I'm sorry, he said.
I'm sorry, he said. He said, you were just a little too late.
The computer was right there, reading the time. 4:34. 4:34, not 4:30. Two 4:34's in a row. Unacceptable.
Somehow, he produced a gun. It was a twelve gauge; it was always a twelve gauge, with three scratches on the side. He pulled the trigger. The crack of the gun going off sounded more like a man's yell than an explosion.
The world blurred.
And Berenice woke up. Immediately, she reached for her dream journal, tucked safely in between her bed frame and the mattress.
"Oh, God, group therapy is going to love to hear about this," she said, even though she had never attended a group therapy in her life. Not even after her mom died, when everyone recommended group therapy.
It was still dark out, so Berenice fumbled around to switch on her bedside lamp. She blinked and groaned as her eyes adjusted. She only had a red color pencil on her side table. Didn't matter; her handwriting was too bad to be read anyways. Writing things down just helped her remember.
Did she remember where the dream started? Berenice bit her lip as she thought it over. No, she did not. Didn't matter. She's had this same dream since she first got a job four years ago. Berenice goes to work. She's running behind. There is a struggle in finding a pair of socks, or in cleaning her nonslip black shoes. She didn't have time to iron her shirt. She ends up late. Just a little. A coworker is there. A manager is there. The owner of the restaurant is there. Someone who could ruin her life with just one misplaced paycheck. She clocks in. She's four minutes late-maybe no one will notice. Someone always notices. They kill her. She wakes up.
Berenice wrote: junichi from convini shot me for being a late bitch. Normally she'd be able to plead in her dream, that it was all a mistake, but Berenice didn't know how to beg for her life in Japanese quite yet.
After making her note, Berenice should have really just gone back to bed. She reached for her little flip phone instead. 5:14. That means. . .she got 4 hours of sleep before her first day of classes. Classes which technically started at nine (although she'd want to be an hour early to acquaint herself with the campus, and talk one last time to the counselor who was helping her as a foreign exchange student).
Berenice laid in bed, unmoving, for twenty more minutes, and then rolled off, feet first, onto the floor. She would have liked to take a shower to wake up, but didn't own a hair cap yet, and hated to see how frizzy her hair got whenever she used a hair drier.
Berenice stepped over the unpacked shopping bags full of cooking utensils and noodles in bulk that littered the floor. The bathroom door was ajar, and the pipe connected to the toilet dripped, reminding Berenice that she'd have to figure out how to caulk that. She switched her bathtub on with one socked foot, and moved a half step to stand in front of the sink to brush her teeth. Not actually moving her toothbrush while it was in her mouth, she plugged in her hair straightener, and started brushing through her bangs. The process seemed to be going slower than usual.
It was because the light was off. Right. She could barely see. Berenice flicked it on with the handle of her toothbrush, and touched the hot part of the iron. Pulled her finger back real quick, and flapped her wrist to get some air flow. Yea, it was definitely hot.
"Ow," she said, since she might as well.
The bath sounded like it was about half way filled, and she'd really need a larger bath to get properly clean, but she turned it off anyways, just to protect her water bill. With her hair in the straightener, she used the mirror in front of her to turn the water off with her foot. It was a slightly harder task than turning it on, so she slid her sock off onto the bath mat.
When her hair was all straight (safe from Namimori's coastal humidity) she wrapped it in a hand towel to protect it, and got herself into the bath.
It was warm, but not hot enough that she'd fall asleep again. If she stayed in until the water turned cold, it would probably help wake her up.
Berenice sat in silence, watching only the tiled wall.
Berenice had only been in Japan for, like, three weeks, but she'd been here for about a month. Here being another world, or another herself, depending on how you looked at it. It's not hard to explain transmigration-it was a whole Chinese web novel genre for a reason-but it is, well, tiring? Unnecessarily confusing? The whole ordeal gave Berenice a headache.
It was 2004 in this world. And Berenice was 13-ish. Which isn't the age she'd be in 2004, being 20 in 2020. The contrivance by which Berenice stopped being 20, holed up in her room and practicing social distancing for the sake Covid-19, was, God forgive this oversimplification, science. Magic? It was science (probably), but she didn't understand it, so it was hocus-pocus to her.
