Catharsis

By: Aviantei

a

We interrupt this usual self-reflection corner to bring you "Sugiyama Kazue's Fun Fact Science Corner." The Fun in that title is, naturally, relative.

You know how you can get like two hours of sleep and feel perfectly fine? Or those days when you sleep in to the afternoon but you're still incredibly tired? Apparently the human body has this thing where instead of basing its energy levels on the sleep you just got, it's instead working off the sleep from the night before that, which explains why we don't feel it until way later.

In its own way, that info is pretty cool, and it makes a lot of things come together. The first time I heard it, I was like, Oh, that explains it! and nodded like I'd ever use that information to my benefit. Upon further reflection, I have to wonder why the human body does that. Surely it's not evolutionary beneficial or anything. Where did natural selection go so wrong?

All that to say that, even though I'd gone to bed at a decent hour the night before, I still had yet to fully recover my sleep debt and my body hadn't finished processing the sleep I did get, so I was still a tired mess when the next morning came along, which really didn't improve my mood.

b

My body gave me some grace in that I wasn't tired enough to need a nap during the lunch period and was thus able to escape another awkward episode of Hiroomi bringing me his supposed leftovers—I wasn't sure if I believed his excuse, seeing as he'd somehow picked out my favorites. Even if it had been the truth that he and Kanbara had had some lunchtime date or whatever, I still didn't like the feeling of guilt from accepting free handouts. As if to prove something to myself, I bought my own damn lunch and enjoyed it in an out of the way section of the school's courtyard.

My pride restored (let's not get into whether that's an exaggeration or not), I actually felt good about going to Literary Club once classes were out. Hiroomi was still obeying my not-meant-to-be serious command to have me accompany him en route to the clubroom, but I was just tired enough not to argue.

He was oddly quiet on the walk over, which should have been a goddamn delight. I think it was precisely that reason why it irked on my nerves. This was probably what they called irony, but I didn't have enough sense of mind to appreciate it. Halfway to the club building I gave in and tried to sneak a glance at him, thinking maybe he'd gotten sick or something.

Instead he was watching me again. It had only happened a few times, but it was that contemplative look where I couldn't read him whatsoever.

"You keep staring, Nase-kun," I said, meaning to leave it alone, or at least meaning to say something more scolding. Instead, it just came out like a fact of life: the sun is bright, grass is green, Kanbara has a stupid glasses fetish, you keep staring. I managed to recover myself enough to add, "I thought that rich kids learned manners growing up."

"Ah, sorry, I didn't mean to bother you." As if to prove his point, Hiroomi turned to face forward, adjusting today's green and blue striped scarf around his neck. It didn't quite match his uniform, but he made it work. "I was just noticing that you seem a bit different today, Sugiyama-san. That's all."

I sighed, checking ahead so I didn't almost crash into anyone or anything, but the path ahead really only had students from other clubs heading the same direction we were. "I like to think I look different walking then when I'm faceplanted onto my desk, Nase-kun."

"I guess that's true." He chuckled, even though my joke wasn't that good. Forget my supposed change in behavior, Hiroomi was damn chipper. Had Nase dropped an Onii-chan instead of an Aniki on him this morning or something? "I saw you reading through an anthology between blocks. Are you making good progress?"

"Yeah, actually. So long as I stick to the plan, I'll be able to handle the rest." We'd likely spend a chunk of our meeting covering the same topic, but I'd happily take a distraction. I managed to make it to the club building door first, and I held the door open as he passed by. Once again, our key wasn't in its spot on the sign out board, so someone had gotten there ahead of us. "What about you? You haven't been slacking on me, have you?"

Hiroomi tossed me a quick glance, though it was accompanied with one of his far too pleasant smiles. "You made your intentions about me skipping club work perfectly clear on Tuesday, Sugiyama-san. I have no intention of breaking those rules." Huh, there's some sense in that head of his, after all. "If you don't mind me offering some advice in return, it would do you some good not to overwork yourself. I know you volunteered for this extra responsibility, but I'd rather not see you so worn out that you can't function."

