Punctual

Punctual (Part Ten)

Oh, such a beautiful fool.

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We’re in the art room again.

“I don’t really... Get it.” Is what I say with incertitude, turning my head to the side to see if it helps. It doesn’t.

Yoshiharu folds his arms over his chest, squinting at his own drawing. He appears to be thinking very deeply, eventually moving a few steps closer to the easel to further scrutinize his scribblings of charcoal.

“Hmm,” he finally replies. “I don’t think I get it either.”

And then he rips the paper off the drawing board, crumples it, and chucks it in the recycling bin, dusting the leftover grime from his hands.

I can only avert my eyes back and forth, trying to decide whether to be amused or concerned that Yoshiharu is now juggling with several tubes of acrylic paint.

I guess that I’m not the only one who needs some help.

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I never really think about the relationship that we share until he asks me.

He says, Sayako-chan, because he’s taken to calling me by my given name and insisted that I do the same for him. And then he asks: What am I to you?

What are you? What are you talking about?

And then all he does is shake his head and says, never mind, you won’t get it, and then laughs at the face I make, the face I make because I apparently get very indignant whenever someone insists that I won’t “get” something.

He says that maybe he’ll ask me the same question later. And that maybe I’ll understand it then.

Maybe I understand it now, Kyohei. Maybe I just don’t want to tell you.

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I’m sitting in the park again, staring at the birds and wondering when I lost my motivation. I find myself replaying, mentally poring over a series of memories, random events that seemed to have characterized the last couple years of my life. The emotions that I feel run from scared stiff from the thought of failure to the crushing disappointment and anger from realizing those fears. Pushing myself to keep going, keep improving, scrambling for the top because I wasn’t good enough if I couldn’t be the very best, but then hating myself with such frightening intensity when I’d found out that I had still only failed in the end.

I purse my lips, pinch the bridge of my nose, squeeze my eyes shut until all I can see are spores of white light taking bloom against a black sky. Gripping my knees with sheet-white hands, I take a couple of deep breaths until I feel human again.

I think I’m burnt out.

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The front door creaks open and I pad down the darkened entrance hall, exhausted from the grueling hours spent in cram school, trying not to think about how late it already is and how much work I still haven’t done. I drop my bag of swim gear somewhere along the way as I turn towards the framed mirror hanging in the house’s entryway, alarms going off for a split second as I take in the eerie glow cast by the reflected moonlight.

There is no expression on my face at first. I start contorting my features, trying to smile but settling for a grimace instead, rearranging my eyes, lips, anything, to see if I can somehow manufacture some semblance of normalcy, happiness, prettiness, to project to the outside world.

The light flicks on. My mom looks at me and my reflection, and I stare back, emotionless once again.

“You’re beautiful,” she says. “Now go to sleep.”

I’m a generally obedient child. I do as she says.

-----

“Yoshiha-”

“Kyohei.”

“... Right. Kyohei-kun, I don’t know what to do anymore.”

The bicycle fool glances up from his textbook - he’s actually studying for a change.

“Well,” he starts, adjusting his reading glasses and shoving untidy spurts of hair from his forehead. “If you’re looking for advice, I’m sorry, but you’re probably talking to the wrong person.”

He grins in response to my unamused frown. I pull a face and hold my head in my hands.

“No, it’s not really advice that I need,” I say despondently. “I kinda just wanted to complain a bit.” Now I just feel silly. Like a child who can’t express her feelings through anything other than whining to other people.

But Kyohei indulges me, chuckles a bit, and musses up my hair (“Stop that!”). He says that sometimes it’s all right to complain every once in a while, and grins once again at my expression.

Growing serious once again, Kyohei turns back to his textbook as the laughter drops from his face.

He flips to the next page. “So my brother’s visiting once the school year ends.”

As if he were telling me what he had for breakfast that morning. The nonchalance is astounding, and I can only give him the strangest of looks as Kyohei finally decides to make eye contact with me.

“What?” he asks, confused at the sheer incredulity on my face.

I just sigh and tell him: “Never mind.”

Right, I think, this guy is definitely a weirdo.

-----

And then he kisses me one day. So I slap him back.

“The hell was that for?” He exclaims, holding his cheek.

“The hell was that for?! You don’t just plant one on me when you feel like it!” I start sputtering, spewing incoherent gibberish and only getting more and more angry as I see that stupid, idiotic, bicycle-riding fool start to laugh hysterically in between his failed attempts at apologizing.

So I walk up to him and start kicking him in the shin. Because he deserves it. Totally and completely.

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