二

28/2/20XX

Symmetry is a beautiful thing.

As I turn left onto the street where my school is, I see Keisuke mirroring me on the other end. It’s easy to see that it’s him because the street is empty and he’s come to a stop directly underneath a streetlight which illuminates his figure with a precision fit for a stage production.

The time is 9:17 am. That’s 32 minutes after we’re supposed to be here but well over an hour before we usually arrive.

Standing at the gate in between us is Mr. Morishima. He’s our gym teacher who only just this year did the sensible thing and shaved his head. Apart from his day job he has a couple of hobbies. The first is staring at the girls in his class a little too intently. The second is guarding the gates like a dog to make sure no one gets away with missing the first bell. I reckon the two aren’t unrelated.

“Oi! You two!”

Morishima tries to lace his voice with authority but it’s pointless. Keisuke rolls his head back in the direction he came from, suggesting without words that we should make a break for it. I give him a short nod in response.

“Both of you get your asses over here before I- HEY!”

We don’t let him finish before we take off running. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened, though it has become less frequent as of late. Turns out it’s pretty hard to chase two people at the same time running in different directions. Impossible in fact. You have to choose one or the other.

“Get back here girl!”

Invariably, I am the one chosen.

“Catch me if you can, fucko!”

I tear up the streets in front of me in an effort to escape Morishima-sensei. Now, I’m fast on my feet but he used to be a national-level runner in his youth. In a straight line, he’d eventually catch up to me. That’s why I take our chase to the back roads, his agility deserted him before his pace had whereas I’m very nimble. Whenever he closes the distance on me, I take a sharp turn down another street. I can do that without slowing down much, he practically has to come to a complete stop before turning.

Even so, after a few minutes, he’s managed to close the gap between us considerably. If I go straight or turn left at the next intersection, I’m going to get caught. My only chance is to turn right, towards the train crossing.

“I’ve got you now!” he shouts as he rounds the corner behind me and sees the barriers on the crossing lower. 

As if that’ll stop me.

Just as any sensible person would expect me to slow down, I speed up and jump over the first barrier like it’s a hurdle. Morshima-sensei shouts something at me but I can’t hear him over the blaring horn of the oncoming train. I cut it so close that the train clips the edge of my backpack as I make it across the tracks.

As I scramble over the second barrier, I notice a group of elementary school children who are out on a walk staring at me with their jaws on the floor. Their teacher is shooting me a very disapproving look, and rightfully so.

I squat down to be at their eye level.

“Don’t ever do what I just did, OK?”

They all nod at me simultaneously.

“And if an old bald guy asks, tell him I went that way!”

I point left before dashing in the opposite direction as the barriers start to lift, leaving myself with just enough time to disappear from Morshima-sensei’s view.

***

“Here,” Keisuke says as he lazily waves a pocari sweat in my face.

Right now I’m lying on my favourite bench, drenched in my own sweat. After losing Morishima, I doubled back to the park we always used to meet up at when we planned on skipping school for whatever reason.

Morishima’s interests being what they are, Keisuke has always been the one to arrive first. He’d always buy me a drink and something to eat as recompense for being the bait but today…

“Where’s my snack…”

“Wasn’t expecting to see you today, didn’t bring any money.”

The vending machine in this park is ancient and doesn’t accept contactless pay. I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re the only ones who ever purchase anything from it.

“Guess it has been a while… how’d you get this then?” I ask referring to the pocari.

“Kicked the machine real hard.”

“Nice.”

With the minimum of required effort, I open the bottle and let the contents drip lazily into my mouth.

“When did we last do something like this actually?” Keisuke asks me, “was it November?”

“Nah, longer than that, I don’t think there was a single day during the second semester that we both decided to come to school.”

Now that I’m halfway through my drink, I find the strength to sit up and free some space for Keisuke. He sits down right beside me, leaving a whole half of the bench empty to our left.

“Think you could give me a bit of room?” I say as I half-heartedly push him away.

“It’s cold,” he says as he scooches back towards me.

“I’m not cold at all.”

“Then share some of that warmth with me.”

“No,” I say as I kick him off the bench.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“You know exactly what it was for.”

“Bitch,” Keisuke whispers as he pulls himself back onto the bench, making sure to leave some distance between us this time.

“So, got a plan?” I ask.

“Nope. We could go see if Shinji has anything for us.”

“Nah, I’m hungry.”

“Well, I’m bored.”

“Then let’s flip for it,” I suggest.

It’s not unusual for us to disagree on what we want to do. Somewhere along the way, we decided that instead of wasting a bunch of time arguing about these things, we’d just flip a coin.

“Alright,” Keisuke says as he takes out his phone and opens his coin-flipping app, “heads or tails?”