"Mmhmm, sure. What's that supposed to be, another fortune telling session I didn't ask for?" I wasn't exactly the type of person that let my personal health go to hell, but hearing someone else actually care about my wellbeing was an almost foreign concept, and it left an almost sticky feeling across my skin. I intentionally went ahead of him up the stairs. "You've sure been a mother hen lately. You do know I'm not someone you have to take care of, right?"

"I'll maintain my stance from yesterday: I see nothing wrong with looking out for my other club members."

He'd said it without missing a beat, and I'd even be willing to bet he'd kept a straight face, even though I hadn't seen it. I'd really forgotten that people like him existed. "If that's the case, why don't you fuss over Kuriyama-chan?"

Hiroomi let out a low-toned hum. "Do you really think Akkey would let me get away with something like that?"

Oh, it's like that, then? I didn't want to assume, but gossiping behind others' backs wasn't a much better habit. Maybe I could ask Kuriyama about it during our eventual tea date. "Too bad. She's the youngest, right? That's like prime ground for a little sister type, right?" I grabbed onto the handrail so I could spin myself around the turn in the staircase and made it up a few steps before a dumb thought occurred to me, and one I didn't like the implication to in the slightest. "Hey, Nase-kun, when's your birthday?"

Still on the set of stairs below me, Hiroomi's expression flickered to surprise, and he paused to meet my scrutinizing look head on. "July twenty-first. Why?"

I was already tsking to myself in disgust after he'd said which month. Dammit.

"Sugiyama-san?"

Being a December baby gave me a poor chance of coming out older, but I'd put my faith in that sixteen-point-six-six-etc. percent chance anyways—and it had backfired, despite the not impossible odds. It would have been refreshing to see him look so uncomposed if I wasn't at such a disadvantage in the long run. No, there was a way I could come out on top, so long as I struck first.

"Sugiyama-san," Hiroomi said again, his brow furrowed, "is something wrong?"

"Not really," I said. How much luck was I using up on the fact that my voice was coming out even? Deciding not to risk it, I started climbing the stairs again. "I was just thinking that, since you're the oldest in the club, you should lead everyone else by example instead of playing truant, Onii-chan."

There was a pause of about point-three seconds of stunned silence before Hiroomi choked on thin air, and I took that opportunity to bolt up the stairs as fast as I could.

c

My heart was still unnecessarily thudding as I opened the clubroom door. For the second time in as many days, the sight of Kuriyama-chan tending to her bonsai welcomed me as I stepped into the club room. It seemed she'd gotten there first, seeing as our resident pair of second years wasn't around yet. While my normal strategy would have been to enjoy the temporary silence and settle into reading, I wasn't quite ready to deal with Hiroomi once he'd pulled himself together from my sudden conversational attack.

The best strategy? Already be engaged in conversation with someone else. Thus, I sat my bag down at my usual spot on the table and headed over to the windowsill, enjoying the pretty way the sun shimmered over our resident part-time gardener's hair.

"Yo, Kuriyama-chan."

Damn, initiating conversation twice in one day and while I was still tired? I should've earned a fucking metal.

"Oh, hello, Senpai!" Since I hadn't been an unexpected arrival today, Kuriyama fell into an easy smile as she turned to me. "How are you doing today?"

It was such a simple greeting that it felt strange to answer it. But Kuriyama-chan made small talk a downright delight, and I all but forgot I was looking for a reason not to get stuck in a one-on-one with Hiroomi. Me and Kuriyama traded off info about our days, then I started asking questions about her plants, which turned into her letting out an excited stream of words I hadn't even known existed in relation to foliage. I thought it was adorable, and, when Nase and Kanbara made their way in, the latter let out a dramatic gasp that made it sound like he was about to faint from joy. Nase kept walking like she had no idea who he was to her usual perch.

"Is this it? Have I died and gone to heaven?" Kanbara asked, half-shouting up at the ceiling in an appeal to the gods. "There's two beautiful girls with glasses smiling together and having fun, so it must be. What an incredible sight. If I'm not dead, I'd rather pass on right now—there's nothing else I want out of life! Ah, praise the powers of glasses!"

"How unpleasant," Kuriyama muttered, though if I wasn't mistaken, her cheeks were forming a faint pink to add to the rest of her rosy looks.

