Don't Let Anyone Know It

Charl Raynal is not normal.

If that wasn’t made obvious by now...

Charl knows it, and he embraces it. There was once a time where he rejected that fact about himself in fear of repercussions from others, but now he is in a fortunate enough position to exist in a place where no one will hurt him for who he is.

That being said, he is also smart enough to hide it when it really matters. Like for instance, when he spent an entire Saturday following Tani around Tokyo while on a date with Kimura Ume.

A date that he enthusiastically helped set up between the two.

Why did he become a stalker in the night? To take notes, draw storyboard images, and sometimes get close enough to the two so he could find dialogue inspiration for his manga of course.

At first when Ume suggested she try to cheer Tani up with a day spent outside of school, he agreed to it with the idea that no one better than a childhood friend could do the job. By watching, he had hoped to learn how two Japanese teenagers interact with each other, and he was going to use that knowledge specifically to develop the characters he’s been drawing back at home. Whether it be little mannerisms or kind gestures, he’d be able to dive into it all headfirst and create his magnum opus.

And boy, did he get some good content.

Naturally, he’d never ever tell them he was spying on them; although he can freely broadcast his interests now, he isn’t dumb enough to think even his friends wouldn’t consider this action as going overboard.

Therein lies the problem, he really wants to tell them what he saw that night.

Not the obvious juicy stuff like their mishap on the slide or the bookended hug, nor the emotionally tender moments in between where the two rekindled their friendship after so much time apart.

No, none of that.

He wants to tell them he wasn’t the only person following them that night…

He’s in a quandary, because there was a boy who spent almost an equal amount of time tailing them, and that would mean that boy is also not normal. Charl can confidently say that his intentions were harmless in the end, but he has no way of knowing what the other boy’s intentions were. He can more or less assume that it isn’t harmless however, and that’s why he wants to make it known.

Someone must know what he saw, it’s been six days since then and the thought of it has been eating him up inside.

He can’t handle carrying the weight of his evidence any longer, so he has to choose that person wisely…

--------------------------

“Some dude was stalking Akihiro and Kimura-san!?” Mariko asks incredulously.

Charl about falls off his chair. “I beg you to please keep your voice down. I don’t want them to find out just yet.”

It could be considered fortunate that heavy rain is falling outside, pelting the large window with thick droplets and creating a very distinct background noise. With the clicking and clacking playing their roles of a physical barrier of sound, Mariko's outburst was avoided being heard by anyone else.

Tani is currently in the process of presenting a box containing the board game 'Scrabble' and 'Mojipittan' to Anita, rattling off history lessons about the games and how they can be used as a tool to learn a new language. Ume and Emilia are chatting away working on Italian.

The rain does nothing to dampen their ardour, but the gray sky saps away the visual vibrancy normally present in the Languages clubroom, instead inviting in cooler and more pastel colors.

“But that’s like, way creepy isn’t it? What did he look like?”

“It seemed to me he was around our age, he was wearing sunglasses and hiding his head in a hooded jacket so I never got a great look at his face. I got close enough at one point to see that he had dyed blue hair at least.”

“Eewww, only a weirdo would hide themselves like that.”

“Y-Yeah…”

Charl squirms a bit, he was dressed exactly the same as the other perp that day.

“Why do ya think he was following them?” Mariko asks, not so stealthily sneaking peeks at Tani and Ume.

“Therein lies the problem, I feel like Akihiro-kun could have enemies all throughout Tokyo, and Kimura-san is quite famous online. Idol worship here is not something to be trifled with, I didn’t take that into account when Ume asked if I’d help her set up some time together with him.”

A chill runs down Mariko’s spine. “Nggyaah, Perfect Blue!”

Tani halts his presentation, now he’s stuck in place holding a stack of colored flashcards and sending Mariko an agitated glare. Everyone else in the clubroom stops what they’re doing and looks at her as well.

She cringes and lets out an awkward laugh before saying, “B-Blue is Charl’s favorite color, fun fact!”

“....”

“I coulda swore it was red before now…” she trails off sheepishly.

Tani narrows his eyes and replies, “Then I’ll have him use more of the blue ‘action’ cards then.”

Mariko sweats and averts her gaze, and thankfully everyone returns to what they were doing before her outburst.

With the coast clear, Tani’s voice once again becomes ambient noise along with the rain drops. She leans in towards Charl and hides her face with her hand when she whispers, “If that’s the case, we have a responsibility to tell Kimura-san at least.”

“I fear freaking her out with this information. She may not take it so well.”

