Slipping on Number 1

Snores and snores and snores pouring.

Splash—a final pour reaches the roof, the incessant snores come to an end.

A young girl rolls over in bed.

Her arms stretch, blessfully causing a groan that reaches the highest cave of her throat.

"Mm..?" She rubs her eyes. Skoink, skoink, kwink.

Eye boogers scratch at the corner of her eyes.

She sighs, sits up, and slumps forward.

She looks left then right, like a headless chicken suddenly gaining a head, in miracle.

"Why do I feel so dead…?"

She yawns and stretches again, her arms heading up.

She lets them fall back down, dry palms hitting her covers with a clack.

Skin wrinkles covers, covers wrinkle pajama dress.

The crickling briefly sounds like rain.

She uses the clack as an excuse to spin and twirl out of the bed.

Pirrouette into the air.

"Oop!" "Huurrrghh!"

The cheap wooden floor shakes under her feet.

She jumps up, up, up, shifting between her two feetsies.

"Cold! Cold! Cooooooold!"

"Why is it so cold!?"

Her entire room is cosmically shaken.

Overhead, she has medals and trophies hung up in place of windchimes.

They ring, seeming to serve their purpose.

Written on a few is her name, Miteki Bless.

Notedly, not a name she's proud of.

Except when on gold.

She smiles up at them while walking.

When she finds herself beneath the biggest trophy just swaying, she stops herself.

Any further and she'd be walking into one of her mirrors.

Her prized dressing station, held together by multiple hand-painted screens, built by who knows who, who knows which—blade and beauty, who wants to switch? (One of her favorite rhymes.)

If she inspected further and disregarded her rhymes, perhaps on the side ridges of the screens, she'd see the character for Ken. Mildly scratched up on every individual screen pair.

She'd like to believe everything was handcrafted by her skillful mother, whose entire capacity came of silk and sweet velvet.

"Ma…" She looked down, her nose grazing a lower-hanging medal.

Marked from 2008.

'Congrats on becoming an ambassador!'

Miteki Bless scoffed, her hand up to her cheek. The back of it blanketed by her black-brown dependent on the lighting and longishly straight hair.

"Should I ask ma if my birthday has passed yet?"

"Do I check the calendar?"

"But where is it?" She talked to herself, contemplating and overthinking without ever looking around.

She stood in place, her eyes looking ahead into the mirror, the medal between her eyes placed exactly like a crosshair.

Bullseye.

She made finger guns. Looking at the her in the mirror, who was headshotted by the medal.

She laughed at her own antics. "So stupid!"

What a lonely soul.

It's pathetic.

Were those her thoughts just now?

The mirrors communicated telepathically.

They cast a sparkling shine on her white teeth.

Gaze upon that gummy smile, those could not be her thoughts, such a sweet thing… it was an evil eye, like a witch casting a spell on the prettiest girl.

The mirrors ended their telepathic conversation there.

"I'll just ask the council… one of them should know."

"I should be… 14?"

"The council members aren't much older than me either…"

They were all sweet individuals between 16, 15 and 18. Head strong, virtuous and righteous in morals that footslogged with hearts gearing towards the "people."

She suddenly smacked away the medal in front of her. The thin, cotton thread that lay invisible in the air's music was pulled a few "hards" too hard, tooting like the c note.

It slinked off the small and hollow cardboard platform extensively hot-glued to the ceiling.

She jumped at the loud thud, "Hum! Hum! Humhumhum…!"

"The unintended effect!"

She pointed at the mirror. The mirror reflected her image back into her eyes.

Back to the topic at hand… though, the things she spoke about were empty in anchoring.

"I can't let either of you die!"

Miteki Bless was pointing at Miteki Bless, while directing the words out of her speaking mouth to ears that were not here.

Her face crinkled up, her nose particularly rising.

She approached the mirror more closely, her steps kicking aside the spilt medal.

"Uyehara Eme! You have the prettiest hair in the world, and it is no secret that I want to touch it, and stroke it, and tangle it, and flat it, and detangle it, and run my fingers through it, and sniff it, and bury my face in it, and disgustingly curiously chew on at the very least---one strand!"

"So, please! Don't kill yourself! Don't die!"

She turned to her left. Two more mirrors.