As we started to settle in for our meeting, I offered Kuriyama the seat beside me. Even though the spot across from me was empty when he came in, Hiroomi didn't take it.

d

"Alright, everyone, let's plan for this weekend."

As she spun what had to be like her fifth sucker between her fingers, Nase delivered her attempt at a call for attention. It might have been sloppy, but since we'd all had our noses in our anthologies in silence, it was good enough. Kuriyama had to blink a few times to reorient herself back to reality, while Kanbara was squinting at what might have been particularly tough kanji. Hiroomi, who'd been dutifully taking notes as he read, put his pencil down and gave his sister his full attention. I took the moment to stretch my arms above my head, feeling skeptic about Nase's intentions when she said let's plan.

As if there's any choice in the matter.

With a fresh lick of her sucker, Nase's red eyes scanned across the table. "We still have plenty of work to do, so taking the week off isn't an option." Yeah, I'd seen that one coming. Well, it wasn't like my plans involved anything outside of reading anthologies, so it didn't make much of a difference—though if another sleepover was in the works, I might just give in and scream. "We'll meet on Sunday afternoon. By then, everyone should have gotten through their first assignments, and we should be able to have some productive talks." Her gaze landed on me. "Sugiyama, I'm assuming you had an idea of how we'll be narrowing these down for group consumption."

After everything I'd already gone through, it wasn't surprising in the slightest that I'd become the one in charge of organizing our club nonsense, so I cleared my throat and got on with it. "At this point, we're making good progress with getting through our reading." The slew of checkmarks and x's across the whiteboard attested to that much. "If we keep this up, we'll have most of the anthologies taken care of by Sunday. I'd like to talk over your individual choices, then we can make a reading plan to narrow things down to our finalists."

If I looked at the past for precedent, it was an almost foolishly optimistic plan. But, again, none of us wanted to be handling anthology publication while exams were going on, so it was hustle now or suffer later. Nase bobbed her head in approval, though she looked far more engaged in the flavor of her sucker than what I was saying. "Alright, I'll leave you in charge of compiling the list, Sugiyama."

In my not-so-humble opinion, that task seemed far more like something the club president should handle.

"Um, so where are we going to meet up?" Kuriyama asked, raising her hand even though it wasn't necessary. Once we all turned to her reasonable question, she placed her hands back in her lap. "We've used Sugiyama-senpai's place before, then we had that sleepover. Are we going to do something like that again?"

I would rather straight up perish than go through either of those scenarios again. It wasn't even an option of selecting a lesser evil.

"Since the weather's going to be nice, why don't we go out somewhere?" Kanbara said, leaning forward with his elbows on the table. "We're always cooped up inside the clubroom. Let's go somewhere fun!"

"And watch you get distracted even worse than usual?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. Wearing contacts was genuinely a pain in the ass, but if following through on that threat was what it took to get him to behave…

"Sugiyama's right," Nase said with no hesitation for her friend's ego. In pure Kanbara fashion, he dramatically recoiled from our verbal jabs. "Still, I'm not opposed to maybe going someplace that we're sure would be quiet."

I only caught Hiroomi's nod in my peripheral vision, and I had somehow embarrassed myself with my own dumb joke that I couldn't even look at him properly as he spoke. Dammit, I'm not supposed to be the embarrassed one here. "If we need a place where we can go without being a bother if we stay for a while, why don't we go to Ayaka-san's then?"

"Oh, yeah, that sounds good!" Kanbara said, his usual hyperactive energy back. Though she was far more reserved, Kuriyama nodded her approval from the spot beside me. "We haven't been there in a while, plus it shouldn't be too crowded, even on a Sunday. Let's go with that!"

"Fine by me," Nase said, giving it her President's seal of approval. The others were trading off comments about how nice it would be, even though I had zero idea of where we were going. We weren't going to end up imposing on someone else's space, were we? Nase glanced to me one more time. "Akihito, Aniki. One of you two give Sugiyama directions before Sunday."

"Oh, I'll do it!" Kuriyama volunteered before either of the boys could even register the command. I was thankful for the intervention (you just knew things were bad if I was thinking it would be preferable to deal with Kanbara's nonsense). Kuriyama turned to me. "Since we walk the same way home, I'll give it to you then, Senpai. Oh, I'd even be willing to show you the way if you want."

