The opposite of love

When lunch once again rolled around as it always did, I slung my back on my back and rose to my feet, planning to once again make my way to that dingy little closet room to eat in comfortable silence with Sai.

Of course, before I could even take a step, ‘comfortable silence’ was cruelly ripped away from me.

“Kabucchi… could I… ask you a favour?” said the voice beside me. No points for guessing who.

“Hmm? What d’you need?”

“Could you… let me have Sai-chan today? For the lunch period, I mean?”

“Let you have her? What is she, cold pizza?”

“I just mean let me eat with her alone today, you spoon,” she said, sighing and rolling her eyes. “I uh… think I should probably have a private talk with her, too…”

“Ah. Right.” I had been so relieved this morning that Pep and I had cleared up our misunderstanding that I almost entirely forgot that poor Sai was still in the dark. Now that I was made to think about it, I felt somewhat guilty that she hadn’t been included from the start. “She’s all yours. We usually eat in that one abandoned storage space at the back of the school. Y’know, the one that I made you spread that rumour about?”

“Ohhhh, the place that everyone now thinks is haunted? Of course you’d be eating there now, I feel kinda silly for not assuming that already.”

“Yeah, it’s nice and quiet, way out of the way of other students. Quite the trek to get there tho, so I’d get a move on if you wanna talk to her.”

“Right. Thanks Kabucchi, I owe you one.”

“I’ll add it to the tab of ‘ones’ you already owe me.”

“How long is that tab?”

“Roughly the same as this country’s national debt.”

“How’d you figure that out?!”

“I rounded up.”

“God dammit, you just can’t let a nice moment go unspoiled by snark, can you?”

“Nope. Now go one, don’t keep her waiting in my stead.”

“Alright, alright. Talk to you later, Kabucchi!”

She waved as she skipped out of the classroom door. Considering the sort of conversation she was likely about to have with Sai, I wondered how she seemed so upbeat. Though, her ability to so quickly change her tune had impressed and frustrated me for years already, so I wasn’t entirely surprised.

Still, it left me to do something I had always avoided doing: eating lunch in my classroom.

There was a clear social caste system at this school, and the place you ate lunch was generally determined by your placement in that caste. The rowdy ‘popular’ bunch maintained their place in the classroom, and since no one wanted to contest them, all the other groups tended to fan out and eat in other places. The only ones who ever ate in the classroom were the aforementioned rowdy group and the loners who couldn’t read the room. I, of course, was not one of those loners. I knew exactly when my presence wasn’t welcomed, and as such I never ate in the classroom when possible. But this time my hands were tied, so against my better judgement, I stayed put.

I felt the occasional glance come my way, but I doubted I was interesting enough for the majority of that crowd to pay any real mind to. Just another one of the unimportant ground plebs hanging awkwardly off to the side. Most of them probably never spared me so much as a second glace.

Most of them.

“Ain’t that a rare sight to see. The king of the undead curses us with his presence at lunch for once. This must be a bad omen, the beginning of a deadly disease outbreak perhaps.”

“What do you want, Bitchqueen?”

As if ascending from the depths of hell just to worsen my mood, the Bitchqueen herself trundled her short ass over to my desk and started goading me like some sort of amateur wrestling heel. For someone with a professed hatred of me she had an irritating habit of seeking me out for the express purpose of getting on my nerves.

“My dear Pep has been strangely spacey and distant these past couple of days. Sad smiles, staring off into space, you know the drill. Now, I don’t wanna go unfairly pointing fingers or anything, but anytime she’s upset it’s normally your fault, so what’d you do to her this time, Dead Eyes?”

“What happened to ‘not pointing fingers?’”

“I said ‘unfairly.’ Pointing fingers at you is always fair.”

“Die in a fire, Bitchqueen.”

“Stop dodging the question.”

God, every word from her mouth was aggravating. Not least of all because she was right on the money: it was my fault that Pep had been upset. Still, I didn’t need to tell her shit.

“If you wanna know what’s wrong with her, just ask Pep herself, you prat.”