“Then we should tell Akihiro instead, he of all people will be able to find out who this guy is and put a stop to it!”

Charl ponders on her suggestion while glaring at his bespectacled club leader, he can imagine what Tani would do if he knew they were being followed that night. Tani would likely begin a witch hunt of epic proportions, go about accusing people walking by and hatch up a plan that involves using Ume as bait to lure the perp out.

Wait, hasn’t he seen this play out before?

“Let’s hold off for a bit…” Charl says with a shake of his head. “It’s almost been an entire week since then and nothing else has happened, so there’s a chance the guy was just someone passing by who took an interest in them.”

“You can’t just shrug it off now, it’s gotta be something more than that!”

Again Charl debates within his mind whether the passing of time justifies bottling up something that could be so serious.

His thoughts are interrupted however, when Tani abruptly takes a seat on the other side of the U shaped table directly facing him.

“Okay let’s get started.”

“!!”

Charl inadvertently jumps in his chair. “A-Akihiro-kun, what?”

“What do you mean ‘what’?”

“Started?”

“Did you not hear a word I just said?”

“I must apologize, my head was in the clouds.”

“We’re pairing up for the flashcard portion of the lesson before we move onto the board game proper, I’m partnering with you this round.”

Mariko is sitting next to Charl just as confused, her stiffened shoulders broadcast her discomfort once Tani’s gaze lands on her.

“Were you not paying attention either??” Tani asks suspiciously.

“N-No no, I was totally paying attention. Flashcards? I can do that, no prob!”

Mariko is bold face lying, and in the process is throwing Charl under the bus.

“Good.” Tani puffs. “Be sure to memorize the phrases I have written down in French for you.” He drops a box of items on her side of the desk and slides a stack of small pieces of red, yellow, green and blue paper towards her. “Ume is ready with her items too, although you’re learning a different language than she is, with the intricate system I’ve created to match perfectly with the Scrabble tile pieces, you can mix Italian and French words with the Japanese script written on the other side of the cards to help with translation.”

Mariko is now certain that she has missed something very important, he might as well have been telling her what the physical properties of the internet are. She sends a guilty side eyed glance toward Charl and notices a beady eyed smile not so delicately hiding his own confusion.

The two have no clue what’s happening.

“Don’t just sit there, go on then.” Tani demands, pushing the items even closer.

“R-Right…” Mariko grabs the stack of colored paper and looks around the room.

Anita is sitting on one end of the table face to face with Emilia, and on the other side of the table she sees Ume waving at her.

“Yo, Mari-chan!”

“H-Howdy, Kimura-san…” Mariko places the paper between the two and whispers, keeping her voice from reaching Tani. “I would like to apologize in advance for being a total fraud. I have no clue what we’re supposed to be doing with these.”

“Hehe, same here." With a carefree shrug, Ume says, "Let’s wing it!”

Ume’s answer comes as a great relief, Mariko would have felt terrible if she had let a teammate down because of her lack of focus.

Lifting her arm out in front of her, she flexes her muscle and proudly proclaims, “I can wing it with the best of 'em.”

A little farther down the table, Emilia sits in silence as she watches Anita gracefully arrange the flashcards and Mojipittan tile pieces together in a neat and presentable order. Setting a small rack in front of the two of them, each rack carries seven pieces of tile with hiragana script on carved into them.

Because the other members of the club are learning Romance languages, the board game Tani has given Anita to play is catered specifically to Japanese. However, he knows that thrusting his student into that game would serve her no good, so he’s gotten creative with the use of flashcards and a partner to help her get through it.

Once she finishes setting up, Anita sends Emilia a heart fluttering smile and says, “You pick the first word.”

When she isn’t talking to Tani, her sentences and statements drag out a little longer than what would be considered normal. But her Japanese has gotten quite good despite being unable to speak very quickly. 

Emilia is impressed either way, yet she takes a while to reply. 

The reason why is that she has yet to figure out how to interact with Anita in a way that doesn't make her panic internally. As much confidence as she gained during her VR night with Ume, it hasn’t translated well when it comes to her foreign counterpart. She sees Anita as an almost God-like, untouchable creature that she considers herself unworthy to be around.

So any conversation is a colossal struggle.

“...Right...”

Emilia’s green eyed gaze looks down at the items on the table, and she nervously picks up a red card and reads it aloud.

“Yesterday.”

“Hmm…” Anita ponders, and starts arranging two cards and studies them before placing another red card along with a blue card on the table.

