A/N: The words in italics are Noriko's memories, which are actually references to my short stories in "Cups of Tea." The stories are referenced in this order: "Spectator," "Push," and "Peg," in case you cared. Also, "Strawberry Cake" is an addition to "Cups" that I just uploaded.
She says
"Wake up
It's no use pretending."
--Naked As We Came, Iron and Wine
.
Too busy writing your own tragedy
You bubble wrap
You've no idea what you're like
Let go, jump in
There's beauty in the break down
--Let Go, Frou Frou
Having already pressed the snooze button on her alarm clock three times, Noriko Nijou crawled to the other end of her lofted bed, lowered the upper half of her body off of the edge of the bed, and reached for the alarm clock that was beeping incredulously from the shelf that hung above her desk. The blaring noise died and the room was dead silent again. She just let herself hang there, motionless, like she did every morning, contemplating whether or not it was worth it to get out of bed to go to lecture when she only had four hours of sleep.
It was during this time in the morning that she was most vulnerable to her memories—to all that she ran away from. By day she was fine. The new life she had in America kept her distracted. It was only when she was not busy with homework or her other activities did Noriko's unresolved issues come out.
Her eyes wandered to the black box she kept under her desk. In it were several hundred paper cranes (made of newspapers that she read every day), a rosary, juzu beads, and a picture frame. It was all in her past now.
-
'I've always wondered what it felt like to be a star.'
-
It was all in the past.
-
'To just sit there and watch all by yourself.'
-
Time to wake up now.
-
'It must be lonely.'
-
"You know," Noriko almost fell head first to the floor at the sound of the voice, "I've never heard of blood rushing to the brain as a cause of death."
"KATE!" Noriko screamed after she regained her balance and sat up on the bed, "You have to stop doing that! One of these days, I might actually fall off and die."
Kate Brandt started laughing from her desk, which was opposite of Noriko's. This was their daily ritual—Kate always let Noriko's alarms go off so that the girl would eventually wake up on her own. Her noise cancellation headphones made all of this possible and she always remained quiet until she noticed that Noriko was hanging over the edge of her bed.
She stood up, unceremoniously opened the blinds, and let the sun flood the box they called their dorm.
"Me?" the other girl asked Noriko with her thick Chicagoan accent, "What in the devil did I do to you? You're the one who decides to risk her life everyday by hanging her entire upper body upside down just to turn her alarm off."
"Hrnn," was all that Noriko grunted as she grabbed her toothbrush and toothpaste and walked past her roommate out the door.
"Good morning to you too, sunshine."
With fifteen minutes left until the beginning of her fundamentals in biomolecular engineering lecture and a twenty minute walk from her dorm to the Chemistry Annex, Noriko decided that her bike would be her best bet. The dreary winter weather had been particularly gracious this week, allowing students to use their bikes to get to and from places faster. In the five thousand acre campus, owning a bike basically meant the difference between life and death (and tardiness) to the students.
Noriko ran down the stairs and turned the corner to the bike racks. Reaching her parking spot, she stopped at her tracks.
There, on the third bike rack from the end, was a fluorescent, sparkly pink bike, and it had a bike lock that was locked not only around the bike rack but also around Noriko's crappy eighty dollar bike.
She was screwed.
There was no way to release her own bike from the clutches of the other bike's U-lock and the bus just whizzed by.
She was also pissed, but with her grade point average in mind, Noriko ran.
"I cannot believe people sometimes. How can some people be so self absorbed and so inconsiderate and just plain stupid?" Noriko ranted as she set her dinner down on the table.
"What's with the self-righteous, self-satisfied indignation?" chided Kate as she stuffed her face with broccoli. Noriko narrowed her eyes. Kate laughed nervously. She reached for her slice of cake and held it out to the fuming girl beside her.
"Cake?"
Her question momentarily halted Noriko, who stared at the strawberry cake. But it was only for a split second.
She ignored Kate and jumped back to her rant.
"Someone decided to lock their bike on mine at the bike racks this morning."
