An Addendum To My Attempt To Explain Myself

OK, that didn’t do the job. I still look a bit insane, don’t I?

That’s fine, that’s fine.

I’ll let you in on a secret, I am just the slightest bit insane. What I said before was a white lie. I didn’t want to make myself look sane, or rather I can’t. I just wanted to look sane long enough to grab your attention.

There was another white lie to that end. Calling Yūkan a place for the unnaturally gifted might sound fine on its face, but unnatural here is not a mere stand-in for extraordinary. I truly mean unnatural.

So, when I say that I want to be the first man to walk to the moon, I mean it literally. There’s no catch here, I want to be to the moon what Messner was to Everest.

There, I sound insane now, right? How am I going to get to the moon unaided? Why would I even want to?

To answer the second question first, do you know who Charles Conrad is? No? Well then, what about Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin? Exactly. Everyone remembers the first to do something, and even second place gets to ride their coattails sometimes. By the time you’ve reached the third person, everyone has lost interest. If they hadn’t already by the second.

The moon is beautiful. I want to have a ‘moon first’. That’s why I want to be the first man to reach the moon unaided.

Now the first question, answered second; How would I go about this?

Explaining myself here will be painful, as it necessitates the revelation of yet another lie on my part. And I hate lying to you, we’re friends after all.

I am not average. In truth, I am exceptional.

All the events leading up to my enrolment at Yūkan were themselves exceptional, and if I were telling this story straight I would’ve started with them. But we can get to them now I suppose, we have as much time as I decide we do.

Things really start 3 days before where we currently are, my last Friday in my home town.

I was standing on the rooftop of my school just after the bell had rung out. The wind threatened to blow me over the railings and the rain was doing me no favours in keeping a foothold.

Across from me, just having exited the stairwell, was Sandra Sanders, the third hottest girl in my year.

The situation here is obvious, it’s a heartfelt confession. On the Monday, Sandra had slipped a love letter in my locker, a very extensive one at that. After a quick check of my phone's weather app, I told her to meet me on the rooftop after school on Friday.

The reason being; I am no stranger to confessions. Receiving them that is. It was annoying at first, having all of these girls, whom I would never even think of dating, assaulting me with sensual requests at all times of day. In class, in the cafeteria, in my bedroom, in my sink. I simply couldn’t catch a break.

But after the first dozen girls, I realized something.

I love rejecting women.

The moment where I see their hearts break through their wide eyes sustains my soul. That’s the only common reaction, the heartbreak. Every girl reacts in a different way, and that’s what makes it so exhilarating.

When it comes to a rejection, I really like to set a scene, make a moment out of it. That’s why when I saw Friday’s weather, I knew that was the day for it. Wind and rain make everything a little more dramatic, a little more transparent.

Back to Sandra. Her breath was ragged and, leaning against the door, she was getting equally soaked as I while she tried to gain her composure.

I had always appreciated that our school had white shirts, it made the rooftop rain play a double success. Not only did it provide drama, it almost always revealed the colour of the bra my confessor was wearing. It was always a fascinating revelation. The colours you wear under a uniform are so personal, they reflect the truth of the self.

Sandra was wearing a black push up bra. This had surprised me somewhat. Despite being the third hottest girl in my year (and by some margin), she wasn’t particularly flashy. She had that image of the ‘good girl’, someone who wouldn’t find themselves standing across from a guy in the rain until her final year of highschool, not her first.

The black bra, and its contrast to that image of Sandra’s, suggested to me something of an underrated head game on her part. I am certain she is into some nasty shit, even today.

“Melo!” Sandra shouted at me after she had composed herself.

I turned to face her straight on. Up until that point, I had been observing her through my peripheral vision. A few dozen rejections ago, it had been divined to me that the dramatic half turn would make some girls knees buckle. Ever since, I’d made sure to incorporate it into the routine.

But Sandra remained on her feet. As was expected of the year’s third most attractive girl.

“Sandra...” I said, running a hand through my slick hair.

“I… I have something I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time!”

There it is. The ‘long time’. Women love to drop this one whenever the crush has persisted for longer than a week.

“I know, Sandra… I’ve always known…”

“You have?” Sandra was barely holding back her tears at this stage.

“I think so… but maybe you should say it just so there are no misunderstandings.”

That one has caused a couple of the weaker willed girls to falter. It’s no fun, I don’t even get to do the rejection part of the confession when that happens.

“Melo… I… I’ve always liked you! Ever since I laid eyes on you, I knew you were the one for me!”

