四

30/2/20XX

Symmetry

is

illusory.

Like anything, it’s a matter of perception and thus, you can be tricked into perceiving things through someone else's eyes. Today, for instance, as yesterday and the day before, I find myself face to face with Keisuke, Morishima-sensei waiting at the gates between us.

Doesn’t it seem odd that something this unlikely would happen thrice in a row? That it would have happened more than once in an entire lifetime? After yesterday's incident, I found myself much more skeptical than I usually am. As I rounded the corner, I noticed a shadow being cast onto the ground on the corner opposite and then Keisuke stepped out a moment after. He has forced a sense of symmetry onto this situation, to make it seem significant beyond coincidence. How many times has he done this before?

Keisuke tries the same thing as yesterday and the day before. The exact same thing, as if he expects me to act like everything is normal. Infuriating.

“Oi! You two!”

Keisuke twitches as if he’s about to turn heel, expecting me to do the same. I know I can outrun Morishima-sensei, I can outrun just about anyone if I put my mind to it. 

But do I feel like it today?

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

Morishima-sensei’s usual tirade cuts off abruptly once he notices me approaching him. Both his and Keisuke’s jaws hang in disbelief as I quietly walk through my school gates for the first time in weeks.

So unbelievable is my decision that Morishima forgets to reprimand me in any way. It’s not a decision I’d make on any other day but I’m so annoyed at Keisuke that I don’t want to cause mischief with him like usual.

I could have decided to head home but he’d no doubt follow me and hound me into doing something. He’s not going to follow me in here.

“Ruri.”

A very unwelcome hand finds its way onto my shoulder.

“Are you alright?” Keisuke asks.

“Fine,” I spit as I swipe his hand off me.

“Come here,” he takes the hand I just displaced and brings it up to my forehead, “you’ve gotta be sick.”

I punch him in the stomach, he retches.

“There’s nothing wrong with me, leave me alone!”

***

Inside the classroom, all eyes are on me.

I’ve arrived well after classes have started, so in one way that’s normal. But today, they’re all talking when I arrive, something that they wouldn’t dare do under normal circumstances during this class. Fujimoto-sensei has a deserved reputation for strictness during his lessons, I’ve been on the receiving end of more than one of his verbal tirades. He’s not a mean guy otherwise, just can’t stand noise.

That’s why it’s so unusual to see him trying nothing to stop the gossip going around, he’s staring at me as well. I try to make my way to my desk but after only a single step he points at me.

“Outside,” he indicates.

I exit through the back door of the classroom I entered through and Fujimoto-sensei mirrors me at the top of the class. We meet in the middle of the hall.

“You’re late, Ruri-san.”

The use of my first name isn’t some kind of slight, it’s a kindness. No one has used my family name with me in over a decade.

“I know.”

“Are you-”

He notices that the class has gone dead silent in an effort to eavesdrop on our conversation and ushers me up the hallway and into an empty classroom.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“Why?”

I’m suspicious of the intent behind that question. All my teachers know that I’m not okay, they stopped asking me questions about my well-being a long time ago.

“That little spat you had outside with Takeda-san wasn’t normal for you two.”

“Don’t you think it’s a bit weird for you to know what’s normal for me and Keisuke?”

“No, it’s my job,” Fujimoto-sensei responds, completely unfazed by my attempted provocation. “Look, I know I’m not your homeroom teacher but that doesn’t mean I can’t be concerned about you.”

“I’d feel a lot more comfortable if you didn’t.”

Fujimoto isn’t a fan of sighing so instead he just closes his eyes and breathes in deeply for a moment.

“Alright then. You can see how much you’ve disrupted my class so do me a favour and wait here until your next one.”

Fujimoto-sensei leaves me alone in the classroom. I hear him a few seconds later regaining control of his class as the loud gossip comes to an abrupt stop.

To pass the time until the next period, I take out my phone and block Keisuke on every app I can think of.

***

The class after Fujimoto’s goes by fairly quickly and without incident, which is concerning. It’s not surprising that the muttering has stopped now that I’m here, I’m sure everyone will have their discussions about it during lunch. What is, however, is that despite following me through the gates, Keisuke never showed up to class. It puts me on edge, not knowing if he’s still around or if he decided to go home.

For this reason, as soon as the bell for lunch rings, I head over to Maiko’s desk.

“Hey Mai,” I say as I turn the seat in front around to face her.

“Ruri. You punched Keisuke in the stomach 2 hours and 13 minutes ago. Why?”

Everyone goes silent around us, emphasizing just how poor of a decision I’ve made. The best way to get eyes off you is to stare right back at them, that’s what I’ve always thought.

“You want to know why I punched him?” I say to no one in particular, “Well it’s none of your business, so shut up and leave me alone.”

Normally something like that would get people to turn away and start whispering about how much of a bitch I am but not today. Aoi, the least popular of the popular girls, isn’t fazed by my reaction.

“Did you two break up?”

