When Miku looks up from her bento – a blue, dainty tin box that has seen enough use the plastic is already starting to peel off – she sees a fox wedding.
The window paints an open blue sky, clouds having migrated to the sides. There's a rainbow blooming from the far right, stretching from the very edge of the clear pane until looping downwards to the ferris-wheel near the city central.
The sunlight is nearly blinding because it's summer. In stark contrast, the air is chilly because of the rain.
She takes a sausage, shaped into an octopi with skin cut and curled into tiny tendrils resembling tentacles, impassively nibbling at the ends.
None of her classmates are aware of the phenomena. Most have already moved from the classroom to the cafeteria with only dozing students or late-workers left behind.
She's the only one staring out the window.
Miku sets the sausage down, one limb having been bitten off. There's still plenty of food left. Eggrolls are stacked, placed into small food liners next to the vegetables and cherry tomatoes in neat dividers.
She hasn't eaten any of the rice either, having mindlessly picked and prodded instead.
Yellow, white, green, and red. The primary colours that make up her lunch are carefully assembled to form a mismatched rectangle, neat but pleasing to look at. Anyone could tell she'd have spent a considerable amount of time decorating.
Anyone.
Now it's muddled. The rice is stacked to the side resembling a hollow tube, the tin's pale underside peeking through. It's resembling more and more an unwanted chid's dish than a high-school girl's effort.
Miku sets her chopsticks to the side.
Her stomach is close to bursting. She's eaten more than she can handle. The rest will have to be left for dinner or tomorrow's breakfast.
Nothing of interest has happened. Not in her lunchbox, or in the classroom. Not even outside.
She waits patiently for the bell to ring instead and doesn't look up, not even when the teacher comes in and asks if she's feeling unwell.
–
Only in very few occasions does Miku speak in class. She answers when questioned and pays attention which is remarkable, considering there are twenty-nine students in class and only a handful are able to fulfill both criteria.
The teachers rarely pay her heed because she hands in her assignments on time and doesn't make a disciplinary fuss, which amounts to far less than one hand can offer.
She isn't particularly intelligent nor athletic. The school has a compulsory rule wherein students are obligated to join at least one extra curriculum class. She did, once. Music.
She'd been a freshman then, interested in picking up an instrument. The piano perhaps, or maybe she'd have have a try at the guitars. But then the club had dismantled itself.
"The attendance was too low."
"We don't have enough members."
"No one qualified to teach is free."
Their school was facing a financial crisis with a lack of budget to be properly distributed.
No one wanted to pay either, which suited Miku fine, because she didn't have the money to chip in anyway.
Clubs are still registered as active because the school had every intent to breed out students and quickly sort them into universities. Look, my alumni have transcended into the working class of our nation's forwarding society.
Isn't that grand? Good? Excellent? Watch these mindless blue-collar workers, overworked and underpayed, live their lives with a roof over their heads because no one wants to be poor.
No one wants to be shameful.
But it's been years since she last showed up and no one quite seems to care.
Walking home is healthy and economical for a lone student living in the city.
She doesn't take the bus.
It's a hassle.
Neither has she has walked home with anyone since the first-year of highschool anyway.
It gets lonely, sometimes. But not really, no, because Miku doesn't mind it. It's a quiet walk that gives her time to think about what to buy next or the homework due tomorrow.
Sometimes, and only sometimes, it gets too quiet.
It's no more the absence of sound than it is the sudden abundance. The roar of the city, pedestrians crossing, cars veering pass.
Things get too noisy, and it drums drums drums in her ear until she's stopped half-way in the middle of the road, people jostling pass her while she digs through the recesses of her bag desperately searching for the pair of gritty earphones with the fading stereo in the right bud.
It gets so noisy she can't even hear herself think.
There are no longer any thoughts to ponder on or analyse or predict because they're drowned underneath the sounds of the city. The sounds of people, absolute strangers, who walk past her like she isn't there.
She's gone so long with only listening to herself, that when she can't, the silence is deafening.
Her apartment is located on a hill erecting opposite the pier, overlooking the ocean tides. Perhaps it would have more tenants should it be linked closer to town or accessible by more modern transportation services.
The bullet-train connecting each district runs from one end of the town to the other in a straight line.
Passengers enter via district assigned terminals. The terminal is allotted numbers, starting from the East-side with I then IV at the city heart and ending with VII at West-side.
Miku's living quarters is exactly two and a half kilometres walking distance from the VII terminal. Strictly speaking, it would take half the time needed if she copped a bicycle and peddled home.