"Maybe they were just in a hurry and they failed to notice," Kate tried to pacify her with some suggestions, "The person will probably remove it by tomorrow."
"They better," Noriko replied, attacking her food with a fork.
But Kate's optimism (and Noriko's wrath) did not succeed at vanquishing the cursed bike. The bike, in all its glorious pinkness and sparkly-ness, defiantly remained locked to Noriko's bike.
A week had passed and the owner of the bike did not move her (or perhaps his? Kate said they shouldn't judge) bike and unlock Noriko's bike.
By this point, Noriko was being driven insane. She had missed the beginning of lecture twice now, and she was not about to take this from some self-absorbed punk who obviously could care less about other people.
Another week passed. Still no sign of pink bike lady (or man, reminded Kate).
Noriko was at her wit's end. It had snowed recently, and all but two bikes were taken inside to safety. Her bike, along with the pink bike, was going to rot there for all eternity.
"Really," she fumed as she dug through her book bag, "How dare this person. Who does she—"
"Or he." Noriko ignored her.
"Who does she think she is?"
"How about," Kate said as she put her bowl of cereal down, "You go check the bike identification number on the bike and report it to the university's transportation division? All student bikes have to be registered, you know."
Noriko was quiet for a second.
"You're right. I'll do that first thing tomorrow."
Both girls quieted down and Noriko started her homework while Kate munched on behind her.
"Hey, Noriko?"
"Hmm?"
"Are you staying here for winter break again?"
Noriko stopped writing. Winter break. She had forgotten about the month break they got from school. It was going to be Christmas again. Time for presents, and trees, and lights, and ice skating, and…
-
'I think I will just watch you from the sidelines.'
'Ha. What would be the point of me kidnapping you to go on this wonderful ice skating adventure for your birthday?'
-
"Yeah," Noriko said absent mindedly. She blinked before turning to face Kate.
"Well," Kate said with a merry tone, "You should come home with me! I know going back to Japan may seem like a hassle, so why not come spend the holidays with me and my family? I promise they're not as crazy as me."
Noriko laughed.
"No one can be crazier than you, Kate."
"Hey!"
She was also relieved to have Kate, who was her first friend in America. They were randomly placed together in the dorms their freshman year. They became friends, and they remained roommates for their sophomore year and, now, their junior year. Although Noriko never explicitly told her, Kate knew that there was something in Japan that Noriko was running away from. Something was keeping Noriko, who had not gone back to her country since she started her freshman year of college. She wanted to tell her to confront it, but she knew it was not her place to say that.
"Thank you Kate, I think I would like that."
Noriko marched up to the frivolous bike. She brushed off the snow and inspected it carefully. It was glazed with an almost fluorescent pink, with stickers of American bands—The Fray, Green Day, Muse—on the main frame. There was a white basket attached to the front, with a soaked pamphlet about Alternative Spring Break volunteer opportunities glued to the bottom, and right next to it was a ringer. The seat was adjusted to the lowest level—this person was most likely short—and what Noriko saw next made her falter.
The bike had pegs. It had damn pegs.
-
'We're biking?'
'It's okay. I know you don't know how to ride a bike.'
-
Swallowing hard, Noriko shook away the memory and looked for the registration number. She found it under the seat without much difficulty and wrote down the numbers before trotting off to the transportation office.
When a patrol car showed up by the bike racks, Noriko was a little surprised. Was America that intense about cycling rules?
She could care less. Finally, the selfish person would get what she (or he, Kate reminded her) deserved.
Noriko stood there as they used a chain saw to cut the U-bike lock into two pieces. Her bike was free! Noriko almost hugged the mass of cheap metal that got her through three solitary years in America, but she noticed that the policeman was taking the sparkly pink bike with him.
"Wait…what are you doing?"
The policeman told her that the owner—the selfish bike owner, the self-absorbed and inconsiderate pink bike lady—was dead.
"It was unexpected. The young lady's family is too busy dealing with everything right now."
And as the policeman drove away with the sparkly fluorescent pink bike in tow, Noriko stood amid the bike racks, frozen to the ground.
