Episode 3: Planned Obsolescence

It was a warm, sunny day in late April, about two weeks after the goo incident that changed the literature club’s lives forever. Kasumi was walking out of a convenience store, with a soda and a bag of chips in hand.

As she was walking down the street, she was humming along to a song on her phone, which Mimori had of course recommended to her and she had gotten into (unironically, actually).

Kasumi felt super happy. It was Friday, it was sunny instead of rainy like the weather forecast had said, and she was finally comfortable in her breasts, which were enhanced by her new kinda-shapeshifting powers.

To her, life was at its peak.

I’m in such a good mood I wanna jump like an anime girl!

And so she did. But when she jumped right at the start of the second chorus, her phone fell out of her skirt pocket and landed face down on the cement, cracking the screen and who knows what else.

Kasumi did a gasp, which sounded a bit more like a squeak before looking back and forth and picking up her phone like it was a hot potato.

She then quickly shoved it back into her pocket with her earbuds and made a beeline across the street to the library, where she was planning to meet Mimori so they could hang out and study.

Speed-walking up to the place, all out of breath, Kasumi flung open the doors to the entrance like it was nothing and headed to where Mimori said she was going to be.

Sure enough, she was in the general seating area, sitting in a beanbag chair, reading what looked like a seinen manga… which was fine by her.

Of course, it’s a seinen and not a shonen, she noted internally. Mimo-chan has never cared for shonen.

Mimori noticed her and perked up, looking very excited.

“Guess what?” she whisper-shouted, although they were about three feet away from each other. But yet again, it’s a library we’re talking about.

“What?” Kasumi asked curiously, shushing her voice too.

“Peter is here.”

Kasumi blushed deeply, clearly embarrassed. “H-he is?”

“Yup. He was looking at the CDs last time I checked.”

Cartoonishly, Kasumi scooted her butt into a lounge chair that was right next to her friend and craned her head to look.

“Heh heh,” she said in the flattest, most expressionless voice she could. “It’s not like I like him or anything.” Then, she looked back at Mimori, signaling her to come closer.

Mimori scooted closer to her in less than a second.

“Yes? Whatcha want, need?” She was obviously excited.

“Uhh…” Kasumi’s voice trailed off.

I probably shouldn’t tell her yet, Kasumi thought. We should get started on whatever it is that we’re going to do first.

“You look happier than usual,” she noted. Her friend appeared all fidgety, even while she was reading that manga.

“I sure am! I hung out with Green today!”

Kasumi looked confused for a second, then remembered who she was talking about. “Oh, Hank! Right! And how was it?”

“We were just looking at pony stuff. He asked what I wanted and I got this book.” She held up her gift. “The next volume in the series!”

“Nyeh…” Kasumi smirked, amused. She didn’t mind her friend’s obsessions, so whenever she brought up anime and manga, Kasumi acted neutral. “You’re that behind, huh? How many volumes are out right now?”

“Meeh! So anyway, are you gonna talk to him before he leaves?”

“Peter?” Kasumi blushed yet again. “No. It’s not like I talk to Mari about him or anything.”

Mimori was slightly shocked. “Such a specific detail!”

“Well, uh, M-Mari talks in his voice and we have conversations and stuff.”

When Mimori heard that, her eyes widened and her mouth formed an “O” shape, then it went back into a smile.

“Maybe…”

“Ah ah ah! Don’t wanna hear about it!” Kasumi put her hand in front of Mimori’s face, baffling her. “I can’t even walk up and say ‘hi’ to mine!” Her mouth and eyebrows wavered and furrowed as she said that.

As Kasumi backed away from her friend, Mimori scooted back as well and grabbed a pencil and paper out of her backpack.

“Gee, somebody’s grumpy today.”

Kasumi pouted and crossed her arms across her chest. “Yeah. My phone screen is cracked real bad.”

Mimori’s face illuminated suddenly. “Like the website!?”

Kasumi rolled her eyes. “You are literally the worst person to talk to.”

“Yeah, I know, and I’m sorry that your phone screen broke. But you used the word ‘literally’ wrong. Like Buckley said—”

“Augh! You and your grammar! But thank you for your concern.”

Curiously, Kasumi took out her phone and quickly turned it on. She ended up grimacing at the distorted-looking picture of her friends on her lock screen.

“See what it did?” Kasumi was clearly on the verge of crying at how her phone looked now.

