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Toru is sure that he's in over his head this time. His heart races as he walks to the art room on the other side of campus, the smell of paint and various other mediums that he can't name off the top of his head getting more and more prominent the closer that he gets, resulting in a scent that he can't put his finger on.
He realizes it as he walks down the hallway, not only did he decide to ask a girl that he's barely talked to more than a few times, just enough to consider a 'friend' but knows about as much as an acquaintance to be his 'valentine' but he went so far as to buy an art kit for her.
There's still time to go back
Is the only thing that he can think of, the only line in his head that repeats as he lingers just outside the door that leads to the art room. The sound of Satomi's humming just barely audible through the door, the scent of art supplies comes back to him, filling his nose as his heart rate speeds up.
If he were less painfully aware of his situation and where the nervousness in his body was coming from, the realization that he's about to make a mistake, he would think that the beads of sweat that fall down his face and his heart beating out of his chest was from him liking her.
But to be fair, maybe he did go a bit far for a girl that he may or may not get to consider a 'valentine' for only one day. After all, boys his age usually get girls that they can actually consider their girlfriends much less this time of year. A box of chocolates followed by a romantic gesture that he has never had the pleasure of knowing before walking away.
But he can't brush off the memory of his nervousness that followed him the night before as he started to have second thoughts, or the thought of her that lingered in his mind as he walked around the art store, surrounded by things that he couldn't name as he searched for an art kit that he thought she would like, unsure as to what he would do with it if she rejected him.
Finally, something, he could ascribe it to a sudden boost in courage or an urge to get this inevitable rejection over with, comes over him and he opens the door to see Satomi standing there, working on her self-portrait. His heart turns to stone and falls to his feet as the crippling weight of the situation that he's found himself intertwined in overtakes his ability to think straight, leaving nothing more than the urge to run away.
The faint whisper of plastic is the only sound that comes out of him as he hides the chocolates and the art kit behind his back. But he can't be sure that the way he walks in, with his hands suspiciously tucked behind him is subtle, that she won't notice that he's hiding something. Satomi turns her head to face to him, when she realizes that there's someone else in the room with her, but she doesn't flinch or scream, instead, her face remains content when she realizes that it's him.
"Oh, hey Oshikiri, what are you doing here?" Her voice is oddly calm as he tries to find the words that lingered in the back of his mind that he's rehearsed all day.
"Hey Satomi, so uh, I just wanted to ask something," His voice sounds like he's trying to avoid something, and he is, but he doesn't know if she realizes it yet, still, it pulls her in just enough to keep her guessing.
"Yeah, what is it?" Her sudden response throws him off and it feels like he's been put under a spotlight, but he should've expected this.
He pulls out the art set before the chocolates, when Satomi sees the art supplies in his hands, sitting just atop the chocolates that lay beneath it, with a hand-written note from him, she's shocked. How did he know that she's been wanting that set for years now? She can't help but to feel something brewing inside of her, and unlike him, she ascribes it to love.
"So I bought you this art kit and all, not just because I know you've been wanting it for a while,"
He pauses, he wonders if he's telling the truth, he wonders if it sounds like he's being conceited, after all, he only heard her making a passing comment in one of their conversations about how she had been wanting this set, it's The only thing that stuck with him as he walked through that art store, for all he knows, he could be wrong,
"But also because uh, how do I say this, so, it's valentines day and all, and I was just wondering if you would want to be my valenti-" Oshikiri's talking speeds up as he tries to get to the point but he's cut off by Satomi's lips crashing into his. Not exactly how he'd imagine his first kiss with a girl to go.
He's startled, but he doesn't push her off of him, even despite the fact that he could. He instead closes his eyes, his hands still clutching onto his gift to her, and just briefly kisses back before she pulls away from him abruptly, just before he can sink himself into the moment and etch the feeling of her lips against his into his memory.
"Of course I'll be your valentine! And I'd love to...be your girlfriend as well,"
Oshikiri takes a moment to process the second half of what she just said, does she really mean that?
"R-really?" He sputters out like a little kid, half-expecting her to tell him that she was joking, but the other half of him hopes that she isn't kidding.
"Yeah,"
"Ok, you can be my girlfriend...babe," The words slip out of his mouth before he can think about the weight of them as they're thrown into the realm of interpretation
The two walk home, hand in hand, as they talk about nothing and everything, Oshikiri feels oddly comfortable in her presence, almost as if they have been together much longer than just a day,
"Do you think people will realize that we're boyfriend and girlfriend now?" Satomi asks out of nowhere, her hand still intertwined with his.
He hesitates as he tries to find a way to respond, he hadn't thought about that and it makes him wonder,
"I don't think they will, and even if they do, I don't think they would care that much about it," Despite his answer sounding matter-of-fact, almost cynical in nature, his words seem to comfort some deep-seated root of doubt in her as she takes his word for it.
"I guess so," is all that he can reply with, a vague statement that could mean anything. He can only hope that she doesn't overthink people's responses even a fraction as much as he does.
The two are so focused on each other that they almost don't realize the curbside that they passed and the fact that they have to part ways soon enough and head over to their respective houses.
