After Laughter

“I haven’t studied at all for the summative today!” 

He heard the outside-voice of a certain bruiser rise above the clamor of lunchtime before he rounded the door. Before deciding to throw in his own, he took the time to again admire the results of his machinations; just a few weeks ago, he could hardly imagine slipping into the classroom with such little fanfare. 

“You’re not the only one.” Theo finally said, and the tallest student in the room turned around in surprise. 

“Look at who finally decided to turn up.” Hara grunted, clearly more happy to see the yankee late than anything else. With him as usual was Sakai, though he was engrossed with something on his phone. 

“I didn’t peg you the type to play hooky.” 

“I’ve got my excuse in order. And I’m here now, aren’t I?”

Never mind that he would have preferred to be sleeping like a stone, or that he saw no point to keeping up this student charade with the current mission as ill-defined as “providing support”. 

The word came straight from his boss: it was “imperative that he maintained his cover”, and so he was here to attend the rest of the day’s classes. As if the extension wasn’t enough of a slap to the face. But Theo no longer had the energy to protest, and it wasn’t the first time he was going into the new day with zero sleep anyhow. 

And none of that mattered to his fellow students. Hara followed up with a question.  

“Doesn’t have anything to do with why your girlfriend is absent too, does it?” 

Theo shifted on his heels uncomfortably. It was about time he cleared that misunderstanding up. 

“That girl, she’s not actually my girl–“

“This is bad. It’s so frickin’ bad, man.”

After plugging away at his phone all the while, Sakai spoke up only to cut Theo off. The boy in glasses had suddenly become restless– unable to decide if he should be seated or not, or face this way or that.

“Dang it. Dang it all!” 

“What’s up with him?”

“Hell if I know.”

Theo was at a loss at this episode, and apparently so was Hara.
Sakai whipped around to glare at them both.

“What’s up with me!? Someone nicked the centerpiece drone for the club’s drone show is what’s up! I spent a year’s allowance on that dang thing, and some motherfrogger–” he said in rapid-fire, before choking up. He looked like he was about to bust a vein. 

“Mother… frogger?” 

Hara could only shrug at Theo’s question. He then proceeded to put a hand to Sakai’s shoulder, before giving his good friend a few “pats” in the back. 

That got rid of whatever was choking him up, with the welcome side effect of heading off what was looking to be an impending rant. Sakai slumped back to his seat, coughing.

Now that it felt that he could get away with levity, Theo decided to tease him. 

“That’s a bad bit of luck. But don’t let it get you down, Sakai-san.” he said, starting out deadpan before snickering.

“Look at it like this– you ever hear of that story about the stolen bike and the total happiness in the world?” 

If Sakai ever did hear of it, Theo never found out. Sakai stormed off, leaving Hara and him to each other for another time. Theo acted fast; by waving to Hara and making his own courteous exit, he wanted to spare the guy a repeat of the last-time awkwardness, besides finally helping himself to a proper seat.

Sinking into the wood and aluminum chair, he thought idly about how this place in this classroom would remain his for some time yet. At the same time, he wondered if he wasn’t being too much of an asshole to Four-Eyes. He resolved to make it up to him in some way.

What the hell, I owe the guy a drone.

Maybe he could start with subbing for Sakai’s day duty tomorrow. 

The lunch break ended not long after, and the issue of the summative test again reared its ugly head. He was barely hanging on to consciousness as he was; to add misery to strife, it had to be a math test of all things. Theo was already struggling to put two and two together, much less remember the trigonometric identities. 

In the wake of that disastrous exam, classes mercifully ended, and he would’ve loved to do nothing but crash into a heap as soon as he made his way back to the safehouse. 

Just before he could, Theo saw that the uplink was lit up with a message. Its contents were like a shot of epinephrine, but his exhaustion could not be staved off for that much longer. 

At the very least, when Theo finally crashed down on the bed, he did so with one less burden off his mind. Now he had something solid to stay here for. Theo Lovell had a new objective.

Before he could start counting sheep, it was already Friday, and then just as quickly came the end of the week’s classes. For a marginally refreshed Theo, the first day of his new term would not pass by without incident. 

He had made good on his private promise to take over from Sakai on his day duty, and was coming back from taking care of the class trash when he heard voices coming from the classroom.

Speaking of, somebody must be have dumped some more.

He saw the sunset spill through the open door, and Theo was briefly hit with déjà vu. Unlike last time, he didn’t give much thought to entering the room. 

There, were four girls again. The clique had their backs to him; only the one girl who wasn’t part of it saw him, and so the other three kept on singing their same old song. 

“…don’t you hear about the things Theo-san says about you?” 

Theo was about to tell them exactly what it was he had to say in the flesh, when– 

“Theo-san!”

The lone girl beat him to the punch, calling to him cheerfully. She certainly looked happy to see him; probably, he thought, she would have been happy with anyone that gave her an out from this shitshow. 

“I’ve been waiting for you to come back. I was wondering if you were free to go somewhere after this. Maybe that karaoke place we went to that one time?”

Picking up quickly on her act, Theo responded like it was the most natural thing in the world. 

“You read my mind, Ema.”

The name Ema repeated on all four of the girls’ mouths in varying degrees of disbelief. 

Theo didn’t let that slip him up; he turned to the clique, singling one girl out in particular with a casual finger.

“Ah– I hope you girls don’t mind me nosing in on your girl talk. Naomi-san, right?” 