Mimori, eager to look at the damage, grimaced as well. “Eek! I never wanted to see that again in my lifetime, it makes me so sad! And look, the glass from the screen is coming off it! Why don’t you have a case for the poor thing?!”

Kasumi sighed greatly. “My parents never bothered to.”

“Great parenting,” Mimori said, giggling.

“And no, I never thought of getting one myself. Real stupid move, I know.” Suddenly, Kasumi had a great idea. “Hey, Mimori.”

“Mmm?” The girl looked at her friend with little interest. “I was just starting to draw! Whaddaya want?” she scowled a little.

Kasumi ignored that statement and tried to capture her friend’s attention yet again.

“Do you think we could go back in time to the point before I dropped my phone? Maybe we can alter history so I never break it.”

Mimori thought about that and nodded. “I don’t see why not. If Tomo teleported the five of us from Australia to the school, why not just us two to ten minutes ago?” She pocketed her drawing and pencil, picked up her backpack, and held her friend’s hand.

“I’m ready!” Mimori shout-whispered.

Kasumi nodded, nervous. “I hope no one’s looking. Anyway… rewind time to… about twenty minutes ago.”

Suddenly, Kasumi felt dizzy and was temporarily blinded by darkness and warmed by intense heat. Was this what Mimori had to deal with every time she time traveled? That would suck, she thought. I’d say it’s more painful than teleportation.

❤

Then, as if time knew what she was thinking, the darkness disappeared and thus Kasumi and Mimori were back in school, seconds after the bell rang signaling the end of the day.
“Um, is this what you wanted?” a voice spoke loudly beside her, over the sound of students entering the hallways.

“AH!” Kasumi was startled. “Oh, uh… yeah.”

“So, what do we do now? Not go home then? There was supposed to be no club meeting today due to everyone being busy…”

“I say—” Kasumi was rudely interrupted.

“I say, good show!”

Groan. “Let’s just go to the clubroom anyway and do whatever—EH?!”

Kasumi, digging into her skirt pocket, felt something rough that almost cut the palm of her hand. She took her phone out and noticed that her screen was still very much cracked.

“H-how could… how?” she said, her voice trembling.

“Oops. I kinda forgot to tell you about that. When I time travel, everything that’s on me stays the same. Like my drawing for instance!” She carefully pulled out her drawing and proudly showed her friend. “But the first time I time traveled, the ketchup stain that was on my skirt wasn’t there because the incident hadn’t happened at the time! Hmm… time travel is a strange thing.”

A flood of disappointment washed over Kasumi’s face. “Dang it! How am I supposed to tell my parents now? They’re gonna freak!”

Mimori gave her friend a weird look. “Wow… I’ve never heard you say that line before. Have you been watching too many early 2000s movies lately?”

Kasumi laughed, showing tolerance to humor for the first time since around lunch. “Yeah, you totally caught me. Anyway, what should I do?”

“We should go to the clubroom and brainstorm something, like an apology letter… I think that’s the best solution.”

“Good idea,” Kasumi agreed. “Let’s do it!”

“‘Don’t care what they say, all the games they play!” Mimori suddenly started singing and dancing and then stopped in the hallway abruptly. “Grab somebody—’”

“Nope, nope! We’re not going there today!”

★

When the girls arrived at their clubroom, they were shocked to see Tomo, Mari, and Naoko inside, like the cancellation of their meeting never happened.

“What are you guys doing here?” Kasumi asked, sounding disgusted but thankful at the same time.

“Oh, well I didn’t have any homework to do so I decided to hang out here instead,” explained Tomo simply.

“Same with Mari and I,” Naoko elaborated. “And this was all a coincidence.”

“Holy crap,” Mimori said under her breath. “That is one big coincidence.”

“So anyway,” Tomo continued. “What brings you two here?”

“Ah! Um, we kinda went back in time to fix my phone but it didn’t work!” Kasumi announced in a rush.

“Why?” Mari held her chin in her hand and leaned forward.

“It’s a long story,” Mimori said while Kasumi facepalmed.

“I don’t even want to know,” Naoko concluded.

“So I was thinking that we could write a quick apology speech to her parents,” Mimori said. “Because they’re stupid enough not to buy their daughter a case and then you just know they’ll get angry when she accidentally breaks it.”

Kasumi did another facepalm. “Yup, I guess that’s what we’re going to do today. The Can Do Anything Club, everyone.”

It went silent for about a second, allowing Naoko to mumble something about the sort-of title for the club and how stupid it sounded.

