The adventures of the as.., p.8
Adachi and Shimamura, Volume 5, page 8
I couldn’t stop myself. In fact, if it wasn’t for the tears flowing into my mouth, I probably could have kept going forever. It was all going downhill, and there was no going back up…not even if Shimamura was waiting for me at the top.
She doesn’t deserve this, a voice chided in my mind. Yeah, I know, I replied silently. I could admit it: I was just jealous. Shimamura hadn’t done anything wrong. But who was I supposed to complain to if not her? Unable to sort out my feelings, I fell into a panic and choked back sobs. Because…I mean…could you really blame me?
Just then, I heard a sigh—so heavy, it threatened to cleave my face in two. And what came next was…
“…So annoying…”
“…Huh?”
In a faint flash, Shimamura’s sharp blade sliced through my barrage of pointed complaints, mowing down my momentum like grass. My melting mind turned to ice as if winter had come early, and sweat dripped down my back like rain.
“This is just getting really tiring, that’s all,” she continued in a flat, pointed voice.
My sweat dried, and I dissociated so hard, I thought I could see my own dilated pupils. I couldn’t move a muscle. It was like the stabbing pain had cut loose all of my motor functions.
Then, with one last heavy sigh, Shimamura hung up. No goodbyes—just gone without a trace. I was “tiring,” and she didn’t want to deal with me.
“…What?”
Timidly, I pulled the phone away from my ear, where Shimamura’s words echoed: So annoying. So annoying. So annoying. The room swayed up and down. My brain had curdled, and I couldn’t think. Instead I froze, staring, my mouth agog.
This was more than mere shock. I was dead inside.
Interlude:
Yashiro Comes Calling
Part 8
“WELL, IF IT ISN’T Little. Where might you be off to?”
The first thing I hear when I walk outside isn’t the cicadas, but Yachi’s voice. I whirl around. The sweltering heat blurs all the buildings, but Yachi still looks crisp and cool.
“Oh, Yachi!”
“Little!”
We pat each other on the biceps—pat, pat, pat, pat. It’s too hot for this, but it’s what we always do.
“I’m going to the pool,” I tell her, holding up my pool bag.
She tilts her head. “Pool?”
“Wait, you don’t know? A pool is…a place with lots of water…”
Turns out it’s actually kinda hard to explain. It’s like a bath, but not really, ’cause it’s a pool… Oh, but I don’t think Yachi likes to take baths, because whenever I ask her to take one with me, she runs away. I always catch her, though, and then I give her a good scrubbing. Makes me feel like a big sister.
“Is it fun?”
“Uhhhh…yeah! Lots of fun!”
I flash my pearly whites at her. She flashes hers right back.
The pool at my school is open for the summer—until the Bon Festival, anyways. Mom said they’ve been shortening the days every year.
“What about you, Yachi? Going on a walk somewhere?”
She’s carrying a canteen and wearing a tall, thin hat made of twigs all woven together. I can see some leaves peeking out through the gaps, too. Really weird. But it looks great with the color of her hair.
“Heh heh heh. Nothing as minor as that.”
“Walks are minor?”
“I’m going out to search for my compatriot. I meant to do it sooner, but I completely forgot,” she announces like she’s bragging. “I was planning to spend a good three hundred years looking, but with the heat, I’ll give it three days.”
“Uh…okay…” I think maybe she just made those numbers up.
“Now then, I’ll see you around.”
And with that, she toddles off into the distance. That’s Yachi for you—she says exactly what she wants to say, then leaves.
“Hmmm…”
…So she’s going on a family vacation? I don’t think her mom and dad would let her go somewhere by herself. Then again, I’ve never met them. Never been to her house either. There’s still so much about her I don’t know.
I look down at the strand of blue hair still wrapped around my pinky finger. At night, when I’m in bed, I can spend hours losing myself in its faint glow. Sometimes I forget to blink, or even breathe. But I always turn out okay. Somehow this single tiny light has the power to make me feel like I’m at the aquarium.
Then the heat finally kicks in, and to shake it away, I start walking.
“Three days, huh?”
I’m used to hanging out with her every day, so it feels like a really long time. I don’t know how it happened, but Yachi’s a part of my life now.
***
Day one. Day two. Day three. And then…
“Well, if it isn’t Little. Off to the pool again?”