She hopscotched over to them, peering her head into the closest one.

"So, guess you two will be the twins… huh."

Starting with… "Kamiya Ketsuhiko."

"I have an intense, deep, indescribable feeling of passion and admiration that beats out of my chest, and this feeling says it is only for you."

Her eyes glared into the open void.

Her eyes purred against her forehead, tilting at an intense angle.

"I had once come to school forgetting my lunch and you… you gave me a snack."

"So, please. Savior Prince, don't die. Don't commit suicide, you are like the messiah of snacks."

"You came into my life exactly when I needed you."

She shifted on the balls of her feet, her loosened-from-turning bedtime yukata swirled with red snow-flakes falling down to her shoulders.

"Kamiya Ketsukira… as your name suggests, you are light. You move in silence."

"You order a presence to yourself, and one that reminds me of those nooses in the haunted house we went to for that one project."

"It's something pretty in the dark that you're too scared to touch."

"I want you to keep being my light. Don't commit suicide!"

She turned around all in haste, all excited, the back of her left foot landing on the cotton thread with the toes digging down into the medal's blue ribbon.

She gasped as the medal slipped across the floor.

She was forced into a split. "Ack!"

"How ironic!" She whined, the corner of her lips spilling over, drooping into sadness, like trees weighed down by a storm.

Storms were of Mother, Nature.

"Slipping thanks to my… Number One!"

Medals were of Miteki, Bless.

The trees had the uncaged ability of not self-inflicting storms upon themselves, though they were striking.

Miteki Bless' storms were wholly inflicted upon herself, infected by herself.

She was a syringe of storms. It took one push, and a single vein to spread among cells.

Her cells chemicalizing in her face, she looks asunder, still thundered to the floor, toes opposite oceans of each other, "Other Number Ones! You'd never harm me, I know!"

She strained to push herself up, her legs working like chopsticks closing in on Korean fried chicken, basked extra in bread crumbs and oil.

Cartoons noises, cartoon physics, cartoon grunts… another stretch, bending down to touch her heels from the front.

The stretching counter: The 50th Stretch of the Gigantic Courtyard shunned Beside Hanayaga Village. …Ominous and not a handful.

"Mm." No shame on her face.

She resumes as is.

There are two mirrors on the right side, mirroring the left side, of which mirrored the right side, that mirrored the left side.

"Hosoo Higura."

"I love silently reading beside you."

"I love the way you eat. It's weird, even I know that. I can't help but stare while you eat. I believe myself not to be a pervert, but your lips are so pretty when they open and close."

"Your teeth are jewels. Your eyes are plaque, very hard to remove and very visible. Once your eyes are on me, I can never look away, I can always tell when you're looking at me, I can never forgive you for not looking at me more than you do. It feels like your eyes never leave me when you look away."

"Don't die. I'll miss that feeling."

She jumps twice to shake the anxious, agitated feeling out of her body.

She shakes her arms and hands, trying to make the excess flow out through her fingertips.

Magic isn't real at this time, unfortunately. Please call later.

Last mirror.

"Muraoka Rii. Your name sounds like fantasy."

"Haha," her chin rises. "Your parents must've read too many novels."

"Just kidding, you do! You do! Tooooo~much~novels~Muraoka-san!"

She downed her phlegm, drastically dipping her head the longer the downing went on.

"We don't talk much, I don't know what to say about you."

"I know what I like about you." She clarified.

She was really worrying, as if Muraoka-san was here in the room with her, breathing inside the mirror.

Could she be hallucinating? Or, she was that good of an actress.

It was that she was a good actress—Muraoka, if she were in that mirror and truly alive, the mirror would fog at her breath.

It was an act—because that Muraoka Rii was lifeless and detached.

"I love the way you manipulate teachers. Thanks to you, students can now express themselves. Whether it be with raccoon hair, like your brown and white stripes or with the simplest things like… little-blazer-modifications. You made our school feel like freedom, and I am so sorry it feels like a prison for you."

"Live, and I will try to make this a better place for you."

"… I can't do it alone. That'd be asking me to flametorch a global hailstorm to save Earth. What am I, God?"

She sighed in relief. "Now, I have a reference for what to say today."

"Will I mess up again?"

She thought long and hard.