If she frugally divided her government sponsored allowance she could possibly scrape enough money to purchase an old relic from the antique shop a ways off from her apartment. An ancient thing powered by nothing but pure energy excursion. No fancy steam whizz or thermal stabilisers.
Absently opening her wallet, she takes the Financial Aid Card out alongside whatever meager tickets saved through meticulous hoarding.
There's a pitiful amount of money left in her digital accounts for anything that wasn't rent or food. The tickets she's accumulated only amount to half of whatever her mother's left behind. That is to simply say, not much.
The front gate of the apartment comes into view and Miku quickens her pace.
Miku's quite fond of it. An out-dated structure with an over-arc, spelling EMPERORS PALACE. The first and last E have already begun their slow descents, tilting charmingly to the left.
It had a rustic charm if not much else.
The gate itself was the only part of the structure that wasn't dismal. Its golden bars were polished with only minimal amount of pain peel.
Viewed from afar, it could possibly bring out an old sense of nostalgia for a once beautiful building.
She slips in and trots to the front steps ascending two at a time.
EMPERORS PALACE had once been a popular tourist destination before the nation-wide pullback of coal. Attracting energetic travelers and locals alike to a stay outside of the city central for a not-quite rural change of pace. Opposite the ocean, it had the superior advantage of aesthetic scenery and fresh, cool breezes.
When the pullback for coal had been announced, major parts of the town's finances were eventually pulled and pooled into the city's benefits. Similarly, the contemporary residents soon followed and now only the old and desperate stayed outside the city.
Like her.
What a depressing thought.
Miku enters the dilapidated building carefully to avoid stepping on mysterious stains.
She takes the stairs because the lifts have long since stopped working from before she had even rented a room. Maybe from before she was even born. These were models from eras long left behind.
Out of the seven floors available only four were currently operating with three used by the tenants. The last three were defunct with each floor's emergency exit door boarded and the buttons hastily removed from the lift.
Not that it mattered since it was broken.
Could it somehow be replaced, she mused.
Would the landlord have to hire some sort of historian? The technology was ancient.
Just looking at it for the first time had made her feel aged.
Alternating between taking one then two steps, Miku opens the heavy doors of the emergency exit. A few feet straight ahead would be where the tenants waited to use the lift. Now there was only an empty gap with the lift's cord protruding from the bottom all the way, to what she assumed, was the roof.
A fork in the path lead to the security clearance doors.
Miku approached the metal door. Beside it, the electromagnetic barriers would occasionally reveal itself by sending small blue signals from the floor upwards.
Transparent barriers were illegal. Outlawed ten years ago when a young boy had been sent into the ICU after running headlong into the electrobarriers. Nowadays, no one was allowed to set one up without a permit.
Miku highly doubted the landlord had a permit for anything. He seemed more intent on wasting his time gambling than filing paperwork.
The door gave a low hum of churning energy. Next to it, on the right, was a metal protrusion with only a screen. Placing her hand on the same screen, it lit up with a familiar turquoise light.
Hastily, digital words scrawled on the metal surface.
READING
READING: RESIDENT OF ROOM 6
READING
READING: ACCESSING INTERNAL DATABASE
READING: ARMAMENT DETECTION
READING
READING
READING: NEGATIVE
READING: ACCESS APPROVED
WELCOME
An exhaust of steam followed the silent opening.
Each hallway for EMPERORS PALACE had three measures of resident safety. The first were the CCTV camera attached on both sides of the metallic entryway, an old but reliable model. Second would be the scanner itself. The last was quite primitive but a true novelty: a key.
Her own room was an LDK with a surprising stretch of space. A memorable call-back to the building's older days of being a resort hotel.
She slips her key into the handle, twists then enters. Removing her shoes with practiced ease, Miku absently tosses them to the side without caring to look where they land.
She doesn't remove her knee-socks because the floors haven't been cleaned in a while.
There's a chandelier hanging from the ceiling that's lost many of its jewels. Only one bulb is working, emitting orange light stubbornly.
Miku places her bag on the table and seats herself in the only elevated surface. An uncomfortable beaten chair with stray splinters jutting out.
"Urghh," Miku moaned.
No money to buy good food. No money to move from this depressing place.
Not even enough for an old fossil piece of a basket bicycle.
Absolutely nothing could heave her out of this depressing slump.
She lay there stationary, legs spread open, thoughts empty, thinking of nothing for what seems like hours until her stomach starts hankering to eat. The summer should well be atrocious but the sea breeze from the open window offers a breath of cool air. Still, she doesn't move.
It isn't until the hunger pangs start to settle does Miku involuntarily get up and move to the kitchen in an exaggerated sluggish fashion. Hunched back and face comically twisted into an unbecoming expression.