Mimori bounced up and down like a Mexican Jumping Bean. “Oh my God! Kasumi, you’ve caught my sarcasm!”

“You never even had it to begin with,” Kasumi snarked.

“But still! You’re turning into me!”

Naoko, who was listening to the girls intently, floated a piece of paper over to the bickering friends and waited patiently for them to pay attention.

Kasumi slammed her hands on the table, getting everyone’s attention.

“Guys, we need to get to work!” she shouted determinedly. Grabbing the piece of paper from Naoko’s invisible arm, she cleared her throat and began to read it out loud.

“‘I’m very sorry, but today I accidentally dropped my phone and the screen cracked. May I please get a new one? All magic comes with a price. -Kasumi.’ Huh? What does that last line have to do with anything?”

“Oh, sorry.” Naoko quickly magicked the piece of paper away from her and erased the sentence with a small pencil top eraser. “Once Upon a Time is my guilty pleasure right now, so some of their dialogue seeps into my writing.”

“Ohmigod YES I love ONCE too!” Mimori squealed. “And if you really like ONCE I highly recommend Secrets & Lies to you too! It’s also an ABC show!”

“Cool, thanks for the rec. But let’s get back on topic.”

Mimori’s smile on her face tightened and she began to mumble something to herself about people not caring about what she said.

Tomo, who was reading a book while the other girls were talking, noticed that the atmosphere in the room became very awkward, so she decided to break it. “Alright, everyone. Naoko had her idea for the speech. But since it’s Kasumi, I thought she should be the forerunner of it. Agreed?”

Everyone agreed in unison and the group got to work.

★

After the highly coincidental meeting of the Can Do Anything Club, the girls had come up with a nice speech in just under ten minutes. It was short, sweet, and to the point. Not overdone, but not undercooked either.

Unlike every other day after school, Kasumi decided to take the long route home so she could have some time to recite her speech, or as she called it in her head, The Death March.

“Dear parents,” she began in a quiet voice. “I am very sorry for dropping my—bah! I messed up! Words, words, words. I am very sorry that I dropped my phone today. It was an accident, and I didn’t mean to do it. Is it okay if you can purchase a new one for me, this time with a case and a screen protector? I promise I’ll pay you back when I get that much money. Love, Kasumi.’ Oh, why did Mimori even bother writing that? It doesn’t make any sense! Well, neither did the ‘Dear parents’ thing that Naoko wrote. We’re not writing a letter, people!”

Right as she said that, she arrived at her house.

Kasumi gulped and walked in carefully. She trotted up the stairs, past her mother and father, and up into her room, all in a matter of thirty seconds. (She did actually count in her head, believe it or not.)

“Phew!” Kasumi panted as she took off her backpack and set it on her floor. Somehow, that walk made her sweat like crazy.

Kasumi then proceeded to do what she did every day after school: turn the size of her breasts back to normal so her parents and brother wouldn’t notice, change into her casual clothes, and dump all of the binders out of her backpack. But instead of starting her homework, which she didn’t actually have today either, she instead looked at her phone in desperation.

“C’mon, phone! Work!” The aggravated girl kept pressing the power button impatiently, but nothing happened.

“AUGH!” Kasumi had enough. She read her piece of paper one more time and trudged downstairs, ready to meet her fate.

“ …”

Kasumi peeked around the bottom of the stairwell, and there were her parents, watching that stupid Western hospital show that she swore had been going on since forever.

“ … Hey, Mom?” Kasumi shakily crept out into the family room.

Unexpectedly, it was her dad that paid attention to her first.

“Hey, Kasu-chan! How was school today?” At that instance, her mom turned around too as she paused their show.

“Oh, um! It was fine! Heh heh…” Kasumi’s hands and lips were clearly trembling, but she carried on.

Alright, Kasumi! You’ve got this!

Her parents now had their full attention on her.

“Did something happen, Kasumi-chan?” asked her mother, realizing how uncomfortable her daughter was in front of them.

“Nyeah! I well, I, um… shoot.”

This is it. This is my one shot.

Instead of curling up and dying on the spot, Kasumi began to recite her speech to the best of her abilities. Her voice was shaking while she did it, but it was the best rendition she’d ever given that day.

Once she finished, her parents were obviously shocked by the news, but they weren’t as angry at her as she thought they would be.

“Well, since that one you said was totaled, I think now’s the time we should get you a new one,” her dad explained sternly.

