Passing Days

I was woken by a pattering on my window so persistent that I found it too hard to get back to sleep again. A heavy downpour had moved in, dyeing the sky a thick grey and sending splashes over the end of the flimsy drainpipe outside. Starved of the usual morning sunlight, gloom and fog hung in my room, with only a hazy lustre to illuminate my vision.

These days made me conflicted. It gave me the chance to spend time doing things inside without any guilt, such as reading or listening to music. It also wasn't hot, so forcing myself to do housework became less of a hassle. On the other hand, despite choosing not to even on nice days, there was a strange sense of distress from having the ability to leave the house taken away from me against my will. I only wanted what I couldn't have, I suppose.

Dressing myself, I made the conscious decision to not wear my uniform, assuming that even the Captain would be sympathetic enough to not organise any meetings or missions on a day like this.

I sauntered over to my light switch, hoping some artificial light would get me in the mood to do something that day.

Click

But nothing happened.

Click-Click-Click

Looks like the power's out again. If Leviathans and storms are so common here, you think they'd have better measures against this.

My mind drifted to the usual options for activities when the power is out, but all of them involved having at least some visibility, and the storm made that, for all intents, impossible. Listening to music was also out of the question, since I didn't have anything to play it on. For the first time in longer than I could remember, I wondered something to myself:

What are the others doing? They must not have any power either, after all.

It felt a bit harsh to only consider them once my other options were exhausted, but I'd lived a majority of my life learning to persist on my own. Even having the choice to interact with people that weren't my mother during outages was a new one for me.

I cracked my door open slightly, peeking out into the communal hallway. Hoshizuna was already leaning against her door, with her arms folded, gazing at the ground, her outline floating in the gloom. Despite being the morning, it was so cloudy that the sun could barely reach us.

It took a while for her to notice me, but when she did, her eyes flashed open.

"It's that time again. Welcome to Power Outage City, population: us."

Was that supposed to be funny? I don't mean that in a rude way, I just... don't know if I'm supposed to laugh or not.

There was a sound from Eri's room as well, which became loud enough to hear once her sliding door rolled open.

"Ugh, this better just be limited to my roo-"

She froze as she spotted Hoshizuna and I in the hallway.

And then she started to closer her door again.

"Whoa, hold it there Eri. What exactly are you planning to do in your room with no electricity?"

Eri was about to formulate an answer but Hoshizuna stopped her before she could say anything.

"If you're about to say 'read a book', two things: one, it's too dark, and two, no offense, but I don't think you have any, at least not in your room."

Eri's head lolled in defeat.

"I guess all we can do is wait, then."

---

I made use of what phone charge I had left, saving the remaining 20% just in case, and shut it off, reducing my view to dark semi-blindness once again. After a few minutes, ten minutes, or who knows, maybe even an hour, of sitting slumped outside in the hallway against our doors, not being able to muster a word to each other, Hoshizuna motioned to start lifting herself from the ground.

"You know... I have a portable DVD player. It's a bit old, but it's one of the only things I have that takes batteries."

I swayed myself to look in Hoshizuna's direction.

"What DVDs do you have?"

"I... don't actually think I have any."

This suggestion is going swimmingly.

"But I do have an idea of where we can find some. There's a media storage room in the headquarters building. It'll be mostly recordings and other important footage, but with a good rummage I'm sure I'll come back with something."

Eri didn't seem enthused by this idea, but Hoshizuna was already dedicated to it, trotting downstairs and grabbing her dark blue umbrella from the stand in the porch. 

"I'll be back in a little while. Either with a DVD for us to watch, or soaked to the bone because my umbrella was wrecked in the wind. Or both."

As the door slid to a close under the booming sounds of rain, Eri's back coasted further down her door.

"She's insane... no wonder they call her the living contradiction."

---

As Hoshizuna had said, she returned with a plastic sleeve containing a disc. Her umbrella was also in tatters, but it appeared she had made it close enough to the dorm to not be entirely drenched when it happened.

"The player's in my room. Come on in."

She entered first, and Eri and I followed in shortly after. We spoke together in unison.

"Ojamashimasu. (Sorry for the disturbance)" 

Hoshizuna's room was tidy and neat, a far cry from the domestic warzone that had been Eri's. Although, this neatness came from the fact that the room was practically empty. On the far side of the entrance, visible from the door, was a low, Japanese-style table with a single cushion beside it, and lining the wall behind it was a kitchen counter with a selection of appliances, namely an oven with a stove, a fridge and a sideboard. The rest of the room maintained its washitsu state, with the wall to the right of the door, which I spotted as I stepped into the room more, having a closet, and an oshiire (a futon closet) imbedded into it. The closet on the left had more doors than any other closet I'd seen in the building, with at least 6 sliding doors: 5 smalls ones and one big one.

There was a hanging wall scroll further along the wall, closer to the table. On it was a painting of a scene at nighttime, with a tree surrounded by white foxes. A second, thinner scroll beside it had kanji brushed onto it.

"Oh, right, sorry."

Eri and I sat on the floor surrounding the table, neither of us bold enough to claim the pillow. Behind us, Hoshizuna was searching through her closet. I took a peek inside from where I was sat, and I saw an umbral mass inside, a pile of objects and items all stacked away inside it. Sometimes it looked like she had to hold out her hands to stop things from falling out. I wondered to myself why she kept it all in there when there was so much space elsewhere.

"Found it. Let's see what's in store for us, then."

Placing the player on the low table and joining us by taking a seat on the pillow, she slid the DVD into the drive. After a few seconds of darkness, the room was blasted with light from the tiny screen. It was, as the label had said, a recording of a baseball match.