The next morning, Noriko crawled to the other end of her lofted bed, lowered the upper half of her body off of the edge of the bed, and reached for the alarm clock that was beeping incredulously from the shelf that hung above her desk. The blaring noise died and the room was dead silent again. She just let herself hang there, motionless.
All her feelings of resentment and hatred towards the pink bike lady melted away as she stood by the bike racks while the patrol car drove away. She was so ashamed of her stupid self-righteousness. She was so quick to judge.
Thinking back, she remembered what she saw when she inspected the bike. Pamphlets to a university sponsored volunteer trip that the girl was probably thinking of joining, stickers of bands she listened to on her iPod while she rode her bike, and a bell she used to warn people as she turned the corner. It was a normal life. It was an interrupted life.
Noriko was curious about the girl. Why did she lock her bike against someone else's? Maybe Kate was right. Maybe, caught up in not wanting to be late to class or having to go back to her room so quickly, the girl absent mindedly locked her bike against Noriko's, with the intent of coming back and unlocking the bike again. She locked her bike thinking that her day would continue, that the rest of her life would continue.
It was so hard to digest for Noriko—how she could be alive one day and disappear the next.
It was the most basic truth: Life is fragile. Life ends abruptly, with no flashing lights or signals.
Noriko knew she would cherish this basic truth for a while. She would keep in mind that every day is a gift, that every day is the beginning of the rest of her life. But now, with the flashy pink bike gone, the lesson it held about the fragility of life would also slowly fade. Noriko would return to her busy, scheduled life—all in vain to forget what she was too cowardly to fix.
Staring intently at the black box under her desk, Noriko made up her mind.
"Seriously," Noriko almost fell head first to the floor at the sound of the voice, "Blood rushing to head? Falling? Any of that making sense?"
"KATE!"
Kate laughed a little before opening the blinds.
"Hey, Kate?"
"Hmm?"
"Thanks for the offer," Noriko trailed off. Kate's face told her that she knew what she was talking about, "but I won't be able to go with you after all."
Kate smiled, grateful that her friend was finally facing her demons, whatever they were.
"In that case," she said as she dug into her closet, "here is your Christmas present…Now, where's mine?"
Noriko burst out laughing from her bed.
Shimako Toudou quietly hummed to herself as she carried her groceries and trudged along the snow. Snow was dancing about her as they descended upon earth and Shimako hoped that she would not have a lot to shovel when she got home. She was already a little upset that the bakery sold their last strawberry cake of the day, but there was nothing she could do about that.
Her steps slowed, like they always did, when she passed by one of the Tokyo's many outdoor ice skating rinks. She gripped the plastic bag handles tighter and trudged along.
Turning the corner to her apartment, Shimako stopped at her tracks.
Standing in front of her door with a cake box in her hand was Noriko, who was looking intently at the doorbell. She turned her head at the sound of Shimako's footsteps. After a brief moment of hesitation, like it was the most natural thing to do after not seeing the other woman for almost four years, her mouth formed a warm smile.
"Cake?"
A/N: Today, I spent three hours in a stadium watching my university's football team duke it out with our rival university. The band was loud, the crowds were louder, and I heard joking threats exchanged between the orange and the blue crowds. They were all so happy. At that moment, it was the game that mattered. It was all that mattered. - Halfway around the world, 300 of my countrymen were dead. Two thousand people lost their lives in neighboring countries, and the devastation is still raging on. Rich or poor. It was all the same. They were all the same. We are all the same. I was in my dorm when I read the headline earlier this week. - A self proclaimed wayward Catholic, I have always had qualms about my faith. But at that one moment, that sunny afternoon, I went on my knees I truly prayed
clamped my hands together
shut my eyes
and for the first time in my life
because I felt like it was all that I could do. It was all I could do.
-
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This story is theirs, because like that girl who locked her bike on Noriko's, they too woke up and went about their lives, thinking that come nightfall, they would be back in their beds and waiting for tomorrow.