"Oh, I just realized, I have to start walking to my house right about now, see you later, babe," Oshikiri is still getting used to the feeling of calling this girl that he barely knew before, something that he didn't think he would call anyone. It comes out naturally, but it feels like he's moving too fast with the nicknames and the honorifics. Even despite that, it doesn't feel forced.
It feels weird knowing that within the span of a day, one that he used to consider pointless with all of the couples that surrounded him and the 'I love you's that were thrown around, he's managed to do something that he didn't think would be possible in all 16 years that he's existed.
As Oshikiri walks home, his head is stuck in a hazy trance, he's still trying to process the fact that he has a girlfriend now, someone he can care about, and someone who can maybe, just maybe, console the loneliness that takes over his heart every time that he finds himself alone with nothing but his heartbeat and the sound of his own thoughts.
He doesn't realize it until he feels a weird heat in his cheeks and he puts a hand on his face that he's been blushing at the thought of Satomi the entire time that he's been away from her. Maybe this won't be as bad as he thinks. Oshikiri feels a rush that he hasn't before, he ascribes it to love, even despite the fact that a familiar doubt still follows him on the way home.
(Toru should know that this isn't going to end well)
The thought of staying after school with Satomi to do nothing but practice a skill that Oshikiri thought he would never be able to do decently feels progressively less foreign the more times that he finds Satomi’s hand guiding him on the canvas as he paints.
“You’re getting good at this, Toru,”
The sound of his first name takes him aback, have they really grown that close that she can use his first name like that? Are they really that close that she can just say it so casually? Maybe he should’ve picked up on that clue by now, but before he can respond, he can already hear Satomi trying to take back her words,
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to call you by your first name, I guess it just kind of slipped out,”
“No, no, it’s fine, we’re boyfriend and girlfriend after all, makes sense that we would be on a first-name basis too,” He almost acknowledges their relationship too matter-of-factly for his own liking, almost like he’s a middle-schooler who’s still trying to figure out how relationships work,
“I guess so, I’m just…not so sure how that slipped out so naturally,” A part of him wonders how she learned his first name in the first place, but it must be for the same reasons that he knows hers,
Oshikiri decides to test the waters, to see if Satomi will pick up on the casual reciprocation of calling someone by their first name, just to see her reaction, he can only hope that she’ll take it well,
“I mean, it’s normal to start talking differently around the people you like, Kazuko,”
“Yeah, I guess so…” Her words trail off as she slowly realizes,
“Did…you just call me by my first name? How did you know that was my first name?” She sounds almost worried, did he hit a nerve? He rushes to clarify himself before she gets creeped out,
“It’s not like that.. I just…I read it on one of the letters addressed to you from your penpals, sorry if it came out wrong,”
“No, I just… I’m just really flattered to have a boyfriend who pays attention to the little things like you do, maybe because you’re the first,” She mumbles the last part to herself but he can still hear it, he doesn’t say anything back, and he doesn’t have to because she doesn’t hesitate to follow up,
“I’m glad to call you mine, Toru,”
“So am I, Kazuko,”
Oshikiri always thought that the shift that comes when becoming someone’s lover would be much more dramatic but he quickly realizes that it’s more subtle than he thought. It’s not much more than what friends would usually do, he thinks at least.
Just the occasional time that he hears his first name come out of Satomi’s mouth, the way that their hands brush against each other during break time, their casual meetings in secret spaces, the occasional outing or two that they call dates, and a comfy feeling that envelops him every time he lays awake at night thinking about her. And that rush that comes to him every time he sees her standing in the art room when he walks in. Maybe he can ascribe that to more than just nervousness now.
“You know what, you really are rude Toru, I mean, saying all of those things over one little comment I made is just uncalled for!” Her words are filled with spite, bitterness spilling off of her tongue as she yells at him. His anger feels justified, after all, she was the one who made that comment about his height, and his social status despite not being much different than him in that department, but when he looks at her, he can’t help but to think that maybe he took it a bit far. Still, whatever remaining bits of contempt and resentment that he holds towards her seeps into his words as he gets up,
“Whatever, I’m leaving, we can just talk this over tomorrow,” Even despite his urge to correct things here and now so that he can go to bed at night normally, he doesn’t want to hear it, he doesn’t want to hear anything coming out of her mouth at all.
As Oshikiri leaves the room in a fit of frustration, he can hear Satomi mumble something under her breath, he can’t be bothered to figure out what she’s saying, and deep down, he doesn’t want to know how she truly feels about him.
A wave of realization washes over him as he walks out of the school with his bookbag clutched to his person and his scarf wrapped tightly around his neck, the only sense of security he’s been able to find within the past 6 months, maybe he did go too far with his comments, after all, she only hurt his feelings once, those cuts weren’t equal. But when he finally realizes how he messed up, it’s too late. It’s not like he can just go back like that, he’ll just have to talk to her the next day when she’s cooled down and they can paint it over.
Sleep doesn’t come to him easily as he tosses and turns in his bed, the whirlwind of emotions turning into a frustrating pain that churns in his stomach, every time he remembers that argument with Satomi, he realizes that he’s more in the wrong the more that he thinks about it.
But just before the raging tides of sleep forcefully take over him at some point when his eyes are too heavy to keep open, he vows to himself that he’s going to apologize to her the first chance he gets to talk to her.
