I'm very self-conscious of my appearance. The frequent problem is, I always pretend not to be, which is why I don't rush to change my pants or fix my hair as I feign impatience at my friend Sebastian who actually is fiddling with his hair.
"Fucksake man! We're going to a lecture on the economics of," I consult the pamphlet I've been fiddling with for the last five minutes, "transpacific urban policy exchange. Literally no one is going to give two fucks whether you look good or not"
Of course he doesn't listen, just looks at me, smiles, and then goes on fixing his hair, ever-narrowed eyes fixed squarely on the mirror.
Sometimes I ask him who the hell he's always trying to impress. He just shrugs and says, "You never know"
What a tool.
But he is one of my best friends, and I don't have too many of those. Friends, I mean; I actually have more best friends than most people, so while I'm abnormally short, introverted, and geeky, at least i have that going for me. Truth be told I'm jealous that he can be so open about his insecurities.
"Okay Konata, I'm ready. You can stop your bitching"
"Fuck you too asshole," I say this with affection. He pats me on the head, ruffling my blue hair. I punch him (albeit affectionately) in the kidney. Finally we leave his off-campus apartment, leisurely walking to the nearby train station. I have to walk a little faster to keep pace. We talk about this and that, conversation interspersed with moments of amicable silence.
"What I don't understand is why I should go through the trouble of watching the whole series all over again. I mean, sure the animation might be better, but there's only so many times I can watch a kid hate himself before enough is enough"
"It's more than improved animation. And they changed the plot a little bit too."
"You say that, but I'm sure it'll basically be the same thing all over again"
"Look, you can't always put a price on giant berserk robots okay? Fuck!"
For a while he doesn't say anything in return, and I think I might have been a little bit too harsh. I have a temper, it happens sometimes, though it's strange for Sebastian to be this sensitive.
"Uh, sorry if-," I break mid-sentence when I turn to look at him and follow his gaze, all feelings of apology gone, "aw, hell"
Sebastian is the kind of person who is happy, and even enthusiastic, to talk about nerdy things with his closest friends. But in the face of potential judgment, he either shuts up, mumbles, or pretends he was never talking about such things in the first place.
Guess which one he's doing now.
"Kagami! Hi! What are you doing here?"
Walking towards us is Hiiragi Kagami, the prettiest thing with purple hair. She smiles at us with a confident geniality; it is a smile that makes the people it is directed at feel, if only for a few seconds, like her greatest friends in the world. It is a sincerity that doesn't know it's fake; the sort of thing actors and supermodels learn to project when they want people, all people, to like them. And Sebastian, like just about anyone else, eats it up.
It sucks the enthusiasm out of me like a vacuum.
Kagami and I are childhood friends, though how much that matters nowadays is questionable. Between the ages of eight and thirteen we were nigh inseparable. We did everything together; told each other everything. It was with Kagami Hiiragi that I spent the most of my childhood sleepovers, and it was to me that she imparted personal secrets that she didn't even tell her family. It was to me that, god I don't even know how many years ago, she had confessed that she sometimes resented her older sisters; that she liked light novels with embarrassing anime pictures on the covers, that she sometimes wet the bed, that she (and this was really hard to admit) masturbated.
That maybe she liked girls.
But Christ, who knows how many things we told each other back then. It all just sort of blurs when I think about it too hard.
We kept in contact for a few months, as freshly separated friends are wont to do. But eventually our correspondence simply stopped. It died out as we lost the motivation to stay in touch with someone who became less and less relevant to our lives because, let's face it, whatever we know of our past friends, and especially our best friends, becomes as static and irrelevant to the present as a light novel collecting dust in an attic somewhere.
And it would have stayed that way had we not inadvertently ended up going to the same college.
Man, I remember how surprised I was to see her again after so long. There was the awkward yet enthusiastic greeting, and the almost endless go-to reunion questions such as "how've you been?" and "how's your family?", repeating lines in a script that made us both uncomfortable, but really we had no idea what else to say.
I was genuinely happy to see her, and she to see me. But after five minutes it became abundantly clear that we were very different people.
I had become an unashamed otaku, developing passions for anime, manga, video games, merchandise, lifestyle; all that stuff in the purview of a cultural demographic that is generally considered to be nerdy and, unfortunately, uncool. Physically (and this is what I was most embarrassed about) I had changed barely at all, though I was now more athletic than most people (though my stature doesn't imply this. At all).
She on the other hand had transformed from my shy friend into a gorgeous social butterfly. Sociable, fashionable, fond of clubs and dancing; she had become the sort of person I, by my very nature, could not relate to, and we both knew it, could feel it in the awkward aftertaste of that first strained conversation.
Ironic really. It was from the light novels she used to read that I developed my passion for anime.
There was so much else I could have talked to her about, but in front of this stranger there was nothing I could think to say. Nothing I had the courage to say anyway.
Do you still read light novels? Did you ever find out if you really liked girls or not? Do you…do you want to be friends again?
After that, our interactions were pained exercises in awkwardness. We waved at each other in the hallways, exchanged shallow pleasantries, and really nothing more than that.
It hurt. A lot. Can you imagine how I felt to have a relationship so integral to the first chapters of my life reduced to a pathetic awareness of each other's existence? And that she seemed so fine with that, with all her friends and buddies, just hurt even more.
