"We Meet Only To Part"

We return to the perspective of HAYASHI HANZO, reluctant member of the HISTORY CLUB, back in the present, with only TWO DAYS UNTIL THE CULTURE FESTIVAL.

On any other day, President Miyata Miyuki and her orbiter/club treasurer/my “friend” Naruto Juro would cackle and give Yasuda and I impatient glances until we finished changing our shoes at the lockers, then they would take our hands in their (sweaty) own and dash off. Despite our protests, Miyuki and Naruto would drag us out of the school, through parks, across avenues, and down a set of gigantic steps connecting Ni-Machi with San-Machi down below.

Yasuda and I would be billowing like flags behind the two absolute nutcases as they would try to leave the other in the dust, with Miyuki’s long legs giving her a seeming advantage over Naruto’s gut, but Naruto’s guts and shonen dedication to never giving up (until his asthma kicks in) combined with Miyuki’s commitment to the clumsy shoujo bit mean they would always be about even.

The stairs are solid concrete, and we’d be going down them at a speed of at least five decameters per second. If I wasn’t an atheist, I’d be praying to God that we don't crack our heads open. I’m better than Yasuda, at least, who would pray to her gods of Reason and Logic (don’t get me started on the time she made the club build a Sciencemas tree).

Legs would blur as we get to the bottom of the stairs, the packed housing of San-Machi stretching before us like sardines, the Pacific Ocean sparkling ahead of us. For a brief moment, maybe it would be beautiful, but then Miyuki and Naruto would move at an even faster pace, metaphoric engines whirring, and as they hit the bottom step-

“Any anime where they jump in the opening is a god-tier anime!” they’d proclaim while leaping into the air, Yasuda and I holding on for dear life behind them. After a slow-mo shot at sunset, we’d hit ground again. Miyuki would laugh and smile while Naruto would take a lungful from his inhaler while Yasuda’s face would remain a bright green while I’d swear to never do that again. But then we would do it all again the next day, and the next day, and the next…

Except for today. Today, Miyuki flashed us back to the origins of her crusade against the Historical Research Club, and the thought of a middle school girl getting tortured subdues the mood. We take the train down to San-Machi in silence; we walk through the streets in silence.

As usual, it takes an outsider to bring levity into the situation. Under the cover of nightfall, we approach the Nishi-Dori Konbini, which sits in the crux of quiet neighborhood streets. My one-time love - the tall, raven-haired Saito Michi - stands outside the konbini, peering into the bushes lining the top of a stone wall.

“Where are you, strange cat, I know I just saw you…”

Naruto’s perpetual mouth breathing draws her attention. When Michi sees us, her smile grows wide. “Hey everyone!”

It’s not like you can be mean to someone like her.

“Hey, Michi,” we all greet back in unison, giving a synchronized handwave.

She goes back to searching for her cat while we head inside the konbini. Miyuki and Naruto have apparently already schemed something up, so while they dash off to a row lined with chicken, Yasuda and I hang out at the magazine shelves. The Wrath tut-tuts at a story about magic communist bears in Nippon Science Monthly; I briefly spot an anxious Saito Fumi peering at us from behind the shelves at the end of an aisle before immediately bolting for the bathroom. The girl with glasses, Mizushima, follows her inside.

I then steal glances at the cashier behind the counter. Her name tag reads Kabashima, and that’s the problem with girls - just one look and you fall in love. Just one look, and you start imagining a life together. Loneliness bites. Loneliness is death by a thousand cuts. You feel it gnawing in every limb, in every bone. A hole where your heart oughta be. People talk about pandemic this and epidemic that - but loneliness, that’s the real killer. And it seems like we’re only gonna get more and more lonely.

Perhaps this is why many people take up drinking. For others, it’s two dimensional waifus. Shikishima’s very own idol, Lucky Girl Hanabi!, waves from the cover of this week’s Shikishima Jump. With her frilly outfits and upbeat attitude, Hanabi’s smile soothes the souls of millions. At least, until the dopamine from staring at a waifu wears off, and you realize you’re all alone starting at a waifu.

I mumble out the words to her anime’s theme song. “Hana-hana-hana-hana-hana-habillion…”

Yasuda side-eyes me with a contemptuous sigh, then goes back to writing a letter to the editor about the scientific inaccuracies regarding magic communist bears.

