I was sort of at a loss as to what to center this chapter around, but I finally decided on what I think will really make it shine.
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Don't you just love showers? I do. I especially like to take them around midnight. Everyone is sleeping then, so I can relax and walk around without being bothered. With the towel still sort of clinging to my body, and the soft carpet whispering under my feet, I can get a lot of my thinking done.
I first got the idea from Emily. I remember when almost every girl in Kadic had a total crush on Ulrich, myself included, and Emily would do all sorts of things to make him notice her. She'd help him with his homework, let him borrow whatever supplies he needed, and take midnight showers just so she could catch him wandering the halls at night. Yeah, she had many different ideas about how woo him away from Yumi.
I never understood why Ulrich would wander the halls. He and his friends used to do really weird stuff... In fact, they still do. But Ulrich was weird in a different way. While everyone else was plain weird (especially Odd), Ulrich was weird in an approachable way. You could totally walk up to him, and he wouldn't talk much. Weird. But he'd listen, at least. I think that's part of why liked him; he was a perfect balance of aloof, strange, and normal.
Enough about him. What matters now is that I'm happy, the world is happy, and a shower is one of life's simple pleasures. Really. Just take one with the heat as high as possible, and just let the water envelop you for a solid thirty minutes. It's epic.
My walking is interrupted by of all people, Aelita. I never see her awake at this hour, so what could she be up to?
"Oh, hi, Tamiya," she says, a mixture of surprise and joy splashed upon her face.
I nod once, to let her know that I'm listening.
"So... Why are you up so late?"
'I should ask you the same thing,' I mouth, happy that she's a lip-reader.
"Yeah, right. I'm actually part owl, don't ya know."
'Oh really?' I smile, and she smiles back.
"Yeah really."
'No way!' We both laugh, except mine is silent. And then, we laugh because I can't, and because it's just plain fun to make light of a condition like mine. I keep forgetting how alive and bubbly she is, even though we hang out more and more now. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to replace Milly or anything. We all used to hang out before she died. We thought that it'd be awkward at first, since we were missing our mutual friend. It has worked out okay, though, and it seems like we'll only come closer.
"Okay, okay, enough," she manages to say, and we both let out a trailing chortle. "I just never knew that you were so much like Emily. I mean, you both wear your hair the same, and there's that whole midnight showers thing..."
'Yeah, she was sort of my mentor...'
"Like I am now?" She raises an eyebrow, and I grin a little.
'Exactly.' I seem to forget a lot of things when time passes. Aelita is what, seventeen now? I'm only fourteen. And yet, we hang out like there's no age gap at all. She jokes about it sometimes. Either she's way behind in mental development (pssh, yeah, right), or I'm a little advanced for my age (maybe). I roll my eyes and tell her, sort of, that we just like the same things. Age is nothing. And strangely, the more I say it, the more sense it makes. Why should your age mean so much? So what if you've spent three more years on this planet? You're still you, and I'm still me. Let's have fun.
'One thing... Are you still going to ask Jeremy out tomorrow?' I mouth.
"Oh, stop it, Tamiya," she replies, blushing a little. "Yeah, I am, ha ha! Everyone knows I have to ask him out. Otherwise, we won't get anywhere!" We laugh, and I give her a slight punch on the shoulder.
'Now you stop it. Jeremy's a great guy. He's just a little... timid.'
"What?" She turns her head, but then realizes that that's not going to help her hear anything anyway, so... I simply repeat what I "said", but more slowly. 'Jeremy is a nice guy. He just is a little timid.'
"Oh, okay." She puts her finger to her my chin for a second and looks to the side, her little idiosyncratic way of thinking. Then she slides her eyes over at me and says, "You're not thinking of some large word, are you?"
'Wait... what?' Now I raise an eyebrow.
"I saw you reading the encyclopedia again. You can't hide it from me, you know. Let me guess... idiosyncratic?"
I laugh, amazed at her ability to always know what I'm thinking. 'I know, I know,' I reply, over-dramatizing my annoyance at her calling me out. I know it seems like a dull way to kill time, but reading the encyclopedia isn't so bad. It puts you to sleep easily, and you learn crap at the same time. Cool, right? Anyway, I got my collection from Jeremy, actually. He was trying to downsize his room, and saw a stack of volumes, so now they're mine!
"Well, I'm going to go hit the sack. Jeremy and I had so much work to do, and now I'm all tuckered out," she pouts.
'Bah, whatever. Don't do anything stupid this time.' She laughs, and I wave her off and grin, and then we part ways. Isn't it great to be able to communicate?
