The Library is Quiet, My Grades are Suffering, and Also My Best Friend is Acting Weirdly Philosophical

POV: Tsukasa 📚

"Yo, Tsukasa!"

A hand smacked down on my shoulder and my half-asleep body jolted forward like a crash test dummy. The culprit? Yashiro, grinning like a delinquent as usual.

“How’d your weekend go? Didya leave your room even once this time?”

Yashiro was my classmate and my annoying best friend. He transferred into my class back in junior high and just happened to sit next to me. And after weeks of bugging me, I finally gave in to his antics. I guess we’ve been close ever since. Though, nowadays, I mostly just copy his homework whenever I can. 

“‘Kasa! Hellooo??”

Too exhausted to acknowledge Yashiro’s existence, my gaze drifted to the front of the classroom.

At the very front, a girl with silky jet-black hair was giggling with her friends at their desks: Minase-san, the student council president and resident popular girl. She was perfect... well, in the sort of way that the world bent itself to accommodate her existence without her doing anything at all.

That’s when Yashiro noticed. “Ha! I know that look.”

“What look?”

“That one! Anyway, quit ogling her. No chance, buddy.”

“Are you some kinda woman expert now? And I’m not into her.”

“Riiight… you know what happened to the last poor soul who tried asking her out—?”

SLAM!

Before he could torment me further, the classroom door crashed open. The noise jerked the barely conscious students in the classroom awake. 

In strode our physics teacher Mr. Sakamoto, disheveled as ever. 

Sakamoto was the type of guy who looked like he hadn’t slept in days. His hair was a ruffled mess and etched on his jaw was a permanent five o’clock shadow. You couldn’t tell if he was twenty-five years old, or forty-five years old, but you knew for a fact he was unmarried, childless. 

Then, like a robot, he immediately plunged into whatever unhinged lecture he had planned for the day. 

He wasn’t wrong though. Things were starting to escalate each day graduation loomed closer. Teachers, family, friends, family-friends… all of them posed the same inescapable interrogations once you’ve reached this stage of your life. 

“Studying hard for those entrance exams?”
"Are you planning to take a gap year if you don’t pass?”

And worst of all, it was relentless. Perpetual. I dreaded it. No, I didn’t just dread it... I despised it. Each reminder was a needle pricking at my already frayed psyche, because, in truth, I had no plan. I never anticipated making it this far, yet here I was: halfway through my final year, standing on the brink of college entrance exams and graduation. Assuming, of course, I could even make it that far. 

I sighed. 

It felt as though only yesterday I was living in blissful ignorance with zero responsibilities. Just a naive boy with manga in one hand, and a PSP in the other. Now the only topic that seemed to escape anyone's mouth was their awfully detailed college plans. 

In the end, my high school life had been quite unspectacular. No grand adventures with childhood friends. No epic coming-of-age story. No mysterious transfer girl from overseas.

And most depressing of all, no secret confessions under a cherry blossom tree.

I briefly looked over to Minase.

Not in a million years. 

I tried to shift my focus back to the lecture in front of me. 

“And remember, energy can’t be created or destroyed... but your study time sure can be!” 

Sakamoto was still rambling about formulas and college preparations. 

Yashiro whispered in my direction from the desk behind mine.

“Man, if one more person asks me what college I’m applying to, I’m faking my death and vanishing into the mountains.” 

“Solid plan,” I muttered. “I’ll write a heartfelt tribute for your funeral.”

I didn’t see it, but I could sense the grin forming on his face. 

⊹ ▬ ▬ ⊹ ⊹ ▬ ▬ ▬ ⊹

“TSUKASA!” 

A voice shouted from down the hallway after final period, as I was eagerly stuffing my bags and heading for the main doors. I didn't need to turn around to know who it was. Sayuri, one of Yashiro’s friends, had taken an interest in me. 

She bounced over to me, her extremely long hair smacking a few nearby students in the face in the process. 

“So I was thinking about the cultural festival the other night and I’ve got all these ideas and they’re gonna blow your mind!” 

Sayuri’s energy could power the whole school if it were harnessed right. 

