An Ordinary Tuesday

(Akane’s PoV)

—

We’d fixed Tsubame’s material after the second movie.

That’s how the night had ended, after all.

After the extra spicy, the movie and the garlic voice, after Shin had gone quiet with a whole house full of smiles unfolding behind his eyes, we’d dragged his laptop onto the low table and worked through the festival files together, exactly like I’d promised.

'Forty minutes,' I said.

But it took closer to ninety, because Shin is incapable of cutting anything without agonising over it and because the dead spot at one minute forty turned out to be a full two seconds of a girl bumping a microphone stand and saying a word her club president would not have approved.

That was so damn boring.

We cut the middle paragraph of the speech, and thirty-eight seconds were recovered.

Shin sent the whole thing back at 11 P.M. with a message that took him four drafts and said in the end: 'Done. See you Wednesday.'

I heard his phone buzzing, but I pretended not to care, even though I wanted to say a one last 'fuck you' to her. Shin didn't even bother to check the message.

Then, we’d gone up to bed, and I’d slept the entire night through without waking once, which almost never happens to me. It started happening after Shin saved me from that nightmare that night.

Of course, we had plenty of sex, because the extra spicy food had an aphrodisiac effect on both of us, and we ended up sleeping at 3 A.M. I literally squeezed him dry; what a poor boy.

We kept sleeping peacefully until the alarm went off.

I made a sound into Shin’s collarbone that I would not describe as human.

“No.” I refused to move.

“Akane—” He muttered.

“No.” I burrowed harder into him and threw one arm over his chest to pin him in place, as though the alarm were his fault and holding him hostage might negotiate it away. “Turn it off. Turn it off and tell the school we’ve died.”

“I promise that I'll do that at the graduation ceremony. But now–”

“They’ll manage.” The alarm kept going. I made another sound. “I was having a beautiful dream, Shin. Do you understand what you’ve done? I was having a good one. The first one in years! And you ruined your girlfriend's sleep! You're the worst boyfriend ever!” I joked.

That got his attention since I felt him shift under me, and when I cracked one eye open, he was looking down at me with his hair a disaster and something soft and careful in his face, because he knows what my dreams are usually like.

He’s been woken up by them. He’s held me through two of them, in the dark, without asking a single question.

“What was it?” he asked. "I'm curious."

I opened my mouth to tell him, and then the actual content of the dream arrived in my conscious mind, and I felt my entire face catch fire.

“Nothing,” I said, looking away.

“Akane.” 

“It was nothing. Forget it. Get up, we’ll be late.” I tried to move, but couldn't.

“Akane.” He propped himself up on one elbow, wide awake now and visibly delighted. “You’re blushing. I’ve seen you blush only a few times in my life, and this is a very rare event. So? What was the dream?”

I lay there with my face buried in his shirt, weighed my options and found none. He was too stubborn to let me run away.

“...We had a house by the sea,” I mumbled. "I don't know if it was in Okinawa or another place."

There was a pause above me.

“…Go on.” He raised an eyebrow.

“That’s it.” I pouted.

“That is clearly not it.”

I made a noise of pure suffering and rolled onto my back and put both hands over my eyes, and told the ceiling: “We had a house by the sea. And it was afternoon. And I was... “ my voice did something undignified “...I was pregnant. With the second one.”

Silence.

“The second one,” Shin repeated carefully.

“There was already a first one. He was down on the beach, running around, and he came up the sand screaming his head off, holding something and yelling something. I could still hear it; that’s the worst part. I could still hear the exact pitch of him saying "‘Papa! Papa! I caught a crab!’”

The silence stretched out, and I peeked through my fingers.

Shin was looking down at me with an expression of such helpless, undefended tenderness that I nearly hit him with a pillow on principle.

He wasn’t teasing, and I was damn sure that wasn’t going to. He looked like someone had handed him something very small and very warm and told him it was his.

Then, because he is who he is, he ruined it by smiling and saying:

“You were definitely eating in that dream. I'm sure as hell that you were even hungrier. I'm surprised that you weren't demanding food.” I heard him giggling.