Nase flipped shut the anthology she'd had lying in front of her, letting the pages close with a smack. "Well, that's settled then. We'll meet at one on Sunday. Don't be late. Club dismissed."

With those brief words, we went about closing up shop for the time being. When Kuriyama passed me the address for our meetup and asked if I wanted to stop by the grocery store with her, I went ahead and said yes.

e

Though I'd planned to be on the route to recovering something resembling a decent routine, the next few school days showed mixed results. I held true to my promise to keep up with my homework, but my brain couldn't quite decide on whether it wanted to behave when it came to sleeping, and, on occasion, I found myself going to bed late because I'd foolishly stuck my nose in a book for a few hours too long. By the time classes dismissed on our half day on Saturday, I'd already worked my way through the anthologies I needed to have completed for Sunday and was well on my way to beginning the next week's par. I salvaged Saturday afternoon as my personal time and avoided social contact like the plague.

I needed to recharge my batteries for what was about to come.

I'd followed Kuriyama's provided directions and managed to arrive a solid half-hour early, even after I'd gotten turned around a few times. We were not, in fact, crashing on someone's home, but instead were at a shop. Comparing the name Kuriyama had given me to the sign, I confirmed I was in the right place and pushed open the door.

A faint swath of incense met my nose in some woody scent I couldn't identify off the top of my head, and there was only the faintest touch of cool in the air in comparison to the early humidity that had been starting to form outside. There was no paint on the walls, with the primary color being a beautiful, almost reddish wood. The varnish shimmered, bringing attention to what appeared to be several gemstones embedded in rocks lining the shelves and twinkling in their own rainbow along the shelves. Even though there was a small bookshelf tucked away on the far side of the room, I couldn't bring myself to be fully at ease in the space.

"Can I help you?"

I had been so caught up in trying to catch my bearings that I hadn't even noticed there was someone at the counter. The speaker had been a woman with dark hair, and she sat in a black kimono and yellow haori combo. Despite her traditional attire, she managed to look perfectly natural—though the look she was giving me from across the room reminded me far too much of the way Hiroomi sometimes stared at me. "Um, well, I—" Speaking out loud hadn't ever been my forte; I'd say that was why I left all my elegance to the written word, but I downright sucked on that front as of late, too. Kuriyama had given me the right address, hadn't she? "Sorry, I'm supposed to meet some friends here."

"Is that so?" I may have been too far away to see properly, but I almost thought I saw something akin to amusement flash through the woman's eyes. "I do have some people who've reserved the space today, but you're free to use whatever you can until then."

"Oh, don't worry about that! She's gonna be here with the others!"

I hadn't been the one to answer, but the words were still correct, which didn't help with my uncomfortable mood in the slightest. Someone else stepped into the room from towards the back: a petite girl that might've actually been a few centimeters shorter than Kuriyama. Her dark hair was wavy and hung loosely, and she had wide eyes that made her look like a middle schooler. Seeing that I was looking at her, she flashed a smile and a wave. "You're Sugiyama-senpai, right? We haven't met before, but I go to Nagatsuki High, too! I'm Shindou Ai, a second year."

"It's nice to meet you," I said on reflex, which saved me from blurting out that she didn't look like a second year high school student in the slightest. "If you're a second year, then you probably know Kanbara and Nase, then?" Not everyone could be like me and completely ignore the rest of their class for their whole high school career.

"Yup, that's right! I know Mirai-chan and Hiroomi-senpai, too." She crossed the room so that we weren't talking to each other over several meters to hear each other. Up close, her eyes were a shade of bright blue that I hadn't ever seen in person. "You guys are still working on that anthology thing, right? Aya-chan said that you guys could use some space in the back, so I'll show you the way, Senpai!"

"Much appreciated. Sorry for the intrusion."

Shindou Ai walked me back towards the door she'd come in from, and I tried not to pay attention to the way that the woman behind the counter's gaze still followed me.

f

"So, Shindou-san, if you don't mind me asking—just what is this place?"

