They walk together in a simple silence. Several blocks ahead, past street-lights and pedestrians and the tail-lights of cars, she sees the train platform and watches as a train lurches and starts, pulling away from the station and almost hesitating before it slides out of view, it's whistle steaming like a kettle and it's metal grinding against the tracks.
As they walk, the scenes of Bonyari during rush hour envelope them. All the people milling about, crossing streets, checking watches and phones as cars rove by and horns honk and all the noises of people chatting, gossiping, shouting, yelping, and monologuing. Crowds cluster and mingle on the platform and the street-corners and outside cafes and shops. Several people sit on the concrete steps leading up to the platform, eating sandwiches or hot dogs or pocky. Everyone listening to music, reading magazines and newspapers and tablets, scrolling on their phones, sending messages, making and receiving calls and some people just holding their knees and watching everyone.
As they cross the first block, she hears the woman's voice of the intercom system, suggesting people to 'check the gap' and that 'safety is a community effort.' It reminds her of an anticlimactic 1984. Realizing someone must've turned the intercom volume up too loud, she lets a smirk inhabit her face.
"I bet she's pretty or a maid," Shuu says, wearing his sheep's-grin as they stop at a street-corner and wait for the light to change. He stuffs his hands into his pockets after adjusting the school-bag slung over his shoulder.
"She's a machine," Ruri says, feeling her bag-strap cut into her clavicle and re-adjusting it when he looks across the street at a girl from school.
"Well, she's a sexy machine though, like Siri," he responds, laughing.
"Who, the girl?" she asks as the light turns and they step off the curb.
"No, the intercom lady," he says, laughing again.
"Oh," she says back, watching him in her periphery. His laugh changes with context. Often, he mimics the laughs of those around him but just as often he adjust his laughter so that it fits into an image he wants to present. When he's made a perverted joke, his laughs turns into a hyuking sort of sound or sometimes like an old man's wheezy laughter. Sometimes, it's just a burst of a laugh or a trickling laugh. When people seem somber, he likes to laugh like a mountain-man, straight from his diaphragm. And, when people are chatting and pleased his laughs become almost dainty as he closes his eyes and a smile emerges in the corner of his mouth.
Right now it's an airy sort of laugh, almost melancholic. When it's over, his smiles is small and sort of empty until he notices her watching him. Then, his smile widens and he grins.
That's how it's been. Maybe since middle school, but Ruri never noticed it until the others went off to that island, keys and pendant and children's book in hand. She told them they should wait for school to end, it being their final year with all the exams. But, as Marika told her while waving a finger in her face, 'Love is always a hurricane!'
Ruri never bother to call her out on taking life advice from a shounen manga. Instead, she just saluted them farewell and walked her best friend to the airport. It's been a few days past a week since then. Every couple days she'll receive a text from Kosaki, but always it's just a checking-in sort of message, something unrevealing and almost curt with a little smily added at the end like a passive period mark.
"Have you heard from Ichijou?" she asks, adjusting her bag again as they cross the final street and weave through the crowds towards the stairs.
"Nope. Have you heard from Onodera?"
"Just little messages."
"Right."
Then, there is that silence again. They're footsteps feel loud to her, the clacking of school shoes on the cement. But, so does everything else, all the crowd sounds and train sounds, the passing phone conversations, people's music leaking out from their earbuds, the lady on the intercom. The smells are loud too, the smell of McDonalds, the smell of coffees, mochas, lattes, the smell of bodies and of perfume and cologne. And, the smell of Shuu. Someone bumps into him and he bumps into Ruri. His body is much larger than her's, but she does not stumble.
"Whoops," he says, grinning. She just shoots him a look.
"You smell like an old man, like a dying, decaying, rotting - decrepit - ruined - retired old man," Ruri says, staring forward, holding the strap of her bag up off her shoulder. Looking at her hand, he smiles and laughs again. This time the laugh falls out of him as if on accident. There is a spontaneity to it that she hadn't heard in awhile.
"You smell like-"
She hits him. A quick jab to the temple. Stumbling a bit, chuckling, he lets her walk ahead then catches up. When he reappears at her side, some feeling between them eases, as if by closing the distance between her fist and his head, she closed some other, unspoken distance that she didn't even notice was there.
"Let me carry your bag," he offers, sticking his hand out as they stop in front of the steps. She watches him, then looks up the stairs and then back at him.
"No. Why would I let you just carry my bag up the steps, anyway? We walked several blocks to get here, and now that we're already here - Well, that doesn't even matter. You only offered because you have to, or you feel like you have to," she says, an anger swelling in her voice. Seeing the blankness in his face, she scowls down at their feet.
"No way!" he responds, then quiets down, "Just 'cause Raku thinks he has to, doesn't mean I do. I just want to! See, see Ruri, see how genuine my face is?"
She looks back up at him and tries not to laugh. His expression is pitiful, some hideous mix between doe eyes and a wolf's grin. It looks almost painful to keep his face contorted like that.
"What - stop that," she starts, stuttering and almost laughing. Keeping her frown, she readjusts her bag and starts climbing the steps. He saw it anyway, the flicker in her expression. For a moment, she forgot to keep composed. Pushing his hands into his pockets, he smiles and pauses before following her
The stairs are cluttered with people sitting or standing or looking off at some distance. People eat and talk and scroll on their phones and read books and magazines and manga and sip coffees and sodas and smoke cigarettes and e-cigarettes. As they ascend, they weave around the people but nobody seems to notice them. Some intuitively sway out of the way, and several others just sit there.
As they climb the last few steps, the platform unfolds before them. The crowds they spotted a couple blocks away become clusters of individuals moving in various directions, some moving in groups and swelling towards train-cars, and some moving on their own and cutting through to reach someone or to reach an open-space or a spot to sit. There are many people hovering at the edges of the platform, sitting on the benches or railings or leaning against the trash cans or recycle bins.
There seems to be a uniform to everyone's expressions, a lax gaze on everyone's faces, a perpetual sigh, a mask of skin and eyes and lips and noses. Except for Shuu, who notices a gaggle of beautiful girls wearing a different school's uniform and lingering near the tracks. They have those puffy, lost expressions of first years, that pinkish hue to their cheeks, that exaggerated way of speaking and laughing as if everything is ironic.
And, they all hold lattes from Starbucks. Ruri notices other men watching the girls too, wether through sunglasses or the corner of their eyes or from across the platform. Some of the men are young like Shuu, and some are aged and in the midst of their careers, wearing suits and carrying briefcases and rubbing their bald spots.
"You disgust me," she says, looking to Shuu. He pauses, half-blushing, mouth open, and laughs again. This time the laugh is his perverted laugh, the one that makes her scoff and look away.
A train rolls in, clanking to a stop on the tracks, a loud whistling noise half-covering the sound of the woman's voice on the intercom as the doors open and the train seems to exhale. The crowd pushes forward, seeping through the open doors like heavy liquid. Glancing to Shuu, she raises a small hand, mouths the words 'see you tomorrow' and turns away, walking stiffly into the crowd, disappearing into the mess of bodies and letting their current pull her into the train.
As the doors close, she tries to look out the window, but there are too many people. Surrounding her are textures of polyester and cotton, the weight of people's backs and torsos, and their faces staring at nothing, sweating flesh, glazed eyes, mouths and noses. In front of her is someone's back clothed in a sport's coat. Staring into it, she observes the threading in the fabric and feels the train lurch, the crowd sway and then, a weightlessness.