Once again, I bump into Yachi outside my house. Pat, pat, pat, pat. Yep, it’s her.
Exactly three days later, she shows up wearing lion pajamas. The hood is a little round lion face, and when she pulls it over her head, its fangs bite into her skin. Kinda looks like the lion’s eating her whole.
“Yup. What about you, Yachi?” Besides getting gobbled, I mean. “Did you buy that?”
“No, I received it. Chrrrrp!”
She raises both hands and a foot in a threatening pose. I don’t think lions do any of that. Especially not the chirping. Still cute, though.
“I couldn’t find my compatriot, but I met a strange lady who gave this to me.”
“Strange how?” Stranger than you? Is that evenpossible?
“A strange lady with fluffy hair.”
“Fluffy?”
“Fluffy like this!”
With her index fingers, she pantomimes a puffy shape around her head. What, like an Afro? Or… “Like a sheep? Hmmm.”
I kinda want to meet this sheep lady, but at the same time, I’m kinda scared… Well, if she was nice to Yachi, then she can’t be that bad. And maybe Yachi’s right about her being weird. But if I told Nee-chan I’m going to go meet some weirdo, she probably wouldn’t let me… Guess I can’t go.
Wait, but why would a sheep lady be giving out lion pajamas?
“Too bad you couldn’t find your…um…compatriot.”
“Indeed,” Yachi nods. “My compatriot is very naïve, so I worry they may have withered in this heat.”
More naïve than you? Is that even possible?
“But once I find them, I’ll need to go back to outer space, so I’ll put it off for now.”
“Uh huh…” I start to shrug it off, but then partway through I whirl around to look at her. “Wait, what?! Really?”
“Really.”
I don’t know much about outer space, but…it feels like she’s saying she’ll have to leave.
“Well…I guess…” Maybe we shouldn’t hang out anymore. But I can’t finish my sentence, so instead I flail my arms. For some reason, Yachi starts doing it, too. This isn’t a game, Yachi!
Under the blazing sun, I flail my arms until my pool bag falls to the ground. It takes a few minutes before the sweat drains the white-hot emotions from my mind.
Chapter 5:
Are Souls Shared?
EVERYTHING I WORKED so hard to build had come crashing down over my head in a vicious avalanche. No…it wasn’t a natural disaster. It was me—I was the disaster.
Whether I exploded or imploded remained to be seen, but suffice it to say, I burst into pieces as fast as a firework. I knew I was in the wrong, and I knew my overstepping of boundaries had caused Shimamura to bolt. But what else was I supposed to do? I only ever spoke the truth. Everything I did and said (or screamed, as the case may be) was an honest reaction to my own feelings.
I knew pressing the issue would cause friction and other unforeseen complications, but I couldn’t stop myself. In the end, I was the dirty kind of firework, spraying my viscera everywhere.
***
Every day after that was spent picking up the pieces of my own shattered shell. This was now day three of sitting on my bed and sighing heavily. While I was gradually recovering from my despair, my heart was still plagued with regret.
I hadn’t heard a single peep from Shimamura since then—no calls, no emails. Unsurprisingly, she hadn’t tried to initiate a conversation, and my phone was as silent as a grave. Clutching it, I flopped down and rolled around on my bed. Depression pulled me down like gravity, and I was slowly sinking.
Now that I thought about it, this was our first fight—or was it? Did it still count as a “fight” if she had written me off for good? The worst-case scenario rose up in my mind again and again, every time just as painful as the last.
I sat up in bed. No. I won’t let that happen, no matter what.
I felt so rejected, it made me sick to my stomach, and my brain was screaming. Why did I charge in headfirst with no respect to how it might fray our connection? I wanted—no, needed—to mend things with her. I needed everything to go back to normal.
Should I call her? No, maybe email her? No, I should call her, right? I waffled one step forward, then one step back. All I knew for sure was that I couldn’t let it stay like this.
Outside the window, clouds streamed past. They said the cicada population was low this year, but I could hear them clearly. Time passed as I lay there curled in a ball. But while my sadness and pain could fade with time, my love could not.
“…Love?”
The fleeting thought made my cheeks flush. Surely I was overstating things…or was I? Admiring someone deeply…yearning to know everything about them… In my view, those things could reasonably be considered a form of love in their own right. So yes, I loved Shimamura. And there was nothing wrong with that.