Shindou had led me down a hallway that looked every bit like it was part of a traditional home, from the tatami mats to the sliding doors. She settled on a room that had low table sitting in the middle and sunshine streaming in through the windows. On the outside, there appeared to be a garden of sorts, but I didn't get a good glimpse of it.

"Oh, this is Aya-chan's place," Shindou said, still smiling. She almost reminded me of a hyperactive kitten with the way she was acting—excited to have new company. "We do all sorts of different things here. Mostly it's a photo studio and cafe, though we also sell spiritual stuff, too."

Settling down into a seat and putting my anthology-filled bag down beside me, I raised an eyebrow, but maybe I shouldn't have been surprised since Hiroomi had been the one that had recommended our location in the first place. "Like all those rocks and stuff out there?" They'd certainly make for some interesting props, but I didn't see them being a popular item in that regard.

"Yup, that's right." Shindou bobbed her head. "You can use those for improving the vibe in your home or even enhancing the powers of certain spells. We even do luck readings if you're ever interested! Though I'm still learning, so I can only do the basic stuff."

"Huh." Unlike with Hiroomi, who I had no problem tearing down his faulty logic, doing that to Shindou seemed mean, especially since I'd asked in the first place. "Well, I don't know if the others said it already, but we're grateful for letting us use your space, Shindou-san. Thanks a bunch." I even dipped my head in a short bow, hoping that would be enough to stop the conversation before anything awkward spilled out of my mouth.

"Oh, that's not a problem at all! Just let us know if you need anything, alright, Senpai?" I realized belatedly that she wasn't giving me that same starstruck look that Kuriyama and Kanbara defaulted to. How novel. A hand flew to Shindou's mouth. "Oh, I should go and let the others know what space we opened up for them. See you later, Senpai!"

In a flash, Shindou had vacated the room, her footsteps pattering down the hallway. Settling myself in for the long haul, I started to unpack my anthologies and notes and got to work.

g

Kanbara somehow managed to arrive early, the Nase siblings arrived in tandem, and Kuriyama was few minutes late, but, for all intents and purposes, the Literary Club had assembled for our third weekend session in a row, so we started right away. After catching up on how everyone was going on their reading pars (miraculously, we were all right on schedule, even Kanbara), I went ahead and borrowed another room from Shindou's kindness and turned that into my one-on-one conference area.

That room was pretty much the same as the last in terms of size, and there weren't too many decorations in the place, either, save for a classy art print on the wall and a small shelf with some of the same types of stones from the front of the store and a vase. Whatever use there was for that type of space in a photo studio/occult shop, I couldn't say, but that wasn't my job.

Despite my grousing at Nase's responsibility delegation skills, I did have a plan for working out the reading recommendations. Essentially, each of the others would narrow down their assignments to a handful of works—I was prepared to allow for about five a piece to make it into the next round, so it was my job to talk it over with them and come to a consensus. Essentially, any work both of us recommended would give us a starting point, then we could narrow it down to par from there.

Once we finished this process up, we'd repeat it with our anthologies that would be coming up in the rotation during the next week, and we'd (presumably) do this conference thing again. We'd then take the recommended winners, have everybody read those, and pick out a selection for the anthology. Depending on the time we had, I might even consider volunteering to put them in a suitable order, but I was leaving the formatting, budgeting, printing, and all that other junk to the rest of the club. Preferably, Nase could handle that shit. So long as it wasn't me, I didn't care.

But first, we had to go ahead and take care of our little conferences first. Nase was the most on top of her work, so we had our one-on-one first while everyone else continued reading in the other room. We may have disagreed on plenty of other things, but it seemed like we really were synched up when it came to evaluating, so we were able to confer our top picks from her block in no time at all. I added the titles to my running sheet along with the ones we'd decided on as a club before, then swapped out for the next round.

Kuriyama-chan came next and gave the task as much focus as I'd expected—which was to say, she was on top of things even though she almost spilled the tea Shindou had gotten for us in the time being. Safe from having a set of drenched anthologies, we got to it. Once again, Kuriyama had a completely different taste than I did, but I gave her some leeway. Ultimately, the one piece she and I had agreed on made it in, along with a split on our other top picks.