Emilia reads out the red card she flips over that says, [ I ]

Anita perks up in excitement.

Emilia then reads what’s written on the blue card, [Did not]

“Okay!” Anita now grabs one of her seven hiragana pieces and arranges it between the flashcards.

Her tile reads ‘odoru’, and she puts it in position so everything on the table makes a sentence.

[I did not dance yesterday]

“...Good job…” Emilia softly mutters.

Anita celebrates her success with a little clap of her hands. She ponders on what to say next, but realizing that she isn't quite at the level to explain what she's thinking aloud with words, she sneakily pulls her phone out and types into her translator app. Upon finishing, she leans in towards Emilia and presents it to her.

“Now I pick a card for you. I have 2 points. But starting with a yellow verb card and using the green 'i' or 'na' adjective cards will give us more points.”

Emilia hasn’t done a great job reacting in a way a normal human would to anything Anita says, so talking through the app will make it almost impossible. Her inability to convey emotion may very well be because they are communicating this way, but it's likely something else entirely.

All she can do is simply stare across at Anita's phone and reply in an almost identical fashion to the robotic voice in the app. 

“...Okay…”

Now we slide to the other side of the table, where Tani is scowling at Charl, who currently looks like he’s on the verge of collapsing.

“How is it that you’re so bad at this?” Tani asks, leaning into the backrest of his chair in exasperation. “It’s really not that hard, you just need to connect the verb on the card to an adjective or noun card, then mix in an action or negative action card and choose to add any word you like with the Scrabble tiles to combine them and create an English sentence. I am so far ahead of you in points already that we’re going to have to keep starting over if we want to make this competitive.”

“My apologies, but isn’t this game a little too complicated?”

Tani gestures behind his shoulder. “Everyone else seems to be playing just fine.”

Charl looks to the rest of his club, and can clearly see that Ume and Mariko are enjoying themselves, flipping cards over and flicking the little wooden tiles back and forth. Their jubilance immediately serves as a slash to his self confidence; and seeing Anita and Emilia smoothly working together makes it even worse.

The rest of his club cruising along is enough to make him want to crawl under the table.

Despite all this, he pulls out a red card and reads, “Energy”

“Oh wow, great job! You pronounced the English ‘G’ very well when you said that.”

Surprised by Tani’s sudden flip from scolding to praising, Charl lets a little accomplished smile lift up the tips of his lips as he flips over a green card that reads, [Thorough].

“‘Th’eruuu...”

Tani narrows his eyes.

“Was that not good?” Charl asks.

“That was trash, do it again.”

As kind as Tani was when praising him, he’s just as ruthless when pointing out flaws.

Charl’s face scrunches up and he becomes hot at the collar. Pronouncing this word in English in particular is notoriously difficult for any French speaker. Figuring that there are still multiple pieces left in order to make a single sentence, the prospect of going any further in this game viciously rips away any motivation.

Even so, he tries again,

“...Th'eroo.”

Although this attempt was better, it was said with the zeal of a deflating balloon.

“Ugh!” Tani clasps at his hair and writhes.

“I-I’m sorry.”

“Alright it’s okay, it’s okay.” Taking a deep breath to collect himself, he points to his mouth and says, “Follow the movement of my tongue and say it with me.”

“Follow your tongue, you say?”

“Nevermind… don’t do that.”

“Actually, I think that may work. We should really explore your tongue.”

“Stop!”

“No really, this is------”

‘🎵RING RING RING🎵’

The sudden chime of a cell phone snatches their attention, and the distraction is welcomed.

Turning to the noise, Tani catches sight of Anita lifting her phone up to her ear and answering.

“Hæ, hvað er að?”

Tani perks up as though shocked by a volt of electricity.

Anita has answered in Icelandic.

The rest of the class stays silent so as to not interrupt her call. But unbeknownst to Anita and everyone else, Tani has spent the last two weeks spending equal amounts of time studying Icelandic as he has Norwegian. With the two languages being quite similar, he was able to grasp most of the grammar faster than he thought he would.

Suddenly realizing he's the only one here who can understand her, he turns away and pretends like he isn’t in the process of eavesdropping.

“She’s coming to Tokyo later tonight!? But why so suddenly? She said she would leave me alone here…”

Hearing that, Tani’s heart begins racing, he sneaks a peek over his shoulder and notices that Anita’s expression is different. To him, she looks like someone who has just found out that their pet has died. Perhaps she's doing a good job concealing it from the others, but Tani is certain that he's spotted it.