A girl bumps into me. Holy shit, how long has it been since I felt the touch of a woman? The womb? Well, I guess it would be when Yasuda stepped on me half an hour ago. What I’d give to relive that sensation…but then I come to my senses. The contact was so accidental that the girl didn’t even notice it - she proceeds toward the candy aisle unabated. She seems familiar - dark hair tinged with red, a magic girl sticker on her schoolbag.

Kato Ryoko? The girl who got her fingers broken by Bandit Ren is here?

I’ve actually heard of Ryoko before tonight. She’s renowned among Shikishima youth and 3chan message boards as a thief and mahou shoujo expert. I guess things make a bit more sense now that I know her backstory.

I glance at Miyuki, but she’s already paying at the counter with Naruto, and it doesn’t seem like Ryoko noticed her beyond a passing glance, anyway. I decide to keep my mouth shut.

After paying with a subway card modified to look like a Bat Credit Card (a Bat Credit Card???), Naruto scoops up multiple bags containing a few dozen chicken products. He owns a manga volume for every kilogram in his big barrel of a body; he wears a black beanie bearing some anime insignia over his buzzcut while thick square glasses adorn his doughy face.

Upon seeing the copious amounts of chicken, Yasuda and I exchange glances. By this point, she’s learned not to question Miyuki, so she finishes her scathing editorial instead. I can’t help but ask about the chicken as we depart the konbini.

Miyata grows serious. “I’ve identified twenty-nine different chicken products in the average konbini, so if we each take seven, we’ll be able to test every product in a single night. That will help us rank them.”

A single night?

Wait. Single night as in - tonight? I got a bed to rot in, thank you very much!

And besides-

“That leaves one left over,” I point out. “And why do you want to rank them anyway?”

“Good math,” Miyuki answers, ignoring my question. “As a reward, you can have the extra.”

I frown as the warm air of the mid-autumn heat wave hits me.

“I will not be eating the extra,” Yasuda clarifies, as if anyone asked her. “For chickens are nervous birds, and I don’t wish to become craven.”

While Naruto respectfully requests that, as the closest thing to a shonen protagonist our group has, he should be doing the extra eating, we head down the street. I’m the only one who notices the girl heading up the hill as we cross paths - Mizutami Sumiko. Her dyed blonde hair, looking like dead grass, falls around her harsh, angular face. We make eye contact for a brief moment.

It’s funny - she’s the only girl I’ve never fallen in love with. I can’t help but smirk at the irony, since out of every girl I met, it seems like she’s the only one who also gets it. The only girl who similarly understands the sad, depraved state of the modern world. Is that why I don’t fall in love with her? I don’t know.

I guess I shouldn’t smirk though, since that just pisses her off. She stuffs her hands deeper into her pockets and heads into the store. I sigh - I feel kind of bad, since I’d like to make her smile for once. I even smirked at her this morning, while the History Club was (literally) running late for school and she was playing hooky. We crossed paths, the irony worked its way into my face, and she marched off scowling.

Naruto and I walk the girls back to the subway station. Yasuda resides on the top layer of Ichi-Machi, while Miyuki comes from a nice neighborhood in Ni-Machi, not too far from the school. Naruto and I live in a seaside district of San-Machi, so I suppose it’s kind of the girls to come down to our district. A dark part of me wonders if they simply don’t want us up in theirs, but I brush the thought away.

“Miyuki,” Naruto says as we pass by our usual hang-out spot of Ivan Sushi. “Why didn’t the HRC get shut down over the Ren incident?”

Miyuki stops, as does Naruto. An advertisement truck rumbles by them on the avenue, its billboard showcasing a poignant scene from hit movie The American Peril! (still in theaters, I recommend anyone visiting the island for the culture festival go watch it) where animated clusters of fallen leaves swirl around the sorrowful protagonists. The truck kicks up a breeze that makes Miyuki’s braid sift in the wind while Naruto’s rolls jiggle. Improbably, cicadas chirp somewhere in the distance, long, drawn-out chirps. And by distance, I mean right next to me, since a bored Yasuda is watching nature documentaries on her phone. I guess she already knows why the HRC didn't get shut down.

“The incident occurred only a few days before the culture festival,” Miyuki explains. “Shikishima was in a delicate spot at the moment. There were rumors of Western sanctions if the island moved to crush the democratic revolt in Japan. The culture festival is the pinnacle of Shikishima’s international PR campaign. The last thing they needed was the kidnapping and torturing of a middle schooler by one of its very own high school clubs getting out.”