It started at the end of February. That was what the calendar would explain to her in retrospect. She was in a hospital room. It was white. She could not recall what the sheets felt like, what the air was like, or how she felt. She felt bad. Bad in a way she could not recall, nor relate to the world around her. Well, of course it was hard to relate to the world around her. It was a fictional world to her merely minutes before she ended up there.
It was the hyper realistic ani-manga world of Katekyo (Katekyoushi?) Hitman Reborn! Because of stupid, not-even-peer-reviewed magic-science of Mafia evil babyman Verde.
"Hired to do an experiment to bring forth a person from another world," was the explanation he gave her.
He may have said more, but he was also preparing a needle full of euthanasia, so Berenice doesn't recall his explanation. As her body was acclimating to the parallel world, she was stuck in a fever state that was basically a fugue. It was all pseudoscience, evil villain monologuing, and probably wouldn't help her return home anyways.
Oh wait-
"Summoning you from a parallel world required destroying that world," he said. He didn't even say sorry.
So, as he was getting ready to dispose of her body, Berenice pled for her life, in English (which she did know how to plead in).
"You know," she said, crying. "I know who you are,"
"Hm," he said.
"And I know how everything will turn out," she choked out. She began reciting a plot point by plot point analysis of the parts of KHR she remembered.
He examined the needle closer. Was she in a lab, not a hospital? She felt like she couldn't see. Did that make sense? Nothing made sense.
Berenice, looking back, wasn't sure what exactly convinced him to not kill her.
But he said, "Of course. You do that."
She didn't know what he agreed to let her do. Berenice nodded along anyways. Her neck was working, but the rest of her body wasn't.
She was in that lab for about a week. She mainly slept. While she slept, ate hospital grog, and checked the ceiling for hints of texture, birth certificates, student-work visas, and quaint amounts of Yen were forged. She was sent on a plane, handed a datasheet to fill out on her body's adjustment to another universe, and told to send weekly reports on her findings. Berenice still has not figured out what she is reporting on.
She'd been enrolled for Nami Middle, so she assumes she's supposed to be Verde's mole into the Vongola, but more importantly, a mole into Giannini, and the Bovino family.
God, it was a haze.
Berenice started regaining her wits when she was on the plane to Japan. One moment she was looking out the window, seeing only blue, and the next, her gaze widened.
"Excuse me," said the business-woman next to her. Berenice was not in the window seat-she was radically overstepping the boundaries of personal space, her hair under that other woman's nose, as she stretched to press her nose to the glass.
Berenice snapped back into her seat, her jaw clenching. She needed to apologize for that. The business woman glared at her, almost embarrassed on behalf of Berenice's bizarro behavior. Berenice could not herself be strong enough to open her jaw, and decided to apologize by never looking in the woman's direction again.
With clarity gradually returning to her body, Berenice started rifling through her bag. She had no idea what would be in it. Documents in both Japanese and English. The forged passport, probably. Her class assignment. An English-to-Japanese dictionary. A wallet with 50,000 (fake) Yen in it. Her plane ticket. Was it even legal for a 13 to be riding on a plane alone? Berenice knew she was going to Japan, a location she didn't know the laws of, and she also didn't know where she was departing from.
Maybe she should ask the woman? Just ask, "Hey what country were we in?" Like that would be a reasonable question to ask? (Obviously Berenice wasn't going to do that).
Without looking at the woman, Berenice said, "Italy, huh?"
The woman audibly sighed. "This is what I get for budget cutting with an economy ticket," she mumbled.
The woman didn't exasperatedly say, "We just left Spain," or anything, so Berenice felt reasonable assuming that she was spot on with saying Italy. Whatever. It probably wouldn't matter, anyways.
She loosely thumbed through the dictionary. How much Japanese would she need to know to get a job?
In the pronoun section it said watashi and boku were what most foreigners used, just because it was a safe amount of formal. Berenice doubted that middle schoolers cared about formality, and in fact, felt that being too formal would make her look like a loser. Oira was said to be used by country bumpkins, and Berenice was technically a farmer, so she decided that she would use oira when talking to her peers. That was, like, two words down! Pretty good for a girl without Duolingo. Berenice smiled.
"Oira. Oira," she whispered. There was a bit of space to practice the writing in the dictionary. "Do you have a pen?" she directed to the woman.
