Chapter 8
"The number you dial is not yet in service," came the automatic voice on the other end of the line. Yuu's eyes narrowed. Why was that it wasn't in service? His former friend must have forgotten to place his phone on properly in the cradle. Yuu toyed around with the cordless phone in his fingers, resisting the unexplainable urge to kick something. He didn't realize that someone was calling out his name until Miki nearly shouted through the door for the phone.
"Yuu!" she said, exasperated, accompanying her small shout with a fist on the door. "Are you finished with the phone?!"
Yuu's nerves frayed. He called back that he was. Miki went back to her own room to use her own cordless phone. Yuu frowned. What was he thinking about? Was he being stupid? He glance at the paper in front of him. It was a weekend past Valentines Day, and he had suddenly been struck by a sense of uneasiness. He reached out in front to crumple the paper.
MIKI"S LIST OF POSSIBLE CHARMING GIFTS, he had written in his scrawl. There were some things that he had never gotten even his own mother, like a nice bead bracelet. He was thinking of giving her a set of hoop earrings, but he just couldn't bring himself in the first place to admit to her that he liked her.
Ginta had been visiting more and more often, the now sickening face popping out in all sorts of places, the malls, the park, the front gate. And Miki was increasingly delighted to hear from her friend.
Yuu stopped in the middle of crumpling the list, pausing ever so slightly, but then again, he changed his mind and brushed it aside so that it fell into the trash can beside his desk, along with the other lists.
Miki's cheerful bubbly chatter carried on. To Yuu's ears, it sounded very much muffled from the other room. His stomach ached from the last thirty minutes of him trying to contact his best friend in his old school. Yuu stepped out of his room to raid the kitchen. As he passed by Miki's door, he heard two syllables that sounded suspiciously like.'Ginta'.
His eyes narrowing, Yuu leaned ever so slightly closer to Miki's door, so that the thin cotton of his shirt brushed against the doorknob.
"Ginta, you're crazy! Now?" Miki was going on incredulously. It was a good thing that Miki had somehow raised her voice. The elation was quite obvious as she continued to speak on the phone. Yuu dismissed the idea of eavesdropping. Ginta must have had achieved new heights of guts and glory to be speaking to Miki on the phone. It was only a phone conversation, so Yuu didn't think much of it. He continued on his way to the kitchen. He sat on the counter and ate one of his apricot jam sandwiches, staring thoughtfully at a container on beside the other jams. Yellow script was written in a nice, tidy handwriting: MARMALADE JAM.
Picking it up thoughtfully, Yuu studied the label. Fruits were drawn in bold ink all over the paper; several fruits in just the right pigment made the substance inside look almost appealing. But he was smart enough not to eat the jam inside. It was a bitter squeeze. The mother of Miki had only bought it because she thought that the label looked nice. There were just too many bitter rinds inside. The cover looked wonderful.until you tasted what was inside.
With a small pang, Yuu remembered what had happened earlier in the year before, when he was with Miki during breakfast, and she had compared him to Marmalade Jam. He had made fun of her then, but now that he had thought about it, he should have taken her more seriously. She was right; all people saw about him was the shiny surface, the sweet and tolerant Yuu. Miki had been the only person who he had ever let see the other side of him, or the hidden side. So engrossed he was in his thoughts that he barely noticed that Miki was packing up some bread into a plastic basket. When he did notice, he also saw that she was wearing a pair of jeans and a new- checkered shirt.
"Where're you going?" Yuu asked, munching into his sandwich. He hastily put aside the Marmalade Jam. He assumed that Miki was simply going to meet Meiko in the park. In that case, Yuu planned to walk her there.
"No where special." Miki started absent-mindedly.
She was holding some chocolate milk into the plastic basket.
"Oh, alright. You and Meiko planning another bumming out movie fest?"
"I'm not going to see Meiko tonight," Miki said, looking at him curiously. Yuu's head tipped upwards warily, sudden realization dawning on his thick, thick skull.
"Ginta."
"Yeah," Miki confirmed. "He wants to tell me something tonight."
"Okay. Hope you have fun with Straight Guy."
Yuu decided then that that was to be the new nickname of Ginta, straight guy, because he was such a straight student. Miki recognized the mockery at once, and she glared at him. Then.somehow, she gave a laugh. Yuu stared at her, then he found that his shoulders sagged.
He was tired in an instant; he established that his nerves refused to make further fun of her. Miki looked at him for a long time, the both of them just staring into each other's eyes.
"Yuu?" Miki said first. "You look sick."
Yuu gave a vague wave of his hand, breadcrumbs flying away for a moment.
