You're Making Things Really Complicated Here

But Haruko was nowhere to be found.

I checked the shoe lockers. I checked the clubrooms. I checked the third floor, the second floor, and the first floor. I checked the principal's office. I checked the janitor's closet, the gym, and the science lab. Hell, I even checked the girl's toilets. No Haruko.

This wasn't the first time, either. When Haruko was supposedly sick, she hadn't shown up even though I'd done all that preparation. Today, I hadn't prepared one bit and she still wasn't around. Although I must say, this time it would be a lot harder to convince me she was stuck at home with a cold.

When I got back to homeroom, Ms. Yamada had arrived.

"Sorry, I'm late."

"Oh, that's okay! It was a bit of a mess this morning, huh? You should've told me you got lost, I'd have believed it!" she said.

Late. Got lost. Why does that sound familiar?

Thanks to my outburst not so long ago, the eyes of every single student in the class were attached to me.

But why did it sound so familiar?

I stood by the entrance. Unmoving.

Something felt hot. Something deep within me, burning.

My eyes shot open as the realization hit. I turned my back to the class and sprinted out of the room, much to Ms. Yamada's confusion. I felt a vague presence of someone other than myself pleading for me to push forward. If I didn't, nothing would change. Call it fate, destiny, a gut feeling, whatever you want, but some force, wholly unknown to me, kept my legs moving one step at a time.

I skimmed by a teacher in the hallway. He yelled not to run, but his words didn't reach me. Past the shoe lockers, bursting into the sun, I headed straight for the train station. I was willing to bet that I knew where Haruko would be.

Exactly nine minutes later, I squeezed through the opening passenger doors and rushed down a set of clanking metal steps, through a thick cover of trees, and emerged onto a familiar pathway. I retraced my blindfolded steps towards the nearest bridge, where a small cardboard church was waiting for me.

Deep breath. The mauve cloth felt much heavier than the last time I'd visited. Here goes nothing.

Pulling it aside revealed a few chairs, drawings on the walls, and a cushion on the stage. Untouched from the last time I'd seen it. No Haruko.

What? But I was so sure, and yet, empty. I stepped away from the cardboard-made building, contemplating how I'd ditched school for what amounted to an empty hideout. In my daze, the continuous sound of flowing water pulled me in. A desire to drown out any and all unwanted thoughts, I closed my eyes, sat, and listened. And then, I heard a voice. It came from behind me.

I couldn't make out any of the words over the river's noise, but I could tell where it was coming from. Her hideout. I walked up to the thick cloth once more and paused before entering. It was Haruko, speaking to herself.

"To be, or not to be, that is the question!" she said.

"With all due respect, your greatness, that's a quote from a play," she answered herself in a different tone.

"Aha! Fool! You've yet to become enlightened by greed, as I have!"

"Why would you say such a thing?"

"It's simple, my child. I eat what I want. I starve when I wish. The wind will blow, and I will take the birds from the sky as a fisherman takes fish from the sea."

"It's not the same!"

"Foolish as always, my child. Your mortal heart desires irrational truths!"

"But, your greatness, if you are all-knowing, why do you not know what I tell you to be true?"

"That is impossible! I know it to be a false truth and—"

She lingered on the next syllable and then continued a couple lines back. Changing a few words here and there. Pausing again at the same spot and restarting from the beginning. Running through the whole dialogue under her breath, and then performing it once more.

She finished through to the same spot and stopped a second time. I took the opportunity to step inside. The first thing I noticed was that she was wearing her school uniform. The second thing I noticed was the pair of scissors on her lap.

It took Haruko a moment to look up, but when she did, she threw the third thing I'd noticed, her booklet, right at me.

"Ow! Hey, it's me!"

Haruko stopped, holding the scissors as if she were about to throw them too. "Yeah, I know. When did you get in here?"

"More like when did you get in here? I didn't even see you walk by."

"Back entrance," she said. "Did you hear any of that?"

"Not really. A little. Can you… put those down?"

She dropped the scissors and replaced them with a pen.

"Why aren't you at school?" I asked.

"Uhm…" She looked down as if to write in her booklet, the one at my feet. "I'm grounded?"

"Grounded from school?"

"Sure!"

"Uh-huh. Well, it's total chaos over there."

"I know. Err, I mean, like, I knew it would be."

She was acting weird. Weirder than her normal weird. "Are you okay?"

"Duh. Never seen a girl in the midst of her creative process before?"

Hold on a minute. Had I ever heard Haruko refer to herself as a girl before? And not God?

"A girl?"

She perked up, her eyes focused on the booklet by my feet.

"Give me that," she stuck her hand out in front of her.

"What?"

"The booklet, give me the booklet."

I picked it from the ground and handed it over. Frantically, she ran her pen against the page, the paper capturing her attention.

"Uhm, hello?"

Nothing.

"Arakawa?"

She kept scribbling.

"Arakawa. What did you mean by—"

"Aha! I got it!" She finally dropped her pen, and her entire body flopped back onto the stage. Her arms went up above her head and her legs spread out in front of her.

"Arakawa!"

"Yep, that's where we are."

"Huh?"

"Just call me Haruko, like you did earlier."

"What? I've never called you by your first name before—" Except once, earlier today, in the classroom.

Wait, how did she…?

"Haruko, what happened to God?"

She peered over her chest. "You know I was only messing around, right? I'm not God."