She takes a small stool and hoists herself up, fishing out the bottle of water and an old can of food from one of the top cabinets. Another day of preparing dinner from another piece of ancient technology; a gas stove. Flames spark to life when she flips the switch.
Not even the school uses flame-based anything anymore. Everything is hydrogen powered these days.
Dinner is fried sardines, a small portion of rice and not-water-lemon juice that's really just cold water sprinkled with lemon essence.
Miku eats to the beat of the radio. An old jazz song from way back when. Her feet tap to the tempo, her head nodding in rhythm with each bite.
The whole apartment is a copy of a museum exhibition. Quaint with a certain charm to it, yes, yet these items – these things – had no right to leave the door. They belonged in this room, in a time that was their own.
She doesn't belong here – doesn't want to be here. Not in a city that's living by a hairs breadth, or a school that dies a little with each day. Not in this fading building, so removed from time that it's become forgotten. Even her own home, a place of comfort, the only place to call hers, is submerged in the past.
Certainly , Miku knows she's drowning with it.
Her days proceed in natural mundane rhythm. Classes are agonizingly dull if not tedious. As per the status-quo, Miku does not leave the classroom for lunch, instead confining herself to the table. If anything the banal routine of school has left her with even more appealing food combinations.
Yesterday, the meal had been placed in such a position to resemble a blooming flower.
Today, the rice was flattened and shaped to form a circle. Excess space was filled with rolled eggs, forming an outer perimeter. Another layer was prepared, alternating between neat slices of cucumbers and cherry tomatoes that circumferences the entire meal.
In the middle of the, ahem, masterpiece was a small drizzle of ketchup in the shape of a teddy bear with green peas for eyes and a small carrot for its button nose.
Miku had spent a significant amount of time working on this one as a way to busy herself until the last possible moment she would have to depart for school.
Neatly she takes an egg and chews thoughtfully.
It's a rainy day today. The air is chilly and the water faintly stink of cleaning odour. Their city's falling financial structure has led to many of their artificial resources being traded in for less costly, more inferior versions. Their rain, for one thing.
In some of the more flourishing cities rain water smelled like roses and was harmless to ingest, tasting just as appealing as their smell.
Students cram themselves into their respective classrooms because the cafeteria isn't situated inside the school building but outside with only a roof to shade from the sun and rain. With their monetary shortages, the roof leaks.
A lot.
A group of girls establish themselves into a circle, their tables formed into a rectangle. Four students with two on each side so one always faces another.
"Did you finish the homework?" someone mutters.
"The one Hanazawa-sensei assigned?" another piques.
"She's such a witch," says a different girl. Altogether they nod their heads in unison. "She never gives us an extension even though she knows we have other things to do. I help my mother in the restaurant as soon as I get back. She knows I do. She's there eating udon at seven."
"Isn't she single?"
"What of it?"
"Well, maybe she's so hard on us because she doesn't have, y'know," her voice lowers to a whisper here, "anyone."
Someone giggles. "If her sexual frustration is channeling itself into actual frustration I'm surprised she's still walking. I'd have pegged her a cripple yeeaars ago."
Miku already has her earphones plugged in by the time they erupt into incoherent snickering.
"Hey, Rumi-chan, your lunch is so cute. You don't mind if I take some do you?"
"You pig. It's not that well-done. Just something I strung up from last night's leftovers. I didn't bring a lot so don't take too much- Hey, Yio, that's a big piece give it back-"
Miku closes the lid of her lunch-box hurriedly.
Once more, today, she can't quite bring herself to eat.
Likewise to the school, her walk back is terrifyingly monotonous.
The bullet-train takes exactly one hour to reach from one end of the city to the other. Within the city area and compromising of seven districts, there are only two high-schools. One in the heart of the city and the other established in the East-side. The small territory, drastically plummeting population numbers and falling economy have never given the city incentive to add another school building.
Instead, those who are able to sufficiently pay for their own education are designated a spot in the East-side. Those who cannot either take the second government provided option, or opt to ditch high-school altogether.
If anything, the train is the only piece of valuable technology in their city. The tracks are suspended far above ground and stretch from the first to the last terminal by means of projected transparent aluminum.
Tractor beams located on the bottom side of the train draw it close to the tracks. Intimate contact is never initiated, instead there is a short distance induced by the repulsion.
Hovering would be more appropriate a term.
Four repulsor engines are situated at the back of the train, two at the bottom and two at the top. During each journey, when the train jets itself to the distance, the very same engines release blue exhaust that trail behind like will-o-wisps.
Miku takes the bullet-train in the IV terminal, departs on the VII, then heads back home. Because no one really lives in the west-side, terminals V, VI and VII rarely fill with people. Many seats are always left open and nobody sits next to each other.
