AN: Just Tomoki's inner monologue & thoughts on his sister. This occurs after the anime, when Tomoko told him that she would stop their nightly 'therapy talk'. Also has references to some events in the manga, and this happens when Tomoki is in the same high school with Tomoko. Tried for a nostalgic, slice-of-life feel. This is my first story for Watamote and the first I wrote with first-person POV. Enjoy... Edit: I just decided this fic will have one or two more chapters. I liked writing Tomoki's thoughts!
Monday
My hell week started when I went down the stairs one Monday morning, and I saw Mom already dressed to go, with a luggage bag ready. She saw me walking down the stairs, and said, "Oh, Tomoki. Your aunt called this morning, your uncle just died. I have to go to back there to take care of your grandmother. Sad news, but I'll be back in a week at most. There's breakfast ready, but be sure to take care of the rest, you know how your sister is... I need to catch the early train. Goodbye, I left extra allowance on the table, and both your lunches. I'll call." She kissed my cheek and went out the door. I touched my face. Mom never does that.
Great. Just great. It's Monday, the week just starting, and I'm already looking forward to a damning week with no one at home but my sister. She's only trouble.
I started eating breakfast, toast and eggs and coffee as usual. Speaking of, she just went out the bathroom and sat down the table in front of me. "Where's Mom?" she asked. "Out of town. Relative died. She'll be back next week," I answered. She looked at me slyly, like she was thinking about how we're going to endure a week alone here. At least there's class and soccer practice, I won't be able to see her face the rest of the day. BUT I still have to cook breakfast or dinner for two, maybe lunch too. Well, she can't cook, but maybe I can make her buy groceries instead of me. (I'm already thinking of things to add to her lunch that can make her choke tomorrow.)
After brushing my teeth on the bathroom sink, I left. She was running up and down the stairs, looking for something in the same exaggerated and hysterical manner with shouting and making a mess along the way, ranting about science and deadlines. I called out, "Lock the gate when you leave!" and left. We go to the same school now, but leave home at different times. I hate being late, I'd like to be in class early, while she usually goes in her classroom just before the teacher arrives. I can see her sometimes from the window, rushing through to the school gate.
I can see her now, running towards the building. In my own room, the teacher just arrived for first period.
###
She always did and said creepy things, but the worst was when she innocently asked me to show my privates. What the actual hell? She even said something about taking a bath together like when we were younger. Naturally, I told her to fuck off. Imagine your own creep-ass sister molesting you. But she did look so sincere, even holding my hand like she was saying something so hopeful. She looked at me like she expected me to strip right then and there. As usual, I slammed the door to her face.
That's the sum of what we talk about. I never call her by name, only by 'Get out' or 'Get lost' when she used to go in my room and talk nonsense. Or 'Shut up' when she gets too noisy in the next room and I can't sleep or study with her incoherent wailing and talking to herself. I have never mentioned her name in my mind, even. The word nee-chan seems so weird now.
We used to talk for more or less an hour each night, last year. Mostly she talks and I listen. She sat on the floor, I stayed on my bed and hardly pretended I was interested. She said that she'll stop going to my room once she gets a boyfriend. She didn't have one when she decided to end those talks. I think, she doesn't need a boyfriend but a case worker or a therapist. I wonder what keeps my mom from doing just that.
Why can't she be normal? Hell, I know of many solitary classmates who are just content, who can interact normally with others. Sometimes I wish she could just be a normal quiet girl, not a delusional pervert always asking me about love and relationships and I just want to haul her out my room and leave me in peace. How the hell should I know about those things? I'm not much of a sociable guy myself, but she's just the worst.
She's stopped going in my room altogether, each night. I always told her to get out, anyway. The last was that when she asked me to 'take off your shorts' incident. She only talks to me when we're eating, now...
Which reminds me of lunch. My friends usually stay on the rooftop, where we play cards and talk to pass time. One of them brought a sleazy magazine with a girl on the cover barely covered by flimsy pieces of cloth, and the group read it together, laughing like loons. I look at those pictures and I don't find them interesting.
It only reminds me of my sister's half-assed attempts at seducing me. It only makes her pathetic, and her jokes aren't funny. I've walked in on her room many times and see her animated porn games she doesn't even bother hiding from me. She's quite open about... getting off. She tells me her kinks, the dirty stuff from the games. She absent-mindedly mentions what she thinks of when she does it to herself. I don't like to imagine it, but she likes torturing me.
