Entry

Kritvik Bhatt

The sun brightly stood in the middle of the clear blue sky with a few shapeless clouds here and there. Those clouds, for some reason, seemed like the shreds of some torn-off paper.

Beneath it stood a large crowd in front of a cuboidal little shed at the edge of the wide street. Those guys were lined up, waiting for their turn. Others stood beneath the lines in groups, and some people were randomly walking inside the street, for some reason. There must have been about a hundred people, man—no doubt.

A guy took the tickets and stuff from the counter and turned right. I walked to the front at the counter after him. There was a woman in her twenties standing inside the shed, her body filled with fats, for some reason, and her face deadpan. She also had some marks on top of her cheeks, and she wore a black t-shirt with the blue and white logo of JenCon on the left side of her chest.

“Two tickets,” I said to her.

“Two?” She asked back as she looked at me.

I nodded.

She then turned her head downward and started to type on the computer system sitting between the two of us—turned toward her, obviously. She then moved her right hand down, took out a few brochures and other plastic cards, a band, and then kept them in front of her as she turned to me and said, “Five hundred rupees. Two-fifty each.”

I nodded as I took out the money from my right pocket, pulled a five hundred rupee note from that bunch, and then raised it to her.

She took it from her left hand and kept the brochures and stuff in front of me with her right hand. I took them up and turned back, pushing from between the lines of people to get out.

Sana was standing at the other end of the line, her arms crossed in front of her chest as she looked at me walking to her with both my hands filled with that stuff. “Well, I don’t think I could have come out of that mess alive.”

I smiled as I stopped in front of her and raised the plastic cards and stuff at her. “Look what they gave me.”

Sana turned her head to my hands and looked at the bands and stuff. She took out one band of the two, took a leaflet, and started to look at them. “It contains the schedule of events today,” She said as she looked at the leaflet. She then took another card which I held and said, “It got a QR code to get one,” her eyes widened, “month free of Kiss-Anime!”

“What?! Kiss-Anime is that legal anime streaming site, right?!” I asked her excitedly.

She turned to me. “That’s so cool, K! We got two month worth of free legal anime!”

I smiled and nodded.

She then turned to the bunch of other little cards and said, “You see, there must be more good deals here.”

“Man, first stick that band on my hand. It’s the ticket, maybe.”

“Yeah yeah, let’s do that first,” She said as she took the dark blue colored plastic band that she had taken and then wrapped it around my right wrist, with their ends on the top. She then took out the white edge to expose the adhesive area and then stuck it.

She then took the bunch of plastic cards, turned her head to me, and said, “Now you stick mine. I don’t really think I’d be able to do it with one hand.”

“Yeah,” I said as I continued looking downward. I took the band from her hands and started to stick the band on her right wrist. I placed it around her soft skinny wrist, peeled off the edge, and then pressed that edge to the other edge around her soft wrist.

“It was kinda tough for me to do that stuff, because I’ve never touched her hands before. Her hands… they were so… great. Man, I liked her hands, for some reason. And that band on her skinny wrist looked so good too.”

I then turned to my left and looked to the inside of the wide street where people were walking to. There was a little scanner at the front with a bunch of people who were checking the wrists of people for the bands and scanning them with a hand-held metal detector or stuff like that. Obviously, women had to go through a cubicle where they were checked. The street was turning to our right about a couple of dozen steps away.

We both started to walk to that place as we had our eyes downward toward her hands, where we looked at the brochures and discussed about them, with us smiling and occasionally chuckling.

***

The barrier and security stuff was now behind us and we were walking to the curvature, still smiling and chuckling as we discussed the cards that we got.

“Like, we have a one-month subscription to Kiss-Anime, access to the first volumes of four-five manga adaptations of Jenshin and its mates digitally, and a few new characters in the game if we scanned it on phone. It’s really cool.”

“Yeah, I’d definitely read those mangas,” I said as I turned my head to her. “And you can take those cards of new characters and stuff. After all, I don’t play that game.”

She turned her head from the cards to me and said, “Who said I was gonna give them to you anyway?”

I smiled. “Okay, man.”

She turned her head to the cards again and raised them to me. “Keep them safe. We’ll make a new Kiss-Anime account and scan one of the two. Then, after the first month is complete, we’d make another account and then scan the second one. Got it?”

I took them up and said, “Damn, are the QR codes in all of the Kiss-Anime cards different.”

“Well, yeah. It’s cool,” She smiled as she turned her head to the front. “I don’t really have pockets in my legging, or I’d have never given my deals to anyone, you see.”

I chuckled. “I’ll keep them safe, obviously,” I said as I kept the cards inside my pocket and then never took out my right hand out.