I lowered my hands, and then looked at him, flatly, with the exact face I use on people who cut in front of me at the konbini.

“Somebody has a death wish this morning.”

“It’s not my fault that you're always hungry, Akane.” He was about to burst out laughing. I could feel that.

 “Get out of the bed, Ishikawa. Right now.” I demanded.

"Oh, sorry, you little princ–”

“Out.”

And he laughed the whole way to the bathroom. I lay there for another thirty seconds with my hands over my face, and I want to be honest about this even though nobody will ever read it: I stayed under the covers a little longer than I needed to, because if I closed my eyes I could still see the sea. And it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

And then, it came, ironically, the moment of the first meal of the day.

I woke up, grabbed one of his hoodies and then walked straight to the kitchen.

Breakfast was cereal, because he’d bought two boxes of those Lilibat's cereals and there was another one left. 

Milk and cereal. Fast and efficient.

The walk to school was cold and bright, one of those mornings where the air has an edge on it, and everything looks scrubbed.

Shin carried both our bags for the first part of the trip without being asked, and I let him, because he needed to be forgiven for the way he broke the romantic mood of this morning.

But then, I took mine back at the crossing because being carried is one thing, but being portered is another.

“You were particularly comfortable last night, by the way,” I said, hands in my pockets, eyes forward.

“Was I? Don't you say this thing quite often?” He asked.

“Extremely. Optimal density. Correct temperature. Better than usual.” I glanced sideways. “I’m going to use you as a pillow even more. I’m scaling up. And if I didn't feel the urge to skin alive every female who would touch you, I'd suggest making this your job. Being a human body pillow for heartbroken girls. You'd be a millionaire.”

He laughed.

“I wouldn't, because that’s how I lost my arm. One arm is not enough to hug you.” He said.

“You’ll grow another one. Bodies do that.” I teased.

“I'm 100% sure that my body cannot.” He scratched the back of his head.

“Then you’ll adapt. I believe in you.”

He was still shaking his head when the school gates came up, and the crowd thickened. In that moment, our paths split the way they do: his toward the west stairwell and the council room, mine toward the third-year corridor.

Sora was waiting at the entrance with her arms full of folders, and she lit up when she saw us.

“Good morning, you two!”

“Morning, Fujimoto-san!” Shin said.

“Good morning, beautiful idol,” I said, and got the small, flustered laugh I was aiming for.

“Roof at lunch?” she asked. “I have the lantern quote, and I need someone to look at it who isn’t Maruyama-sensei.”

Shin nodded. I nodded.

She then beamed at us both and swept off down the corridor with her folders, and Shin gave me a small wave and went one way. I went the other way, and it was, by every visible measure, an entirely ordinary Tuesday.

I sat down at my desk, took out my books, and looked at the empty chair two rows over.

Kurone’s chair.

Nobody had said anything about it. The class had already absorbed her absence into the general weather, the way a class does, the same way they’d absorbed all the rumours from Monday, which had thankfully mutated into something about a Judo practice.

'Voices truly spread like a virus. They could literally kill anyone.'

Somebody’s bag was leaning against her chair leg because there was nowhere else to put it.

'I don’t know what’s happening to me.'

'I’m terrified of the dark and of being alone.'

I turned my phone over under the desk, and noticed that there was nothing new since last night.

I typed a simple 'how are you feeling this morning, Kuro?' and sent it before putting the phone away. For all of first period, my phone didn't buzz. Not even once.

Second period was a surprise test. A philosophy one.

Kishi-sensei announced it with the expression of a man who had been looking forward to this for days, and the room made the noise a classroom makes, and papers went down the rows, and I picked up my pen and did what I always do, easily.

Put a problem in front of me with a correct answer, and my whole mind goes quiet in a way it never goes otherwise.

I worked through it cleanly, front to back, checked it twice, and had it done with eleven minutes to spare, and in those eleven minutes, with nothing left to occupy the machine, my eyes went to the empty chair again.

And again.

Nausea. Tremors. Mood swings. A body doing things it can’t explain.

I’ve always taken birth control.

