Tinkering With My Feelings

Terada-sensei had a voice like if you took a fork to a plate and slowed the playback right down.

Everything he said was shrill, uninteresting and generally delivered with the energy of a man who had said this exact thing to this exact type of student approximately forty times before and had long since made peace with the repetition.

Way to make a girl feel special, huh?

"Ishikura-san. Your Japanese literature marks."

What about them?

"Mm."

"They are not where they need to be."

Why? Didya lose 'em or something?

"Mm."

"University entrance examinations are not—"

That tears it!

I was not listening anymore.

Trying not to cry, really. I hate awkwardly confrontational conversations with teachers. There's something about being looked at across a desk by someone who has already categorized you that makes my chest do a thing I don't really have a word for. Not shame, exactly. More like — being held up to a light and found dim.

I begrudgingly nodded at what felt like appropriate intervals.

He handed me a paper.

My most recent graded assignment.

I looked at it.

I looked at it for exactly as long as it took to understand what I was looking at and then I stopped looking at it.

I stuffed my feelings about it somewhere deep down and internal where they could be processed at a more convenient time, specifically never.

"Thank you, Terada-sensei," I said, with half a smile that didn't really convey anything. Not gratitude. Not resentment. Just: the correct number of facial muscles, arranged in the correct configuration, for the correct duration. I've gotten good at that.

He dismissed me.

The hallway was nearly empty save for the odd exhale of relief that the day was over with.

Tomoe fell into step beside me without a word, which was one of the things I liked most about her. She didn't ask. She didn't look at me with the look that meant she was about to ask. She was a quiet and reliable presence, and let the hallway noise fill the space between us. That's a skill, actually. Most people can't do it. Most people treat silence like a problem to be solved.

I was fine.

I was completely fine.

The paper was folded in my bag and I was not thinking about it.

I was not thinking about the number on it.

I was not thinking about Terada-sensei's face, which had the particular blankness of someone who has stopped being surprised by you.

I was not thinking about entrance examinations or what it means to be not where you need to be or whether there is, somewhere, a version of me that would have been where she needed to be by now.

I was—

A collision with someone happened in the way collisions always do — suddenly, and with no one's permission.

A shoulder. A bag.

I bumped into both at the same time.

Something clattered.

Several somethings clattered around.

I looked down.

Tiny pliers. A watch bezel, rolling in a small determined arc toward the wall. A screwdriver so small it had no business being on a floor this large. And my paper, which had escaped my bag with what I can only describe as opportunistic timing and was now face-up on the hallway floor, grade visible, as if it had been waiting for exactly this moment to air its grievances publicly.

For a second I just looked at it.

The number stared back at me from the floor with the same indifference it had from the page. Numbers don't care. That's their whole thing.

I dropped to my knees at the same moment someone else did.

We nearly connected foreheads.

I grabbed the pliers. He grabbed my paper. I grabbed the bezel. He grabbed the screwdriver. We both reached for the case at the same time and stopped.

I looked up.

Sugihara looked back.

Up close his eyes were — I am going to describe them clinically and without editorial — sharp. Relaxed. The eyes of someone who was not particularly alarmed by anything that had just happened. Not apologetic. Not flustered. Just — present. Taking stock. Like he'd run a quick assessment of the situation and found it manageable.

I found that irritating, briefly, before I found it something else.

"Sorry," he said, first, which I noted.

"No, I—" I started.

We were both still crouched. I was holding his tools. He was holding my paper. This was an equitable hostage situation and neither of us had moved to resolve it.

He glanced down at what was in his hand.

I remembered, approximately half a second too late, what was written on it. The number. The red ink. The comment in the margin that I had also not been reading and also had memorized.

"Your calligraphy," he said.

I prepared to die.

"It's oddly consistent. Like a font."

I blinked.

He tilted the paper slightly, as if examining it from a better angle, which no one had ever done with one of my failing papers before. In fact no one had ever done anything with one of my failing papers except hand it back and move on, as was correct and appropriate. "Most people's handwriting gets messier when they're writing fast. Yours doesn't."

"I— uh." I took the paper from him. "Who, me? Really?"

"Yeah you, really."

"No, I mean—" I laughed, which came out slightly unhinged. "It's just — no. It's nothing. It's just how I write."

He handed me my paper. I handed him the pliers and the bezel. We both stood up.

I became aware, standing, that he was taller than I'd registered while we were both crouched on a hallway floor conducting an equitable exchange of objects. This was neutral information. I filed it neutrally.