"You can get a girlfriend if you want to, but what's wrong with you? Some guys bend over backwards to impress the ladies, and you've got your own cheering squad when you play in the games, but you don't seem to care," said my friend, one who talks like he's 30 and not 15. The four of us ended up in the same high school.
"Because I don't."
He sighed. "So what's your sister's latest misadventure?"
"They get boring quickly. It makes you all laugh, sure, but it's more pathetic than funny," I said. I once talked to them about her attempt to look cute, and about her dousing herself in Coke Zero and thinking the guys want her when they only see ants crawling all over her. Gross. We had a good laugh over that. Though, my friends don't know she's in here. I think they just assumed she's in another school.
I think about girls, and all I can think of is how my sister fails at being one. She's the damn walking definition of a turn-off. Not that I have been 'turned on' by someone or anything. My friend claims I have fangirls, I said I don't see them. But he said it was because I looked like I was gonna eat people, like I was tired and in the verge of snapping something angry. "Unapproachable. Cool, silent type," he said.
"I'm just gay," I joked nonchalantly, and he just grinned and slapped my ass.
"The hell?!" I said. That was uncalled for.
"Nothing. You're cute."
Then, the bell rang. It was time for afternoon classes. While we went down the stairs, I saw her. She sat among overturned desks, her legs propped up on the table with her shoes on the floor, her skirt rolled against her thighs and showing too much skin. She didn't see me, she was busy smiling over something on her phone. But if I wasn't in a hurry or if I was alone, I would have gone to her and told her she should at least wear shorts if she wants to sit that way. No one seemed to notice her, and more people pass by the main stairs and not by this narrow fire-exit staircase. Classes went on as usual.
She's been okay, lately. No longer that nervous, not that anxiety-ridden anymore. Or she's still the same, I just think she's 'better' because she rarely talks to me like she used to, which was every night.
###
I went home around 5, I didn't stay around with the guys. I walked alone on the village street to home. She hasn't arrived yet. I mixed my afternoon coffee and turned on the TV, and after flipping through boring channels, I turned on the DVD player.
Oh. Mom didn't take the CD out, so it replayed from where she paused. Back to that old video of us as children, playing on the same carpeted spot where I am sitting now. It's disgusting to watch. Well, I could imagine these were different children, but I cringe inside when I've said I wanted to marry my sister when she's so different now. Those were more innocent times. The video continued, and I sipped my drink as I watched, careful not to choke. Two cute kids are on the screen.
"Brothers and sisters can't be married," said the girl.
"But, Onee-chan, we can stay together until we grow old!" the boy answered.
"We can just stay together and take care of mom and dad by ourselves, then."
"I won't get married, then! Neechan, you won't, too. Promise?"
"Tomo-kun, don't say that. We won't really be sure what will happen. You're saying that now, but who knows, in the future you can't stand me anymore." The young girl on screen seemed so wise, and what she said then turned out to be true now. Now she was replaced by a completely different person.
"Huh? That will never happen, neechan!"
I heard the gate open. I had to turn off the TV, I left the living room, and went upstairs to my room with my cup of coffee. Once I settled in my chair, I can hear her walking up the stairs. I can hear the door to her room slam close and then house is so quiet that I can even hear her sit and turn on her computer. I gathered all my books, it was time to study.
###
My mind lingered on other things while staring at algebraic equations, practicing solutions with a pencil on scratch paper. That video again, triggers a train of forgotten memories.
My first kiss was with her. We were children, all we did was play, and kiss. There was nothing wrong with that, then. We slept together, ate together, bathed together. But soon there was something wrong with the bathing together, and at that time the kissing also stopped. I used kissed her awake during mornings when she was still sleeping. I always woke up earlier than her, so I can see her pretty green eyes open. She'll wake up and kiss me back. Then, mother didn't have to tell us how awkward it all would be in the future. Then, years passed. I was growing up, developing. Not that she had developed much. She'll always look like a scrawny boy to me. It seems like I have never seen her as a girl, but another sex entirely.
Then, for inexplicable reasons, even if we lived in the same house she was a stranger. But before...