“Anyway, where is JenCon? Are we still not there?” She commented as she had her head to the front.

“Maybe it’s only some more steps away,” I replied.

There were a lot of people—all walking in the same direction as us. The place was filled with people’s indistinct chatter and footsteps, no doubt.

I moved my left hand inside the pocket of my pants too as we walked silently.

“Those… bastards who organized this are making me wait for too long. I’m gonna kill them now, you see.”

I chuckled. “Control yourself, man. It’s not their fault, obviously. The ground is built that way, for some reason.”

“Then I’m gonna kill those guys who made this ground.”

“Damn, you seem damned angry, man,” I chuckled again.

“Well, I’m serious, you see.”

“That’s sad, man.”

She frowned as she turned to me. “You see, you sound cringe speaking that.”

I chuckled again, for some reason, as I turned my head to her. “Maybe I learned it from you.”

“… That dialogue or just being cringe in general?”

“Both, man. Both.”

She smiled as she said, “Well, that was a really good one.”

“Damn! Come on, you’re not supposed to accept defeat, man!”

“Whatever.” She turned her head to the front. “Anyway, JenCon is just some steps away, you see. And, I have a list of things I wanna buy in my head already.”

“What do you plan on buying?” I asked her as I looked at her looking at the front.

She looked at me again and said, “A tee, first of all. And then, I’d buy some posters, some manga of Jenshin, and a key-chain.”

“Damn, I thought I’d just buy what I like.”

“You don’t really know Jenshin, that’s why.”

“Yeah.” We both turned our heads to the front. “Maybe.”

“I just looked at the events list, and there’s a really cool voice actress who voiced one of my favorite characters. She’s gonna be here and stage an event, and then she’ll be signing autographs.”

“She’s not a writer or something, so what she’d be signing, huh?”

“I don’t really know,” She shrugged. “Posters of some new season or a new game? They’d announce something, you see, so it’d be related to that. They didn’t really mention it on the brochure.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

We were walking on a curvature, man, and as the turn ended, we were able to see the end of the street. At the end of the street, there was a grand JenCon logo, blue and white in color, obviously, where some people were clicking their photos, and the gate was on the right edge of the street.

“Hey, look at that!” She excitedly pointed to her front.

I smiled. “Yeah.”

She suddenly started running. I looked at her little backpack being jerked up and down—with her arms straight, for some reason—as she ran.

“Sana! Don’t run!” I yelled toward her worriedly.

“No.”

I sighed out from my mouth, and then, with my hands in my pockets, I too started to run slowly toward her.

Just some steps in front of the big JenCon logo’s figure made of hard white plastic, she slowed down and started to walk to it. There was a guy at the right edge, and another one some steps away from him, just beside the center. There were two groups of photographers too, who clicked their photos. The one at the center walked away from the figure toward his group with a smile as Sana was walking to it.

“Show me the photo,” I overheard him as I stopped some steps away from her, looking at her back walking to it.

She suddenly turned to me, and with determination in her eyes, she commanded, “Click photos of me.”

“Huh? Here? Really?”

She irritably narrowed her eyes.

“O-Okay, okay.” I took out my smartphone from my right hand, clicked here and there on the screen for a couple of seconds to open the camera app, and then moved it in front of my chest, tilted ninety degrees. “Give me a pose and smile.”

She stood in front of the logo, moved her head downward, her right hand holding her left one in the center of her waist, and gave a smile.

“She’s… so damn pretty, man!” I thought, my eyes opened wide as I was looking at her. I then turned my eyes to the camera in front of my chest and clicked the photo. I tilted it straight again, zoomed a little, crouched down to get the ‘perfect angle’, and then clicked another one.

She then turned her head to her right—my left—and I clicked another photo.

Click!

“Done!” I shouted toward her.

With that smile, she started to walk toward me. “Show me.”

I stood up again as I opened the photos. She stopped in front of me and I turned my phone to her. She took it from my hands and glared at it. She then swiped left and looked at another one.

It was a photo of the close-up shot of her face when she had turned her head to her left. Then, she looked at the photo of her figure in front of the JenCon logo, her head tilted down. The logo was a little blurred, for some reason, but the white blurred background made her black clear figure eye-catching. “That’s sad,” She said with a smile. “You’re really good at clicking photos.”

I smiled and chuckled.

She suddenly turned her head to me and said, “Well, you’re my personal photographer for today now.”

“And my fee?” I joked.

She raised her eyebrows. “Well, you’re lucky that I let you live, you see.”

“Damn, really?”

She turned her head to her left at the entry gate and said, “Let’s go inside, then.”