The woman handed one to her.
"Thanks," Berenice said. "Oira. Oira." She paused, wrote down some characters. "Watashi? Wa-ta-shi. Wat-ash-i? No, no, oof. From the top. Oira. Oira."
Berenice was running on a high, and practiced for the rest of the twelve hours of the flight. Grammar was always a lot easier for Berenice than vocabulary was, and Japan only had one reflexive pronoun, so she wasn't too worried about that. Worst comes to worst, she'd sound like Yoda, or something. At her speedy rate, she'd figure out how to write her name in Katakana in no time. The business woman requested to move seats, without getting her pen back.
Berenice's arrival in Japan was not noteworthy. She exited her airport gate with only her carry-on bag, went to an information gate, and as soon as the worker manning the desk heard her attempt to say dotchi, he took a look at her English-to-Japense dictionary, and made a call to get someone bilingual.
The bilingual person was a woman named Karen with a pixie cut hair style, and a too tight grin. The woman's clean, nonthreatening appearance reminded Berenice that the term "emotional labor" was coined because of women who worked at airports.
"Do you have a host parent picking you up from the airport?" Karen asked, shuffling Berenice through crowds of people, towards the exit. Karen was definitely the one leading them, but Berenice walked in front of her. Even at 13, Berenice was 5'8" (Or, uhh, 176 cm? 175?ish), with two-to-three inches she'd gain in a year. People tended to stay away from the giant with the baby face.
"They'll meet me at the train station," she said. That was a lie, of course. Lying came unnervingly easy to Berenice, but she supposed that came with growing up as a lesbian with bad parents. She wasn't really at the point in her life where she needed to lie less, with all of her spanking new forged documents.
"Did you ship all of your other luggage over?" Karen asked next.
Berenice pursed her lips, and saved herself from tripping over a man who stopped in the middle of the goddamned hallway. "No. It got stolen," she said, and added, so the woman wouldn't feel guilty, "In Italy. I've heard Japan has a good second hand clothing market, so I'm looking at the bright side of things."
Karen stood with her at the end of international concourse. "Do you know where you need to go from here?"
"A city called Namimori?" Berenice said. It was fictional, of course, so she had no idea what prefecture that was. Chiba, maybe?
"Ah, in the - prefecture?" Karen said. Somehow, Karen both said a word, and said nothing at all for the name of the prefecture.
Berenice went with it. "Yes, exactly." She nodded with fervor.
Karen gave Berenice a set of directions to follow. Berenice took out the business woman's pen, and the folder where she held all of her forgeries, and wrote them down. She only had to have Karen repeat them twice to make sure they were right.
So Berenice took a bus to the train from the airport, snuck in the gate behind a man looking like he was on a Job, rode that train through the unknown prefecture, to the city of Namimori. She mainly remembered the suburb section of the city, but wasn't surprised when her stop was in the middle of a bustling metropolis. It wasn't even too far of a train ride-she only had three hours to study her job application phrases before she had to hurriedly stuff her dictionary into her pocket, and fight to get off the train. It seemed to be the nighttime commuter's rush, and jet lag hadn't even set in yet.
Berenice stepped out into the train station, jumped the turnstiles, and then stood on the street corner, hands on her lips, power stance, facing the world. The wind rustled her hair. It probably looked pretty cool, until the pedestrian signal flashed, and she did the white person half jog across the street. She wasn't going in any particular direction, since she didn't know the town, but Berenice had the sense to keep her momentum going above all else.
The first thing Berenice noticed about Namimori is that it was clean. Berenice grew up about a mile away from an incinerator that burned garbage all day, and if that wasn't dirty enough for ya, she lived near a major byway, and people just threw whatever garbage they wanted to anywhere. One time she walked out to get mail, and there were four bullet holes in her mailbox. There wasn't even broken glass on the sidewalk curbs in Namimori.
Pondering the delightful cleanliness of Namimori, Berenice found herself in front of a grungy looking convenience store. It looked like some kind of off-brand 7/11, because 7/11 Doesn't Exist Here, Of Course. More importantly, it looked like the kind of place with a high turnover rate, and a manager who would hire a middle schooler (her).
Berenice pushed the door open, careful not to smudge the glass with hand-prints. It didn't even have a bell.