"Straight guy, straight guy," he mumbled weakly to taunt her some more. But she seemed immune, just staring at him as if he were crazy. In a moment, her face became expressionless.
"Why do you turn stupid and insensitive all of a sudden?!" she asked him almost angrily. "You're so nice to other people but you act like you hate the fact that I'm alive! You insult me and you compliment other people."
Yuu gave a tiny, tiny chuckle. "'All people see is the pretty surface, but they don't know about the bitterness, huh, Miki?"
Miki's eyes widened a bit as she went over those words. They were familiar words, she was certain that she had heard them before, but she just couldn't place where. She stood up, dusting her already clean jeans. Her face was uncertain, brooding over the mysterious ring of the words.
Picking up her basket, she was about to go out of the kitchen. She stopped, her body rigid, and she said distractedly under her breath:
"Yuu, pass the Apricot Jam, will you? I forgot to bring some for the bread.It's not.going to taste good with out the.jam."
Yuu, by this time, had finished his sandwich, and he had started to get up as well. He held up the apricot jam jar and said some words that came from what he remembered had happened, they all tumbled out like an echo from the past.
"None left," he said. A small under comment was: "Finished it all." He followed with another line: "All we have is this."
He held up the Marmalade Jam. Miki's face scrunched up as she looked at it in distaste.
"Marmalade Jam?" she asked. "I don't like that stuff. It's so bitter, especially around..... the....."
She stopped in mid-sentence, understanding dawning in on her. Her food basket hung limply at her side as she remembered in a flashback about the time she and Yuu had been left in the house earlier in the school year.......
"Especially around the rinds?" Yuu finished suggestively, making a small motion with his hand. He said again: "And yes, Miki... I'm a lot like Marmalade."
"." Miki was busy studying in awe the almost crazy half smile on his face.
"Miki," Yuu said. "Then you're a Mustard Girl. Always spicy......and sour."
He walked past her, leaving the marmalade jar in the middle of the shiny lacquered surface of the table.
IN THE PARK 7:34 PM Friday
"Yuu's acting all funny," Miki said to Ginta. She had a worried expression. "He's talking suddenly imitating conversations we'd had some time ago, and he's spacing out.
Ginta shrugged, yellow lamp light pooling his black hair as he borke the bread apart. He was wearing a polo and a Nike jacket, his blue slacks adding a pleasant touch.
"Maybe he's jealous," he said nonchalantly. A glob of marmalade fell in front of him as he spooned it up to meet the knife.
"Of what?" Miki asked, not getting the message.
"Of you, of course," Ginta exclaimed, as if the answer were so obvious. "I mean, I've known that he'd had a crush on you when he first interrupted your date with Shin!"
"You know about that?" Miki asked, amazed at how informed Ginta was.
"Don't be stupid. Yuu doesn't like me, all he does is make fun of me."
"Look who's being stubborn? Maybe it's because he LIKES you, Miki, and he's just really, astoundingly horrible at showing how he feels."
Miki though she saw something in Ginta then that she didn't like. It was as if her were almost happy.
"Why are you so smiley?" Miki asked him suspiciously.
"Because I know that now I have you!" Ginta replied without hesitation. He was exceedingly bubbly that night. He hugged her, his uneaten marmalade sandwich in his left hand.
"I confessed my feelings for you in front of Yuu so that he'd see how useless it is to try to get you," Ginta said. "It's because.I really care about you."
His revelation of toying with Yuu's feelings left Miki numb.
Ginta bit into the sandwich.
"Wow," he exclaimed. "It has so many bitter rinds.I didn't expect that from the way the labels is drawn."
"You.." Ginta looked up from the jar. "Acted the way you did to make Yuu jealous?"
Now that Miki had added two and two together, she now realized that Yuu's actions were somehow explained. Ginta nodded slowly.
Then..
"Ah, crap," he laid his forehead in on the palm of his hand. "Miki."
"I have to go," Miki said hurriedly, standing up. "Ginta, give all of these to me tomorrow, alright? I have to do something."
She was caught up in the moment, heading on impulse, adrenalin pumping in her veins. She got up and started to run to the exit of the park. She saw a scene in her mind's eye, how Yuu would react to her confession of apology and her love for him, and her affection for Ginta. She let out a small breath. Since the street happened to be empty, she rushed forward to be a step closer to her goal. She had barely set foot on the pavement, when:
"Miki!" Ginta appeared from the other side of the road after Miki had crossed. He held the basket in an irregular manner, as he tried to wave frantically. Miki looked at him and suddenly felt light headed.