“Heads.”

Keisuke taps the screen and the digital coin flies upward, rotating several times before landing heads up.

“Tch,” Keisuke grumbles.

“Don’t ‘tch’ at me. The coin is absolute.”

As we both get back to our feet, I reexamine the park in a way I haven’t in a long time. I’m reminded why I hate coming here in the winter; the bare trees don’t hide anything from the disapproving pensioners and parents in the surrounding houses, the streetlamps acting like a spotlight for anyone sitting on one of the benches. When the trees are gracious enough to offer any kind of cover, you can relax here for a while.

“We should probably get moving before your parents show up,” I say, gesturing towards the woman watching us from her second-story window with a phone in her ear. She quickly draws her blinds upon noticing but it’s obvious she’s still peaking out.

“Yeah, let’s.”

I let Keisuke walk in front of me so I can give the woman the middle finger. It’s a tendency of mine he doesn’t like.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Keisuke’s fingers begin digging lightly into my shoulder blade as I’m giving the woman the finger with my right hand, pulling down my eyelid with the left and sticking my tongue out.

“She called the cops on us, she deserves this at least.”

“We’re the ones in the wrong here, stop being such a child.”

Keisuke puts his hand on the back of my head and forces me to do an apology bow towards the house of that senile old bitch before we leave. 

He’s such a hypocrite, if that were her husband up there, he’d have no problem doing it himself.

***

“What about that one?” I ask, pointing at a Mos Burger across the street.

It’s about half an hour after we leave the park that we finally find a place suitable to eat at. Being we're in Tokyo, there were naturally several fast food places within a 5-minute walk but finding one we’ve yet to be banned from can prove difficult at times.

“Nah, let’s go somewhere else,” Keisuke replies.

“Why? We haven’t been banned from this one right?”

“No, but-”

“Don’t tell me you don’t like Mos Burger. Mos Burger is the best.”

“...”

“Whatever, I’m going in.”

“Hey, wait!”

I walk across the road since there are no cars in sight and enter the restaurant. I note that there are two servers present, one girl and one guy, before taking my seat at a booth. Keisuke, being who he is, is compelled to wait for the lights to turn green before he follows me in and sits down across from me.

“Can you not do shit like that?”

“No. Now are we going to play or what?”

One of our favourite games is to try and talk our way into some free food, the winner is whoever can get the most valuable meal in total menu price. This is why we’re banned from so many establishments. The current score is 111- 86 in my favour, and that’s including all the times I’ve let Keisuke win by intentionally bombing. He’s not very good at accepting failure so if there came a point where he felt he could never catch up, he’d stop playing. I like this game, free food is involved, so I’d like to play it as long as feasible. Even if that means throwing the occasional match.

Unusually, Keisuke’s eyes light up at the suggestion.

“Fine,” he says as he takes out his phone and opens up the coin-flipping app.

“Heads,” I call.

Tails, it lands. I never get the breaks when it’s important to get them.

“Wish me luck,” Keisuke requests as he heads over to the counter.

This place is very dead right now. Its only other occupants are the 10 am regulars, namely a few suits who are skipping work. It’s why we choose places like this, at this hour the only customers are people who shouldn’t be here, so no one bats an eye at the presence of two high schoolers.

Keisuke brushes his hair to the side as he approaches the tills, which immediately tips me off that he’s decided to approach the girl. He’s very predictable, hair sweep if it’s a girl, hands in the pockets if it’s a guy. One time he couldn’t tell if he was approaching a guy or a girl and short-circuited, returning to me and admitting defeat before even trying. As it happened they weren’t either but that’s neither here nor there.

“Yo,” Keisuke’s casual voice fails him yet again.

“What can I get for you?” the cashier says whilst stifling a laugh. She looks to be in her early 20s, has her dyed blonde hair tied up to fit in the Mos Burger cap. The rest of her uniform is a little bit less neat than a manager would like, tucked in but with some creases showing. Her left wrist is the most telling though, a band of skin around it a lot lighter than the rest, she’s the type to wear bracelets regularly.

“Well, you see, I forgot my phone and I promised my girlfriend that I’d buy her food today.”

He probably doesn’t realize that he refers to me as his girlfriend in a few too many lies for me not to notice. I know it’s a convenient lie but he doesn’t seem interested in coming up with something else. I can be a sister too.

“She’s your girlfriend? Since when?”

The girl has already seen right through his flimsy lie, which forces him to pivot.

“About a year, it’s actually her birthday today.”

I resist the urge to shout across that it’s not my birthday since interfering would violate the vague ruleset we have. Not that I need to interfere, he’s fucking this up fine all by himself.

“You managed to forget your phone on your girlfriend’s birthday?”

