I'd Rather be…
I do not own Whisper of the Heart/Mimi wo Sumaseba.
If you listen closely, tenderly strain to hear the silence, you will find…
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Tsukishima Shizuku let out a long, drawn out sigh as she stared longingly from her school desk towards the halcyon sky, her chin resting on her palm, her eyes glazed over. She vaguely heard a bubbling noise in the back of her mind. How she ached to join Seiji in Cremona, to just leave all the monotony behind. Good-bye to the repetition of quadratic formulae, so long tricky English verbs, to Hell with oxidation numbers…
No, she had to do this if she wanted to face Seiji as a person who pursued her dreams. If only it weren't so horrendously dull! So much for a decent tale to tell in her next letter to him. The ideas and the dreams fluttered sporadically in her mind, screaming at her to just try and catch them. The words and the kanji taunted her as she reached for them in the darkness, only to lose the inspirations like rippling water.
"Oi! Tsukishima!", barked the teacher, "watch that solution, or else you'll have one heck of a mess to clean up after class!", eying the frothing concoction on Shizuku's burner.
"R-right!", she stuttered as she frantically tried to salvage her thoughts towards science. The brewing, unnaturally volatile-looking mixture of she-couldn't-remember-what hissed at her. With a slight splash, she found her lab apron covered in a thin film, the beaker nearly empty beside her. Oops.
"Ahh, what to do? What to do?" pondered Shizuku as she strolled down the sidewalk, punctuated with tiny Sakura flowers. "Writer's block sucks. There's got to be something inspirational somewhere," she complained to herself as a bushy orange tabby pranced in front of her ever so nonchalantly. "Seiji must be having the time of his life, while all I have to write about in my letters is school and spring and boring stuff," she had a little staring contest with the cat. One of them grew bored and left. Or perhaps both of them tired. She traveled the remainder of her journey home in silence, both in speech and mind.
When she arrived at her bedroom, she seated herself, pen in hand. On her desk was a white sheet of paper, staring blankly at the fountain pen, so much depended on it. She wanted very much to tell Seiji of her wonderful adventures. It only seemed fair when he was having such a fantastic time in Cremona. Here goes nothing:
To Seiji,
How's life in Cremona? I guarantee you're having a better time than me. For me, it's just work, work, school, study, and did I mention school? It's very riveting in a forehead against the desk way. To be honest, I don't have much to say except that the monotony is causing a severe case of writer's block. I-
…No, no, that's no good. She tore the paper in half and failed to score a three pointer in the waste basket across the room. She restarted:
To Seiji,
You'll never guess what happened today! I was brewing up a little concoction in science that just might have been the cure for the common cold, but a little something went wrong and I ended up making the world's most powerful explosive! You should have seen it expand and expand until it touched the ceiling: after it sizzled through two stories of the building! The teacher said he would've given me the highest marks, but it was too good and it wasn't fair to the other students. Also, destroying school property is apparently frowned upon. On my way home from school, I decided to take a detour to Mount Everest in Nepal. And I was home in time for dinner! I wish I could have taken a picture of the flag I stuck up there to show you. On my way down from the mountain, I stopped by Bangladesh and, from scratch, I built about ten huts for the homeless jaguars. One of them got a little impatient and tried to attack me. Luckily, I managed to fight him off with my amazing martial arts skills that I picked up in gym class. Before dinner, I wrote a five hundred page novel, but I wasn't happy with it so I rewrote it. I'll send it to you in a bit. With all the excitement, it's hard to pick something to write about. The only thing I'd rather be doing is spending time with you.
Love you,
Shizuku