First Brush - 6

Walking around school in Mitsuki’s train is about as gruelling as Sayuri’s imagined it to be. Wherever they go, they turn heads and birth whispers, all of Hakuin alight with fresh new gossip. If she didn’t feel like a fish out of water before, she’s now fully aware of how suffocating air can be. With her discomfort quickly reaching a boiling point, she searches Asami’s face, hoping to find some kinship. But Asami’s perfectly calm, if not a slight bit listless.

Of course, that’s not all that surprising. Given her appearance, she’s probably no stranger to being gawked at, let alone by so many different people. But there’s something about her attitude that suggests something more than familiarity with awkwardness. As if she’s not just used to this particular situation, but knows it so well that she can already predict what will happen next, and how this will all end. And since she’s not freaking out, or giving her any signals, Sayuri can only hope that she’s got nothing to worry about.

“You two okay back there?” Mitsuki asks, paying them a quick peek. “You haven’t said a word since we left. Feels like I’m leading a funeral procession.”

“What’s there even to talk about?” Asami growls, barely holding back a groan.

“Anything, I don’t know. Like hey, it’s quite nice outside isn’t it?”

“Sure looks like it,” Sayuri offers in a half-conciliatory, half-pensive tone. “We’ve not had this much sun in a while.”

“Well, it is spring, after all. We should enjoy it while we can.”

“Yeah,” Asami says. “It’s not long before it’s summer, and we’ll be sweating bullets every day.”

“Huh. Are summers in Tokyo really that bad?”

“Well, yeah… You’re not from here?”

“Not really,” Sayuri chuckles. “I was born and raised in a small town near Aomori, but my father and I moved to Tokyo once I got accepted into Hakuin.” She pauses for a moment to gauge their reaction. Neither girl seems to notice the absence of her mother, and if they did, then they don’t ask about it. A breath of relief sluices through her chest. She should be more careful with her phrasing. Nobody likes a sob story.

“No way, that’s amazing!” Mitsuki pipes up all of a sudden. “How was it like growing up in the sticks of Tohoku? Spare no detail – I want to know everything.”

“…You sure? It was a little bit boring, if I’m being honest.”

It seems like she’s the only one who thinks that, though Mitsuki’s borderline manic enthusiasm makes Sayuri question her intentions more than appreciate her curiosity. Asami, on the other hand, is egging her on in silence with a shy, yet never waning smile. Nevertheless, Sayuri’s still hesitant. Being put on the spot has never been her forte, least of all when it comes to talking about herself. But seeing the other two girls’ gazes glisten with genuine interest gives her just enough confidence to clear her throat and soldier on.

The conversation is awkward at first, lots of wells, uhhs and erms, but with a little help from the ever-social Mitsuki, things quickly pick up. Questions about northern slang seamlessly dovetail into debates over delinquents and gyarus, drifting thereafter towards the topic of aesthetics at large. Before long they’re outside, talking about their favourite fashion, as Mitsuki leads them all to their lunch spot.

In the middle of the hedge rings lining Hakuin’s backyard rises a small gazebo, where climbing flowers hang in blooming garlands. Two girls are already sitting at the table within, both idly scrolling through their phones in a fruitless attempt to cure their boredom. Still, they’re focused enough to miss Mitsuki’s arrival; when she claps her hands, they almost flinch out of their seats, much to their friend’s delight.

“Dammit Micchi, I almost had a heart attack!”

“How many times have I told you not to pull this sneaky crap! And where the hell have you been? We’ve been waiting for ten minutes.”

“Sorry about that,” Mitsuki says through a thin smirk. “Just had to swing around the second floor to pick up some new friends.”

“Oh? Are these the two girls you told us about?”

Two? Sayuri can understand one, Mitsuki approached her after all, but Asami? She’s been nothing more than an innocent party to the slapping, and a quiet bystander after the fact. But the fact that Mitsuki mentioned her in what appears to be more than in passing doesn’t sit quite right. Before she can dive too deep into her thought spiral, however, a tug on her sleeve steals Sayuri out of her own head. It’s Asami nudging her to take a seat, so she can slide on the bench right after.