"Ginta!" she waved. Ginta rushed forward.and Miki gave a sudden scream for him to step back, but it was too.late.
As the drunken driver was being questioned, and as Ginta's limp body was being wheeled in the ambulance car-...
And....As the blood lay on the road amidst the fallen food from the fruit basket....As Yuu watched the clock from the kitchen wall in the house, and as Ginta drew in shallow breath after shallow..breath...
Miki was leaning against the lamp post, her low battery cellphone in one hand, and another hand swiped against her eye. Everything was surreal, she was detached, the same words in her head.
"...Ginta..Ginta.."
"The number you dial is not yet in service," came the automatic voice on the other end of the line. Yuu's eyes narrowed. Why was that it wasn't in service? His former friend must have forgotten to place his phone on properly in the cradle. Yuu toyed around with the cordless phone in his fingers, resisting the unexplainable urge to kick something. He didn't realize that someone was calling out his name until Miki nearly shouted through the door for the phone.
"Yuu!" she said, exasperated, accompanying her small shout with a fist on the door. "Are you finished with the phone?!"
Yuu's nerves frayed. He called back that he was. Miki went back to her own room to use her own cordless phone. Yuu frowned. What was he thinking about? Was he being stupid? He glance at the paper in front of him. It was a weekend past Valentines Day, and he had suddenly been struck by a sense of uneasiness. He reached out in front to crumple the paper.
MIKI"S LIST OF POSSIBLE CHARMING GIFTS, he had written in his scrawl. There were some things that he had never gotten even his own mother, like a nice bead bracelet. He was thinking of giving her a set of hoop earrings, but he just couldn't bring himself in the first place to admit to her that he liked her.
Ginta had been visiting more and more often, the now sickening face popping out in all sorts of places, the malls, the park, the front gate. And Miki was increasingly delighted to hear from her friend.
Yuu stopped in the middle of crumpling the list, pausing ever so slightly, but then again, he changed his mind and brushed it aside so that it fell into the trash can beside his desk, along with the other lists.
Miki's cheerful bubbly chatter carried on. To Yuu's ears, it sounded very much muffled from the other room. His stomach ached from the last thirty minutes of him trying to contact his best friend in his old school. Yuu stepped out of his room to raid the kitchen. As he passed by Miki's door, he heard two syllables that sounded suspiciously like.'Ginta'.
His eyes narrowing, Yuu leaned ever so slightly closer to Miki's door, so that the thin cotton of his shirt brushed against the doorknob.
"Ginta, you're crazy! Now?" Miki was going on incredulously. It was a good thing that Miki had somehow raised her voice. The elation was quite obvious as she continued to speak on the phone. Yuu dismissed the idea of eavesdropping. Ginta must have had achieved new heights of guts and glory to be speaking to Miki on the phone. It was only a phone conversation, so Yuu didn't think much of it. He continued on his way to the kitchen. He sat on the counter and ate one of his apricot jam sandwiches, staring thoughtfully at a container on beside the other jams. Yellow script was written in a nice, tidy handwriting: MARMALADE JAM.
Picking it up thoughtfully, Yuu studied the label. Fruits were drawn in bold ink all over the paper; several fruits in just the right pigment made the substance inside look almost appealing. But he was smart enough not to eat the jam inside. It was a bitter squeeze. The mother of Miki had only bought it because she thought that the label looked nice. There were just too many bitter rinds inside. The cover looked wonderful.until you tasted what was inside.
With a small pang, Yuu remembered what had happened earlier in the year before, when he was with Miki during breakfast, and she had compared him to Marmalade Jam. He had made fun of her then, but now that he had thought about it, he should have taken her more seriously. She was right; all people saw about him was the shiny surface, the sweet and tolerant Yuu. Miki had been the only person who he had ever let see the other side of him, or the hidden side. So engrossed he was in his thoughts that he barely noticed that Miki was packing up some bread into a plastic basket. When he did notice, he also saw that she was wearing a pair of jeans and a new- checkered shirt.
"Where're you going?" Yuu asked, munching into his sandwich. He hastily put aside the Marmalade Jam. He assumed that Miki was simply going to meet Meiko in the park. In that case, Yuu planned to walk her there.
"No where special." Miki started absent-mindedly.
She was holding some chocolate milk into the plastic basket.
"Oh, alright. You and Meiko planning another bumming out movie fest?"
"I'm not going to see Meiko tonight," Miki said, looking at him curiously. Yuu's head tipped upwards warily, sudden realization dawning on his thick, thick skull.
"Ginta."