I wonder who recorded it? Nobody here really sticks out to me as a big sports fan.

I wasn't one myself, either. But I wasn't here for the baseball. Their technique and even the rules of the game had flown right over my head. But I watched their expressions: faces of burning intensity and unyielding focus. They were the kinds of faces I'd never made before. Hoping Eri and Hoshizuna wouldn't see, I attempted to recreate them on my own face, only to embarrass myself at how pitiful I felt, stopping short of anything even resembling what I was seeing. I didn't stand a chance of living up to them like this.

I creased my eyebrows and pursed my lips. I grit my teeth. I narrowed my eyelids. But nothing had any weight to it. The acting involved was obvious to me every second I tried it. It made me glad that I was only lit by a small screen.

Hoshizuna's voice broke the silence, startling me as I failed another mimicry. In the time I'd been thinking to myself, she'd gone to the fridge to fetch something, and returned with a sharing bag of cookies.

"Do you like baseball, Eri? I mean, I always see you with that bat and all..."

"Does it matter?"

"No, not really, I guess."

Crossing her legs, Hoshizuna returned to watching the game, but I could tell that, like me, she wasn't fully engaged either. The only person that seemed to be drawn in at all was...

"I've... played, before."

Hoshizuna nodded. I wasn't sure why. It was her way of making someone aware they were heard.

"Oh yeah? I'm not much of a fan myself, but I think I like anything where I get to root for a team to make a comeback."

Eri continued watching the match as another batter was stricken out. With a clenched fist hidden under her thigh, she eventually mustered a reply.

"What's the point, then? If a team is a clear winner, with strong players and a better record, why bother supporting a team you know is going to lose? It's pointless. It's unsatisfying."

"I... I don't know, actually. There's something charming about the weaker teams. The way that they push for every point, the challenge they go through, the sweat, and the tears. I'm satisfied even if they lose because I know that they didn't give in or take it easy, not even for a moment. But I guess that that is pretty pointless like you said."

Eri lingered on Hoshizuna's words, twirling her toes.

"I remember baseball being like that. But it was all wasted effort if you lost. A player that wins is a champion, an ace. One that loses is a liability. If you know you can't make it, then why bother trying."

Hoshizuna couldn't face Eri once she'd heard that. Only looking through me at first, she remembered my presence and quickly used me to divert her attention.

"What do you think, Beryl?"

Me?

"I... Uh. The... way they can hit the ball like that is quite impressive. It reminds me of the way Eri hit the Leviathan last time."

"Ahah, yeah, you're right. I bet she could hit a home run.

I pinched the ends of my hair, something I always resorted to when anxious.

"Maybe. We would need to find more Leviathans for her to practice on."

"Is that up to baseball regulations? I don't think Leviathans and batting cages are the same."

Hoshizuna laughed, and I found myself unable to stifle a chuckle in return. I couldn't quite tell, but I thought I spotted the edge of Eri's lips curl upward from under a curtain of hair. She tried to hide it by taking another cookie into her mouth, but still responded soon after.

"I'll tell you one thing, Leviathans are a much easier target than baseballs."

"I bet. Well, at least baseballs don't try to kill you", Hoshizuna joked.

The corner's of Eri's lips creased, and she managed another reply.

"You'd be surprised."

"We better not be sent to the mainland to fight any killer baseballs or I'm quitting."

We continued our muffled giggling as the game faded into the background. The sound of the rain assaulting the wooden frame of our apartment was just a hallucination now. A calming, cordial air provided a warmth different from the faint morning humidity outside.

"Hey... if we were to quit, what would you guys do? You know, theoretically speaking."

Hoshizuna soon realised what effect the question had as our laughter trickled away into dead air, with her being the worst affected, jamming her lips shut.

It was foolish for any of us to think about what we would do if we quit, least of all what life would be like if we were able to live normal lives, engage in hobbies, or make a career for ourselves. In those four walls, comforted by the artificial warmth that bathed us all on that dreary day, we'd made a comfortable false reality for ourselves. We were deluded by the world we were watching play out through the window of a portable DVD player, by the sun, trapped in that recording, that never stopped shining. 

But we wanted to delude ourselves. It was our fleeting chance. 

And we wanted it to last just a bit longer.

Ding-dong

We were rescued by the sound of the doorbell, and to break the tension, we all ventured downstairs to check the door, doing our best not to trip with each step.

We opened the door and were greeted by a very soggy Minamoto. Her hat was dripping heavily and her usually grandiose and cascading coat was sodden, clinging to her.

"I came by to inform you that we're working on having the power fixed. As you've probably assumed, there will be no meetings, practises or missions today, at least not until everything becomes habitable again. But I will have some information regarding our next step tomorrow, if all returns to normal by then."

Hoshizuna leaned forward but dared not peek her head outside the door.

"Right, that makes sense. Understood, Captain."

Almost making her way back out into the rain, Hoshizuna called out to her.

"Um, Captain!"

She avoided raising her voice for long, catching herself at the end of her words as they trailed off.

"Yes, Hoshizuna?"

"We're, uh, watching baseball, if you want to join. I had a portable DVD player, and it's all we could find."

A flicker of consideration appeared, but it could also have been raindrops trailing over her cheeks. Reading her expression took enough effort in clear weather.

"I... I have work to attend to. I could hardly afford to. But... enjoy yourselves. I'll see you tomorrow."

Pulling the brim of her cap over her eyes, she merged with the bleak skyline, melting into the torrent.