God, kill me! I forced myself to face forward, though I could tell I was destined for a neck cramp by the end of the day. My “love” (TBD) was goading me on, telling me something had to change. I needed to take action, and the first step was to talk to her—so the best option was a phone call.
My screen was already slick with the palm sweat of determination. Nevertheless, I hesitantly brought up Shimamura’s contact. But my inner coward was already rearing her head, worried that Shimamura might just send me straight to voicemail. What would I do then? Could I accept the rejection, let go, and move on?
My heart had put up a dozen force fields to minimize any potential damage, but I brushed them away like cobwebs. With encouragement from the seventy-plus unsent emails in my drafts, I tapped the button and reached out to Shimamura.
There was no guarantee this would go well, and honestly, I wasn’t prepared for what would happen if she pushed me away. But life was full of moments where the only option was to wing it, and this was one of them. For me, Shimamura was an essential part of my teenage life.
Every second spent waiting for the phone to connect was fresh torture. It rang, and rang, and rang—
“Yes? Hello?”
“Aaaaahhh!”
My eyes and lips faltered, betraying the panic I wasn’t meant to let show. My heart ached like it was being crushed in a vise, and I curled up on my bed. It wasn’t uncommon for Shimamura’s voice to fluster me, but this time was decidedly different. My fear was winning out, rushing through my bloodstream like poison, making my fingers go numb.
“Helloooo? Sakura-chaaaan?”
There was no trace of annoyance or hostility in her voice, no beating around the bush—just a direct connection between me and her. My first reaction was relief, followed by: “Um, hi…Sh-Shimamura-san.”
I sounded like a kid who wasn’t sure if her mom was mad at her. Classic me.
“Huh? Why so formal all of a sudden?”
“Oh, o-okay… I’ll just call you Shimamura, then.”
“You’ve been calling me Shimamura this whole time, silly. Anyway, what’s up?”
You and I both know “what’s up”! It’s been keeping me up at night, and I’m miserable! Or was it the sort of minor detail she could shrug off after three days? I hated feeling like the two of us were such vastly different people…but at the same time, it offered me a ray of hope.
Before I got started, I adjusted my sitting posture. The tightness in my chest eased slightly, granting me just enough room for my desires—and my voice—to thrive. Let’s make this happen!
“Shimamura?”
“Yeeees?”
Seriously, what the hell happened last time? Because I didn’t appreciate it and also I still have a lot of concerns and I need you to give me answers and I know you said I was annoying but sometimes this flippant attitude of yours can be really frustrating for me too so please don’t scare me like that! You don’t know how badly I want to scream and cry and cling to you because to be honest I feel like I might break down and start sobbing at any minute because I have the right to complain and also I think I have the right to know more about you so please just tell me, or to put it a different way, basically, long story short—
“I was thinking we should go hang out somewhere.”
As my thoughts swirled and frothed endlessly in my head, this was the end result. I didn’t have the life experience to know for sure, but if I had to wager a guess, it was probably somewhere in the same vein as my younger self begging my mom to take me on a trip. As I waited for her answer, I clutched my phone. The rest of my body was now every bit as sweaty as my palms.
“Sure, sounds good.”
By contrast, Shimamura’s voice was cool and composed, agreeing as swiftly and readily as the oscillation of an electric fan… Wait, what? This was proving to be so painless, it was actually starting to freak me out. It almost felt like the call we had the other day never even happened… My brain stalled.
“Are we going today, or…?”
“Huh? Yeah… Er, actually, let’s, uh, do it tomorrow!”
I wanted to see her as soon as possible, but if I met up with her in this state, I’d probably be a nervous wreck and end up humiliating myself. In the back of my mind, a voice asked “Haven’t you already done that a bunch of times?” but I ignored it.
“Ah, tomorrow. Have you already planned out what you want to do?”
“Sure have,” I replied, grabbing my summer to-do list. It’s finally your time to shine, little guy. “First, um, I wanna go shopping…”
“Uh huh?”
“Then go to the pool…”
“Uh huh…?”
“And then spend the night at your house…if that’s cool.”
And so I read the whole list, top to bottom. Ack! I was so excited, I forgot the part about holding hands! Well, it’ll probably happen at some point during the other stuff. I’ll just have to make sure of that.