We were only two weeks into the semester and she was already talking about festivals. She always had the most insane ideas, and I tried my best to not get too involved.

“The semester just started and you’re already planning for the festival?” I asked.

“Of course! How could we possibly be the best stand if we don’t get a head start?”

To be brutally honest, I was far more concerned about college entrance exams than some school festival. 

“No thanks, I’ll pass.”

At that moment, Sayuri’s eyes doubled in size, and her lips pouted. “Pleeaaaasse??”

I rubbed my temples. There was no escaping this and I was far too sleep-deprived to resist her. It would have been a guaranteed loss anyway. 

As soon as I agreed, Sayuri’s eyes lit up. “Yay! You’re the best, Tsu-kun!”

Tsu…kun…?

Then she skipped away like an elementary school child.

And I still had no idea what I had just agreed to. 

I shut my locker and head for the main doors, but just as I was about to escape, I heard yet another voice.

“Hey, ‘Kasa, you up for some after-school studying at the library today?”

I turned to see Yashiro behind me. Grinning, as usual, hands in his pockets. 

“You? Studying? That’s a new one.”

“Yeah, I figured I gotta step up my game if I pass this semester.” He made some weird marching gesture. 

“Or my dad’s gonna kill me.”

He did have a point. The increasingly excessive workload on top of looming midterms and college exams, admittedly kept me awake at night. Some extra studying wouldn’t hurt. Otherwise, I might meet the same fate as Yashiro: a disappointment that hit harder than his father’s belt ever could—if he even had one... 

“I suppose I could for a bit.”

“Alrighty. Shall we?”

⊹ ▬ ▬ ⊹ ⊹ ▬ ▬ ▬ ⊹

The library was in the school’s so-called “old wing” and despite the rest of the school being fairly modern, at least as modern as a public institution’s budget could allow, the library looked straight out of the Taishō period. The first thing you notice upon your arrival is how dimly lit it is, how the floorboards creaked obnoxiously beneath your weight. 

Polished hinoki pillars seemed about the only thing keeping this cavernous structure from collapsing, and the whole place smelled of dust, mold, and librarian perfume mingling with the decaying book bindings of dead, failed writers. 

Yashiro and I sat where we normally did, at a small table in the back hidden between two large shelves. 

It was quiet. The kind of quiet that made you aware of the absence of noise. The rapid flip of a textbook page or the hiss of a dying light bulb filament.

I flipped through the pages of my textbook, took out a notepad, and started working on the math problems from today.

Yashiro, however, seemed to be somewhere else entirely. His head was tilted forward, flicking a pen as he stared at what looked to be an old map that had been lying on the next table over.

I tried to focus on my work, but eventually pen-flicking became too obnoxious to ignore. 

“You’re not actually studying, are you?” 

“Maybe I’m just letting it marinate in my head.” 

“Right…” 

I began to wonder why Yashiro even bothered inviting me to study if he wasn’t actually interested in studying. 

Then, he spoke again. His voice was almost thoughtful. 

“You ever think these maps are kinda crap?”

I stared blankly at the randomness of that question. “What?”

He twirled the pen between his fingers. His eyes were on the ceiling. 

“I mean, they pretend to tell you where you are. But they only show stuff someone else decided matters. Everything else? Left out. Doesn’t exist on paper, so people act like it’s not real.”

“Is this another one of your moronic New Zealand conspiracies?”

He ignored that. 

“Just sayin’, sometimes it feels like you’re following the map, doing everything right, and then BOOM. You hit a place that’s not even on it. And suddenly, the whole thing feels wrong. Like it wasn’t made for you in the first place.”

I continued to stare, utterly dumbfounded. Yashiro wasn’t exactly a deep thinker by any intellectual standard, and now he’s talking like some caveman philosopher on the cusp of sentience. Maybe the library was a good environment for him after all. 

“Are you sure you're alright, man?” I finally asked. 

Yashiro’s eyes never left the ceiling, like there was an insect up there or something. “Just thinking. Don’t mind me.”

I went back to my work, but that didn’t last more than five seconds before he abruptly began again. “Like... everyone’s got their own version of the world. Things are always changing, right?”

