April passed seemingly in the blink of an eye. Classes continued, my old cram school contacted me with a possible job, and Hideki reignited my passion for philosophy as Light became increasingly busy with something that he didn't feel comfortable divulging. Though Hideki remained largely unreadable, he confessed that he did enjoy our discussions, and I found him occupying my thoughts more frequently. What sort of thing would we debate next time, I wondered, and how could I catch him off guard? It was the sort of playful thinking that I'd had in high school towards the beginning of my arrangement with Light, and it went hand-in-hand with my increased comfort when I was around him. Hideki and I were friends. Or at least, I considered him to be my friend. As closed-off as Light was, I could still read him much better than I could Hideki, who was always conscious of what he did and said.
And then suddenly, at the end of the month, Light returned.
I noticed him at the door to the study room and Hideki followed my gaze and excused himself. He and Light exchanged glances as they passed each other at the door, not quite glares but in no way neutral, before Light came in and shut the door behind him. "You and Hideki seem to be getting along well," he said, pulling out the chair across from me to sit down. Though there was no edge to his voice, there was something else. My crush on Light had waned in the previous weeks, in part from his sudden withdrawal without any explanation and his disdain of Hideki for no discernible reason, and so my response came out much more harshly than it would have months ago.
"I don't think it should matter to you who I choose to associate with."
"Well, it does matter," Light insisted. The tension in the air was practically tangible.
"I don't want to argue," I said, softer this time, "And I don't want to lose you as a friend, Light. Why do you dislike Hideki so much?"
"I can't talk about it."
"There are a lot of things you can't talk about lately."
"Yes, there are." Light took a deep breath. "We're friends, right?"
"Of course."
"And you trust me?"
I paused. "Yes, Light, I trust you."
"Then you have to trust me when I say that this is something I can't talk about."
Light and I started to avoid each other. When one of us came into the room, the other would leave, and we didn't make eye contact, speaking only when necessary and giving one-word answers. It seemed childish, and I'm sure he was just as frustrated as I was, but neither of us were willing to budge. Hideki was in the middle, and I felt terrible for putting him there, as Light had clearly made it known that he didn't like us talking. For weeks, we behaved like children, and Hideki continued to meet with me between classes, his presence comforting despite my guilt.
From the other end of the study commons, I watched as Light was approached by a female classmate and tried to ignore how it stung. Hideki sat to my right, waiting patiently for me to return my attention to the debate. "You look like you've been dumped." I turned to him, wide-eyed in embarrassment, and stammered out that he knew that wasn't the case. "I'm not saying that's what happened," he said, sounding uninterested, "I'm saying that's what it looks like." I apologized for getting distracted, but he shrugged. "No, I think this sort of reaction is normal for someone in your position. Do you ever think that you and I should stop associating?"
"No. He doesn't have any right to tell me who I can and can't be friends with."
Hideki didn't comment on that. "You're both stubborn," he said, "But unlike you, Light is a sore loser. It's likely that he'll try to make this as painless as possible until you cave in, but it's also likely that he will do everything in his power to facilitate your surrender sooner, possibly by-!"
"Can we please get back to the debate?" I snapped. What I did dislike about Hideki was his penchant for psycho-analyzing everyone around him-he said it was another hobby-and how accurate he tended to be. He allowed himself a small smile. He always seemed to enjoy completely honest, emotional responses from me, regardless of how much I disliked them.
"Of course."
Our first debate on the mind body problem had opened a can of worms and we had exhaustively dissected every solution we could think of, beginning with my lackluster defense of substance dualism. This time, Hideki was defending eliminative materialism, a stance that considered all mental states and emotions-love, happiness, pain, belief, and so on-to be nothing more than "folk psychology," outdated ways to refer to what would one day prove to be nothing more than brain processes. Of the various solutions to the mind body problem, eliminativism was one of the more radical. While identity theory posited that our feelings could perhaps run parallel to brain processes, and behaviorism treated them as tendencies, eliminativsm said that emotions should be completely discarded.
"Folk psychology is akin to old superstitions from bygone ages," Hideki said, "It's not so different from folk biology, or folk cosmology. For centuries, it was widely accepted that the earth was at the center of the universe and that everything revolved around it. There is a history of mistakes and revisions in science, and to think that we were correct the first time in terms of neuroscience is baffling."
"But to completely dismiss all emotion as nothing more than "folk psychology" seems a tad drastic," I argued, "Especially since they're such private things. Behaviorism assumes that mental states, such as hunger, are tendencies expressed through behavior, but this isn't always true. If someone is dieting, they may very well not eat even when presented with food, despite being hungry. There are feelings that are not expressed through behavior and are only known to the person feeling them. Even if you say that I don't feel, I know I do."
"Just as one may have "known" a witch to be guilty based on spectral evidence," Hideki countered, "Preserving something as scientific fact based on intuition alone is unthinkable. Though we may not currently have the technology to pinpoint the exact location of each and every feeling, I don't doubt that in the future, we will, and we will change the way we refer to them accordingly."
"So one day, I'll come into class with a headache, but instead of saying my head hurts, I'll tell you my C-fibers are firing, and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about?"
"Exactly."
"Hideki, that's ridiculous."
"Mere assertion is not an acceptable counterargument."