“Is that so? I see…" She takes in a deep breath and turns towards the chalkboard. "Okay, I’ll be outside shortly.” 

Unceremoniously hanging up the phone, she places it into her bag. 

Tani stays silent, he doesn’t know if he should speak up or not.

“Is everything okay?” Ume asks, speaking up in his stead.

“O-Oh, yeah it’s all good.” Anita begins gathering her things. “Something came up at home, I have to leave for today.”

Ume looks a little concerned, but when Anita doesn't elaborate or express anything otherwise, she is able to shake it right off. “That’s a bummer, we’ll miss you!”

Anita looks to Emilia and says, “Sorry to leave you alone, Emilia, thank you for your help today. I’ll make it up to you.”

“...No problem…” Emilia has no idea how to respond to that. All she can do is choppily lift up her hand to wave goodbye.

After throwing her bag over her shoulder, Anita makes her way to the door.

“See ya tomorrow!” Mariko says with her patented dimpled smile.

“Have a good day.” Charl says next.

Tani, on the other hand, remains silent.

Anita stops in the doorway and looks at him.

“Tani…”

Now he’s forced to turn to her.

“What’s up?”

“There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.” she says in Icelandic.

The two stare at each other like a tiger would if it stumbled upon a mirror in the jungle and came face to face with its own reflection.

“You want to tell me right now?”

His reply has the effect of pushing her eyebrows closer to each other. She can feel it happening outside of her control, so she hides her face from him.

“Haha,” she lets a discomforted chuckle escape her lips and mutters, “I knew it…”

“Come again?” Tani asks, he wasn’t able to hear what she said.

“...Will you walk me to the front gate?”

Her reaction and the way she’s moving her body are entirely unfamiliar to him. The thought of this brings about a very unique emotion, both excitement and apprehension coexist within him and are fighting each other for dominance. He might finally find out more about her life outside of Kokusai. What else could she want to talk about after all?

He assumes that whoever she was talking to on the phone just now has something to do with that.

He has wished to learn about this topic for almost two weeks now; even so, the prospect of getting those long awaited answers makes him nervous.

There's no telling what it may mean for their friendship going forward. 

“Sure thing.”

Tani isn't nervous enough to not chomp at the bit to find out.

He gets up off of his seat and follows her out, but not before addressing the rest of the class saying, “I’ll be right back, I expect each of you to have at least 8 points a piece by the time I get back.”

With that, the two leave the clubroom and shut the door behind them.

Mariko reacts to his exit by slapping her palms onto the table and asking, “What the frig does he mean by 8 points?? There’s points in this game??”

Ume shakes her head, “Beats me!”

“I still don’t even know what these cards are supposed to be.” Charl adds.

The three turn and send wanting gazes to Emilia, who returns their attention with the energy of a blank piece of paper.

“Why are you all staring at me like I know something you don’t?”

“But you and Anita were totally crushing this game!” Mariko replies.

“I barely heard a word she said.”

The three react to this revelation as though it were a blast from a cannon that they are in the process of shrinking away from.

“How is that even possible??” Mariko bemoans. 

Emilia raises her hand and answers, “She had her hair in a ponytail, I've never seen it in that style before so I was distracted by how pretty she looked."

Although surprised, they find her excuse valid.

“Alright, I have an idea.” Ume says, gesturing for everyone to gather around her at the table. “Let’s try and play this game with the four of us together. We’ll do the best we can with what’s in front of us, so when Tani comes back we’ll have a built-in excuse for why we played the game wrong.”

Mariko doesn’t spare a second to push back against that idea, she quickly sits opposite of Ume and smiles. “Sounds like a great plan!”

The other two push their seats in close and the group begins to rearrange cards by their colors, and place even numbered stacks of each in front of them. All of the Scrabble tiles and the racks they are in are now in the middle of the table, most of the letters on these tiles fit in each language barring the diacritics that the English alphabet doesn’t use.

Ume takes her de facto role as leader in this game and says, “Okay, I’ll pull the first card, and all of us will try and make a sentence around it. Since there is Japanese print on the other side of each, we can get creative and mix and match languages. After we’re done we can flip it over and find out if we made something that makes sense. Maybe each of us can add a tile word and keep building from there.”

Pulling a piece out of the yellow stack, she flips it onto the table so everyone can see.

“Hmm…” Mariko ponders the words presented to them, completely unable to make sense of the Italian word she’s looking at; she is able to read the Japanese script on the other side. “Beware?”

“Uwa, sounds kinda ominous.” Ume says. Turning to Charl she adds, “Why don’t you start to build a sentence around it? Since you’re to the right of me.”