Head…

Head empty.

"Okay. I can't disrupt my daily schedule."

She stomped her feet.

"Let us, lettuce go!"

In the corner of her room was a bucket with minerals and herbs, bamboo and sticks. The items sat below a tiny, square-shaped paper-sliding door.

It roamed around the height of Miteki's neck area.

She slid it open with two hands.

A long, vast farmer's land gradually piled up before her eyes. She formed binoculars with her hands, helping her eyes adjust to the light.

Everywhere within the radius of a fifteen minute walk was empty. The only life a dug up trail extending its breath for the miles of horizon ahead.

She twisted her arm out the window-sized, window-shaped door.

Rusty metal sounded.

There was a tap attached outside on the wall beside the window.

The water fell out but was caught by a well in the ground, serving simultaneously as a pond and a water catcher.

The tap water firstly went through a filter before being caught by the well that surrounded the entirety of the courtyard.

Miteki Bless had always wanted to put giant koi fish inside but her mother said no: what a waste of fresh autumnspringriver water.

What is that, she asked at the time, for no response to be given in return.

Her mother hadn't had the heart to tell her literal-taking daughter she'd been messing with her. Achoo, achoo, 'at the time' literal-taking daughter.

The guilt worsened whenever little baby Miteki Bless would see a frog hiding in the cardiac notch of the yard's water bushes.

Croak, croak, croak, the frog would go.

Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit, Miteki's poor attempt at conversation. Does the croaky come from the springriver autumns?

She would butcher the phrase every time without fail. Yes, the mom would swallow and lie.

"The croaky."

"Yes."

"The croaky-"

"Yes—"

"Croaky—"

"Croak—"

"Ye—"

Miteki Bless nodded to herself. She closed the tap water after rinsing off the sticks and sand-like mineral-herb mix in her scooping hand.

The water leaked through her fingers, escaping microbacteria corrosion.

"Great confirmation. I still think of ma when I clean my teeth."

Her routine hadn't heen ruined after all.

She chucked the mix and the sticks into her mouth, beginning to chew.

The countryside's perfect remedy to clean teeth.

She swallows, against her mother's recommendations.

"Beauty also comes from working on the inside." Miteki smirked proudly at the revelation.

The real reason was because she didn't know of a hygienic place to spit these properties out. And laziness.

Hey, it was easy access to a fun and efficient life.

She took a short bamboo out of the bucket.

It itched against every corner of her mouth, from teeth to tongue.

She was more soft when grating it against her tongue, in hopes of preventing any bamboo pricks from turning her tongue into a deadlyus, pricklyus cactus.

She dropped it into the pond. This, she could do.

She looked so proud of herself, doing it.

She slid the paper door—using two hands—to a close.

Teeth-Theatre performance over, world, look away.

She began cleaning up the dressing room.

She grabbed a rolling ladder rolling it past an odd conception mathingy-contraption—a long, spiralling straw that reached the ceiling—carefully extending up, angled directly in the front-beneath of the cardboard's hollow space.

She climbed up silently and resolutely, a bit too dramatic.

The medal repeatedly hit against the ladder's steps, trailing behind the cotton thread held in her fist.

She hooked it perfectly to the cardboard.

She dusted her hands off, pretending it was ten desolated days of work.

She jumped down, landing on two knees and ten fingers spread apart to asborb impact.

"Mouth clean…" She looked in the mirror, the second-head on her head staring disheveledly. "Hair!"

She roughed it up, rumpling it up into a dumpling bun.

The train would ruin it if she kept it down.

Her arms avalanched down and formed a T, like she was a magical girl shooting a beam.

Time!

She was ready for her lucky charm, a luck ritual of sorts.

She blew air through the spiralling straw.

This was one of her favorite experiments with the Venturi Effect, to which she earned a prize for in elementary school.

The straw is one big tube, that curves and spirals when it needs a reason to accelerate the breath blown through it. She'll admit, the spirals are more than a tiny flaw, purposeful. She wanted to challenge herself.

Ring!

The medals and trophies clink with each other. The air that flew out the straw's thin opening was a loud gust.

Her lucky charm.

It was time to head to school.

Ma, was a night shift worker and would be back in two hours.

"Goodbye, ma! I'll see you later!"