"Good afternoon," said the middle aged clerk from behind his counter. Berenice couldn't read his name tag, but she did see that he did a shitty job of shaving, had eye bags, and two recent grease stains on his shirt. It should also go without saying, as she is outside of an airport, and into Japan's heartland, that he said this in Japanese.
As smoothly as she could, Berenice stuck her arms behind her back, smiled, and replied in same. "Good afternoon. You," she considered which word she knew to get her a job, "need help? Around this place?"
The clerk blinked, his left eye shutting a little slower than his right, like it was waiting for a moth to fly away. "You mean a job?" She made some assumptions about the words he said. He may have said something else, and Berenice could be lying about that too.
"I am on a work-school visa," she said, because she did not look up the word for studying. "I am proficient at math, being nice, and cleaning. I have recommendation." Verde would probably be fine with being her recommendation, if she really needed one.
The clerk reached under the counter, and pulled out one of those bulk packets of applications. The kind that never really applied to the jobs that used them. At her restaurant jobs, she always just filled out like half of those double sided word nightmares, and always recommended hopeful hires to do the same.
"Thank you. I have a pen," Berenice said, removing the business woman's pen from her pocket. Ever since she reached her clarity, oh, 16 hours ago, she's been on a roll! She ignored the sensation in her chest that made it uncomfortable to breathe, and wrote her name (in both English AND Katakana-look at her!) on the application on the counter. The next words looked a little difficult, so she decided not to let her potential new coworker see her struggle until after she was hired, and took the application towards the freezer section of the store, using the glass door there as her writing surface. Her arms were shaking, as they sometimes did when she forgot to eat. This was not going to be good for her handwriting.
To figure out what the words meant most efficiently, Berenice guessed. It would make sense for one part to say age, and another address, so she quickly verified that with her guide, and made sure that her handwriting was illegible. If it was legible, and she lied about having an address, Berenice was pretty sure she'd be committing tax fraud.
Berenice walked around the edges of the aisles, keeping an eye on the mirror set up to discourage shoplifters, and nabbed some Tylenol almost at random. If she were wearing a coat right now, she'd go for a bag of chips, but, unfortunately, only wore a cute, cable knit sweater.
"Here," she said, sliding the paper back to the clerk. He didn't look at it.
"When can you start?"
Berenice didn't know how to pronounce any numbers, so she only said, "Tomorrow."
The clerk nodded. "I'll train you. Be here at-" He said a number. Berenice quickly schemed to avoid looking stupid.
"Can you write that down?" She handed over her pen, and the clerk grabbed a sticky note from somewhere next to the register. He had shitty handwriting, but Berenice couldn't judge him there.
She took the note, exited the store, and quickly jot down the address of the location, so she could find her job again tomorrow. God, would she have to use MapQuest? Since this was 2004?
Berenice headed back the way she came. There was no way she'd be able to get a hotel room, but Berenice was not above sleeping in McDonald's bathroom.
Which was where she ended up sleeping for her first week in Japan. It was awful, but after her third day of training on the job, the clerk, who Berenice then found out was called Sato Junichi, kind of let her run the convini by herself. So she pocketed a few energy drinks, and nabbed a little more Tylenol while stocking, and it didn't matter that she was sleeping for shit damn.
The rest kind of just fell into place because Berenice knew she was a person who deserves good things to happen to her. She was able to get an apartment rented to her from an old lady with some kind of dementia by pretending she was a high school student and that her Nami Middle clothes were from last year, actually. She was able to avoid a down payment by faking a mouse problem in the apartment after stealing some dead mice from her job's sticky traps.
After wandering around in the streets after work, she found quite a few second hand stores, and while she had to purchase men's shoes to get any that fit (which. . .she did normally), Berenice found some very cute coffee mugs with cats on them, and a mini rice cooker. She didn't learn the rude pronouns yet, so when people were rude to her for not knowing shit damn while manning the cash register, she literally didn't know. It was kind of vindicating that what those high schoolers said literally didn't matter because she didn't know!
Which was a routine for a while. Which let her think. Which brought her back to that thing she didn't let herself dread. There was nothing to dread about Namimori Middle.