She flashes a look over towards me and our eyes meet. Her expression says ‘I know this is a load of bullshit’.

“Yeah, I’m an idiot, I know… and it’s embarrassing to ask this but I was wondering if you might be able to help me out here, so that I don’t look like a total loser.”

Keisuke is oblivious to the fact that his ‘charm’ is totally lost on this girl. When she questioned the truth about our relationship status at the start, she was giving him an opportunity to retreat, to not embarrass himself. Service workers are polite like that, otherwise they wouldn’t work in service.

“I saw you take out your phone when you sat down.”

“Oh well, uh, that was just my new phone, still haven’t set up the pay function on it, I forgot to bring my old one.”

The cashier girl says 'nice try’ with nothing but a company-approved smile.

Keisuke returns to our booth and slumps down beside me, clearly frustrated.

“You should’ve tried your luck with the guy,” I jab.

“How was I supposed to know she doesn’t like good-looking men?”

“If that was your angle, you shouldn’t have said you had a girlfriend,” I say as I edge past him.

“Good luck."

My luck is never good, that’s why I don’t rely on it. You have to remove luck from the situation as much as possible.

“Watch and learn.”

I feel like showing Keisuke up a little bit today so instead of making for the scrawny male server, I go to the same girl he went to.

“Hey.”

“Let me guess, you forgot your phone?”

I pull out my phone and show it off to her.

“Nope. Do you like my case?”

She takes a second to look over the design.

“It’s very masculine.”

“Because of the skulls?”

“Because of the skulls.”

I put my phone away while discreetly looking her over. The biggest thing I couldn’t see from a distance was the piercing hole in the side of her nose. That’s the last bit of info I needed to piece things together.

“So which university’s business course did you drop out of?”

The other server beside us looks at me like I’ve just unpinned a grenade in front of him. That’s the thing about guys though, they don’t know girls like girls do. The female server, after a brief pause, starts laughing.

“Not one worth dropping out of,” she laughs, “happy birthday, by the way.”

“It’s not my birthday.”

“Didn’t think so… you’re not really with him, right?”

She points not so subtly at Keisuke, who, not so subtly, is watching our conversation. I cover my mouth with my hand so he can’t read my lips.

“Why, he look too good for me?”

“More like you look too good for him.”

“Right?” I like this girl. Too many people assume that Keisuke and I would make a good couple because they see us together so often. “I’m in a competition with him right now actually, winner is whoever can get the better meal for free. Loser has to do whatever the other says.”

“Sounds horrible for the loser.”

A customer comes in behind me but this girl calls for the other employee to deal with them. I’ve got her right where I want her.

“I’m too pretty to lose, don’t you think?”

The pout I put on is exaggerated, it’s not designed to make her think that I’m truly troubled by any of this. It’s cheeky, provocative, it says ‘I want you to do this for me’ and some people really respond to that.

“As much as I’d like to help you out, any food I give you comes out of my pay.”

“035934.”

“What?”

“First six digits of my number, the other four will cost you.”

“How much?”

“A large combo.”

She’s trying to play it cool but the corner of her mouth is giving away the fact she’s already made her decision. She rings up an order on the till and swipes her own phone on the scanner to pay for it.

“You really wanted my number huh?”

“There aren’t enough girls who know that they’re hot, couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Do give me the rest of it though.”

She hands her phone and I input my details into it.

“I’ll bring your food to you,” she informs me.

By the time I’m back seated, Keisuke is very unhappy.

“So you win again, huh?”

“Did I win last time? I don’t keep track of these things.”

“Yes you do.”

He’s annoyed at me. For winning. Normally I’d drag out my Neville Chamberlain mask and jump to appeasement but today I don’t feel like it.

“Yeah? What’s the score then?”

“112-86.”

“You even remembered to count today, well done.”

My flippancy annoys Keisuke who gets a little too accusatory with his body language.

“See, you do keep count!”

“And so do you, don’t act like it’s a big deal.”

He slumps back into his seat realizing he can’t retort without sounding like a total hypocrite. Not wanting to admit defeat though he tries another favorite tactic, the ad hominem.

“Well, you only have such a big lead because you use underhanded tactics.”

“What, like giving out my number?”

“Yeah, it’s unfair.”

“You’re welcome to try it too, if you can convince someone to take you.”

“That’s not what I meant…”

What crawled up his ass this morning? As much as I feel like being a bitch today, I better stop winding him up unless I want to deal with his moping.

“Look, I didn’t even give her my real number-”

My phone starts ringing and the girl who I gave it to arrives over with my food in one hand, her phone in the other. She places the food down in front of me.

“Just making sure you weren’t pulling a fast one on me,” she turns to Keisuke, “she wasn’t.”