Once, it was Christmas and I was five and she was six. I learned about kissing under a mistletoe. I kept it like a secret, lured her down the wreath, and asked her to kiss me and she did. I remember when our lips touched my whole body seemed to tingle, a brief frisson. I smiled that whole day.
We promised that we would be together forever, with locked pinkies and all.
I was a selfish kid. I remember what I thought then, that if there was a silly rule in the world where I couldn't marry my nee-chan, the best I could do is magic to keep her. Every time there was a chance to wish: dropping coins to a wishing well, blowing a fallen eyelash to the air, and writing notes for the temple each New Year... I always wished about me and my sister.
Remember, that was when I was young. I look at her now and cringe. The fuck happened to her? Did the strange curse of the mistletoe somehow come true? I no longer believe in superstitions or make-believe rituals, but I'm scared I'll be stuck with her like this. Be careful what you wish for. I assure myself, though, that promises were always made to be broken.
Sometimes, she still wears the same cotton dress at home, new when she was ten. It's worn out now, the white stained yellow. I still like it better than when she just wears a shirt and shorts.
Tuesday
The stickers of her silly photo booth pictures she stuck on my walls, pictures, table, calendar, the damn light, I had rearranged in a neat grid on a fresh piece of paper. I keep it inside my drawer. Not that I'm sentimental, just OC, and throwing it away would be a waste of money, even if she was annoying. The pictures are hilarious, actually, only showing how much she isn't used to picture-taking. I know she did it out of spite because I wouldn't go with her. Hell, from what I can guess and what she implied when she talked to me, she even puked after taking a good long look at the mirror.
(The cicada shell she left on my table is still there.)
That time I was sick and she stayed here so she'd get infected with my cold, she cried under my blanket for a long time. She was jealous, some of my girl classmates came round to visit but they only gave that day's homework that I missed. My hand hovered above her head, I was tempted to just pull her hair to get her off my bed. I wondered, was she jealous of me because someone thought to visit me and not her? Or was it she was jealous of those girls who talk to me...
(We had the same name except for one syllable.)
During nights, I content myself with looking out the window, watching the fleas dance under the streetlight. I can't sleep easily, and it's better than staring at my ceiling and wait for sleep to come.
She didn't go here for that one-hour talk. That was last year, but each night I still half-expect her to barge in and annoy me. For a long time, she did not. It's been months. Thank god.
Wednesday
Today, we agreed to buy lunch outside, and that I'll get take-out for dinner. I did wake up early, to cook rice and eggs for breakfast. I didn't see her at school or at home the most of morning.
In grammar class today, we were asked to write. The teacher gave us a topic: When was the last time you felt the closest to anyone? She gave us fifteen minutes to write. I'm not good at it and I couldn't think of anything. Everyone around me kept quiet as they scribbled but my paper stayed blank. The teacher passed by, looked at me and my pen. "Just write. Don't think," she said. Huh? How could I write if I don't think? Nothing comes to mind in the first place. Time passed, I still haven't got any words while the girl beside me is already halfway the back page of her own. I glanced at the clock, three minutes left.
I wrote fast. I just elaborated on how the only time I felt close to anything was when I'm playing sports. Everything else is gone except the game and the goal – and if I achieve it, it feels like nothing else. Or, I don't usually even have thoughts about success, but I feel like I don't exist in the game. It's a sort of freedom. Yeah, the thought sucks and is unclear but it's what I jotted down.
"Time's up. Pass your papers," the teacher said. She ruffled through the sheaf, scanned each paper, and commented, "I meant a person, not an object." Okay, that's me. So lame that I don't feel as close to anyone as I do with a soccer ball, eh? She said she'll check it and return tomorrow for revising.
###
When Tomoko arrived home at 6, she looks kinda shaken. Her hands tremble a bit on their grip on her backpack straps, she's looking at the floor, and she's gritting her teeth as she went up the stairs to her room. This expression is familiar – she might have suffered another embarrassing moment somewhere. I watched the news channel. The dinner's ready and I've eaten.
I hope she won't go in my room anymore, she's a pain in the ass and I'm not listening to her rambling. Well, she doesn't because she said talking to me didn't improve anything. I remember her dramatic last talk that I don't belong to "her future" anymore, that she had "no use" for me. Who does she think she is, saying that, assuming that I even cared?