Man, this is getting awkward. 

I decided to play his game hoping he'd finally shut up. “Yeah, I guess things… change... Is there an insect up there or something??”

Yashiro eventually looked away from the ceiling and his grin returned. With that, his habitual carefree self snapped back. “You’ve got no idea, ‘Kasa”

“You’re not making any sense today.”

“Intentions, intensions,” he said mockingly. 

“Still, impressive seeing you try and use your brain for once, though.”

“Woah, woah! Who’s the one copying my homework answers every morning? I’m surprised you even did it just now.”

…Touché.

Yashiro stretched his arms and let out a yawn loud enough to get us thrown out of the library.

“Anyway, screw this. I’m going home. My stomach's about to start a revolution if I don’t feed it soon.”

“What about studying?”

But he already turned the corner. Reluctantly, I gathered my stuff and followed suit. 

And just like that, the weirdest Yashiro study session of my high school career came to a premature end.

⊹ ▬ ▬ ⊹ ⊹ ▬ ▬ ▬ ⊹

“Thank you for the meal.”

I looked down at the steaming bowl of curry rice on the table. I was starving. Wasting no time, I grabbed my chopsticks and dug in.

Mom and Dad were discussing something about work in between bites, but I was too busy wolfing down my dinner to care.

The faint sound of the TV drifted from the living room, where a rerun of Doraemon was playing.

My younger sister Tohru sat across from me. She watched as I stuffed my face.

“Don’t eat like a pig,” she muttered, ironically with a mouth full herself. “You’ll get fat.”

I stuck my tongue out at her, and she smirked, poking her tongue out at me in return.

What a brat.

After a few minutes of cleaning my plate of every speck of its contents, I stood up and excused myself. “I’m heading up.” 

I climbed the stairs up to my bedroom and then shut the door behind me.

A small room, but cozy. Against every wall were overburdened bookshelves cluttered with manga, old textbooks, and the occasional trinket that had long since lost its purpose. A desk covered end-to-end in papers and textbooks, and a single window on the back wall that let in far less light than ideal. 

I tossed my bag onto the bed and went over to my desk, pulling a manga from the shelf and distantly flipping through it as I leaned in my chair. The characters on the pages seemed almost too familiar, their conversations almost too predictable. Maybe I had finally grown out of this stuff.

I shivered. It was chillier tonight, as if the outside air was coming in somewhere. 

I raised myself up to check and see if the window had been left a millimeter open. It wasn't.

The view wasn’t bad, though. The night was beginning to settle and the street lamps had lit up on my street. In the distance, you could barely see the lights of the city blinking like fireflies.

My gaze wandered over the neighborhood and rested on an old tree across the street. It creaked and groaned under the pressure of the evening breeze, swaying, its leaves rustling with an almost hypnotic sound.

It was then that my eyes locked on to something.

A figure. Standing right across the street. Not moving, not turning.

At first, I tried not to think much about it, but…

The figure didn’t move.

It was a girl, I think. Shoulder-length hair, tied in two ponytails which flailed in the wind. She wore a school uniform with a skirt that was a little too long to be ours. 

It was too dark to make out her face and she didn’t budge an inch. It became evident that she was staring. Staring into my room, right at me.

Instinctively, I dropped below the window line, out of sight.

My heart suddenly felt like it was in my throat. The cicadas’ chorus seemed to fade, replaced by the pounding of my own heartbeat.

Paranoia took over. I wondered who it could have been. I’d never told anyone my address except for Yashiro... and unless Yashiro was a shapeshifter who could change his form at will, that certainly wasn't him. 

A minute passed. Maybe more.

I stayed crouched behind the wall. My mind was racing. The room felt even colder now and the sound of my sister’s anime was still faintly audible from downstairs.

Had I simply imagined it? Were my eyes just playing tricks on me? I’m just tired and I’m seeing things. Yes, merely a figment of my imagination, created by my excessive consumption of fiction. I’ve just been reading too much manga. Or… What if?

Slowly, I built up enough courage and crept back up to the window.

I forced myself to look again.

But she was gone.

📚