“Okay, I guess a noun card would be best here?” Charl pulls a red card and places it on the table to the right of Ume’s yellow. “This says, [You].”

Relieved that he got a very easy card, he rests easy.

Next is Emilia. She grabs a blue action card at first, and seeing it doesn’t fit anywhere she then grabs another yellow card and places it in its correct spot on the table.

[Have been]

Despite Emilia’s inability to have a proper real life conversation, she is still someone who has learned a new language, and can understand when and where a ‘linking verb’ is applicable. She doesn’t say anything, and simply leans back in her seat and awaits Mariko’s next move.

Mariko has also learned a new language in her life, but it was because she grew up around both Japanese and English as a child, she is by no means an expert at English grammar despite being able to speak it fluently. So for her, deciding which card to choose is a bit difficult. Fumbling a few cards in her hands and looking through it, her delay in choosing makes her flustered; she can’t help but feel like the others are agitated while waiting on her.

“Ehh-- Uaaah..!” She makes a rash decision and throws down yet another yellow card.

The four read it together.

[Followed]

Charl shrieks. “Why did you choose that one, Mariko-san??”

“I’m sorry! I panicked!”

"Was it really that hard to avoid those words entirely? You have so many other cards in your hands!"

“There’s nothing wrong with what she picked," Ume says, neatly arranging everything in order. "Although it’s creepy, it kinda fits.”

[Beware you have been followed]

“Charl, why don’t you try translating this to English?”

He is almost unable to believe that this sentence, of all possible sentences in the multiple different languages they are in the process of learning, is the one that comes out now. Considering the topic of conversation before this whole thing started, the odds are astronomical.

Because of this, Charl fights against himself to read it aloud. “B’wayer, yu hev bn foolowed…”

Ume looks at Mariko and asks, “How was that?”

Mariko is sweating, she’s really regretting throwing down the card that brought about this hidden confession. “I-It was about as good as it sounded.”

Aka, not good. Since Tani isn't here however, no one is around to care.

“Okay, your turn to say it, Emi-chan.”

“In Italian?”

“Yeah, I’ll copy you!”

“Attenzione, sei stato seguito.”

Emilia said that so fast that Ume couldn’t catch much of it. She tries her best anyways, “Attentsioone, sei stato segitou.”

“That was decent, good job.”

“Oh, hells yeah!” Ume clenches her fist and celebrates.

“So that means it’s my turn now?” Mariko asks, she has no faith in herself to complete this task.

“Yeah, give it your best shot!”

Mariko feels like a phantom’s hand is squeezing at her heart and it’s making it hard to breathe. The thought of speaking French is the least of her worries however. Her magenta eyes bounce off the happy face of Ume and land onto the ghastly figure of Charl. His hands are clasped onto his cheeks like he were inside the swirling world of an Edvard Munch painting.

It seems like he knows what's about to happen.

Shifting her gaze back, she struggles to say, “K-Kimura-san…”

Ume couldn’t look more innocent than now, blissfully unaware of the secret that she and Charl have been carrying.

“Beware, you have been followed..!”

She’s spilled the beans and said that in Japanese.

“You’re supposed to say that in French!” Ume replies.

“No, seriously dude, you were followed while you were hanging out with Tani last week!”

“...Eh?”

Charl throws his head onto the table as though he was just delivered the most crushing defeat. For him, this is like watching a trainwreck unfold in slow motion. 

With his face sunken into the table he says, “I’m sorry Kimura-san, I must shamefully admit that I was watching you and Tani while you were out, and in the process I noticed there was a man following you two as well.”

Ume is taken aback, for very obvious reasons. She is having a hard time deciding whether they are serious or not. “Wait... wait hold up... What?”

Lifting himself off the table, he looks her square in the eyes and answers, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before this, I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate or not.”

“Umm, I mean...” Ume doesn’t know how to react to this bombshell. “Was it just some random old guy?”

“He looked to be around our age.”

The color of Ume’s face begins to grow pale. “Did you get a good look at him?”

Shaking his head, Charl answers. “All I could tell was that his hair was dyed blue.”

Now Ume completely goes white, she covers her mouth with her hand and quivers.

“...Oh god.”

“Are you okay??” Emilia asks, putting her hand on her friend's shoulder.

The reaffirming touch does enough to ground Ume in reality, which helps her let out an answer so heavy that it sinks the entire room down with its gravity,

“Guys… I know exactly who that was...”

To Be Continued!!