It would be a scandal for both our families.

I put my pen down, folded my hands and stared at the front of the room. I made myself breathe, because there is a particular flavour of dread that comes from having a suspicion you can’t test and a friend you can’t reach, and it doesn’t care that you got full marks.

Then, the bell rang. I handed in a perfect paper and felt nothing about it at all.

Lessons finished early for some reason, and I was up the stairwell to the roof before the corridor had properly filled, taking the last flight two at a time.

They were already there. Shin on the bench with his tie loose, Sora beside him with a folder open across her knees, both of them laughing at something.

That was the first thing I noticed: the laughing.

Because Sora Fujimoto, the president Fujimoto, has spent every day I’ve known her running at about eighty per cent president and twenty per cent person, and somewhere in the last week that ratio had quietly flipped.

She was sitting with one leg tucked under her, and her hair was down. She was mid-story about a first-year who had tried to requisition a live goat for the animal café, and she was doing the voice, and Shin was laughing properly with his head back.

“Akane! You're finally here!” She waved me over like I was the missing third of something. “You have to hear this. A goat.”

I sat down and heard about the goat, and it was funny. I laughed, and the three of us ate lunch on the roof in the cold bright afternoon.

It was good. Genuinely. Sora is easy company once she stops holding herself at arm’s length, and I liked watching her let it go.

And I sat there for forty minutes watching how she looked at Shin.

There was nothing you could point at. She wasn’t flirting; I’d have found that easier. It was in the timing. The way her eyes went to him first when she landed a joke, like she wanted to check. The way she’d start a sentence to both of us and finish it to him. The small unconscious lean of her whole body toward the side of the bench he was sitting on.

She wasn’t doing it on purpose. I knew it. I’d bet my apartment she doesn’t even know she’s doing it. That’s what made it complicated, because you can be angry at a strategy and you cannot be angry at a girl’s instinct.

And I sat with that stirring in me. It was three things at once, and they didn’t fit together.

Something possessive, low and quiet, that noted mine and stayed seated.

Something almost sad, because I like her as a friend, and I know exactly what it is to sit near someone and want something you’re not going to ask for.

And underneath both, that other creature in the basement that had been awake since a lifetime: 'Look how easy it is. Look how she fits into his afternoons. He’s about to have a whole family again, and a girl in love like her is having him for herself every day, and what exactly are you—'

I shut the door on it. Hard. I had to trust Sora.

“Okay,” I said, standing up and brushing off my skirt. “I’m heading off early. I’ve got things to do.”

Shin looked up at me, and I watched him understand why I was leaving without a single word crossing between us.

“See you at home?” he asked.

“No. I’ll come and get you when you’re done with your student council errands.” I let my eyes slide to Sora, and held them there for a beat longer than necessary, and smiled with about forty per cent of my mouth. “You’re in good company anyway.”

It wasn’t hostile. It was, precisely and deliberately, 'I see you. Don't overstep.' 

Sora went a delicate pink and became extremely interested in her folder.

I bent down, kissed Shin on the cheek, and left them there in the cold sunlight.

After that, I quickly walked out of the school, ignoring every single student and giving a bad glare to the ones who blocked my path.

The pharmacy was three blocks away from the school, the one with the tired lighting and the pharmacist who never looks up.

I stood in front of the shelf longer than I expected to.

There were more kinds than I’d assumed. Digital and not, one line and two lines, early detection, twin packs. I read the boxes with the same focus I’d given the test that morning, because if I focused on the packaging I didn’t have to think about the girl at the other end of this errand, sitting alone in a dark house being afraid of the dark.

I took two. Different brands, in case one was wrong. Then I picked up a third, because if the first two disagreed, she’d need a tiebreaker, and then I stood there holding three pregnancy tests in a fluorescent-lit aisle at four in the afternoon, buying them for my best friend, who is not carrying my brother’s child.

Probably.

I paid. The pharmacist didn’t look up. The bag was small and white and weighed nothing at all.

I put it in my school bag, zipped it shut, and started walking toward Kurone's house.

My phone stayed silent in my pocket the entire way there...