(So much for childhood promises.)
8 PM. While I was drinking a can of Coke Light and reading manga after studying, she went in and sat on the floor in front of my bed. She didn't say a thing. I continued reading.
"Let's have sex."
I puked all my coke all over the book, including bits of undigested dinner.
"Got your attention, all right."
If she had wanted my attention, why say something as sick as that?
"Get. Out," I told her.
My head started to ache. Then everything went dark and blurry, and I couldn't control my head falling downwards with its weight, conscious but delirious and I stumbled to my bed and tried to sit. What she said felt like I was standing on a floor carpet and something suddenly tugged it away and left me to fall. After a few hazy minutes of me unaware of my surroundings, my mind felt clear again. She's still there, fanning me with a thin magazine and placing a tiny mint oil bottle open under my nose. She looked visibly relieved when she saw my eyes open.
"I honestly thought you were going to faint. I won't try to rape you or anything," she said.
"I was feeling kinda sick since this morning. You keep saying that kind of creepy shit and I'm really gonna vomit on you. Bad idea for a joke."
"I got to have experience. It's wrong, but how can I perform well if... I just want... to be able to get off by something real... you're the only guy I know," she said with a stutter, I think she was just letting her mouth speak fast without thinking and it's irritating to see and hear.
"Can you hear what you're saying?! Couldn't you just shut up about it and forget it?" I answered.
"Otouto... I'm sick. I'm so sick. Forget it. I know we can't. Just hug me. It will make me feel better," she said, kneeling in front of me, her hand fisting her skirt. She pressed her wet face in front of my shirt. Tears, snot, and sweat. I stayed still, she stayed still as well, both of us. This near, she was so small. Her forehead barely reaches my chest. Her hands slowly went up to encircle my waist.
Begrudging, I acquiesced. This is how she held me. Before, when I was smaller, my wet face would press against her like how she was against me right now when it was me who was crying. I used to be smaller than her. I let my right hand around her and touch her left shoulder. My hands held the back of her waist. She seemed so small, frail, breakable. She sobbed for no reason. Her hands ran up against my thighs. We stayed that way for a minute. Then she let go, left, and went back to her room.
When we were younger, she'd usually kiss me when I was crying. I didn't do that. What the hell her problem was this time, she didn't tell me.
Then I realized what she said, and what we just did was... ew, but then I felt too sick and weak to kick her out.
(Sometime when I was sleeping I heard her come in. Ah, to clean the vomit...)
Thursday
In class today, the teacher returned our papers. My half-assed essay was returned with the note "Change subject". Our lesson was about revision. I half-listened at the lecture about deleting unneeded phrases, or adding more detail, checking punctuation. Then she gave us time to write again. I won't rewrite, but I have to start on new one entirely.
"The writing process sometimes brings back memories you only thought you have forgotten. By starting on a page, one usually finds what one wants to say in the act of writing itself. I have told some to not think – I know that sounds ridiculous. What I mean is sometimes you don't have to be in such tight control of what you want to say because that freezes you. Sometimes the best writing is spontaneous – your first, real thoughts, not the thoughts you'd like yourself to think."
I thought, when was I close to anyone? My friends? They're fun, but they're all equal to me, I don't favor one over the rest. My family? There are cousins I'm okay with. Dad's out of the question – he's always away on business trips, he goes home around once a week if he's busy. Mom? My sister? Okay, that's the easiest to write about, so I started a half-hearted essay, I was tempted to lie and make up a story. To my surprise, the teacher was right. How memory works is surely weird, but I kept my hand moving across the page. It was strange how this just popped up, a story about us as children from a summer years ago, the season for cicadas.
The teacher said time's up. I quickly thought of a title, wrote "Cicadas have no Memories" at the top of the page then passed it in front.
"I'll check it, and the best essays I choose will be read tomorrow by those who wrote them," she said, and dismissed the class.
###
It rained again, beating and pouring down my umbrella as I ran home. Soccer practice at 4 PM was cancelled due to an unexpected storm. Strong wind blew rain in all directions, beating water against my uniform, the sound was like TV static turned up to maximum volume. Something snapped, the umbrella's frame reversed and turned upwards. The black plastic cover went down with the rain, floating at the flooded side of the sidewalk away from me. Rain bathed me.