A bitter feeling in the back of Oshkiri’s throat that he can faintly taste follows him the whole way to school, fragments of words that can’t be found pile at the back of his mouth as he tries to come up with something that sounds like a proper apology in his head instead of writing down notes in class. He looks nervously around the room, he wishes that time would speed up so that he can see Satomi and finally get this horrible feeling over with, but at the same time, he wishes that it would freeze completely so he doesn’t have to think about it anymore.
That familiar scent of paint takes over his sense of smell as he walks closer to Satomi’s studio, or at least what he likes to consider her studio considering how many times she’s in there by herself after classes, every time that he smells the scent of paint, he can’t help but to think of her, and at this time it just makes him feel worse the longer that he lingers. He’s hesitant to open the door but he can’t just let their relationship fall apart like this over one little argument. Even if she doesn’t forgive him, the least he can do is try and say sorry for what he said.
The door to Satomi’s studio opens with a creak, guilt takes over his every breath as he stares at her, lingers in the doorway for a moment, just looking at what she looks like without him bothering her, she seems so conten t without him, and it makes him wonder if he should just leave her alone.
“Hey Satomi,”
She turns her head, almost disappointed that she has to see him again,
“Oh, hey Oshikiri,”
“I’m just Oshikiri now…?”
“Sorry,...Toru,” The name that he’s allowed her to call him doesn’t slip out of her mouth so easily anymore.
“I’m really sorry, Kazuko, I didn’t mean to say all of those things after that comment you made, I should’ve just told you how it hurt my feelings instead of hurting yours tenfold, I let my emotions get the better of me, and I’m…sorry for that,”
The words slip out of his mouth but every sentence that he’s rehearsed and spills out to her feels forced, he can’t tell if it’s hard to admit or if he doesn’t actually mean it, he can only hope that it isn’t the latter.
“I guess I should apologize too, I’m sorry for that comment I made about you, I didn’t realize that my words would hurt you like that, I didn’t mean it that way, I’m…not good with words, maybe that’s why I paint so much,” once again, she mumbles that latter part to herself, it’s something that he’s gotten used to picking up on.
It’s almost like the first half of her sentence is what she wants him to hear and the part that she says to herself is what she truly feels, he waits almost eagerly for when she mumbles something to herself that sounds completely different from what she actually says.
“You know, I can make it up to you if you can forgive me, where would you like to go for our next date?” It’s the only thing that he can think to say, probably not the only thing he should think of.
“I guess, somewhere scenic? I’ve always wanted to go somewhere at sunset with a nice view, I feel like it would give me a real boost of inspiration for my painting,” It’s a relief that she answers so vaguely, many ideas pop up in his head as she speaks but one stays in his mind to the end,
“Then we’ll go somewhere scenic at sunset,” Oshikiri says matter-of-factly.
“How can I make it up to you for hurting you though, I mean, you can just take me to all of these nice places, and you do so many nice things for me, but in comparison, it just feels like I’m not doing enough,”
Her words sound eerily like one of those things that she mutters under her breath and Oshikiri is almost taken aback by how distinctly he can tell the difference that was never meant to be told in the first place.
“Well, I know a way you can make it up to me for now,”
“...How?”
“An art lesson, show me how you create such beautiful colors on those canvases, and maybe a kiss,”
She looks at him for a moment, before he can feel her lips on his, even if it still feels odd, he can never get tired of it, something that he’s put so much weight on becoming effortless when it’s with her. She pulls away, and an amiable silence lingers in the air in the passing moment that neither of them says a word, it feels peaceful.
“Pick up that paintbrush, I’m going to teach you how to create beautiful color schemes,”
The golden tangerine of sunset surrounds the two as they grow nearer to the destination that Toru promised Kazuko that he would take her to. He couldn’t think of a more perfect place to take her even if it was thrown at his face.
A perfect intersection of an ocean view from the top of an overpass, a beach, and a flower garden all intertwined in one place with roads and masses of city views that people would kill to see surrounding them.
“You can open your eyes now,” He’s surprised that Kazuko has managed to make it this far without taking a single peek, maybe he’s more impatient than he thought when it comes to surprises.
As Kazuko takes her hands off of her eyes, she almost faints at the weight before her, it looks like a picture taken out from one of her many lucid dreams. Toru smiles to himself, he gets to share a moment at one of his favorite places ever with the girl of his dreams, it still feels odd being able to say it.
Kazuko grabs onto his hand as she stands there in shock as she looks around,
“Wow, I…I couldn’t have asked for better, this place is amazing, how did you find it? It looks like it was taken straight out of a movie scene,” When she asks him that, he can’t remember, he remembers going here many times as a kid and the way that he would cry every time they had to go home, the times that he would sneak out when his parents were at work and the amount of times that the salt air of the ocean would fill his nose as he walked across the shore. But even still, he can’t put his finger on anything specific.
“I’ve always wanted to take someone here, it was my favorite place to go when I was little and even now I still like going here once in a while, I don’t go here too often because it’s one of those places you have to center your weekly schedule around, and plus, if I got to go here all the time, I feel like the magic would wear off at some point, but being here, with you, it’s like there’s a certain spark to this place,”
To be fair, he isn’t lying, it’s one of those places that he can’t just go to every other day, let alone always be able to make it the moment that the sun starts to set in the sky, he got lucky this time.