To her I was just a face in the crowd who used to mean something more than a casual greeting. Though to be fair, she had become much the same to me.
So when she drew up to us, that is, Sebastian and me, it was with a neutral sort of warmth that she reserved for everybody that she said, "Hey Konata, what's up?" not a question but a casual greeting.
To which I smiled and replied, "What's up?" also not a question.
And with that she turned to talk to Sebastian about whatever. Apparently they occasionally hung out with the same people at the same bar.
For my part, I ignored them. By now it was easy to pretend that she didn't matter, to pretend that I didn't care about her presence. So I waited patiently, tuning out their conversation to observe an argument going on the other side of the road. I hummed the theme song from Serial Experiments Lain under my breath.
One of the arguers was a stocky gentleman, gesticulating wildly with both hands and struggling not to shout, only barely succeeding. The other was a taller fellow who was absorbing all of the abuse flung at him with admirable stoicism, only occasionally muttering in response, pointing at his opponent's chest with a firm finger.
It's like they've stepped out of a Saturday morning cartoon.
When the taller man pushes with particular venom, the shorter man reaches for something in his jacket, I get the feeling that something is wrong. I feel a hand on my shoulder.
"Huh?"
"Kagami was asking you what the lecture we're going to is about"
Kagami smiles at me, does she even really care about this stuff? "Uh..." I glance back at the arguers, "it's uh... It's about..." the shorter one is struggling to pull something out of his jacket, "the economics of..." he pulls it out
"Konata? You okay?"
The tall one grabs the shorter one's hands, keeping him from using the gun. They struggle. I stand mesmerized, watching as they scuffle until the tall man manages to push the short one down, the gun sliding away. Rather than grab it himself, the idiot runs. Right towards us.
The short man crawls to the gun, reaches it and grabs it, points it in our direction.
Time slows down. The coat of the taller man flutters in bullet-time, lazily flapping like a windswept flag. Behind him his friend has brought the gun to bear, muzzle sliding almost mechanically into place. Trajectory set.
I stand, deer in the headlights, and Kagami and Sebastian are looking at me like there's something wrong with me, and I see the shorter man brace, and all of a sudden my mind catches up to what's going on.
"Get down!"
I duck to the floor, uselessly covering my head. They don't take me seriously, just continue to look at me weird, Kagami looks concerned.
"Uuuh…Konata? You doing alright there?"
"You idiot, get down!"
I don't think. In the split second I have to make a decision everything feels like it has changed, and all I can see in Kagami's face is a superimposed image of my best friend in the entire world. I tackle her, bringing the both of us down to the ground, with me in top. She's about to protest when the first bullet goes off.
"What the hell are you-!" BANG.
Now they take me seriously, pricks. BANG. Sebastian ducks, people are screaming in the background.
BANG. A bullet whizzes by my ear as the taller man jumps over me, Kagami is babbling, panic-stricken.
BANG.
BANG.
I feel the bullets zinging overhead, passing over my body as it shields my childhood friend. I bury my head in the crook of her neck, just as scared out of my mind as she is.
BANG. Silence, I think the worst might be over but I can't be sure. I stay where I am.
BAAAAAAAAAAAAANG!
Numb. My brain has been dumped into a vat of anesthesia. It shoots through my body with the decisive ferocity of a jet piston. All sensation filters through eight layers of cotton, but I can feel her underneath me, shuddering breaths gently jostling me to the tune of a discordant metronome, matching the wavering beat of my heart.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump? Thump?
I can feel something drip down the side of my head and onto my face, before it drips with a delicate, wet *splut* onto the ground.
The shooting has stopped, replaced by the klaxon of sirens in the distance.
"Konata?"
I can't turn my head, but I can feel her shaking beneath me.
"Oh god, Konata?"
What she says next is lost in a swimming lack of sensation ("don't die! Not like this! Konata! Oh god! I..I…), I smile goofily into the pavement. Her perfume is nice.
"Don't move! She's been shot!"
"Konata! Oh fuck...oh fuck!" Sebastian.
Someone moves me, someone is crying in the background, someone holds my hand before I am wrenched away. All I feel then, all I know that matters, as I lie in the ambulance, smiling at nothing, is that despite how I must look right now, I probably saved Kagami, and that's all that matters.
Somehow this makes everything okay.
The air is cool, the oblique undertones of frigidity I associate with dentists' waiting rooms and archive libraries, of air-conditioned rooms in summer and hospital wards.
I think I can guess which one I'm in right now.
I open my eyes to pallid fluorescent light. A heart monitor beeps discreetly somewhere to the side. Yup, definitely a hospital room.
"Konata?"
I look at the purple-haired girl sitting at my bedside. She's been crying, I can tell, though I'm not sure how it is I can tell or to what I am comparing her to.
"Konata you're awake!" She hugs me, but is careful about it, gathering me into a delicate embrace that makes me feel like I'm made of glass. I am pretty tired, come to think.
The hug lasts for a while. It's tender, and I can tell that it means something when she begins to cry.
"Oh God, I thought I'd lost you," she murmurs into my shoulder.
Eventually she draws away and smiles at me, suddenly bashful. I blink.
"Who are you anyway?" I say.