He looked at the screwdriver in his hand. Then at the case. Then with the particular economy of movement of someone who does not waste actions, he put everything back in order and closed the case like it had never been a problem at all. Thirty seconds, maybe. Things in their right places.

"Anywho," he said, with the energy of someone for whom this entire interaction had been perfectly normal, "I've gotta run." He glanced between me and Tomoe. "Ishikura, right? Nice to meet you. Tomoe too? Cool." A small nod. "Bye, girls."

And then he was gone. Down the hallway. Just like that.

Tomoe and I stood there.

The hallway resumed being a hallway.

"Woah," Tomoe said, after a moment. "Didn't know a tinkerer could be so chill like that."

I was holding a graded paper that a boy had just called a font and I was trying very hard to not deepfry from the inside out. My paper, specifically. Which he had looked at and not said anything about the number. Which he could see. Which was right there. And the thing he had chosen to comment on was my handwriting.

"Mm," I said.

This was, objectively, nothing.

I started walking.

Tomoe chased after me, a short distance behind.

"So," she said.

"So."

"You gonna be ok?"

"Huh? Yeah." That came out very unconvincingly.

"That wasn't very convincing."

I facepalmed internally.

"I'm alright, Tomoe. Really. Why shouldn't I be?"

"Because you're sweating."

"I'm walking!"

"Profusely."

"Okay."

I stopped walking.

There was a beat where I tried to locate, internally, what was actually happening. The paper. Terada-sensei. The number in red ink. The comment in the margin. The screwdriver on the floor. The handwriting. Like a font. The eyes that were not alarmed by anything.

Lot of things had happened in the last twenty minutes.

"You're doing that face again, Azu."

"Lots happened just now." I took a breath. "Failing Japanese lit, breaking the touch barrier with Sugihara, what now? Rain?"

"It's partly cloudy today, maybe." Tomoe offered.

"Standing here isn't productive. You wanna stay over today?"

She stared at me for a moment.

Then she grinned.

Her grin was brilliant and infectious, almost blinding compared to mine. It was a grin that told me exactly what I already knew — that she had clocked everything that had just happened and had opinions about it and was going to be very restrained about sharing them, right up until she wasn't.

"Sure."

A couple hundred steps and an uneventful train ride later, I'd made it home plus Tomoe.

The train had been good. The train had been the right amount of nothing. I'd looked out the window and let the city go past and not thought about anything specifically, just let the thoughts kind of drift without landing. That's the thing about trains. They give you permission to be in between.

"Azu, sis, you home?"

I heard my older sister Umeko's soft voice coming from upstairs.

I took off my shoes.

"Yeah! Tomoe's here too!" I called up to her.

I didn't need a response, she was probably busy cramming for her upcoming exams anyway.

I turned to Tomoe who was staring intensely at our Bonsai tree. She does this every time. I don't know what she's looking for. I've never asked. Some things are between a person and a bonsai.

"Well?" I asked. "Don't tell me you forgot how to talk."

"I'm working on it." She poked me.

"We need a game plan."

"Sugihara or your essay."

My face flushed.

I pouted.

A beat.

"My paper. Duh."

Suddenly with a gust of wind, Umeko rocketed down the flight of stairs.

Crap. I said her sleeper agent word.

"Essay!? Paper? What paper?"

I stuck my tongue out at her. "Beat it."

"Oh come on Azu, I won't beat down on you too hard. Besides, I got into-"

"The Know-It-All Education and Learning Center, yes."

Ume smirked with a knowing grin.

"Then you'd trust that I'm more than qualified to play teacher," she said.

"You and what grades, B-student?" I jabbed her playfully.

"Fine, fine. You win this round, but don't get used to it."

I gave her a thumbs up.

"Anyway, what paper? Where is it?"

"That's what Tomoe's here for."

"And they say blood is thicker than water, huh?" She drifted to her natural habitat, our pantry.

"Don't get lost in there, butter face."

She popped her head out. "I'm in better shape than you... Ow — ow, stop that!"

I swatted her back into the snack cave.

Tomoe tugged at my sleeve.

I followed.

"Ok, ok. I'll leave the food gremlin be. Let's go to my room."

I glanced back once at the front door. At the shoes I'd left by it. At the general direction of a hallway I was no longer in, where a boy had looked at my failing paper and said like a font and then put his tools away in thirty seconds and left like none of it was a problem.

I didn't know what to do with that yet.

I followed Tomoe upstairs.

I'd figure it out later.

Or I wouldn't.

Either way, my handwriting was consistent apparently.

That was something.