And yet, even while communicating, I miss the talking. So much more can be said, so to speak, when you speak. Ha ha. I mean, it's really hard to try to tell someone that they're mascara is running when you can't, well, tell them. It's crazy the amount of gestures I have to make. I'm practically a mime by now. You name it, I can act it out, and people usually get what I mean within a moment or two.
See, now all I can think about is Hiroki, Yumi Ishiiyama's brother. First of all, he was totally weird. He had a manga collection that rivaled Odd's, he would do handstands in the hallway, his handwriting was pure scrawl, he was always smiling, even when no one saw anything funny. But I think of him mostly because was a master mime. The Stairs, the Box, the Lasso, the Whatever-You-Want-To-Insert-Here. He did it all.
He was also all over Milly, and Milly was into him, too. Well, as into him as she could be at eleven, but whatever. What's sad is that Milly and Hiroki hung out for a month before she called it quits. They weren't dating, but they were really, really good friends in that short month. They were a hair short of what Milly and I were, and I got jealous, which is hard for me to get. Anyway, she just decided one day that she didn't want to go any further with Hiroki.
But, wow, you should've seen the guy. He took it hard. He still "loved" her, as he said, even though she wasn't interested. But Milly, the good girl that she was, humored him. They both thought that nothing special was going to happen, but they still did stuff together, for about three years. Hiroki still had hope, the crazy kid, and maybe he was right. A few months ago, about a month before the earthquake, Milly told me that she was starting to change her mind. She said that one of those days she was going to try to hook up with him.
And the worst thing is, she did. She went to the Ishiiyama's, out of the blue, and asked if she could see Hiroki. And there, they officially decided that they were going to start dating. They were back to normal, sort of. I wasn't jealous anymore, just sort of proud of Milly. And then, a week later, was the earthquake.
How bad is that?
One week. He only had one week, one real week of close proximity with her before she was snatched away. Remember how he took it hard when she "broke up" with him the first time? He took it even harder when she died. I thought I was screwed up, but he was, and still is, even worse. He's getting better again, but even still, he is not who he used to be. He jumps at things, he won't set foot in a museum for some reason, and he never comes to school anymore.
I visited him once, and I'm planning on going tomorrow, too. But that first time, I was scared. He looked so... so broken, as if he was a jigsaw puzzle that someone had cut up. He was a real puzzle at first, with how weird he was, but I barely recognized him.
On the inside, though, he was like smashed glass. His voice was raw, he was shrouded in blankets and duvets, and he was pale as milk. His mom said that he's sick, sick from a hard to cure ailment: grief. He misses her, plainly. His love for her was so strong that his mental torment spread to his physical well being. It might sound crazy, but it happens.
He knew that he was sick, too, and he knew why. He just couldn't get over her death. He felt responsible, like I did, and sometimes still do. He wished it was him instead of her. He was just plain sad. We talked for three hours, just letting the awkwardness slide away, and replacing it with mutual understanding. We were getting tired, though, so I started to end the conversation.
'If it was her instead of you, then wouldn't she feel like you do?' I wrote.
"Yeah," he said, his voice like gravel. "That's why I'm so... angry. It's like whatever happened, one of us would be unhappy. I die, she's sad. She died, I'm... sad. Either way, it just isn't right."
I thought for a moment, trying to think of what to write. 'Not to be callous, but that's life.'
"Yeah. That's why it's so screwed up. This whole thing, I mean - life, her death. It's not fair, Tamiya. Nothing is." And then, he pretty much fell asleep.
You know, the whole thing with Hiroki kills me a little inside. Why does he have to go through this? He's barely my age. But again, that's life.
It makes me just want to say, "Screw life", like Hiroki did. He's not suicidal or anything, just pissed. I know how he feels. I'm sure that all of us who knew Milly do.
As I stand in front of my door, I wonder if Milly will be waiting on the other side, wearing a towel like me, eager to stay up late like every Saturday night and play our outdated little Gamecube. Maybe, just maybe this is all a horrible dream. But alas, I turn the knob and her smiling face isn't there to greet me. Only her empty bed stares lifelessly, and I shudder. I'm definitely not going to sleep well tonight. But hopefully, I'll eventually get over this whole thing.
If there's one thing I regret, now that she's gone, it's not telling her how much she really means to me, as weird as that might sound. She might make a face and laugh it off, but I know that inside, she'd be touched, and maybe a little creeped out... But then, we'd be closer. And that's all that matters.
I think I'm more and more like Hiroki the more and more I think about Milly. I just miss her.