I resist the urge to glance at Yasuda, since her father is Minister of the Interior, Minister of Defense, and Minister of Energy for the island and Chief Administrative Officer for the Nakashima conglomerate. There are 3chan rumors of another Russian, a full-blooded one, running a secret team within the conglomerate’s Human Resources Department as well. If anybody could and would cover up something, her family and its associates probably were involved in it.

“Don’t stare at me, Hayashi Hanzo,” Yasuda mutters, putting her phone away.

Shoot. Guess I didn’t do a good job of resisting.

“I’m not blaming you or your family,” Miyuki clarifies. “It is what it is. But it’s why we need to take the opportunity provided by the trivia contest and destroy the HRC once and for all. As long as the two clubs exist, we can't ever get along. There'll only be peace when one club's left standing.”

“Poor Fumi,” I mumble. Naruto nods.

“Do not ‘poor Fumi’ my arch-nemesis,” Yasuda says. “I must destroy Saito Fumi and her Historical Research Club. There can be no other way. I can’t show her any weakness.”

I frown. “Why must you do it?”

“It’s destiny,” she answers matter-of-factly. “It’s been my mission since birth. Sometimes, we are fated to walk a single path, with no road left but the one that leads to the end.”

“Then step off the beaten path,” I tell her. “Take the road less traveled by.”

“Do not guilt me with Robert Frost,” she scoffs. “I don’t even like history, Hayashi Hanzo. But it is my destiny, so here I am, and so I must go.”

“For somebody known as the Wrath, you’re quite meek when it comes to a stupid thing like destiny.”

“We’re all slaves to fates,” Yasuda merely says. “Some acknowledge the chains, others ignore them. But they’re there all the same.”

“Break those chains!” Naruto bellows. “Grab hold of your own destiny and don’t let go. Fight the power!”

“Do not lecture with me with lessons gained from children’s cartoons, fat boy.”

Naruto lets out a big belly laugh. Miyuki gets the group walking again, through the crowded avenues near the San-Machi Mall. “Destiny or otherwise, we need to win. Thirty-four years of history and tradition would be lost if our club gets dissolved. And furthermore-”

She narrows her eyes, and not just from the rainbows of neon soaking the street. “I neglected my duties as club president in middle school. My best friend got hurt ‘cuz of it. I won’t be a neglectful club president ever again.”

The kaicho grins and gives us a thumbs up. “Believe it!”

I don’t believe it. Or parts of it, at least. “You really think Fumi would hurt us?”

“Do not underestimate her,” Yasuda warns, apparently knowing something I don’t. “Our destinies are intertwined. He who controls a man’s destiny controls that man entirely. We must take care that we’re pulling her strings of fate, and not the other way around.”

With that esotericism, we reach the subway station. Miyuki divides up the twenty-nine assorted chicken products, with Naruto earning the extra piece thanks to his honest work as the club’s pack mule.

“I want your reports on your assigned products tomorrow morning sharp,” Miyuki orders as the subway pulls in. I still don’t know why we’re eating chicken, but that's how it goes sometimes.

The Wrath raises a small hand and waves as the train doors close. “Bye-bye.”

The subway ships off the girls, leaving us men to discuss serious matters.

“Yasuda’s so hot, man.”

“I know, Naruto. I know.”

We walk together through a few blocks until we go our separate ways towards home. Hundreds, if not thousands of people crowd this main avenue, and it seems like all of them are in groups. It’s just me, alone. I think of Yasuda’s foot stepping on me in the classroom, and then her hand waving goodbye on the train. I’m sure you can make a metaphor out of that. Why can’t that hand hold mine? Why can’t any hand, for that matter?

I walk across a long pedestrian bridge emblazoned with roving neon searchlights. On the adjacent high-rises, a bright billboard shines down upon me. Lucky Girl Hanabi herself gives me her serene smile.

“You look lonely,” she coos. “But you’re gonna be okay. You still have me.”

I can’t help but crack a smile, and that pisses me off. I lean my head back and stare at the dark sky above, my mind racing in a mixture of two dimensions and three dimensions, one fake but always there, one real but always far.

There’s a speck in the sky. At first, I think it’s just another splash of neon, but the speck grows closer and closer. Like a speeding bullet, something small crashes into the concrete at my feet.

As Hanabi watches, I kneel down and find myself looking into my own reflection - definitely sad, slightly murky - in the deep green hues of a gemstone.

“You look lonely,” Hanabi repeats, but I could’ve sworn the voice came from the jade this time. “Think of me, and relax for a little while…”

I reach down and retrieve the jade.