Well done Sandra, you’ve proven yourself a cut above the lambs, you’re a fully-fledged sheep. I had thought. But you still made a net loss of my respect with that response, we only met each other for the first time 3 weeks ago.

“Sandra, thank you. Your heartfelt confession, it means the world to me…”

The edges of Sandra’s lips twitched upwards slightly, daring to believe they could be allowed to smile, that Sandra would be the girl to finally win. Ahahaha, foolish lips!

“However…”

I turned around and leaned my elbows on the railing, looking out into the distance. This was half to make myself seem genuinely sad and half so she couldn’t see me smiling. I heard her stumble backwards but didn’t hear the wet plop to the floor I was expecting to follow. She must have steadied herself against the doorframe.

“My heart belongs to someone else, I’m sorry.”

“Someone else? Who is she???? Is it Sam? I’m better than Sam.”

“No, it’s not Sam.”

Sam was the second hottest girl in our year. Sandra wouldn’t have known this, but since I Sam went to the same middle school as me, I had already rejected her.

“Did you ever have a crush on someone when you were a child, Sandra?”

“Of course I did…”

“Then what happened? Why are you here now, when another once held your heart?”

“We both grew older, became different people.”

Checkmate.

“What if he hadn’t?”

Turning myself around, I faced her once more. Another convenient thing about the rain, if I just contort my facial muscles the right way, you can’t tell from a distance that I’m not crying.

“When I was 8 years old, I made one of those stupid promises that kids make. ‘I’ll marry you when I get older.’ Alice, that was her name, and what a name it was. Alice and I made this promise to each other years ago. And at the time I fully expected to move on, to forget such a promise.”

I rubbed my eyes with my sleeve, pretending to wipe away some tears.

“In retrospect, it was a bad idea to be making promises while lying on the train tracks. We were both so caught up imagining our future wedding, that neither of us heard the horns of the oncoming locomotive. Alice was ripped from this world by a freighter train I later found out was transporting lava lamps cross country.”

Putting my head in my hands, I had made sure to leave a gap in between my fingers to peak out at Sandra. At this point the tears were streaming down her face, I had her hook line and sinker. This is where I always dropped the killer line, have the girl run into my arms and hug me. It was genius, I got to cop a feel and reject the girl in one smooth move.

“We are not the same, Sandra. Alice never got to grow up. She’s still that 8 year old girl who thinks I’m going to marry here. And I can’t move past that. I’m sorry Sandra. I’m sorry!”

I turned around and pretended to start crying against the railings. I felt like boobs to the back that day, to be quite frank. That was my only reasoning.

“Melo!!!”

Sandra took off from where she was, plotting a course directly for my back. In but a few moments, I would be feeling the pleasures of breasts assaulting my tingling spine. At least, that’s what I thought. Something went wrong.

In the few seconds between the stairwell and my back, the wind picked up dramatically. I heard the squeak of slipping sneakers just behind me. Everything from there happened in slow motion.

Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw the outline of Sandra’s black bra. I’d never had the opportunity to reject a girl with boobs at eye level, and Sandra was no exception. She was flying through the air, right over the railings. The wind had lifted her off her feet and into the air when she slipped.

That moment lasted an eternity, I could see it happening again. I had brought Alice to the train tracks, I had brought Sandra to the rooftop. It was going to look really bad if another girl died because of me.

With nothing but self-preservation on my mind, I reached out to grab Sandra’s outstretched arm. As soon as we clasped hands, I was reminded why she was number 3. Those couple of extra pounds that Sam and Kate didn’t have pulled me over the railings with her.

The school was 4 stories tall, so whoever took the brunt of the fall was going to die, that was certain. I wrapped my body around Sandra’s as we fell, making sure I didn’t miss out on what was sure to be my last opportunity to feel her up. My plan was to gain control of the situation, have her on top on the way down and then flip our positions right before we hit the ground. That way, perhaps, I could keep both my reputation and bones intact.

Just before we hit the ground, I closed my eyes and swung my weight around to put Sandra on the bottom and braced for impact.

But it never came. My eyes weren’t opened by the sound of Sandra’s neck snapping satisfactorily, but by a chorus of applause. There we were, Sandra and I, floating inches off the ground. Everyone in the school building had seen us fall and were clapping my performance from the windows. Cheers and whistles rang out from everywhere.

I set Sandra down lightly on the ground before I fell to her side. I felt exhausted but exhilarated all the same. For the first time since I was 8, I found something that excited me more than crushing the hearts of women.

Last Friday, I learned to walk on air.