“What? No. We were never together.”

“So why’d you punch him then?” asks another girl.

“Because I can punch whoever the fuck I want?”

“Maybe he broke up with you because you’re too violent,” girl number 3 snorts.

“Are you deaf? I just told you we were never together!”

“And you won’t tell us why you punched him?”

“Any of you would’ve punched him if he’d done what he did to me to you.”

That gets everyone turned away from me but it doesn’t shut them up. In fact, they’re louder than ever, having decided they’ve gotten everything they can from me and started speculating about what I just said.

Not knowing what to do, I collapse onto the desk and cover my face with my arms.

“It seems we have both made large miscalculations with our words,” Maiko says.

“You don’t say.”

“Did you want something from me, Ruri-san? It’s not often you approach me in class. In fact, it’s not often that you’re in class.”

“I didn’t bring anything for lunch today. You always make a bento that’s way too big for you so I thought you might share.”

Maiko quickly shields her bento with her body and side-eyes the rest of the room. She sees the glances being cast back but…

“We shall head to the roof. People will get the wrong impression if they see us sharing a bento.”

…completely misreads the situation as usual.

***

“So,” Maiko begins as she hands me the uneaten half of her bento, “what was that this morning?”

We’re sitting on our favourite bench on the roof, the only one positioned under a light source.

“Nothing,” I say as I shovel some rice into my mouth, “just a small disagreement.”

“Small disagreements don’t end up with one party breaking the other’s ribs, Ruri.”

“I made sure not to break anything, I think.”

Maiko snatches the bento back from me just as I’m about to scoop up some more rice.

“Hey! You said I could have that!”

“I changed my mind. You can have it back when you tell me what’s wrong.”

I try to steal the box back from her but she lays her entire upper body on it to prevent me from doing so.

“Why is everyone acting so weird? You’ve never pushed the issue before.”

“Because before your habit of not being forthcoming only affected you. Now it’s different, it affects Keisuke too.”

“You think this will help you get with him?”

“Stop trying to get out of this by riling me up, it won’t work.”

I look properly at Maiko’s face; there's a determination that I’m not used to. She’s not gonna let this go.

“Fine, fine. He wants to talk to me about ‘something’. That’s why I punched him.”

“...that’s it?”

“What do you mean ‘that’s it?’ Yeah, that’s it.”

“Do you punch everyone who wants to talk to you?”

“Mai, I think you’re failing to pick up on tone again.”

“Then why aren’t you explaining it to me?”

Maiko being so bad at social interactions can be very troublesome. It makes it way harder to squirm your way around a topic, fudge it up with language. It’s difficult to distract her when she gets confused by anything approaching a non-sequitur.

“Do you remember New Year’s?” I say.

“Yes, you left me alone at a party full of people I don’t know.”

“Yeah, sorry about that… did Keisuke not talk to you about what happened that night?”

Maiko pauses for a moment.

“No. He knows that I don’t like him talking about you.”

This is a revelation.

“Are we even friends Maiko?”

“I have always been unsure.”

“Can I have some more rice?”

“Can you finish telling me what the problem is?”

“Tch, bitch… well, that night… he uh… long and short of it is he asked me out and I said no.”

Maiko pauses for a very long time. She doesn’t even unpause of her own accord, I have to poke her in the cheek to get her moving again.

“Are you crazy?” she says after unpausing.

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Aren’t you the one always going on about how you two would have sex and end up in an unfulfilling relationship?”

“Yeah. I am. But when he asked me, I couldn’t say yes.”

The pin finally drops for Maiko. Because of her difficulties with intuiting tone she always thought I was just saying those things to rile her up.

“So when he says that he wants to talk to you about something, what do you think it is?”

“I don’t know, just that I don’t want to talk about it. It’s some sort of serious conversation, and I want to avoid that. I wouldn’t be talking now if you weren’t blackmailing me with rice.”

aiiko reluctantly hands me the rice but she holds onto one end of the box as she does so.

“Well, if the mere thought of having this conversation causes you so much stress, you should just get it over with. Maybe he wants to ask you out again, maybe he wants to apologize. Either way just be clear with him, if he’s really your friend he’ll respect whatever you say.”

She finally lets go of the bento fully and I tip the entire thing into my mouth in one go.

“Yeah, and then he’ll be forced to look somewhere else for sex?”

“And I’ll be ready,” she says dead serious, “that reminds me…”

“What could that possibly remind you of?”

“... you do know there’s a history test next period, right?”

“Oh,” I reply.

“You didn’t know, did you?”

“Of course I didn’t... Fuck it, I can always just fail.”

***

Maiko leads me to Miyamura-sensei’s room after lunch since I’d forgotten where it was. Bottom floor, room 3, as it happens.

She also leads me to my desk, which she makes a point of telling me she remembers because it always being empty triggers her OCD.