“Where do you think we should go first?”
“Wherever you want to go, you’re the leader here,” He’s hesitant to give her that level of control when the possibility of getting lost is perilously close to him by giving her that privilege, but it’s the least he can do.
Kazuko takes his hand and walks around with him around the place until he’s seen every last corner, and he’s impressed at her ability to not get lost within the endless scenery. They stare out at the sunset, slowly getting accustomed to the way that the violet and orange hues of the sky mix and intertwine. Toru leads Kazuko around the flower-filled path, encouraging her to take as many photos as she pleases to print out when she gets home. She convinces him to take a walk around the beach, their eyes locked and focused on nothing but each other and the setting sun as waves crash onto the shore.
Finally, as the final stretch of nighttime drowns out the last vestiges of sunset, they take a walk around the city, an air of safety surrounding them as they’re walking together in the city rather than just by themselves, the lights of Tokyo at night filling up their peripheral as their hands’ clasp onto the others. The sounds of the world around them drown out once more as they get lost in conversation,
“You know, I feel like we should end off the night with a trip to the art museum, I know one just downtown that’s open until midnight,” Kazuko says, her words trailing off into the midnight black of the sky as she waits for Toru’s response,
“Sure, we can go there right now,”
Kazuko was taken aback at his lack of hesitation, she was expecting him to say something to the effect of ‘no, not right now’ it seemed that she still needed to get used to his unrelenting kindness even despite his rude-looking exterior.
“Really…?”
“Yes, really, just show me where it is and we can go,”
“You know, I really couldn’t have asked for a better boyfriend,”
“And I couldn’t have asked for a better girlfriend,”
Their worries fade into nothingness as stars fill the darkness of the sky around them.
Even despite their comfort around each other, Toru can’t help but feel like there’s that one part of her that he can’t get to, something that separates them every time they cuddle, that barrier that keeps them from being intertwined when they talk into the late hours of the night on the weekends that they share with each other. It’s every time that Kazuko hesitates to tell him anything about her penpals, it’s the things that she goes quiet about, it’s nothing much, but he can't help but to feel like it’s going to become too much to handle soon enough.
Toru and Kazuko sit in the living room of her house vis a vis, it’s nothing new, but the air feels tense. Kazuko reads the letters that her penpals have sent her with an unpleasant expression on her face, he’s always been aware of his girlfriend’s penpals and he’s always wanted to know the nature of their relationship.
He’s gotten hints and fragments of information dropped over multiple conversations, most of which Kazuko probably doesn’t remember, to make a scattered picture, a shattered image of what might be, but it’s the one thing that she prefers to keep private, and he doesn’t cross that boundary, or at least, he tries not to.
But when he watches his girlfriend’s face twist from content to frustration and resentment, the same way it does when he accidentally hits a nerve when talking to her, he can’t help but to wonder.
“So mean! Even Chiharu’s writing such awful things…” Kazuko says as she covers her mouth, presumably holding back tears as she pushes the letter away from her, Toru can’t help but to grab it to see what her so called ‘penpals’ are writing to her, he’s been semi-aware of a brewing tension and a misunderstanding that arose from when she decided to write to them about him, but it’s the first time that he can peer in from more than just a birds eye view above.
His face is neutral, unmoving as he reads the letter, but he can’t help but to be in a state of shock that people would write such mean things to her over something like a letter, let alone over such a small misunderstanding.
“Kazuko…what the hell is wrong with these people? I mean, it’s just…it’s not normal,”
She suddenly stands up as Toru holds the letter in his hands,
“Toru, sorry, but could you go? I have to write a reply to Chiharu right now,”
“I can’t sit here and say nothing when she’s writing stuff like this!” Kazuko says, pacing around the room, almost like she’s trying to figure out what to write in response,
“Kazuko…” Toru tries to say something, anything to calm her nerves down to where they can talk it out rationally, but she cuts him off,
“Please go home!”
He gives her a hesitant nod before getting his things and leaving the house. Toru doesn’t realize it in the midst of his hasty attempt to leave her house and let her cool down on her own, but he accidentally leaves his scarf on her sofa. The cool air of later winter, turning spring brushes against his face and his neck as he thinks about Kazuko and her penpals. How their relationship, even over writing has soured to such a point, just because of the fact that Kazuko decided to write about him and things got blown out of proportion, he can’t help but to feel bad for inadvertently being the catalyst to her current situation.
It’s only when he’s just outside of her house does he realize that he’s left his scarf on her couch, he’s hesitant to go abc inside, still worried about Kazuko and what she’ll say, but he knows that he has to grab it before it’s too late, it’s the only thing that lets him have peace ever since he’s started to have hallucinations regarding people’s necks growing to unnatural proportions,
“Ah, shit, I forgot my scarf again,”
He grows closer to Kazuko’s house as she rushes out of the door, just as she walks around the corner, they collide like two people caught in a crowded school hallway. Kazuko’s reply letter gets knocked out of her hands from the collision and Toru notices it as it falls to the ground like a feather. He picks it up for only a moment and he can’t help but to see that the letter is addressed to herself. But he only gets a moment to reflect on that accidental mistake as she snatches the note from his hand with nothing more than a hasty ‘thanks!” almost like she doesn’t want him to know about the letter.