Her mom nodded. “I like how you want to take responsibility for your mistake, I’m proud of you. But please promise me that you’ll do some chores around the house so you can earn the money to pay the phone off. ”

Kasumi let out a sigh of relief. Well, that went better than expected. The only bad outcome of this is the crap ton of chores I’m going to have to do.

“So, uh… when are we going to the phone store?” Kasumi had to ask.

“Tomorrow,” her dad continued. “I won’t be working on Saturday, so I’ll personally take you to a phone store so we can get you a brand new one. I think the iPhone 6 is the most recent one on the market right now? Unless you like Android more...”

Kasumi’s heart skipped a beat. She hadn’t thought about it before, but getting a new phone meant the one she had right now was going to go bye-bye.

My baby…

Knowing what to do, she called her friend (and nostalgia guru) Tomo. After thanking her parents, of course. A billion times.

★

Kasumi called her friend on her mom’s phone while laying sprawled out on her pink, flower-patterned bedsheets. In the background, her alarm clock/radio was playing a Top 40 station, something she always did whenever she had somebody on the phone.

Ring, ring.

“Hello?” a warm, low-quality sounding voice greeted her.

“Hey there, Tomo!” Kasumi responded happily. “Sorry for interrupting whatever you were doing, but I’d like to discuss something important with you.”

Knowing that her friend Tomo was always busy with something, whether it was watching old recordings of TV shows or studying for tests that were weeks from now, she wanted to make the conversation somewhat quick.

“Sure, what do you wanna talk about?”

“Do you happen to know about, um… iPhones?” Kasumi asked, slightly embarrassed for asking her and not looking it up online.

“Sure! I know a substantial amount. I don’t have one, though. I don’t have anything new, for that matter. Did you know smartphones cause bad posture and poor eyesight?”

“Gee, that makes me wanna get a new phone now. Anyways, Mom and Dad said ‘yes’ to me getting a new phone—”

“Yay!”

“But the new one is the 6th generation, and I have the 5C. I know they’re probably not too different from each other, but now I’m suddenly scared of having my baby replaced with a newer one.” She pouted.

“Well, I’m sure you could still purchase the one you had before, but—I can’t believe I’m saying this—get the latest and greatest thing. It might take some getting used to, but Generation Z had a much easier time adapting to things.”

“Cool,” said Kasumi, showing her soft side. “Thanks for your help.”

After she hung up, she set her mom’s phone to the side and hugged her pillow tight.

“Maybe it’s for the best,” she said softly. “I need to put my baby out of its misery anyway.”

★

In the end, getting the iPhone 6 was indeed a smart move. It ran leagues better than her old one did, plus since she had an SD card, everything that was on her old phone got safely transferred over to her new one. The only downside was she had to try to remember the passwords to apps, but other than that she was quite happy. It made her want to dance again.

With her new screen protector and her sparkly blue phone case with stars on it, she was ready to hit the streets again and jump all she wanted to.

Well… as long as her phone was in her pocket or something. It could still fall on the ground and get the case all dirty or the screen protector all scratchy.

Augh, the joy of technology. You can’t have fun like you used to…

Kasumi was suddenly throwing it back to Tomo’s time (that she didn’t even live in).

On Monday, her friends were all eager to see her new phone, even though their classmates probably already had the new model.

“Wow, nice case!” complimented Mari, grinning. “I like the stars on it! And how it’s super sparkly!”

“I like the way his eyes sparkle in his eyes,” said Mimori in fake amazement, obviously referencing something. Kasumi rolled her eyes in return.

“Can I touch it?” asked Naoko. “I’ve never touched an iPhone 6 before.”

“Uh, weird statement but okay.” Kasumi handed Naoko the phone gently and she started to pet it like a kitten.

“New technology is fascinating,” Tomo lamented. “It’s crazy to think how much it has advanced in such little time.”

“No kidding,” Kasumi added, looking at her friend. She appeared to be having some sort of existential crisis in real-time. She couldn’t blame her.

“So did you learn anything today?” Mari asked, impersonating a teacher. Not any specific teacher, just a teacher.

“Umm…” Kasumi had to think for a moment.

“If this ends on an ‘everybody laughs’ cliche I’m gonna—” grumbled Mimori, being angrier than she had to be.

The girl then had a eureka moment. Sort of. “I learned that I shouldn’t… um… overestimate my parents?”

“That is true,” Tomo commented.

And then the room was awkwardly silent until Mimori started ranting about TV show cliches.