Miyamura-sensei is already at the top of the class holding examination papers underneath her arm. I only met her a few times at the beginning of this year, she’s a new teacher at the school, but I’m certain she didn’t have her hair dyed white like that. No way the principal would’ve allowed that. She must’ve started fucking him since I last saw her to be getting away with it.

The bell rings and she casts a gaze across the classroom until her eyes come across an empty desk in front of me. She looks at it for a moment before quickly losing interest.

“Your test will commence as soon as you receive the examination booklet and end whenever you finish it, I guess.”

That seems very informal from an educator to me but I don’t mind. I wish more teachers gave less of a shit one way or another.

Miyamura-sensei begins handing out the mock examination papers to everyone and eventually passes by me.

I elected to take World History. Having planned to not study for any of my exams, I felt like it was my best bet. Midnight Wikipedia binges and doomscrolling on twitter must have imparted some knowledge of the world onto me, if only by osmosis.

The exam is split up into several sections, I scan over them to see where I should start.

Section one is on general Japanese history. I still don’t know which one was Yoshitsune and which one was Ushiwakamaru, so I have no chance there.

Second section is on 20th century history, which I always hated. I know there were a couple of important wars and that Japan wasn’t really involved. Seemed really boring.

The third section piques my interest.

[Section 3: THE FUTURE]

Question #1: In what manner will the end of the universe come about?

Oh, one I can try and answer. Wikipedia’s article on the subject told me there are a number of scientific theories on this topic.

There’s the ‘Big Freeze’ hypothesis, which suggests that one day there will no longer be enough gas left in the universe to sustain star formation, meaning all that would be left would be black holes. Black Holes shrink very slowly according to the theory of Hawking radiation and so after an amount of time approaching but not becoming infinity, the last black hole would simply cease to be. A scary thought, I didn’t manage to sleep the night that I read about it.

The ‘Big Rip’ is perhaps scarier. As the universe expands, some people posit that the rate of its expansion will increase to such a scale that eventually even the atoms that constitute reality will split so far from each other that you could not observe one from the position the another. In this state, time itself will stop and the observable universe reaches a size of zero. I found it quite difficult to comprehend when I read about it. Ultimately, it just seems like a different theory about how we arrive at nothingness.

In the ‘Big Crunch’ theory, there is a point where the universe stops expanding and begins to contract back to a singular point. In some versions of this theory, the end of this universe invokes the ‘big bang’ for a new one and that universes exist cyclically. That’s a scant consolation to anything existing now, when everything must first be destroyed before something that they will never reach can be started.

It doesn’t end there. There’s the ‘Big Bounce’ and the ‘Big Slurp’ (scientists seem to love using the word ‘big’ for these things, I assume to make their theories sound more important), classic heat-death and something known as ‘cosmic uncertainty’.

The only constant is the outcome. Whilst no one can seem to agree on how things will end, we all seem convinced that they will.

Answer: I don’t know.

I look around to see if anyone is struggling as much as I am but they all have their heads in their papers. Of course they do, I’m probably the only one who’s skipped two-thirds of their first paper.

Question 2: Has humanity surpassed its ‘great filter’?

For a moment I consider calling over the teacher to ask if there’s something wrong with the paper but decide against it, not wanting to draw the ire of my classmates.

This is another thing I’m familiar with. Related to the fermi paradox that asks why we have had no contact with extraterrestrial life, the ‘great filter’ proposes that there is some rung on the evolutionary ladder before such contact becomes possible that almost no sentient species passes.

But this question is impossible to answer. Some think the ‘great filter’ is an event as ancient as the basic division of cells that lead to modern life. Many think we may now be passing through that ‘great filter’, perhaps no other form of life that discovered nuclear fusion managed to prevent its own self-inflicted extinction. Maybe it’s something so far ahead of us that we can’t even comprehend it, like a hurdle in a race that extends beyond the horizon. We don’t even know if this paradox is correct, all of this might be based on a false presumption, it’s a stupid question.

Answer: I don’t know.

Question 3: Assuming the absence of an explanation consistent with scientific understanding, which eschatological theory holds the greatest likelihood of being true? Explain.

Answer: I don’t know.

Question 4: When will you die?

“Fuck this stupid test!”, I shout as I ball up my paper and throw it aimlessly, hitting one of the other students in the back of my head. No one turns around to look at me apart from the girl I struck, I am just the first of many who will crack under the pressure of the examination, they have to worry about passing.

Miyamura-sensei stands up from her desk and retrieves my examination paper from the floor, unfolding it and scanning my answers. She sees that I haven’t managed to answer a single question with anything definitive and begins marching towards me.

Good. Maybe she’ll throw me out of the room and I can get back to doing what I do best.

She places a cold hand on my shoulder and squats down beside me. My body is twitching in anticipation of her words. A ‘come with me’ or ‘get out of this room’ that will free me from my obligation to this chair. But those words never arrive, instead, she whispers something so lightly in my ear I think for a moment that I’m imagining it.

“You’re still alive in there, aren’t you?”