Toru stands just outside of her house, like he was minutes prior, unsuccessful in his attempt at reviving his scarf, with nothing more than just a lingering inkling in his gut that tells him something is off.
A doubt brews in Toru as he tosses and turns in bed, he can’t help but to feel that something was off in that brief interaction between him and Kazuko, like she was hiding something within that letter that she had addressed to herself, he should realistically be worried about weather or not she’s cheating on him. But his mind longs towards the possibility of her friends being fake, made up, after all, he could only presume that if she was conscious enough to write a letter in response that fast, she could definitely be aware of what address she would write on the letter.
It’s not many nights that he doesn’t stay up, overthinking and pondering her every response until he can conjure up something that satisfies his brain enough for him to be able to find sleep, but he finds it odd that he would loose this much sleep over such a small thing, maybe this was that thing that he thought would become too much to handle.
The smell of paint starts to have a more bittersweet connotation in Toru’s eyes as he sits there, in that comfortable chair posed in the way that Kazuko wants him to, a pose that he’s practiced until he’s perfected, unsure of what to say in his position as Kazuko’s muse for her latest painting after she decided to destroy her old self-portrait. It’s unlike her to be this silent, even with his position as being nothing more than a live model for her to paint, they usually have something ti fill up the silence in the air, but this time it permeates throughout the room, it consumes Toru until it’s too much to take, until his thoughts and worries grow too loud to stay silent,
“You’re pretty quiet today, did something happen?”
Kazuko doesn’t say anything in reply, he looks at her almost as if he’s awaiting a reply, but to his dismay, it never comes, she just continues to silently paint him. Nothing more than their breathing take up the deafening silence that overtakes the art room that they’ve so very shared for the past four months and it starts to get to him. He has an urge to hear something, anything from her, even if it’s the sound of her yelling in his ear to leave him alone, he wonders why he’s more content with the thought of hearing her scream then desperate to hear the calmness of her silence, even if it’s on the verge of breaking.
“Oh right, when do you think you’ll get an answer to that letter?” Toru can’t help but to mentally facepalm himself for bringing up such a sensitive subject less than a day after the incident in her house, but it’s the only thing that’s louder than the voices in his head and the only question in his mind regarding his girlfriend. Finally, Kazuko decides to say something,
“...It came yesterday…another mean letter,” Kazuko’s voice is dejected and quieter than her usual voice. Toru’s gotten used to how she normally sounds. Her quiet tone of voice in contrast to the loud people that constantly surround them at school, and the soft llit in her words that craft sentences he could find somewhere in a poetry book.
The way that her voice gets louder when she talks about art or quieter when they cuddle together and she’s on the verge of sleep, but still desperate to talk to him before she passes out. But hearing her voice, now, it almost sounds disappointing, it just sounds like she’s a shell of a person that she once was, even with him.
“Yesterday? The answer came yesterday ?” A hint of doubt overtakes Toru’s response, he doesn’t know much about her penpals, even from reading a letter from one of them directly, but he does know that a letter from Fukuoka to Toyama would take longer than a day, let alone a few hours after Kazuko replied.
“That’s really fast, huh?” Toru says, a sense of doubt slowly starting to overshadow his ability to believe in the validity of these so called ‘penpals’
He shifts in his chair as he starts to go on a tangent, he doesn’t want to, but his mouth starts to move before he can think, his curiosity about the letter that he saw just the day before, mixed with his pre-existing knowledge culminating into a response that seems almost rehearsed, and he sounds almost desperate to get it out of his system,
“That day…the envelope you dropped–it was addressed to you. There was no postmark on it, so it wasn’t from a friend. You wrote it.”
Kazuko gives him a blank stare, almost as if she’s been caught in an act, but she can’t find the words to retaliate against him, and stupidly, he takes this as a sign to keep going,
“I know, I saw it. Did you put it in the postbox? Kind of weird to write letters to yourself,” He tries to shift his tone, soften the blow but every question and follow up comes out as a lower blow than the last, it doesn’t come out any less insulting to Kazuko,
“So I was thinking…like, maybe your penpals never actually existed…you know?”
“What?!” His proposal forcefully breaks her silence and he seems almost proud about that, his hints of doubt and fragments of resentment finally being able to seep into her thoughts they way that they overtake his.
“Come clean, you’ve made them up, you just made up some imaginary penpals and had imaginary correspondences with them, didn’t you?”
“Your amazing pen pals…they were just you all along. You weren’t writing letters to them, you were writing answers from them. And because you were writing their replies, all of their tastes and hobbies matched up with yours,” Toru says, trying ot put the puzzle pieces together in his mind as he goes on with his tangent.
“Of course, you could make it go however you wanted, but you ended up fighting, I have a theory about that…” His voice grows more cynical and sardonic as he goes, struggling to wrap his head around the thought that comes up in his head, he already has a hard time with his own hallucinations, and it seems that he doesn’t handle the idea of someone else suffering with them any better.
