Little Numa Does Suffer

Numarei walked out of a shady building with a triumphant air. She was in Kabukichō, an area of Tokyo known for its entertainment district, with a high concentration of unsavoury activities. Neon signs with oversized kanji lined the buildings, while men in cheap suits lingered at corners, promising cheap drinks and job opportunities. Posters advertising host clubs were everywhere. And hosts and hostesses were around every street, taking smoke breaks with their backs against the walls.

“You did good out there.” Her boxing teacher—a middle-aged man with a silver beard— said, patting her on the back. “I thought that psycho had you for a second, but you pulled through.”

Numarei nodded. “She was pretty good at grappling. But she got cocky and stepped within my range.” She mimed an uppercut, and the two laughed among themselves.

They went down the street, unmindful of it all, just delighted in their evening victory. Joy bled into their features. Into their otherwise alert consciousness, rendering them unable to notice what stared their way.

From a street corner came a familiar figure.

“Shion?”

The word had such a strange quality. Numarei had never uttered it in such a place. Much less expected to.

Katsuwara Shion was in Kabukichō. Not only that, but it was at an hour past midnight, with an unrecognisable man’s arm around her.

Why? Why was she here? Was she dressed so differently, as if styled to impress someone? Cozying up to them like a long-time friend?

Numarei did not understand. Her teacher did. With a tug of his hand, he tried to divert her gaze, to make sure that the two friends did not see or acknowledge each other’s presence.

He failed.

Numarei ate lunch alone the next day. Then the one after that. Shortly after, Numarei drew back into her lonesome shell, eating and punching at a tree outside. At times, people spoke of her cruelly. In the halls. In the classes. In everywhere that they were, and she was too.

After a few weeks of this, alone, so alone, someone approached her at that tree.

It was not someone she recognised.

“Numa-chan, right?” The boy walked with a self-assured air. He had unbuttoned the top two buttons of his school uniform. “I heard you’re available. Is that true?”

She was not stupid. A few other students stood behind him, boys and girls alike, sniggering at the sight. Among them was Shion herself. She was smiling, laughing in a way that Numarei had not seen in a long time.

“I’m not what you think I am,” Numarei said. She sat back against the tree, angling her head down.

A girl’s voice came from the group. “Come on, Shion-san, show her!”

Shion came forth with her phone extended. On the black clamshell was a photo of Numarei and an unknown man, walking away into the streets of Kabukichō. She was dressed in a sports top and pants; her arm was wrapped around the silver-haired man.

“That’s right,” said Shion, with a smile of cathartic release. “You’re something of a whore, aren’t you?”

Numarei stood up. “He’s…” Her Yamanashi accent bled through. The symbol of her unbelonging. “He’s just my teacher.”

“A cram school in Kabukichō?”

“No, uh—boxing. I do boxing.”

“At that late at night. At that place?”

She laughed. Everyone laughed. Throat tinged with the adolescent cruelty of someone who knew better and did not care. They were judging her. Not because they spoke to her, and simply formed their own opinion. But because they’d heard it from elsewhere, without ever deciding to question it once!

Numarei leaned against the tree, breathing, catching her breath and withholding something deeper from coming out.

“So what were you doing, slut?” Shion said. “Come on, tell us!”

“You—” You were with someone. But who’d believe her? With her back turned like that?

Chances are, she’d just say she was out with friends, or something significantly less dire than what they implied Numarei would do.

She began to tense. Something crept in from the edge of her vision. Numarei let her eyes linger on Shion, and she did not recognise what lingered beneath that laugh of hers.

Something was building inside her. She could feel it. Bubble, bubble—bubble. Numarei groaned. She opened her mouth to say something terribly unkind, but decided against it, choosing to walk away instead.

“Psst. I guess it runs in the family, after all.”

“What’d you say?” A powerful and unflinching voice came from Numarei. “Who said that?”

Their laughter continued. Numarei spun back on her heel. The sound that whipped through the air was one of a fist.

The boy who approached her went flying.

“W-wai-”

Then the girl behind him.