Maybe it was Ema’s show of boldness, or maybe Theo overestimated just how much his effect on the school’s girls had died down. 

Either way, Naomi must have short-circuited. She blanked out of the conversation completely. Seeing what had happened to her, her two pals started blurting out an increasingly unlikely series of excuses for why they should be anywhere but here.

Somehow, the situation made Theo think of a figure of speech he heard from Sakai but couldn’t recall exactly: something about the screw that stuck out getting driven in? 

The clique didn’t wait for him to remember. With their overwhelmed center needing the other two as crutches, the three screwheads shuffled right out of the classroom. 

Theo regarded the remaining girl, and searched for any traces of that terrible night. Of course, he found nothing. Ema Kurose would remember nothing of Kuroshima; not even to be grateful that such horrors had been wiped from her memory. 

“Theo-san…? You’re staring.”

So he was. 

“So, what’s up with you being absent yesterday?” he asked, a mite too quickly. 

Ema responded with unusual speed herself; Theo figured she wanted to put the whole clique affair behind.  

“It was the damndest thing. Both Dad and I overslept! Well into the afternoon, and by then it was too late to do anything about school. It was real embarrassing having to explain that this morning. And as if that wasn’t enough, I even got scolded by Tanabe-sensei for my part-time work before he let me go, ehehe...” she answered, laughing at herself.

Theo knew immediately that the flash of boldness that Ema had shown was just that– a flash in the pan. 

He wasn't merely referring to today; he'd heard what Ema had done on that island. Theo struggled to square the girl before him with the same girl that had body-blocked that monster to save a stranger. She must be good at running into things, if nothing else. 

He relented. No matter how he looked at it, this Ema was still much the same normal girl. 

Though, there might be more to you than that. Something interesting. 

He wouldn’t mind being around to find out for sure, Theo thought. He was probably going to be here for the rest of the year, after all. And he needed to improve his familiarity with more than just the grounds of the school, if he was going to accomplish his extra mission. Theo made up his mind.

“So, Kurose-san. Do you want to go somewhere after this?”

***

Ema’s feet landed on the wet concrete of the wharf. Ahead of her, steaming away, was the Kofuku-maru. Impossibly, from where she was, she could see the man on the boat’s wheel, his silhouette bathed in the unreal light of the various instruments scattered around the bridge. Though he had his back to her, she felt like she knew him very well. 

Over where the Kofuku-maru was steaming towards was a bank of darkening clouds, monumental in their size. There was a looming dread there, but also a promise. Ema steeled herself. She clenched her fingers–

And they brushed against the soft cotton of her bedsheets as she closed her fist. 

As she got up, it felt like her cheeks were still burning. It was something lingering on from last night, when she stewed over the events in that orange-lit classroom before she fell asleep. 

She didn't know she could be so bold. Of course, it didn’t last very long at all, and she let herself be swept up by Theo-san again.

Ema gave out a sigh that became a yawn. Sometimes, it seemed that she was stubborn in all the wrong things, and a pushover in all the wrong things. Ema Kurose had always been that way. But maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to shake it up sometimes. 

She reached out to turn off her bed lamp, when a strange feeling came over her.

That was odd. Wasn’t there supposed to be something behind the lamp? She couldn’t remember what that thing was exactly, though. She might just be imagining things again. At the end of a token search, she shrugged and went about her morning routine. Whatever it was, it would probably pop up again eventually. 

Ema switched over to the other room to fix her father’s bed, only to find it all made. She blinked, then rubbed at her eyes, before hearing two familiar voices through the walls.

“What do you mean you’re withdrawing, boss?” 

“I meant it as I said it– I ain’t cut out for chairman. I already have my hands full keeping you jokers in line.” 

It was her father and his first mate, as always. Unsure what to do now, Ema just stood there and listened as her father groaned. 

“I must have been dragged into one hell of a bender if I can’t remember a lick of what happened the other night. Hell, even the past month’s gotten spotty.”

“Heh, that bad? What were you assholes downing?”

“That’s only the short of it. Look at my back.”

The mate who had been chuckling became silent, and Ema wondered what her father was showing him. It couldn’t be the tattoos. The mate had already seen them a long time ago– he was the only one in this town who had. The mate spoke again in a bewildered voice.

“Just what the hell were you up to last night?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. None of those jokers from the council could tell– or would tell me. But that settles it. I ain’t hanging around for a drink with those guys ever again.” her father said, adding, “Coming back to what we were talking about, where was I? Ah, yeah– with the energy boys backing off, there’s no reason for me to be there. End of story.”

“They sure are quick to change their tune, now that they’ve found themselves the mother lode on Kuroshima. Much easier to get to than bothering with that deep sea crap, that’s for sure.” the mate replied.

“All’s well the ends well for everybody.” 

“But you know, the corpos will be back. Someday. And the chairman’s bound not to forget our little coup attempt.” 

“They can play the long game all they want– we’ve got our own to look after.”

As the two continued their talk, a weird feeling came to Ema that she’d heard her father say that before. Try as she might, she couldn’t remember when or where.

She shook herself out of it; from the smell of things, breakfast wasn't yet made, and she wanted to try something new out. Ema opened the door into the fourteen-mat space that doubled as their living and dining room, and her father was there to greet her. 

“Mornin’, Ema.” 

“Morning, Dad.”

***