“While you wrote the letters, you started to really believe that these girls actually existed, you probably had images of them made up in your mind and all, and then I think they got jealous about you talking to me,” He throws in an assumption about her as an extra insult, the vile flood of words spilling out of his mouth like sludge as he goes on with his rant.
“You felt bad for them so you had them writing taunting letters to you as a way ot punish yourself and apologize to them in your head, but when you actually got the letters in the post, it was a terrible shock, it didn’t matter that you wrote the letters, and you got angry anyway,”
“I know I sound like a psychologist and all, but…long story short, you were only using those letters to criticize yourself,” His eyes dart around the room before coming back to her when he finally stops, feeling a twisted sense of satisfaction envelop him as he watches her attempt to process his words.
“You say the weirdest things, the envelope was addressed to me? There’s no way it would be. I must have written my address by mistake,” Her response is oddly collected and he’s almost disappointed at how calm she remains, he wonders, in a brief moment of clarity if he should continue, or if he should leave it be,
“Don’t play dumb. You had to have known,” Kazuko’s unrelenting dedication to her cause almost makes Toru doubt his own words but he stands firm, he doesn’t know why. It doesn’t seem like attempt to reality-check her is bringing her any closer to a concept of reality than when she tries to comfort him amidst his hallucinations of a doppelganger.
“Well…in any case, your pointless game is over now, Thats’s the real reason you destroyed that painting that you were working so hard on…that was a farewell to your friends.” he can’t help but tos mile to himself until he hears the slamming of a paintbrush against the art kit that he bought her, it’s only in that moment does he realize the way that he messed up, seeing her face twisted with anger, it forces him back into reality but he can’t bring himself to backtrack or try and soften the blow, either way, it’s too late.
“Stop it! Sitting there, telling me your random theories and running your mouth like that! My friends are all made up?! Excuse me?! They exist…” Even despite her anger, her words trail off for a second, almost like she’s starting to doubt herself, just for a moment, “...They definitely exist.”
But instead of coming to a realization about her friends, she doubles down,
“I’m not going to let some outside spectator talk to me like that! You’re not part of this. I don’t need you telling me anything,”
“I’m going home!” Kazuko says as she leaves Toru sitting there, in that same chair, but the air is much more tense then when they both entered the room, it leaves him with a pit of realization in his stomach, did he really decide that his hold on logic was more important than the relationship with Kazuko that he worked so hard on building? His eyes follow her as she grabs everything but the art supplies that he gave her and storms out, the last vestiges of his pent up anger singe at him as he mutters to himself,
“Jeez, at least clean up your paint supplies,” He cant help but to feel like he’s just ended an argument with his parents, but indecision takes over him as he sits with the memory of Kazuko’s words adn the doubt that filled the air as he tried to bring her back to what he thought was reality. He paces around the room, closing up the art kit that he gave her as he ponders,
….Don’t tell me she doesn’t realize it? Maybe she doesn’t know that she’s….that she wrote all of those letters to herself?
He stands besides the unfinished portrait of him and he wonders if she should’ve at least waited until the painting was done to send her storming out of the room the way that he did.
Toru sits in the emptiness of the classroom even with people surrounding him, there’s a certain void that fills the air in his mind without Kazuko there, he didn’t realize it until he found every second that she wasn’t there with him full of nothing but her shadow and every remnant of her that he could cling onto. That loneliness that he tried so hard to escape consumes his whole person until he’s a shell of a person ,until his presence is a mere whisper in a loud room.
As his notes become less cohesive, it gives him an odd deja vu to their first fight, over that small comment that she made regarding his height and how he stormed out of the paint room, almost the same way that she did. But the difference in context is monumental, it almost feels like an insult to try and equate what she did to him compared to what he did to her.
The memory weighs down on him the more that he thinks about it, in retrospect, he realizes more and more just how wrong he was in that moment for being so rude to her in her own art studio, the way that he kept on going until it was too much for her to handle, his forceful attempt at bringing her back to reality that only ended in yelling. Even having the smug audacity to smile to himself and say those words with such ease and fragments of built up resentment and anger seeping into his ‘theories’ about her penpals, a bitter tone that wasn’t his own.
He passes by the art room on the other slide of campus as he goes to retrieve the art kit that he gave her, and the portrait that she made. The smell of oil paints wafting to his nose, and it almost brings him to bitter tears at the memory of Kazuko, or the pale approximation of who she might’ve been before he tore down her idea of comfort.
Oshikiri shouldn’t have assumed that since their friendship was on the verge of ending to go so far as to say that they were all made up, but still, he said all of those things, he can’t help but to hold the art set that he bought her, the colors all mixed up from using it so much over the past four months in his hands as he makes the one decision that he can hope he won’t regret in a fit of desperation to go to her house and at least apologize, even if it’s the last time that they talk as a couple.
He wonders if this will be their breaking point, their relationship starting the way that it ends. He can’t help but to feel that the possibility is much more realistic than he originally thought.
Oshikiri rings the doorbell as he sits there in the quiet air outside of Kazuko’s house, when she opens the door, she’s almost unrecognizable, her hair is unkempt as she wears a white turtleneck, there’s dark circles underneath her eyes from presumed loss of sleep, she answers with nothing but his name, not even his first name that he’s gotten so accustomed to hearing,
“Oshikiri.” The sudden shift in tone throws him off, maybe he should’ve expected this.
