can lend her a ear. I slipped my hand up to touch my earlobes, which had two small earrings on them each. I have confidence in my earlobes. They’re smallish and have a nice shape to them, so gold earrings look really good on me.

Suu-chan let out a breath while knitting her eyebrows together. Balling her hand into a fist, she taps her shoulders. When she puffed out her cheeks, with her round face, it made her look older than she is. She looked like an old woman past 20.

“Yeah.”

“Well for starters, I gained even more weight recently, and I don’t know how I’m going to fit into a swimsuit come Summer.”

“And secondly, my parents’ moods couldn’t be any worse because things aren’t going so great with their business. The air’s always tense between them, and they’re always fighting.”

“And thirdly, because circumstances being the way they are, I don’t get an allowance. And because I couldn’t work part-time what with all the tests, I’m really beginning to feel it in the wallet this month.”

“And fourthly, yesterday while I was spaced out at the train station, some old man came up to me and asked me: ‘How much?’”

“He was just your average looking geezer in a suit. Like, he didn’t give off that kind of creepy vibe at all–he looked really normal, you know? And that kind of person was going around asking “How much?” to someone in broad daylight. It scared me more than it pissed me off. It made me think like, is that all that’s on guy’s minds, you know?”

“And fifthly…”

“Kei-kun’s been acting strangely lately…”

Suu-chan folded up the sleeve of her blouse, and revealed her upper arm to me. Suu-chan’s skin is white and smooth. It’s what you would call ‘velvety’ skin. And there, was a dark-red bruise.

“He hit you?”

“That makes no sense.”

“Then what’d you do, Suu-chan?”

“You should’ve given him a right smack with the bag.”

No wonder she’s the top scorer of our grade. I’ve never carried around a bag with a dictionary in it.

She makes a tearful smile, and she falls into silence.

I lightly rubbed my own arm. It makes me sick. The men who go up to teenage girls and ask them “How much?” and the men who abuse their girlfriends—they both make me sick. I felt myself getting goosebumps.

“So what? Does him being in a bad mood justify him hitting you? That’s just sick. That makes no sense.”

In a flash, all expression disappears from Suu-chan’s face. Her face becomes flat and emotionless. The only thing moving are her lips.

“You know, my dad does it too.”

“My dad. He hits too.”

“No, my mom. He hits her so hard that her face swells up—even over something little. In my dad’s case though, he doesn’t even apologize. In comparison, Kei-kun’s at least a little better.”

“Well, that’s true, but…”

“He looks pretty happy you know, when he’s watering the crop. He had this great big smile on his face when he told me that the vegetables are growing really well this year.”

“It’s the same with my dad too. He works really hard, and there are times he’s super nice. Still though, he hits her.”

“That’s it—I’m going to lose weight.”

“I’m going to do everything that I can. I’m going to lose 2kg by August.”

“I’m going to do it.”

“Yeah. It’ll be a summer when I can say goodbye to this pudgy stomach of mine.”

“In August?”

“Don’t get me wrong–I really want to. But wearing a swimsuit in August…it’s going to take some guts.”

“Yeah, I will. I’m going to make this stomach flat. I’m going to wear a bikini. I’m going to the beach. Misaki-chan’ll be able to go too, right?”

“Well aren’t you the cool one, Riho-chan.”

“Yeah, that’s true. I can just see her coming with a right hook yelling ‘screw you!’”

She caught my fist that was coming up from underneath with one hand, and Suu-chan laughed. She was back to being the Suu-chan I was used to being around.

Chapter end