I dropped the useless umbrella, hugged my sling bag and ran. Home was four blocks away. I paused to open the gate, and rushed to the bathroom. I undressed, and my soaked clothes were so heavy with water. I ran hot water to the tub and plunged right to the steaming water. Outside, the rain has stopped. Somehow, I have bad luck with rain – my umbrella always breaks, I'm always outside when it's the heaviest. I sat in the warm water, hugging my knees.
The bathroom's door opened and it was her, still wearing her uniform and hooded jacket. I recoiled, she merely raised an eyebrow and walked to the toilet. She went in to pee. I watched her and saw how her feet dangle as she sat, they don't reach the floor. She was too small, too short.
"What's wrong, Tomo-kun?" she asked.
"Tsk. Don't call me that, and you could've knocked," I said.
"Then you should have locked the door." She stood up, adjusted her underwear, let the skirt fall.
"What are you thinking of? Why're you watching me like that?"
"I don't think anything," I said and turned away. Then she locked the door for me before she went out. I got up later after dozing, dressed, went to the kitchen to cook rice for dinner. When I went outside to hang my wet clothes to dry, she was playing with a white spotted cat. We don't have pets, I'm allergic. "He went with me to watch the meteor shower once," she said, stroking the cat.
###
I ate by myself again. After that, I knocked at her door. "It's your turn to wash the dishes," I said through the closed door. I didn't see her for the rest of the night again, but I did hear the clatter of cutlery downstairs, and her going upstairs. I slept earlier than usual.
Friday
In that class, a boy was called out to read his seatwork from yesterday.
"My mother was insane. She was in a mental hospital and I used to visit her everyday to bring food and read aloud some novels for her. She always told me that she wanted to commit suicide. I told her I want her with me, but if that's what she wants, I'm okay with it. I never told the doctors, even after the news came that she hung herself with a rope twisted out of her blanket," he read. It was long, written in simple words, but everyone fell silent. The teacher simply called out the next, a girl whose story was about her twin who died when they were younger.
"Next is Tomoki's. It's about his sister," the teacher said. I didn't expect my name, the previous readers talked about death and mine wasn't. Even before I walked to the front to face everyone, I could hear my friends snickering at the back. Frankly, I forgot what I wrote, I just recall it was about my sister and cicadas. I knew it could sound embarrassing. I took the paper from the table and started reading.
Cicadas have no Memories, by Tomoki Kuroki
When I was nine, me and my sister used to collect insects, both dead and alive. Once, we were lost while searching cicada shells upon trees. During sunset drifting to evening, we were engrossed while collecting that we didn't notice we were far from where we came from. Only thick trees surrounded us, and I couldn't even see the dim streetlights. I was scared, and there was no one except her and our net full of dead insect skins and the loud singing of crickets, a sound that I found oppressing. I told her I was frightened, then she kissed me. We sat huddled in the dark, on the roots of a large tree. She whispered a story to comfort me.
"Once, there was a brother and sister lost in the woods, because their evil step-mom didn't want them so she sent them to die with hunger in the forest. But they had bread, and soon found another way out with their father by trailing the broken crumbs on the floor..." she said, and both of us stuck in an embrace since it was cold.
I told her we didn't have bread. We were real and we would not be saved by fairy tales. She told me that maybe mom and dad were already looking for us, she told me to calm down and continued her story. The two children found a house deep in that forest, a house made of candy with chocolate floors, sugar-glass windows, and curtains made of frosting. They ate the candy.
I said that maybe we could look for that house. When I was a kid, I never doubted its reality, it was easy to fool me. I believed in tooth fairies, Santa Claus, and promises. She said we won't try to find the candy house, because the witch ate kids and how could we go back home if we became her dinner? But she forgot the rest of the story, and she said to try walking out again, but I was scared and she still tried to make me get up, assured me she can find a way out.
"It's okay. I'm here. If we keep on walking, we'll find a way out." Like the kids in the story, we left a single cicada shell on the grass. It was a waste to let go of it all, but we followed the story's example. We walked, and the moonlight was just enough for us to see by. After walking, we found the same spot where we had huddled earlier; we had walked in a circle.