Berenice took as long as she could in the bath. "As long as she could" ended up being 24 minutes, because Berenice hated inactive activities, and especially she hated ones where she could not tap her foot, and listen to a tune. She needed to buy some blank CD's to burn soon, and pirate some music on the library computers, or she would snap. That would be something to look forward to. She penned it into her mental calendar as something she would be allowed to think about on Sunday.
Berenice stepped into the part of her room that was her kitchen. She opened her fridge. She certainly had bottled water and lettuce. Berenice pushed back some of the bottles of water, as if by moving them it would reveal something that its transparent opacity did not already. Maybe she had something in the cabinet?
Open. Peek. Ah, rice, and canned tomatoes. Berenice considered the tomatoes and rice she ate yesterday, the day before yesterday (echdoe is how you say that in Welsh), and the preceding week as well. She hoped they had cooking class regularly, because Berenice was absolutely going to borrow some flour and make some fluffy rice cooker mega pancakes.
Berenice finalized putting on her uniform, grabbed her carry-on-turned-backpack with its four composition notebooks, two pens, one pencil (each nabbed from the library-which didn't feel like stealing because she thinks they were, like, up for grabs anyways. Since it was a library), and locked the door behind her, careful not to slam it. She hasn't met her across the hall neighbor yet, but she doesn't want loudness to be the circumstances.
Next Berenice found herself at a cafe on her route to school. She showed up around the time the barista, a haggard but pleasant old man, was putting up the open sign. Berenice followed a very particular menu, so she knew she was getting milk oolong tea and a heated monkey bread, but pretended to take her time to give the old man some time to situate himself.
She placed her order. "How are you today?" she asked. It felt stiff. Berenice never prided herself on public speaking, but talking to people used to be her job-she never sounded stiff.
"Some days it's just good to be seen," he said, chuckling in that old man way.
Berenice knew old man speak. "Good to see, too," she responded.
He replied, "Nice Japanese." A phrase Berenice had been hearing, not always sincerely, oft as of late. Whatever-her response was the right response because the old man continued to look happy. She noted his name tag. Nakamura, if she was to follow the common reading.
After receiving her food, Berenice sat in the corner of the shop. A few people started coming in around her, those early morning commuters. Berenice didn't like to observe people, but without a phone, it was more interesting than counting specks of dirt on the floor. Eventually, a baby came in. That baby. (Reborn, but she didn't want to acknowledge that).
Act natural. Act natural. She took a loud sip of her tea, felt it go down the wrong hole, and hacked loudly into her vest's collar. A man in a business suit glared at her. Too natural. That baby didn't look over, too busy being in the queue.
Should she try to get his attention? Like, strictly speaking, as a spy, this is a great opportunity to get on the baby's good side. Berenice craned her head to look at the clock. She'd give herself 30 seconds to consider this ethical dilemma.
The negatives: interfering as an outsider, one who would never quite understand the shape of this world, would undoubtedly make some things worse. Has she been registering the people around her as fully human more than character, the permanence of her selfish actions on others? Are the people around her more than characters? Would her only love in life be of caricatures? Was she being used, or was she using?
5 seconds left to ponder. That baby placing his order. The positives: did any of that matter? Or was she just trying to salve her inevitable inaction, and look at the time. She had to get to school soon to be early.
Then she heard that baby say, in that tiny baby voice, "I seem to have forgotten my wallet."
Berenice stood up abruptly. She looked out the door, and then she looked at Nakamura. Her actions felt robotic. Whatever! Let people tune into the freakshow early.
"Nakamura-san," she said, approaching the counter again, not looking at that baby. She pulled out her wallet from her bag. She glanced. She only had larger bills on her, and didn't want to wait around too long. So, "Thank you for the good drink. Next few orders, I'll pay." She passed over a 2000 yen bill, her heart breaking at the action, and quickly exited the shop. Nakamura said some kind of "Have a nice day!" at her. She blocked it out, only listening to the sound of her feet on the sidewalk.
Her first task at Nami Middle would be to check her face, because she felt like she was about to cry. Talking to someone once is fine, but the knowledge that she'd have to interact with some people multiple times, and justify her actions (and her existence) always shook her.
She put her hands together as she walked. Berenice found she was also, literally, shaking, possibly from drinking caffeine. Or not eating enough and letting her blood sugar drop.