“H-hel-”

Then the other behind her.

Their bodies graced the air like ragdolls, falling with all the grace of a bowling ball. With a single punch, she’d dislocated their jaws entirely and rendered them unconscious.

They cried. Everyone cried. Throats tinged with the adolescent despair of someone who knew what approached, and could not refute.

At last, she fell on Shion and straddled her. Her fist raised over the girl she had called friend.

Shion said nothing.

Thud. She punched her. Thud. She punched her again. Thud. She continued to do so again and again, each time with a fraction of her strength, so that she did not kill Shion—but also so that she did not sleep just yet.

Her face was red. Her face was bruised. A black eye. A red patch on the left and right cheek.

The noise had died for a while now. The sound of adolescent laughter and fear was reduced to mere breathing, the subtle inhalations of someone unconscious or hurt.

Even so, it was not silent. Alone in that courtyard, the only one still conscious enough to feel was Numarei. Shedding warm, plentiful tears over her best friend.

This girl. This person, who she’d divulged her secret to and spent so much time with… She’d betrayed her on a whim. All for a crumb of attention. That meant that she was no true friend. And that meant that as far as Numarei’s life went—the only people who mattered were her father, her teacher, and all those she had fought.

“Hah.” She laughed a simple laugh.

The answer had come to her, and it was quite simple, too. If the sole friend she had made in everyday life had betrayed her. Then it meant the everyday life itself was wrong.

Those who had deemed her father unjust. Those who had looked upon her nocturnal activities. They were all the product of normalcy! Of a society fitted with people who would not, and could not, understand her.

The police arrived soon after, but Kyoujyou Numarei went free. The underground sponsors she worked for had bribed off the police, and those that couldn’t be bribed, intimidated.

Thus, Kyoujyou Numarei abandoned everyday life. She fought opponent after opponent in a true martial-arts fashion, and at one point saw a giant portal open in the sky, and took a ship to some foreign world.

That’s when she met this lunatic. Jenn Dickhead or something. She’d angered her at first—called her ‘porn-bait’. But when Numarei beat on her, this lunatic didn’t get angry. She just rambled something about aesthetics and passed out.

And that was supposed to be it…

Then she appeared again. Then she made it into the battle royale, and then Numarei—all of a sudden, found herself saving Jenn from an unknown assailant. Then, she just kept on appearing.

At the dinner. At the weird triathlon.

And finally, at the fight to beat up the King.

She stood facing Jenn. She stood with a tear down her right eye, celebrating the fight at long last. And perhaps because after all this time—she’d found another friend. Someone who took Numarei in her entirety—someone who judged after all was said and done.

Numa. I like you just the way you are, so don't try to become someone else for me.

“Jenn. Promise me you’ll let me beat you up.”

“Sure thing, Asura Fist. But only if you do the same!”

The battle drew to its inevitable conclusion.

And so, step by painful step, they closed the distance between one another and put themselves at arm’s reach. Numarei punched first; her fist dug into Jenn’s solar plexus. It was no longer the whip of sound it used to be. But it still hurt.

Next was Jenn. She grabbed the fabric of Numarei’s top with one hand and headbutted her in the chin. The impact staggered her; her mouth bleeding—her head in a daze.

The crowd watched in silence. They were watching the death throes of the match before them. The slap of skin. The constant stagger after each and every blow. The air leaving their lungs in loud, painful grunts, only to be followed by laughter right after.

Numarei shut her eyes, closing them for so long that she seemed to fall asleep. Jenn saw it. For an infinitesimal moment, she followed in Numarei’s steps, and her body became slack from the half-second sleep.

“You win, Jenn.”

Numarei wrapped her hand around Jenn’s back. She leaned into her, mouth pressed against Jenn’s ear.

“Was I aesthetic?” asked Numarei, on the cusp of sleep.

“The best.”

They crumpled into each other, near-corpse against near-corpse. Jenn said nothing, but tightened her arms around Numarei, staining herself with her friend’s own shed blood.

“It seems the winner is set! Jenn Cockehead has won the battle!”