“Hey, how’ve you been? I brought your art kit, you…left it before…” Oshikiri’s words trail off, he tries to do away with the unpleasant formalities but he still has the audacity to ask how she’s been doing.
She lingers in the doorway with an uncharacteristic look of unease in her eyes and her movements mimic that of his hallucinations more than the girl that he thought he knew. It makes him realize just what he’s done, he tries to say something, anything, to make it up to her and make things right, but it isn’t so easy.
“Satomi…are you sick or something?” He doesn’t realize that he’s regressed to using her last name, just like he would if she were nothing more than his acquaintance, but it feels like there’s a sense of distance and tension between them that he doesn’t dare cross by using her first name, he doesn’t want to come off more disrespectful than he already is.
“Oshikiri…a letter’s coming…” Her voice is wild with emotion, like she’s on the brink of combusting into a meltdown, it’s hoarse, almost like her vocal cords are tired from screaming, but it sounds like she’s barely said a word in days.” She goes into the house and he can’t help but to follow her, a mix of worry for her well-being and courtesy. That sense of deja-vu comes back to Oshikiri as he sits on her couch, the same way that he did before things in their relationship spiraled for the worse.
“The fight…just keeps getting worse. They sent me threatening letters almost every day, I…I didn’t know what to do, so I wrote ‘i'll kill you,’ and then they said they were going to kill…me,” Her voice is wobbly, like she’s on the verge of tears, she’s scared in the same way that she is when something shakes her up, but her face looks beyond that point, like she’s just shy of a nervous breakdown.
That layer of doubt in Oshikiri’s mind still lingers, the same way that it did as he listened to Kazuko try to defend herself against his accusations but he doesn’t dare say anything. He already feels like he’s walking in a minefield, any slip-up and it could send her spiraling for the worst in front of his eyes, he already has enough of a guilty conscience.
“They’re coming to kill me…for real…Yuko’s coming from Hokkaido, Miki from Tokyo, and Chiharu from Fukuoka. They’re coming here. They’re going to meet up and come here together as if I’d let them kill me…” Her voice trails off, even in the midst of her panic, she still has some resilience left, even if it’s directed at the wrong thing. He sits there silently, but his nerves quickly combust into flames of worry when she glances to the door, and he can’t help but to glance at the door as well, only to find nothing’s there, for a split second, he almost believed her.
Still, she doesn’t realize that and his body snaps into fight-or-flight mode when she screams, her eyes wild with worry and fear when they meet him for just a fleeting second.
Oshikiri’s mind can pick up on the fact that something’s wrong much faster than his body can react, it feels like he’s moving in a viscous liquid as his body fills with electric static that’s on the verge of bursting into flames. He tries to figure out what to do at the moment, he’s always heard of situations like this, but he never thought that he would be caught in one. Does he run away? Does he call 911 in a hopeless attempt to save her from herself? Or does he try to stop her himself ?
He’s always criticized the people who don’t act rationally in these kinds of situations in movies, tv shows, even books that he occasionally reads,, but the gravity of what’s going on in front of him forces him to realize that no one would act rationally in this situation, let alone him.
It coalesces in him standing there as she screams at nothing in particular with the knife in her hands, his grip on reality loosening and slipping up as he realizes that he’s on the verge of fainting, adrenaline pumps in his blood and he just barely manages to catch himself before he falls to the ground.
In a fit of desperation as Kazuko screams, he tries to calm her down himself, it’s the least he can do,
“S-Satomi? What’s wrong?! There’s no one there!” But his words don’t work, before he can realize what’s going on, she’s stabbing herself in the stomach with that same kitchen knife, the sounds of her agony filling the silence in the room that was once so amiable. Before his mind can take hold of what’s going on, he’s already dialing 911, his hands are moving on their own and he acts out a script that he hasn’t rehearsed.
“911, what’s your emergency?” The operator’s voice is uncharacteristically calm in the frantic moment that he stands there beside Kazuko’s house phone, his hands trembling to the point that he can barely hold the phone. He can hear the muffled screams coming from the other room, he can only hope that it won’t be used against him.
“YUKO! MIKI…! STOP, CHIHARU!!”
The operator’s voice blurs into nothingness as he struggles to answer their barrage of questions and tries to keep his watch over the girl in front of him, completely disconnected from the one who he considers his lover in the next room over as she stabs herself over and over again, each slash looking like it’s coming from someone else, he's’ never experienced an out-of-body trance, but he feels like a disconnected spirit in that moment.
In the instant that the operator pauses to write something down, he runs from the phone and to her in a last-ditch effort, tries one last time, a futile attempt to get her to calm down long enough for the ambulance to get there, his desperation and emotions overriding every control that he’s put in place for himself, but it doesn’t work, he can only watch in horror,
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! STOP! STOP!!” He realizes faster than he wants to that his words bounce off of her and reflect back onto him, a projection of his true feelings as her blood splatters on the floor.
When he runs back and hears the operator tell him that the ambulances are coming and give him the go-ahead to hang up, his emotions are so high that he can barely feel the weight of them holding him down, pinning him to that area, just in front of her as he watches, helpless to do anything, slash her own face as her eyes go bloodshot from the shock and pain.