She pulled out her map from her bag as she walked. She shook too much to close the zipper back up. Whatever! Whatever! She could keep walking. Look at the map. Keep walking.
No one looking at her.
No one looking at her, waste of space. Oof.
Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba, don't think about it, ba ba ba ba ba, keep walking, ba ba ba. She mouthed it, "Ba ba ba ba."
Namimori Middle's gates loomed before her. By the nature of walking over eight blocks, and going through the motions of anxiety without giving her unnecessary feelings time to make themselves obvious, Berenice was feeling alright again. The school wasn't scary at all, and she felt fine and dandy. It inspired no feelings of beauty or fear, nor any feelings or sublime. She stepped through the gate. Nothing bad happened.
The front office wasn't where you would expect it to be. It was near the first floor bathrooms, though, so after Berenice cleaned the snot off of her face (heh. . .how did that get there), she was accosted by the secretary who happened to be entering the hallway at the same time.
"Our disciplinary committee is very serious, and had to commandeer the previous principal's office. So our current one is a little. . .lacking," said the vice principal. He kind of gestured at the entirety of the room they were seated in. Berenice was actually standing because there was only one chair, so saying 'they were seated' wasn't even totally accurate. "My apologies," he added, and Berenice had to guess what half of the words he used were.
"It is fine," she said. Did saying 'no problem' translate well into Japanese, or would it sound kind of rude and informal?
"You don't have to say that," he said. "I'm sure you would have rather gone to one of the private institutions in the area, but I will say for Namimori," and he started talking about test scores. Berenice's falsified backstory included test grades that put high expectations on her. She had no idea how well, even being 7 years ahead of the material, she would be able to live up to them. She was more of an essay writer than a standardized test taker.
Eventually, the vice principal said some signal phrase, and a young woman came in. A younger woman, that is. She was short (most people were to Berenice), with her hair in a half bun, and her hands crossed in front of her red polka dot cardigan.
"Hello," she said in English. "I am your English teacher, Ito-sensei." She stuck out her hand for Berenice to shake.
Berenice shook it. Ito-sensei did not have a strong handshake. Was that a good or a bad thing in a teacher? Actually, when was the last time Berenice had shaken anyone's hand? She felt a fondness for the woman at the gesture. Something familiar, that you wouldn't think about missing, you know?
Berenice didn't miss handshakes, though. She was going to have to wash her hands after this, when she just went to the bathroom.
"I am Berenice Reynolds," Berenice said, back in English. "Berenice is my given name, in case I made that confusing." Did she miss speaking in English? Well, she missed the clarity she had with speaking in a language she knew. She missed knowing that she was saying what she meant to say.
"You did fine," Ito-sensei replied. She had dimples, even without smiling. "Kyoto-sensei informed me that we were having an exchange student from America's capital-aah, how exciting-I did an exchange program in Florida one year. This all is to say, if you need help adjusting, I am the person you may ask."
That was a lot to follow. "Thank you," Berenice said, because what else was there to say.
Ito-sensei and the vice principal (Kyoto did not seem like his name, Berenice must have misunderstood something) spoke amongst themselves in the rapid fire Japanese that locals kept away from her ears. She did understand the words "exchange student" and could tell from context that they weren't talking about her because they said "not here". The "not here" exchange student must have been Gokudera Hayato, who would show up soon after that baby finished his analysis.
To be honest, although Berenice did like the delinquent character archetype, it was an entirely different deal dealing with them. It could end up being like many of her own past friendships, where she'd just end up getting a lot of drunk voicemails. But she also dealt with the constant stress of wondering if her friends would overdose or fuck something up with their asthma. It would be different for Gokudera. He did smoke, but he also kind of lacked the proper amount of irreverence towards Capitalism, so Berenice shouldn't fit him into the mould of her old friendships. Also he was 13. Most 13 year olds didn't do Molly like her friends did. Berenice frowned. Most 13 year olds-as far as she knew-didn't do Molly.
She picked at a hangnail, and when she looked up, Ito-sensei and the vice principal were both looking at her. Berenice straightened her posture.
"Let me walk you to class," Ito-sensei said.
Berenice followed her out of the room.
"What university did you go to?" Berenice asked, just to enjoy the sound of her own voice.
"Oh, I went to Flagler in America. Beautiful campus. That's why I like teaching out in Namimori. It has a similar sort of feeling to Florida, wouldn't you say?" Ito-sensei said.