The girl blows me a kiss and leaves me to deal with the mess she just created for me. Keisuke’s face is being assaulted by a rage-induced eyebrow twitching. I gotta come up with something, fast.

“That’s crazy, I must have accidentally typed out my number by hitting random digits. What are the odds?”

“Literally impossible, I’d say.”

“Oh come on, eat some food,” I push the tray in front of him, “that’s what we came here for, right?”

He wants to argue with me but his hunger gets the best of him. He digs into his half of the meal and our conversation very quickly turns trivial.

The trip to Mos Burger was never going to fill up an entire day, and so it proves. I see the girl and Keisuke share more than one disapproving glance whilst we ate. I can’t believe she cares that much nor that he’s engaging with such behaviour. OK I can believe the second part, he probably thought that by not engaging he’d be losing somehow.

I step out into the warm, stagnant air. A glance at the time tells me it’s nearly 2pm. Keisuke follows me out a few moments later.

“What took you so long?”

“I forgot something. Anyway, you have any plans now?”

“Nah, I was just going to head home. It’s late enough that Mom won’t get on my case.”

“Why don’t we go do something?”

“We just did something.”

“I know but something else.”

It’s not like Keisuke to be so shifty about something like this. If he had a plan, he’d tell me exactly what it was, not just appeal to ‘something else’. I don’t like that.

“I’m tired, I’d rather just go home.”

“But I’d really like you to-”

“I don’t care what you want me to do.”

He seems hurt by that but I don’t care. It’s been a while since I’ve spent this long with someone else, I’m mentally exhausted.

“Ok fine,” he says. I turn to walk away but he grabs me by the arm.

“What are you doing?”

“Don’t take the train back.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Just don’t.”

“Gonna need a better reason than that,” I say as I try to yank myself free. The strength in his grip is beginning to scare me a bit.

“Please. Promise me.”

I don’t want to drag this out any longer. Keisuke’s been acting weird all day and I think I’m best just giving him some space for now.

“Fine. I won’t take the train. Happy?”

He lets go of me finally and I massage my wrist which he burnt a bit.

“Yeah… I’ll talk to you soon.”

***

I don’t spend long on the roof today, for whatever reason. It’s one of those days where I’m not tired but I don’t even have the energy to think. Not even up there.

Saying I don’t have the energy might not be right. When it’s the body that’s out of energy, you feel it. You could try moving but your muscles resist you, their loyalty being tested by the lactic acid that they’ve poisoned themselves with. And when you’re tired, exhausted, the brain acts in a similar way. You begin a thought but find yourself incapable of completing it or connecting two somewhat complex ideas together. What is a trivial, subconscious act most of the time in holding our strings of thoughts together becomes near impossible as they all try to fly away from each other, the mind’s gravity weakening as it approaches shutoff.

This is not like that. If the exhausted mind is thoughts without gravity to hold them together, what I’m experiencing is the opposite. My mind is working but no thoughts will begin, I find myself staring at walls and chasing insects that cross my periphery.

At some point, I crawled into my bed and took out my phone. I'm not sure when that happened but it’s already 10 pm now.

I often think about how awful an invention the smartphone was, usually when I’ve found myself scrolling through Twitter so long that I start seeing tweets in English. All of human knowledge is in the palm of our hands, all of the time. This seems great until you realize it means knowledge of all tragedy as well. I simply scroll and scroll while never reading more than a word or two of any tweet.

“Death. Death. #rkgk. Earthquake. Suicide. #sponsored post. Death. #いいねーくれ。 Tsunami. No future. にゃあ.”

You get told often enough that sharing your problems will make you feel better, that relating to someone else’s struggles will halve the burden. Well everyone spills their hearts all the time now and it isn’t helping. Knowing that you’re not alone at the bottom of the swamp is scant consolation when you realize no one else knows a way out either.

My spiral is sharply interrupted by a LINE message I instinctively click on. It’s from Keisuke.

[Hey]

I hadn’t been thinking about it and instantly regret clicking on it. Now he knows that I’ve seen the first message, I can’t escape.

[Are you able to meet up now?]

Does he mean now? It’s already 10 pm. I’m not one to care about breaking curfew but he always has been.

[I want to talk to you about something]

I turn my phone off and throw it across my room in one motion.

My heart is racing but not in a good way; it feels like it’s about to burst, my breathing is fast and I feel like I’m about to have a panic attack.

I hide myself underneath my blankets, snuffing out all the lights and crawl into the fetal position. I have to stay here now, or else I might see something like that again. Closing my eyes doesn’t make any difference in the total darkness but I do it anyway. Counting sheep never worked for me, sheep weren’t cool enough, so instead I do what my Dad taught me to do and begin counting exploding stars.

“1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7… 8… 9… 9… 9… 9…”