By the time Miku is half-way up the hill, she notices the plumes of smoke squirming upwards.
They writhe upwards, propelled by the air currents.
Oh no.
Her feet have taken root in the ground. Oh god please no
Miku doesn't notice her hands have balled themselves into fists until she feels the uncomfortable puncture of skin. Her nails have broken the thin layer, leaving an uneven red indent. Her attempts to slowly unfurl them are terribly difficult. Wound tightly, as though cohesive tape has ground them together, she tries to pry them loose but they've already begun to shake.
More smoke rises until it towers the EMPIRES PALACE. Standing in the middle of the road, watching the gas thicken and blot into an abominable globule, she thinks that's my home. I have nowhere to go.
The adrenaline finally kicks in when Miku snaps herself out of the shock.
Her heart beats thunderously, pumping energy and hormones throughout her nervous system. A spur of strength bursts in her legs, supplanting them from their rigid stature.
Miku breaks out in a sprint.
Her bag blows against her rib awkwardly but she barely even feels it.
That's my home
That's my home
That's my home
That's my home
Self-induced, terribly vexing mantra never stops. Fleeting feeling of fear boil over in her heart, threatening to combust the very same way her home is.
Running up the hills should have made her a hot sweaty mess but nothing shakes off the clawing of fear in her body.
Everything feels so cold.
Icy. Frigid. The higher she climbs the stronger the feeling takes root. Like a parasite, it scrawls from the tips of her toes, violating her body.
That's my ho-
"Fujimura you goddamn idiot. Do you have rocks for brain? The flame's too big you piece of shit."
Her landlord comes into view, towering over a small pyre.
Momentarily, she breaks her view from him to stare back at the EMPEROR and sees that there is no burning home.
No ambulances or fire-trucks.
Not even a lone police wagon.
The building is still as dilapidated as when she had left this morning. Though, the smoke made its peeling grey paint look even more disgruntled. Casting shadows that seemed to accentuate every displeasing part of the building.
"What the hell are you looking at."
Miku's attention jerks to her landlord.
"You deaf, dear?" he asks in mock affection. "Don't tell me you ran all the way here."
Miku doesn't offer a reply. Relief floods her senses away, and what trails after are sharp spikes of pain. Her body has finally caught up to her. Her chest can't stop heaving, her feet weighed like iron.
Tanaka begins to laugh raucously.
"Fujimura, I've found a bigger dumbass than you! Amazing how many you can find in one day. This one's the third in a row," Tanaka squawks. He kicks a stray block of wood into an imitation bon-fire.
Miku waits for her breath to catch up, leaning on the gate for support.
"What… are you doing?" she wheezes.
"Hinamura didn't pay rent," Fujimura says from his squatting position. He fans the flames pitifully using a battered notebook.
Tanaka uses his foot to kick Fujimura. The latter nearly trips into the flames but catches himself with his hands, face inches from catching fire.
Tanaka's face deflects from mild amusement to knitted rage.
"Dumbass, this wasn't about rent," he says, "Jesus, no. I wouldn't kick a paying tenant out, not in this economy. Listen here girlie. That bitch was stealing from me."
Hinamura.
Miku tried to place a face to the name but came up empty. She wasn't particularly close to any of her neighbours.
He took her silence as an incentive to continue. "If I catch any of you stealing from me, I'll evict you immediately. Let Hinamura be a good lesson. I found my things in her floor. Said she didn't take them. Said someone else did it. What am I, a fool?" He picks up a photo and hurls it into the pyre. "She's the only one who's allowed up there 'sides me."
Looking closer, the items strewn into a haphazard pile weren't blocks of wood like she had initially thought. They were belongings. Books, chairs, boxes. All of them ready to be plucked and burned.
Miku nods hesitantly and lumbers past them.
The heat from running and this- this little show were unbearable.
"If I catch you stealing," Tanaka warns just as Miku places a hand on the doorknob. "There'll be hell to pay, darling."
She slams the door shut behind her and falls to the floor unceremoniously. Her heart still hasn't calmed. Leaning by the door, her legs spread, there isn't an inch of care that her shoes are touching the stains on the floor. It doesn't matter. Not right now.
Staring at the ceiling, Miku lays a hand on the door in mock embrace.
I could've lost my home, she thinks. But I didn't.
This place is disgusting and broken and I hate you Tanaka you old leech. But. I don't have anywhere else to go. I don't want to go back to the mainland. I'd rather hang myself than go back there.
The national government issued building for Social Security lay in the centre of their nation. There, people like her – orphans – would register themselves, living in co-ed buildings until the age of fifteen where they could issue for an international passport.