Berenice felt her gut sink. Similar to Florida, eh?
"The furthest south I've ever been is Atlanta, and that's technically, uh, Appalachian, which," Berenice said, thinking of the proper way to describe Appalachia. "Which is different than know, there's, um. Bluegrass music. Banjos. Cornbread. Uh, chanterelle mushrooms. I mean I guess, the mosquitoes and the mugginess are, like, probably the same?" Hopefully her English teacher wouldn't eat her alive for using like as a filler word. The discourse about why using filler words was fine, actually, was more of a 2013 thing.
Ito-sensei appeared to think. Not in a way that showed she cared, but like she was aware she should care about the words a 13 year old vomited at random. After much build up, she asked, "Do you like Namimori so far?"
Berenice recalled the mold in her bathroom, and the cheap ramen she stole from work. "I like that I can walk anywhere I need to go. It's very clean." Except for me, since I didn't get to wash my hands. "But my hair is very frizzy here."
"You're 12, no one cares about that yet," Ito-sensei said. Berenice wished she didn't care about that. She was about to start eating paper.
"Ha ha," Berenice enunciated. "Oh, this is my class. Thank you, sensei." Berenice wasn't sure if she should bow, or go for a handshake again, so she stiffly nodded (more like, jerked her head forward), and flashed a thumbs-up.
The classroom was empty. It kind of reminded Berenice of Clip Studio Paint background assets, except in real life. There were even the windows that people could look outside of and daydream. Berenice's own establishments of middle education had been severely lacking in the window department. Except for when kids crawled out through windows in art classes. That was probably a universal public school occurrence.
Taking advantage of the windows, Berenice sat herself right beside them, in the front row. The windows even gave her a view of the sports clubs practicing outside. Berenice wasn't even sure if her high school ever had sports clubs. One of those people, separate from the rest, was Sasagawa Ryohei, she saw, squinting. White hair, and displaying passion even with the distance.
No need to look at passion head on. Made her temples ache. Berenice took out her now worn dictionary and a notebook. First day introductions-this could make or break a person, she was sure.
First day introductions: useless when the people around you had that je ne sais quoi that you lacked. Seats were assigned in alphabetical order. Berenice did not sit by the window. She sat in front of Sasagawa Kyoko, who would no longer be able to see the front of the class, because of Berenice's longer-than-reasonable torso. But worse than Kyoko, who undoubtedly would be kind and not deserve any of Berenice's ire, was Longchamp Naito.
Berenice had no idea who he was. He had an Aura of Relevance, but she didn't know him, so she wasn't sure how accurate her aura readings were. Maybe she was letting her anger cloud her inner eye? Because she was boiling. Fingernails full on in the flesh.
So: introductions. Berenice gave hers. She gave part of hers. "I'm Reynolds Berenice from DC, America. For short, I am Bernie. For tall-"
Longchamp burst onto the scene. He threw his bag at the only empty seat. The one next to hers. Without letting Berenice finish speaking, he went, "I am Longchamp! Sorry for my lateness! My goals for school are to get a girlfriend. I like many kinds of girls, but when I have one girl, I know she's very special." Somehow, he tripped on his way to sitting down. When he fell onto (someone else's, thank God) a desk, Berenice swore she heard the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme start playing.
Acting like nothing was wrong, he just sat down, waved at her, and started eating chips from his bag. Berenice sat down. There was no recovering for her after that. She had no idea what she looked like right then. Angry, sad, befuddled? She did not want to hate a child.
He was loud while he was eating. Ooh, Berenice hated the noise of chewing. She might have to hate a child.
And then, like that wasn't a weird thing to happen, Kyoko introduced herself. "I'm Sasagawa Kyoko. I don't have everything figured out yet, but I hope to study ballet and criminal justice, someday." She smiled brightly. Berenice looked at the blackboard because, again, who was she to look at passion head on.
There were only a few introductions left. Then the opening ceremony. Then classes that were challenging because she didn't understand the language, and classes that were easy because she understood them all too much. Lunch. Seeing everyone push their desks together in the classroom, and then eating alone on the staircase. Submitting a form to join the school beautification committee as her club. Changing in the bathroom. Going to work.