“The ones and only,” Mitsuki chimes, plopping down on the opposite bench beside the other girls. Yet another problematic word choice, but Sayuri’s eager to let that one slide. She’s hungry, and with everyone else already (re)unwrapping their lunches, she’s more than happy to follow suit. Though when she sees the other bentos, a pit opens up in her stomach. Compared to Mitsuki and her cohort’s gourmet platters, her hastily put-together home-cooked bento looks like cheap grub. Thankfully, Asami’s not too fancy either, though the golden glow of her glazed unagi makes her feel sorry for ever trying to tease her with her poor man’s sushi.

With food as their social lubricant, conversation doesn’t too long to flow. It starts with names, Mitsuki’s friends introducing themselves as Kumiyama Kumiko and Ichinose Ichika, which Sayuri already has trouble remembering. Hopefully they won’t mind if she confuses them in the near future. Save for the subtle difference in eyeliners – puppy and fox – they share the same bleached highlights, sparkling lip gloss, rolled up skirts and slouched socks.

Once formalities are out of the way, Kumiko’s the first one to break the ice in earnest.

“So, Hayakawa, what’s your deal?”

“Sorry?”

“Like, don’t get me wrong, slapping Takuya’s a real power move. Ten out of ten, no notes. But, like, you know his dad’s on the school’s board, right? Do you not care about that?”

“Eh?” Sayuri feels for a moment like she’s watching herself in third person, her soul having left her body. Despite the severance, she’s acutely aware of the sweat behind her knees, the way her chest hitches up and down, the start of a hyperventilating spell.

“Oh, never you mind about that.” Mitsuki waves her hand. “You think that shmuck will tell his daddy that a girl smacked him silly? He’d sooner confess he likes men.”

Sayuri sighs. Only a minute of chit-chat and her nerves have already gone from zero to a hundred and back. Though with how forward Mitsuki’s friends are, she’s got a sinking feeling this will be a pattern rather than an isolated incident.

“Still, why did you do it?” Ichika asks.

“I don’t know,” Sayuri muses noncommittally. It’s not a lie, more like a half-truth; she was defending Asami, but why she went so far is something she’s yet to parse herself. And it’s not like Asami will let her do that now, what with the loaded stare she’s poking into her. “I just thought he was disgusting. Brash, arrogant, disrespectful. Predatory. I should’ve probably given him a piece of my mind before anything, but in the moment – I just couldn’t help it, I guess.”

“Well, you did what most of us have been dying to do for ages,” Mitsuki says. “Guess that’ll teach him to treat women like they’re trophies to take to his room.”

“Speaking of,” Kumiko says, “it was you he was hitting on, wasn’t it?”

Asami’s ears flick up. She flashes Kumiko a doe-in-the-headlights glance, then lowers her attention back to her eel. “Mhm.”

“Was it because you were, I don’t know what’s the term, a cat girl?”

“Maybe. Who knows?”

“Right, right.”

There comes a pregnant pause, chopsticks errantly scraping the bottoms of lunch boxes. Ichika puts her down, then wipes her mouth with her handkerchief. From her bag, she pulls out a tall thermos, but before lifting it to her mouth, she turns to Asami. “So, like, how much of a cat are you?”

Her voice betrays no malice, her bluntness makes Asami do a double take all the same. She doesn’t even need to ask, “What?” Her grimace does it all for her.

“Your disease, the nekomimi thing or what’s it called. I heard it affects everyone differently, so I was just wondering how it affects you. Like, for instance, do you take showers or do you lick yourself clean or something?”

Sayuri braces herself for Asami’s scathing retort, but it fails to come. Instead, her chin dips, hair draping over beet-red cheeks and lips stuck open, struggling for words. But when they finally come to her, a fire crackles underneath them, low and menacing. “I’m not an animal. I bathe just the way you do.”

“Oh, I see. Sorry if I’m being presumptuous by the way, I don’t mean anything by it. Just never had anyone to answer these questions before, you know?”

