Chapter 12:

Persons Talk to People

As Usual, Ishikura Can't Tell The Time

Three days after the festival, I became convinced something was wrong.

Not because of evidence.

Because of the absence of it.

Nothing had gone wrong.

The booth had worked.

Yuta had texted me — we had exchanged numbers at some point during the flyer sessions, I have no memory of when, it just sort of happened the way things happen when you're not paying attention to logistics because you're too busy malfunctioning — about a podcast on clockwork mechanisms and I had listened to forty minutes of it and understood maybe sixty percent and loved it anyway.

The host had a voice like someone's patient uncle.

I had taken notes. I don't know why. I don't think Yuta asked me to.

I just did it and then looked at my notes afterward and felt like a person with a normal, reasonable life, which should have been a warning sign.

Tomoe had been texting in lowercase, which was her version of exercising restraint.

Honomi had sent a thumbs up about something and I wasn't sure what but it felt positive.

Umeko had looked at me at dinner and said "you seem different" and I said "I'm exactly the same" and she said "okay" in the exact tone that meant she was filing this away for later. I did not ask her to elaborate. I was not ready to elaborate. Some things need to breathe before they get words put on them.

Everything was fine.

So naturally I concluded that something was deeply, structurally, possibly cosmically wrong.

This is a pattern I have. I'm aware of it. Being aware of it has never once stopped me. I've tried. I've read things about it. I've had internal conversations where I explain to myself, patiently, using small words, that the absence of a problem is not itself a problem. My brain receives this information, processes it, nods along, and then continues doing what it was doing. There's simply no corrective mechanism. The pattern runs. I watch it run. We coexist.

Azu: hypothetically

Azu: if things are going well

Azu: is that a reason to be worried

Tomoe: AZUSA

Tomoe: NO

Welp, there goes her restraint.

Tomoe: THINGS GOING WELL IS NOT A THREAT

Azu: it's statistically suspicious

Tomoe: IT IS NOT

Azu: the absence of problems could indicate undetected problems

Tomoe: THAT'S NOT HOW PROBLEMS WORK

Azu: and how do you know??

Tomoe: BECAUSE I LIVE IN REALITY

Tomoe: WHERE ARE YOU LIVING???

Fair question.

I put my phone down.

I picked it back up.

Azu: okay but

Tomoe: NO "OK BUT"

Azu: I'm just

Tomoe: AZUSA

Azu: yeah okay

I put my phone down for real that time.

I made tea. I stood at the window for a while. Outside, the street was being completely normal.

Cars.

A person walking a dog that was in dire need of a fur trim.

A tree doing tree things.

Nothing was indicating structural failure.

The universe had no visible cracks.

I went to bed.

I stared at the ceiling.

I thought: maybe it's actually fine.

I thought: that's exactly what someone would think right before it stopped being fine.

I went to sleep at some point. I know this because I woke up.

I went to school.

I was going to be normal.

I was going to be so normal.

I had decided this on the train, with intention, with genuine commitment.

Normalcy. That was the goal.

To be normal and fine and not weird about anything.

I was a person going to school. I had a bag. I had breakfast.

I was, by most observable metrics, a functional member of society.

I repeated this a billion times to myself like a mantra.

Normal. Fine. Not weird. Normal. Fine.

I was halfway down the hall, normal-levels of normal, notebook in hand, not thinking about anyone specifically —

I saw him talking to a girl.

Third year.

She was laughing.

I narrowed my eyes. Then ducked out of sight before anyone saw me.

Okay, so.

Okay.

He wasn't laughing — he doesn't do that with strangers, he does the quiet focused thing — but he was talking and she was leaning and he had that look, the one where something has his attention, the one I have apparently memorized well enough to identify from fifteen meters down a hallway, which is information about myself I didn't need to have —

I turned around.

I went to a corner.

I stood in it.

Okay.

Breathe.

Okay.

He is a person.

Persons talk to people.

Persons talk to third-years who laugh at things.

This is a school. Schools have people in them. People talk. This is Tuesday and that is a conversation and I am standing in a corner being spectacularly, documentably, historically —

"Why are we in the corner," Tomoe said, from directly behind me.

I did not scream.

It was close.

"I'm thinking," I said.

"About what."

"Nothing. Concepts. The nature of —"

"Azusa. You can't stand in a corner and block my view at the same time. Who was she?"

"I don't know."

"Did you —"

"I went to the corner before I could find out."

Tomoe looked at the corner. She did a small, slow survey of it. The wall. The fire exit sign. Me, standing next to the fire exit sign.

"How long have you been here?"

"Approximately ninety seconds."

She put both hands on my shoulders.

"I need you to go talk to him."

"I can't just —"

"Go."

"Tomoe —"

"GO, Azusa, before I punt you over there."

I looked down the hall.

The girl was gone.

Yuta was standing alone looking at his phone. Doing absolutely nothing suspicious. Had never been doing anything suspicious. Just a person, in a hallway, looking at his phone.

Completely normal. The third-year had apparently gone somewhere and taken her laughter with her and left behind just: a boy, a hallway, a Tuesday.

I knew that.

I had known it the entire time I was in the corner.

That had not helped even slightly.

I walked over.

He looked up.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," I said. And then: "Who was that?"

Just — out. Immediately. No preamble. No easing in. The words simply left my body without consulting me.

Cursed mouth damn you.

He blinked.

"Shizukume. Third year. She dropped off a clock last month, wanted to know if it was done."

"Ah," I said.

"Is something —"

"I went to a corner," I said. "Down the hall. For like ninety seconds. When I saw you talking. I just — my brain went somewhere and my legs followed and I ended up in the corner and then Tomoe found me because she always finds me, I don't know how, it's not physically explainable. I think she has a tracking system. I've never found it. I've looked."

God, why did I say all that...

He looked down the hall.

At the corner.

Back at me.

"The corner by the fire exit," he said.

"Yes."

"Specifically."

"I needed a wall on two sides."

He nodded slowly. Like this was useful information that he was filing away for later reference, cross-indexed under something.

"You came back out," he said.

"I — what?"

"From the corner. You came back."

"I mean. Yes. Obviously. I wasn't going to live there."