I saw a girl approach Light and sit nearby, and they traded a few words. Light laughed and they continued talking, both looking very animated. "I think," I said, no longer looking at Hideki, "That eliminativism is too critical of so-called "folk psychology" and doesn't give it enough credit for its successes. Maybe we are wrong. In fact, we probably are. But I don't see any reason to completely discard our current understanding of emotions and the way we talk about them. If I tell you that I'm in pain, you know what I mean. There are some emotions that are complex, not fitting within the context of behaviorism, and for these, the only way to express ourselves is to use the word. If revision is in order, then fine, but I think that folk psychology still exists and is so widely in use because it's onto something."
Hideki studied my expression, not needing to look where I was looking to know what I was so fixated on. "I will concede that," he said, "There are some rather complex mental states. It would be difficult to fully express yourself if you couldn't describe your emotions as, say, longing."
Light looked happy. My chest felt tight. "Longing," I repeated, "When you put it that way, it's almost embarrassing."
"But is it accurate?"
"Longing" isn't a word I'd ever applied to myself, or an emotion I thought I was at all familiar with, but seeing Light smiling and talking and so far away made me think. "No more than C-fibers firing," I told Hideki with a bitter smile.
One of my former cram school teachers had gotten in touch with a family in the area who were looking for in-home tutoring for their teenage daughter, and I'd agreed to start in May. A conspicuous envelope had come in the mail with money for that month's rent, and I knew that I should do something nice for Mother's Day. As strained as our relationship had been, my mother and I had come to an understanding after my enrollment to To-Oh, and we talked infrequently. Our time apart had given me the chance to reflect on her good points and every letter I got in the mail reminded me that though she was all I had, I was all that she had, as well.
The plan was to treat her to lunch somewhere and maybe give her flower or something. I wasn't really sure-when I lived at home, we celebrated by me wishing her a happy Mother's Day in the morning, and then she would disappear downtown for the rest of the night. I figured changing things up with a formal meal wouldn't hurt either of us, and wrote to tell her that I wanted to spend time with her.
I spent the train ride to my old cram school trying to think of restaurants. It would look bad if we went somewhere cheap, but I didn't exactly have a lot of money at the time. Something simple, maybe a cafe, I thought, along with, this shouldn't be so difficult.
I arrived towards the beginning of a class session, and my former teacher warmly welcomed me and introduced me to the class, making sure to mention that I had been the second-highest ranking student. I smiled cordially, wanting to tell them that it didn't really matter, but said nothing. He stepped out into the hall to give me a paper with the family's address and contact information and wished me luck, and I thanked him for his help, starting to leave when I noticed that the address was familiar.
It was Light's home address.
"It's good to see you again," Sachiko said as I took my shoes off in the entryway, "How have you been?"
"Fine," I said, putting on my best smile. Something was off-her own smile was nervous. I awkwardly excused myself upstairs.
Sayu could not be more different from her brother.
Her room was cluttered with casual clothing and magazines, and she had a poster of Hideki Ryuga-the singer, of course, rather than the eccentric student Light had an irrational and baseless grudge against-over her bed. "Sorry it's a mess," she said sheepishly, shoving a sweater under the bed and going to her desk.
"It's not so bad," I told her, taking a seat next to her. "What do you need help with?"
"English. I'm not doing very well." I opened her textbook and saw her staring at me out of the corner of her eye. "Um...do you mind if I ask you something kind of personal?"
I stopped turning pages. "That depends on the question, I guess."
"Okay." She hesitated. "Why did you and Light break up?"
I pretended to be interested in her textbook. "Break up?" I repeated distractedly, trying to come up with a better answer.
"He said you weren't actually dating," she continued, "But I don't believe him. You actually broke up, right?"
His mother's awkward behavior suddenly made sense. But I couldn't figure out why he'd chosen then to tell the truth. It was possible that they'd asked if I would tutor Sayu for free as a family friend, and he'd taken the opportunity to correct them, though it seemed more likely that this a passive-aggressive way of putting more distance between us. We weren't pretending to be a couple anymore. I couldn't help but wonder if this meant that he'd also slammed the door in my face in regards to dating in the future. He hadn't asked again if I was interested, and perhaps this meant that he wouldn't be asking.
"Did you?" Sayu prodded, and I shook my head.
"No, your brother's right. We're just friends."
She looked very skeptical, but when I asked her to show me what she was working on in class, she didn't ask again.
Sayu worked hard and caught onto concepts quickly, much like Light did. I was needed mostly to help solidify concepts that she was having trouble with, and didn't actually teach much. "You're doing very well," I told her, and she shrugged.
"I have to," she said, "I have to be at least close to as good as my brother, otherwise Mom'll be disappointed."
I hadn't thought about it before, but being Light's sibling must have been difficult. Sachiko probably expected nothing less than perfection from her, after her first child had been at the top of the rankings, and it made me wince to think that so much pressure was put on her. When I had been in high school, that kind of thinking had made me isolated and unhappy. Sayu had gone the other way; she had been the one to say "yes" to her friend's invitations out, and her grades had suffered for it. On the other hand, I didn't see her turning into the socially-awkward recluse that I was.
"There should be a balance," I told her, "Between having fun and working hard. You just have to find it."
"You think so?" She sounded glad to hear it.