“Got it.”

“Anyway, you say you’re not an animal, which is fair, like you talk and all. But you’re not exactly human either, right?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, uhh, humans don’t have tails, fuzzy ears and fangs, do we?”

Whereas the questions were neutral, if not amicable before, Sayuri can’t help feeling there’s a serrated edge to them now. The kind that cuts only when you drag it back and forth, back and forth, jagged teeth digging into flesh. But before she can intervene and steer the topic back to safer waters, Mitsuki beats her to the punch.

“Now, now, Chika, settle down,” she says half-heartedly, and to no consequence whatsoever. Far from smoothing things over, her limp nonchalance has the opposite effect.

“What? I’m just curious.”

“Yeah,” Kumiko joins in. “Like, if she feels uncomfortable, she’ll tell us, right?”

She should, but she probably won’t. If anything, Asami looks like she’s barely clinging to her composure, her tongue all but bleeding from how hard she’s biting down on it. And considering how she’s had no problem telling Takuya off despite his exhausting insistence, Sayuri doesn’t get what’s stopping her from doing the same now. It’s almost like she’s trying to launder her emotions, dilute them until there’s nothing clear about them, even when they’re painfully obvious.

“I’m fine,” she rasps.

“See? It’s all good.” Kumiko gestures towards Asami, pointing at her with an open palm. The table falls quiet for a moment, the atmosphere still sizzling with tension, which the respite helps with. But just when Sayuri thought the situation was defused, Ichika’s eyes ignite with a mischievous spark.

“Oh, by the way, is it true that you’ve got sharper senses than we do? Like super hearing, night vision, all that?”

“Yes.”

“That’s so cool, you’re like a superhero.”

“Mhm.”

“What about smell, though? I remember reading somewhere that cats like to mark stuff with their scent, rubbing against things to claim them as their own and what-not. Is that something you do, or…”

Asami stands up, meeting Ichika’s surprise with a burning glare of her own. “Yes, that’s exactly right. I can’t go anywhere without spreading my musk all over the place. Makes me feel like home. And if you must know, I don’t have a toilet and I don’t have plates either. Just a litter box and two bowls I eat and drink out of. It just feels natural. Oh, and how could I forget. You know how you go to the doctor for your yearly check-ups? Yeah, I go to the vet. He grabs me by the scruff of my neck to keep me calm, because I freak out otherwise, then draws my blood, checks me for fleas, the whole shebang. And when it’s all done, he gives me a treat. That’s my favourite part.

“Is that enough for you?” she growls, but she doesn’t stick around to hear the answer. The air is already thick with it anyway. Without a huff of breath more, Asami grabs her lunchbox, slides off the bench, then pads out the gazebo, her pace picking up the moment she rounds the corner.

The following second stretches to infinity, Sayuri stuck stunned in place. A frown teases the crease of her cheeks. She thought Asami could handle it all by herself. That she knew the intricacies of Hakuin’s social web far better than her. And besides, last time she stepped in, things went awry right away. It was a miracle everything turned up in the end.

And yet, sitting idly by was still the wrong choice after all. If for no other reason that she doesn’t feel right about anything that happened in the past couple of minutes.

So, she goes to fix it. “Sorry,” Sayuri says as she hastily sweeps her belongings in the cradle of her arm. “I should go after her,” she adds, more to herself than to the rest of the table, though they pick up on it regardless.

Mitsuki sighs. “Are you happy now?”

“… I still don’t know what I did wrong,” Ichika says.

“Yeah, well – oh, why do I even bother? Don’t worry about it, Chika. You did nothing wrong.”

It’s at that moment that Sayuri turns around, half to double check if she hasn’t left anything behind in a rush, half to exchange a final glance with Mitsuki, a silent goodbye. But when she does, Sayuri finds no trace of remorse or disappointment in her expression, no hint of scolding in her eyes. Just a self-satisfied grin on a face that gleams with smugness. Like this was all a scheme she cooked up, and it all went according to plan.