Feeling the nape of her neck, she found the small cross-stitching. Inside would be the government issued micro-ship. Everything from the day she was born to the exact time she had registered for the train one hour ago have already been recorded and stored. It would continue to record for every vehicle she took, or attendance registration. All the way until the day she died.
This was the only existing link between herself and others around her.
Classmates, teachers, her neighbours – hell, even the pedestrians she walked past. Everyone had a chip that coupled them to the database facility in the mainland.
In a way no one's really alone.
Living while being connected to others. It's her catharsis during the times when she can't move out of bed. A phrase that gets her to the bathroom, ready for school with breakfast cooked and settled on the table, during the worst of times.
Miku's reverie is broken when she hears scuttling sounds.
From the downstairs kitchen, opposite Tanaka's room behind the counter. Normally, Miku would have simply ignored this. Tanaka was always eating. That's why none of his clothes quite fit over the tremendous pot-belly he bred.
But if Tanaka was outside…
The only other member with higher authority was…
Miku couldn't quite remember.
Nevertheless, absolutely no one was allowed inside by Tanaka bar special occasions. None were currently planned. This building hadn't had one in years, and if it did, it would have been before Miku had moved in three years ago.
Getting up was strictly less difficult than it was climbing up the hill. Her legs no longer felt like iron, having melted into wobbly jelly. She still held onto the door in a pathetic attempt to stop from swooning.
"You shouldn't be in there," Miku warns. She removed her bag, letting it slip from her shoulder and deftly catching it with clammy hands. "Tanaka's not in a good mood," she says, dropping the honorific out of habit. Using honorifics for Tanaka would imply she respected him.
Which was an appalling lie.
No one respected him.
Miku moved to the door adjacent the lifts and tried not to groan. Two flights of stairs in this mushy, jello state would kill her, irony withstanding. "He's throwing a bitch-fit right now," she called, letting her voice carry without looking back. "You're better off getting it from someone else."
Each step was excruciating. Miku had already sworn she was seeing Heaven's door, beautiful thing, lots of pretty lights, by the time she was on her floor and wobbling for the door. Behind her, there was a hurried creaking sound.
Good.
At least they had listened.
Miku opened her door, entered, locked it then tumbled to the floor in that order.
Today was Wednesday. She still had school tomorrow.
She didn't just moan.
She moaned real pissing loud.
When Miku woke, her entire back ached. She vaguely realises that her shoes are still on. So was her school uniform.
She'd slept on the floor, her bag used as a make-shift pillow.
Disgusting.
Sitting up the bare minimum needed to glance at the clock, Miku made an irate face. 01 16.
She'd gotten back at… around 6?
Well, it was sometime around six. She hadn't had dinner yet nor rolled out the futon. Getting up to the stove would be a Herculean task.
She dragged herself on all floors to the table in lieu of walking, heaving and mumbling bloody murder under her breath.
Taking out the lunchbox, the previous illustration having been jumbled and destroyed from the impromptu dash hours before, how embarrassing, she clapped her hands together in a simple prayer of gratitude.
Only slightly frazzled, Miku takes a bite of the egg-roll and chews methodically. She despised cold food but she could swallow this down. Her stomach was desperate enough.
Taking a clump of ketchup rice, Miku found herself completely enamored by the repulsion from her tongue versus the alleviation of the stomach pangs.
Did she like it? Did she hate it? The food comes in gross but slides down good.
Her body couldn't make up its mind very well. Vomit, or not?
Bang Bang
Someone was knocking.
Taking a glance at the clock, she grimaced.
01 21
Miku went back to eating. Each bite was accompanied by knocking, slowly upsetting her appetite. This floor had three rooms with at least three different tenants. Surely, someone or the other would come out and make this rude interrupter of late night-early morning dinner-breakfasts leave.
Bang Bang
When it became obvious that no one would amuse this crude intruder, and that she, out of all the floor's inhabitants, had the least patience (or alternatively, was the only one awake and coherent enough to give a shit), Miku ambled towards the door.
Stretching beforehand, one hand shooting up and the other bent behind, she fixed a reasonably indignant scowl.
Yes, yes. I'm coming. There's obviously nothing important to do, say, at one o'clock in the morning. Never mind that people may be asleep. Obviously whatever it is can't wait until tomorrow, no.
Goddamn if it was Tanaka that would just be the proverbial hammer swinging down onto the coffin. Dealing with him at this ungoldly hour would implode the last remnants of her patience, and the necessary brain cells needed to make new ones.
"What is it?" Miku asks, swinging the door open.
What greets her is a red-eyed monster.