Halfway through the process, I declared a personal rest break to stretch my legs and (make an attempted effort to) organize the titles in my head. I didn't want to end up in some place I wasn't supposed to, so I just paced up the tatami mats in the hallway a few times. Kanbara caught sight of me on his way to the bathroom and proposed that we take a snack break, which Nase approved before I could even snark that Kanbara was just trying to procrastinate on his turn. So, with our club president's orders, we went to snag some crepes from a stand a bit down the road I hadn't even known had existed.

I got chocolate and banana. It was delicious.

We had been making good progress and I'd already taken care of my weekend homework, so it wouldn't be a complete disaster if we stayed out late, but that wasn't my ideal idea of a free evening. Thus, dragging Kanbara back by his collar, I tossed him into the conference room and got to it. After what had to be a solid five minutes of him going on about glasses, he finally shifted into a mode that wasn't fully serious but still productive. If nothing else, he wasn't just basing his choices on the topic of glasses, so that helped things out. We matched on three of our initial selections and spent some time debating the remaining two. After an extended argument on his last slot, I gave in to his dumb glasses fetish and let him get away with whatever nonsense work he'd chosen, hoping that everyone else's common sense would kick in and save us when it came to the final evaluations.

With that done, we were to what could possibly be the easiest or most difficult one of them all:

Thanks to my dumb system, I had a one-on-one with Hiroomi for the first time since Thursday, and I honestly had no idea what to do with myself.

h

Taking about the cheapest procrastination trip in the book, I went to the bathroom after I set Kanbara free. It was pretty nice and tranquil, the same scent of incense from the front of the shop in the air, and I spent far too long washing my hands before heading back to the room. As the (unofficial) Truant Queen of the Prep Class, maybe I should have had more dignity than that, but I'd pretty much tossed dignity out the window when I'd gone and called him Onii-chan.

What the hell was I even thinking? Getting the one up before he realized he was older than you? How stupid can you get?! I'd honestly just wanted to see his reaction, but then I'd made it worse by not talking to him normally in the days after that. Sure, I wasn't about to go out of my way to talk to him when I didn't have to, but still.

I made it back to the doorway, wondering if I could snag my stuff and bolt for it, but Hiroomi was already sitting at the table, his back turned to the door. Even if my bag had been on the side to make a clean escape, it wasn't like I could shove all my anthology copies in it and make a clean get away. Resolving myself to just act naturally and pretend like it hadn't happened, I walked in and dropped into my seat cross-legged, pushing aside the book I'd been going over with Kanbara to make way for the next batch, opening my mouth to say something in greeting before I lost all nerve.

"You've been working hard, haven't you?" Hiroomi asked before I could get any words out—but it wasn't what he said that stopped me. It was the look on his face, with his lips faintly turning up into a smirk and a hint of amusement in his eyes. "Is this the part where I should say that you've done good work, Imouto?"

Ah, shit.

Catharsis

EIGHTH

I really made a mistake.

[Author's Notes]

(cackles maniacally) I've had the scene of "Sugiyama calls Hiroomi Onii-chan just to fuck with him" in my head for a while now, and I'm so glad that it's now out in the world. Please share your thoughts, I've been wanting to see how everyone reacts to this moment for ages-

In any event, I am super grateful to those who have gone ahead and given their feedback/support since the last update! Thanks to Darki1905, amgs, hannahjoma, Miki (Guest), and 010321cal for the favorites, follows, and reviews! Considering how silly self-indulgent this fic is, I'm glad you guys enjoy it so much. I'll do my best to keep writing in a way worthy of your support!

I recently rewatched Kyoukai no Kanata because we previewed it in my anime club and that made me want to go through the whole series again. It really is a stellar show. Specifically, we watched it as part of our KyoAni appreciation week. Since this fic hasn't updated since the KyoAni arson attack, I wanted to take a moment to thank all the people who worked on this show and to give appreciation to the memories of those lost and hurt. May this fic serve as an expression of love for everything KyoAni has given us.

(clears throat) With the somber stuff out of the way, I hope that seeing this fic update has brought at least some sort of brightness to your day! Things have been busy over here, but we'll see another update by the end of the year for sure, so please look forward to it!

-Avi

[09.23.2019]