“You think I didn’t try that? She just kept insisting everything was fine. ‘Don’t worry, Ranchan, it’s nothing important.’ That shite over and over again.”

“That… does sound like her, yeah…” dammit Pep, your refusal to be a burden on Bitchqueen has just moved the burden to me, you royal pain in the ass. “Look, there was a bit of miscommunication between us that caused all three of us some undue stress, but that’s all been resolved now. So get your nose out of it.”

Morally, I knew that as Pep’s close friend she had a right to be concerned. But personally, I wanted absolutely 0 involvement from the Bitchqueen whenever possible. Perhaps I’m the oil, but she’s definitely the match, her presence only sought to cause unnecessary fires.

“So it was your fault. Well, colour me surprised, there you are, causing problems ag-” she stopped dead half way through her theatrical and ridiculous villain monologue, and her expression seemed to turn from a sneer to a scowl. “‘...all three of us?’”

“Hmm? Yeah. Me, Pep and Sai. Y’know, the other member of our club? There’s no way Pep hasn’t mentioned her. Unless… y’know… you’re not important enough to privy to that knowledge.”

I had hoped that jab would aggravate her a tad, but what I hadn’t expected was for her to look outright disgusted.

“...oh, I know who the fuck you’re talking about alright…” she clenched her fist as she spoke, almost as if knowledge of Sai’s existence alone was making her violently angry. “That silver haired bitch with the attitude problem, right?”

“...that’s one way to describe her, I suppose.” If it had been said at least partially in jest I would likely have simply agreed and moved on, but the sheer venom in her tone told me there was no joke to her assessment. “What, you got a problem with Sai too?”

“A problem with her? Why would I have a problem with some outsider skank waltzing in and trying to steal my Pep from under my nose?”

“Easy…”

“At least you’re dead eyed freak that she only sticks around with because of history, that silver bitch doesn’t even have that as an excuse. She just flaunts her pretty face and Pep goes all googly eyed at her. I mean, what else does she even have? The bitch is even more stuck up than you somehow.”

“Ran, wind it in…”

“What does Pep even see in her? She’s not fun, she’s not social, she’s not popular. She’s just an elitist, condescending, slimy little whore-”

The table and everything on it clattered as I slammed my hands down and throw myself up from my seat. For a brief, fleeting moment, I almost felt the urge to wipe that scowl on her face. But I let the moment pass, I breathed in, and I sat back down.

“Leave.”

“What, that silver witch put a spell on you too or something? Since when do you care about anyone but yoursel-”

“I said leave, Ran. Now.”

She looked back at me with a mix of surprise and hurt, almost like I had betrayed her. For all we disagreed on, the one thing we shared in common was protectiveness of Pep, so I guess she had thought I would take her side. Fucking idiot.

After a moment, that surprise seemed to wear off, and hurt turned to scorn.

“Tch. Should have known. You and the bitch deserve each other. Enjoy your life, Kaburi.”

She turned on her heel and stamped away, fists still clenched. The rest of the class, who I suddenly became acutely aware had been watching us, awkwardly begun to return to their conversations, snagging glances at us when they thought we weren’t looking.

I surprised myself at how angry Ran’s shittalking of Sai had gotten me. I knew I was likely to react like that if someone said the same stuff about Pep, but I didn’t realise how protective I had become of Sai already. Then again it could hardly be said I didn’t already hold some level of animosity towards Ran in the first place. She just finally pushed her luck too far this time.

It’s often said that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. I can confidently say that that saying is wrong. People often use the reasoning that ‘if you hate someone you have strong feelings towards them, which means it can’t be the opposite,’ but that’s sophistry at best. Just as the opposite of one is negative-one and not 0, the opposite of a strong positive feeling is a strong negative feeling, not a lack of feeling altogether. Hate is to love what sadness is to joy, or pain to pleasure.

Why was I so adamant about this?

Because what I felt towards Ran in that momentary outburst, I could only describe it as the opposite of love.