He normally faints around blood like that, but he’s stuck to the ground, unable to do anything as he watches her slowly collapse in front of him, dropping the knife that was in her hands.
The image of her looking at him, as she breathes her final breaths, full of pain, her bloodshot eyes taking one last moment to look at him in her final seconds permeates in his mind and etches itself in his memory, overtaking every reminder of her before this. The shock that takes over his body forces him not to feel the tears that run down his face as a scream that isn’t his own works its way out of his mouth, sounding like it's coming out of his soul, his mouth is so wide open that it feels like something is trying to escape him.
Oshikiri crouches beside the girl that he used to call his girlfriend with a proud smile on his face as her heart rate slowly decreases to zero,
“No…no…no…no…NO… NO NO!! No…” his voice shakes like an earthquake and the emotions in his body radiate from him with the force of a thousand suns, he feels like throwing up, he feels like he’s on the verge of fainting, he feels so many things that it doesn’t register and translates into him feeling nothing at all, a reaction that he deems wildly inappropriate in that situation, he hotels her hand as she finally dies, her body soulless on the ground, covered in blood, and distantly in Oshikiri’s mind, he realizes it…the true gravity of the situation.
She's ... .dead.
Tears fall and stain his clothes, they fall onto her lifeless body as he gets up to call her parents, he doesn’t know why, but he feels like he needs to tell someone about it, at least the people who are closest to her, before the outside twists the story, a moment of clarity yells at him not to do so, but he needs to take just a moment, a fleeting second to distance himself from the situation he just witnessed before his body starts to act on instinct.
He notices the number for her parents on the wall, and his fingers move on their own, just like when he called the emergency line, but he doesn’t hurry, taking periodic breaks in between each number that he dials, each time giving him a moment of doubt to wonder if he should
“Kazuko! What’s going on? It’s unlike you to call us at such random hours of the day,” He immediately gets an impression of what her parents are like, even despite the fact that he’s never met them. The sweet tone of what he can only assume to be her mom makes him feel uneasy, his voice is quiet and hoarse, hesitant to speak as he tries to compound the endless weight of what he just witnessed into a few sentences that he can get through to her parents in a way that they’ll understand,
“This…isn’t Kazuko,”
“Huh? Who is this?”
“This is Toru Oshikiri, one of your daughter’s friends…I called because I went to her house after we had a fight over some so-called ‘pen pals’ she had and before I realized what was going on, she was stabbing herself, and I was calling 911, and I had tried to stop her, and the ambulances are coming at any minute now but…”
His words trail off, the enormity of what he wants to say is more than he can articulate into words. He can’t say it. He can’t bring himself to describe what happened in front of him. Even as a mere bystander, it’s too much for him to try and say, but words that aren’t his own flow out of his mouth before he can realize it,
“...she’s dead. Your daughter, Kazuko…she’s…dead.” His lifeless eyes look to the ground as he can hear the shriek of her parents, his voice sounds horribly calm even when he was screaming the same way that she was just a few minutes prior, his vocal cords tired from the strain, he can only try and compose himself in the barrage of questions that come his way, but his grief sucks the life out of his voice as he answers, even in each crack and shake of his voice, every reply comes out as a deadpan,
“I don’t know who these ‘penpals’ are…all I know is that they don’t exist, I saw her…she was standing near the doorway with a knife in her hands and she was yelling at them to get away, but when I glanced over to what she was yelling at…I saw nothing there,”
“Our relationship wasn’t much more than a friendship, I got her some chocolates for valentines Day but that was all that we did together, I swear it,” nothing more than an unnecessary lie.
“I just wanted to return her art supplies and apologize to her,”
“I tried to stop her, I swear, I was trying to talk to the operator and keep watch of her at the same time like they instructed me to, I tried stopping her myself but…she wouldn’t listen,”
“I’m not implying that I want you to come here any faster than you can, but I feel like it would be the least that you could do, at least hold a funeral for her, a proper burial and memorial for your daughter…if that’s fine with you,”
“I don’t…I don’t think that an open-casket funeral would be a good idea, I saw her face, I’m not sure if you could handle seeing that,”
“Ok, I see, bye.”
Before he realizes it, he’s been holding a phone that no one has been talking in for over five minutes, her parents have already hung up the phone and he can distantly remember the conversation that they had, him denying that they were ever in a relationship, denying everything they ever had, trying to sugarcoat what happened, every one of their responses and their distress.
He remembers telling them how he would prefer if the funeral was closed-casket, he doesn’t want to be reminded of her face as she held his hand in her last moments, and he doesn’t think that they’ll be able to handle seeing her face any better than he has.
He staggers to Kazuko’s lifeless body, he doesn’t know why, but he holds it in his arms as he breaks down and dissolves into a puddle of nothingness, insurmountable grief forcing him inconsolable.
Every social norm that he’s forced himself to learn over the years, every one that’s kept him from fitting in, slips his mind, Oshikiri tries and fails to hold back his tears as he looks at the girl that he once called his. Holding her lifeless body in his arms.
(Toru should’ve known that this wouldn’t end well.)