Jayus Theory

The One about the Frog

Chapter 00

The sound of the train is deafening, the metallic rattle of the platform as the wheels of the cars screech to a halt at the station. Digital chimes ding while a friendly but robotic voice gives safety instructions to stay clear of the door while closing. The train is loud but the people are surprisingly quiet when we pull away again, zooming off to the next almost identical looking station. Probably because it's so early. I scored a seat on this train, something that anyone will tell you is quite a feat during rush hour. Not having to stand pressed up against strangers is something to celebrate, but it's such a mundane detail that you're probably wondering why I'm bothering to tell you about it.

I have a secret for you though- this is probably going to be the highlight of my day.

And you're probably thinking, Rin, you haven't even gotten to school yet. How could you possibly know that already?

Here's how it is: I'll get off this train, walk the two blocks to my average high school. I'll sit through Literature and Calc, and then I'll eat lunch. Lunch has the potential to be the highlight, because my mom makes me bentos to take with me. You know, the kind with the cute little food picks shaped like Pokemon and flowers? It's kind of embarrassing, kind of cute, I really can't make up my mind on that. I like to wait till then to open the bento for the first time to really give myself that element of surprise. But you get to have lunch every day, a good lunch is definitely more common than a seat on a crowded train. Ergo, train seat beats lunch. It's like paper vs. rock. Paper always comes out on top, simple logic.

Then I'll go to PE, hide beneath the bleachers to avoid running, possibly get caught if someone snitches on me and then head back inside to go to Chem and History. Really no points in that whole four hours of my life that could even maybe go into a highlight reel.

Then I go to my part-time job at the bookstore in the mall, do my homework at the register because who buys books anymore? Maybe read some comics while I'm at it.

Then home.

Bath.

Bed.

Sigh.

I don't really know what I want to be when I grow up, I just hope it's a little more exciting than this. I can't really think of anything I'm particularly good at, or anything I like more than other things. At least not things you can get paid for, right? It's not like I can make a career out of witty retorts to cat callers or reading manga.

My grades are pretty average, sometimes slightly above average. My mom says I'd do better if I applied myself more. But does it really matter? Does anything? What's the point in doing better if that just means more of this? So what, you go to school, do well in school to be able to go to more school and then use the piece of paper they give you to get a job and then work till you die. Maybe you meet a nice guy, get married, have a baby or two and you think you're happy till you find out that the nice guy you married develops a drinking problem and starts texting other women on the other side of the mattress.

You're probably thinking I'm jaded.

You're right.

XX

Lunch is vegetable onigirazu with a side of melon cut into little flower shapes. I'm pretty sure my mom uses a cookie cutter to make the shapes, which seems a little wasteful, but I don't have the heart to tell her stop. She also always puts these little notes with encouraging/cryptic quotes on them in the side. In middle school I stopped reading them because I didn't want my classmates to see that my mom still packed my school lunches, but I realized last year that I didn't particularly care. Today's says "I no naka no kawazu, taikai wo sirazu" or "A frog in a well never knows the vast ocean". Whatever that's supposed to mean.

Am I the frog in this situation? What's the metaphorical well supposed to be?

Whatever.

"What'd she put today?" My friend and classmate, Ai Hinozuka, drags her desk to sit next to me.

"Something weird." I say non committedly, picking up my chopsticks.

Ai is… different from me, to say the least. She's bubbly and loud, athletic, she even has a boyfriend. We became friends in middle school before I got more… me. Don't get me wrong, I like Ai a lot. In fact, I'm pretty envious of her zest for life. I just don't really get why she's still friends with me. I will do anything to avoid talking in class, I opted for a part time job instead of clubs and visibly sneer at anything that involves more than a light jog. We're practically night and day.

"Oooooh." Ai snags one of my melon flowers, popping it into her mouth, "I wish my mom still made my bentos all cute like yours.". To be honest, I'd probably stab someone else with my chopstick for stealing food off my plate, this is, after all, one of the few highlights I'll have today, but it's Ai so I let it slide.

"She likes to do it." I don't know if I'd particularly care if my mom stopped putting so much effort into my lunches. I think she knows that it's one of the things I look forward to. Maybe she thinks it's because of how much effort she puts into it? Cute.