It was hard to admit it, but Berenice derived most of her value as a person from how useful she could be, because useful was the best she could be. Well, maybe it wasn't that hard to admit it. She seemed to be admitting it all of the time these days. She was good at sweeping, at least.
When she arrived at work, Junichi let out a sigh of relief. Berenice was pretty sure he was the franchise owner, and had no other employees because she'd never met them.
"Good thing you finally showed up," he said, throwing off his apron. Berenice could tell by now that when he spoke to her, he was using the rude 'you'. If Berenice had any other coworkers she would totally unionize with them over that.
Berenice walked behind the counter, and put on her vest that hung next to the money bag. When Berenice got paid, that's where her paycheck would be. So the robbers wouldn't even have to open the cash register, they could just take her paycheck.
She clocked in, and frowned. Then she smiled again, because she was technically on the clock. "I'm twenty minutes early," she said, through her smile.
Junichi had already started collecting his energy drinks. Berenice hated that they liked the same flavors.
"Have a nice day," he said.
"You too," she replied. "You should hire someone else so we can go finally do that bowling together."
"If anyone applies, sure," he said.
He left the building with a burp. You know, Berenice held no esteem for him as a person, but she was pretty sure he was her friend. She was good at sweeping, and that meant something in a convini.
So she swept. Waved her broom at some high schoolers. Arranged some chips. Snuck some Aleve into her pocket. Did her homework behind the counter. The worst part about any job is that all of the interesting things occur at once.
Berenice thought, "You know, this Japanese History homework is pretty interesting." Then Irie Shouichi came in. Or Enma. She didn't remember his last name. One of the characters with red hair. Or someone else, who just happened to have red hair. But it wasn't a common hair color, a fact Berenice had nailed into her by her dead mom, who was so proud of her red hair she had it cut off to make a wig out of it, just in case she lost it to cancer. She lost her life to cancer, instead. Maybe she wouldn't have died if she went bald.
Irie (or Enma) went to the medication aisle. He stood in the medication aisle, tapping his foot. Berenice couldn't work on her homework while a customer was in the store so she watched him, just smiling.
Irie (or Enma) approached the counter, looking away from Berenice's face. He was just getting bandaids and Pepcid. Was Pepcid generic, or was it trademarked? Wait. Antacid. Pepcid was trademarked, then: Pepcid ™.
"Will that be all for you?" Berenice asked, without even flinching at her fake-ass customer service voice.
He nodded. There wasn't a single way to interpret that boy's face as holding anything but pain and discomfort.
Berenice finished ringing him up, and handed him a bag with the receipt in it.
"Have a nice day!" Berenice said.
"I won't," he said, and Irie (or Enma) hightailed out of there.
Huh. Looking back, Berenice might interpret that as an omen.
(A/N) It's social distancing time, babes. Which means its time to write your self indulgent fanfics. This self indulent fanfic will feature ALL of your favorite characters: Naito Longchamp, Kurokawa Hana, Shouichi Irie, Verde, Tsuna's throwaway line older sister who goes to college from like chap one or something. I reread Wittgenstein to write this but I did not reread KHR yet so lmao...
For reference, as an SI, Berenice Reynolds is somewhat me, but if I leaned into my worst traits a lot more, and repressed my dead mom (and other, story irrelevant bc im not unleashing that in a fanfic) trauma in a worse way. The name isn't mine, but I know my mom would have named me Berenice if she named me something else :'). KHR is fundamentally a series about losers, so making myself more competent would betray the heart of the series, I think. Except I made myself more competent at learning Japanese because a strict language barrier would make the story drag more. I think for focusing on being the 'other' a limited grasp of language is can be just as powerful. Was going to insert myself as my actual age, but a proactive older character would be less meaningful in a gag manga that centers of coming of age and I like to write about Themes. I have strong ideological opinions, but I know that if you all wanted to read theory, you'd download the Noam Chomsky and Edward Said pdfs and read that instead. So I hope to hint at those opinions in actions. and Thematically.
Also. Obviously I have no beta reader or anyone to talk to about this. Which is why some sections are stiff and confusing. But gotta put it out there so you can move on howdy hoo. so throw some words at my throwaway tumblr askbox. its also wistpossessed tumblr . Nothing posted but I can do art i guess. . .