Now, we were really lost then. I started to cry, then. She kissed me again, like she always did when I was crying. I could feel that she was scared, too. There might be other things lurking in there, between the trees. But she held me. We were so stuck together, gripping on one another, that it seemed our breaths and heartbeats were one. It felt as if we would ever let go, one of us would vanish forever in the darkness beyond, far within the trees. I closed my eyes and I couldn't even speak, my fear has taken my voice.
We walked again, collecting the shells we left on the way, and veered off to another direction. We stopped on each step, her observing if this was the same place we had been. I calmed down, after walking, we reached the parking lot, and my mother found us – she hugged us both so tight it hurt. We were lost since five p.m. and it was nearly nine, and at that time it was all less than an hour to me.
That was the only time I ever felt close to someone. After that moment, when we were one, that closeness never repeated again. It was when we began to drift apart, living in the same house but always strangers. I can compare it to things in space – things combust, the space expands to infinity, what was once one will be broken and will never meet again. I had my sports, she had her anime and comics and games. Never once during middle school did we talk properly. We do, lately, but its annoying. Its not like before.
Frankly, I think of her as a bother now. I would like to write more about the funny, embarrassing, and pathetic things she does just to show off... but I'm running out of time, the clock says it's near deadline and that would be off-topic. Really, it will take another, longer essay.
Done. When I lowered the paper, my friends were all laughing silently and I sneered at them.
"Well. I hope things go better with you and your sister," the teacher said, and called out the next student to read. My fairy story was nothing compared to their... heavier experiences about love and loss, poverty and death. Mine was too simple and forgettable.
###
That afternoon, there was a belated announcement on another special holiday break that left us to half-day with no class. I know she's eating lunch in some corner between buildings, always alone. I knew right away she was lying when she said she had a boyfriend who eats with her – it's okay if she embarrasses herself in front of me (cause I'm used to it), but I don't like to imagine if with other people. It makes me ashamed for her.
I went there and she's there as expected and I told her there was no class and we can go home. She perked up right away, and said, "Really? Then I'll get my bag." I waited. Home was within walking distance, but she said she was going to buy something for school, and we ended up in a bookstore. We stayed for hours, with her reading one manga after another. I passed the time reading as well. After that, she pointed to the WcDonald's and said she was hungry. (I still recall the last time we met here on accident and her sickening disguise, but it was a long time ago.)
We both ordered a burger and large fries, not speaking that whole time. I noticed some students from our school, too, looking at us curiously. Then we walked home.
We passed by a large tree, and I noticed an open cicada shell on the trunk. I picked it up and showed it to her. I placed it inside the empty container of french fries from WcDonald's she was holding. Then, she disappeared down the trees. I waited, and she returned, the box was now half-way filled with the dry insect husks. She was always better at looking for them than me.
We went home. The phone rang and she answered, it was Mom. She nodded along and said yes, then closed it again.
"Mom said they'll hold the funeral earlier on Sunday because some of her cousins need to leave early to another country. We'll have to go there tomorrow morning, ride the bus."
I nodded.
We didn't sleep. She doesn't sleep, and in the silence of 3 AM I can hear the clicks of her mouse in the next room, she's still online. Me, I thought of nothing in particular while doing a meditation of staring at the streetlight outside, in the darkness of my room.
Saturday
Come morning, we took turns in the bathroom and ate sandwiches for breakfast, and set out. I wore my baseball cap, dressed in simple clothing: shirt, camo jeans, sneakers. She had her Fidel Castro hat, the bug-shades, a blouse, capris, sandals. Sometimes you're so used to something that you don't notice it anymore, and once you do it's like you're a stranger in your own city, amazed all over again – like how I often forget that the sun rises in this country first than anywhere else in the world. As we went out to the first bright at 5:30 AM, I thought that I've always liked sunrises more than sunsets.
We were the first on the still empty bus when we reached the station, and once seated she slept immediately, leaning back on her seat. The bus filled quickly, and I pulled down my cap over my face and slept, too. Sometime during the journey there were bumps in the road that made the passengers tumble all over, and I woke to find her head resting on my lap. I was annoyed by the drool on my jeans, but I was too sleepy myself to mind.
End
AN 2: Well, this story to me had a "Nothing happened" effect.