XX

Exercise is the bane of my existence. Always has been, always will be. I'm super fucking short. More than normal. I stand at a menacing five feet, so basically anyone can outrun me, out goal me, out… I don't know sports. Anyway, not only am I shorter than your average middle school student, but I'm also (surprise, surprise) terribly frail. You know the deal- I'm skinny. And they always lead you to believe "oh, when you hit puberty you'll get taller". No. Nope. Uh uh. When Mother fucking Nature finally hit me it was more like a light breeze. If that idiom was literal, Ai got hit by a bus and I got hit by a mouse on a unicycle. I didn't get taller and I stayed flat as a board.

It's not all bad though. Being small has its perks. I never have to carry heavy objects, people reach things for me and I can hide in small spaces.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the point to this whole spiel about the specifics of my body's anatomy. You see, I have a method of sorts to help me escape my abstract archnemesis, the dreaded physical education.

Step one: Wait until everyone else has changed into their uniforms and exited the locker room.

Step two: Get into my locker.

Step three: Yeah, that's about it.

Once I'm in my hiding spot, the teacher walks through to check for stragglers, walks out and I'm home free, baby. Sometimes I stay in the locker room till class is over, but that poses the risk of someone walking in and catching me playing pokemon on my gameboy instead of running laps or whatever else they do during this class, so I usually head off to a spot underneath the bleachers to train my team. I've also briefly considered just staying in the locker, but despite fitting into the thing it isn't exactly comfortable.

This could also be considered a highlight. It's pretty exciting to break the rules, isn't it? And also pretty nice to stretch out on some grass to play games when others are sweating their pubescent balls off. But once again, the rarity of the train seat makes it just that much better. It's not everyday you get a seat on the train.

XX

I know what you're thinking; Rin, why are you telling me this? Everybody's been to high school. This stuff is average, run of the mill, normal. And I'm gonna get there, I promise. I'm just really trying to paint a picture for you to realize just how regular my life was so that you can really appreciate the shock that I had to go through on this last day of my regular life.

It's funny how you can just kind of drift through life without direction. I had pretty much resigned myself up to this day as a spectator of the world. I was complacent and depressed but also painfully self aware.

In Literature, we learned about Plato's Allegory of the Cave. I'll sum it up for you, since I know that it theoretically sounds boring. It's not, or at least I didn't think so. Basically, these people have been living in this cave for their entire lives. They're chained to the walls. They face a wall that is illuminated by a fire behind them, all they can see is the shadows of objects held up in front of the fire that they do not know is there. All they know are the shadows and they don't realize that they're chained there. Someone eventually realizes that they're trapped and that the shadows are just a caricature of reality projected for them. He escapes, but when he tries to free the others, they don't want to leave. Looks like I did retain something from school.

Do you know how awful it is to suddenly look around and realize how boring everything is? How totally fucked the world is? But just shaking off the rose colored glasses isn't enough to change that. It doesn't make you special when you realize that you and everyone around you are living in the allegory of the cave. That just means you see the chains. That's worse.

And I think my mom was right, I was the frog, and it was on this day that I met him and hopped out of my well and into the ocean.

(A/N)

sup. just finished K and kinda got a little frustrated with the lack of female characters, but it's cool, it's cool, there's lots of really awesome characters to work with.

this is my first fanfiction, so i'm sorry if it isn't very good. i usually only ever do original works, but quarantine things, amirite? i just really liked the world of K and also just totally fell down the rabbit hole of thinking misaki yata is one of the best characters i've seen in my whole goddamn life. he's like a mix of mugen from samurai champloo and edward elric (insert chef's kiss). i personally don't enjoy yaoi ships. i think i only have one and it was like a slow burn kind of love.

anyway, i wanted some yata reading, couldn't find any that really resonated and came to the conclusion that i'd just come up with a character and make it myself. this is pretty casual from my usual tone, but i wanted to focus mostly on someone normal surrounded by the characters of this very interesting world and how someone who isn't a superhuman might feel going through the motions of that world.

enjoy.