"Yeah," Miki confirmed. "He wants to tell me something tonight."
"Okay. Hope you have fun with Straight Guy."
Yuu decided then that that was to be the new nickname of Ginta, straight guy, because he was such a straight student. Miki recognized the mockery at once, and she glared at him. Then.somehow, she gave a laugh. Yuu stared at her, then he found that his shoulders sagged.
He was tired in an instant; he established that his nerves refused to make further fun of her. Miki looked at him for a long time, the both of them just staring into each other's eyes.
"Yuu?" Miki said first. "You look sick."
Yuu gave a vague wave of his hand, breadcrumbs flying away for a moment.
"Straight guy, straight guy," he mumbled weakly to taunt her some more. But she seemed immune, just staring at him as if he were crazy. In a moment, her face became expressionless.
"Why do you turn stupid and insensitive all of a sudden?!" she asked him almost angrily. "You're so nice to other people but you act like you hate the fact that I'm alive! You insult me and you compliment other people."
Yuu gave a tiny, tiny chuckle. "'All people see is the pretty surface, but they don't know about the bitterness, huh, Miki?"
Miki's eyes widened a bit as she went over those words. They were familiar words, she was certain that she had heard them before, but she just couldn't place where. She stood up, dusting her already clean jeans. Her face was uncertain, brooding over the mysterious ring of the words.
Picking up her basket, she was about to go out of the kitchen. She stopped, her body rigid, and she said distractedly under her breath:
"Yuu, pass the Apricot Jam, will you? I forgot to bring some for the bread.It's not.going to taste good with out the.jam."
Yuu, by this time, had finished his sandwich, and he had started to get up as well. He held up the apricot jam jar and said some words that came from what he remembered had happened, they all tumbled out like an echo from the past.
"None left," he said. A small under comment was: "Finished it all." He followed with another line: "All we have is this."
He held up the Marmalade Jam. Miki's face scrunched up as she looked at it in distaste.
"Marmalade Jam?" she asked. "I don't like that stuff. It's so bitter, especially around..... the....."
She stopped in mid-sentence, understanding dawning in on her. Her food basket hung limply at her side as she remembered in a flashback about the time she and Yuu had been left in the house earlier in the school year.......
"Especially around the rinds?" Yuu finished suggestively, making a small motion with his hand. He said again: "And yes, Miki... I'm a lot like Marmalade."
"." Miki was busy studying in awe the almost crazy half smile on his face.
"Miki," Yuu said. "Then you're a Mustard Girl. Always spicy......and sour."
He walked past her, leaving the marmalade jar in the middle of the shiny lacquered surface of the table.
IN THE PARK 7:34 PM Friday
"Yuu's acting all funny," Miki said to Ginta. She had a worried expression. "He's talking suddenly imitating conversations we'd had some time ago, and he's spacing out.
Ginta shrugged, yellow lamp light pooling his black hair as he borke the bread apart. He was wearing a polo and a Nike jacket, his blue slacks adding a pleasant touch.
"Maybe he's jealous," he said nonchalantly. A glob of marmalade fell in front of him as he spooned it up to meet the knife.
"Of what?" Miki asked, not getting the message.
"Of you, of course," Ginta exclaimed, as if the answer were so obvious. "I mean, I've known that he'd had a crush on you when he first interrupted your date with Shin!"
"You know about that?" Miki asked, amazed at how informed Ginta was.
"Don't be stupid. Yuu doesn't like me, all he does is make fun of me."
"Look who's being stubborn? Maybe it's because he LIKES you, Miki, and he's just really, astoundingly horrible at showing how he feels."
Miki though she saw something in Ginta then that she didn't like. It was as if her were almost happy.
"Why are you so smiley?" Miki asked him suspiciously.
"Because I know that now I have you!" Ginta replied without hesitation. He was exceedingly bubbly that night. He hugged her, his uneaten marmalade sandwich in his left hand.
"I confessed my feelings for you in front of Yuu so that he'd see how useless it is to try to get you," Ginta said. "It's because.I really care about you."
His revelation of toying with Yuu's feelings left Miki numb.
Ginta bit into the sandwich.
"Wow," he exclaimed. "It has so many bitter rinds.I didn't expect that from the way the labels is drawn."
"You.." Ginta looked up from the jar. "Acted the way you did to make Yuu jealous?"
Now that Miki had added two and two together, she now realized that Yuu's actions were somehow explained. Ginta nodded slowly.
Then..
"Ah, crap," he laid his forehead in on the palm of his hand. "Miki."
"I have to go," Miki said hurriedly, standing up. "Ginta, give all of these to me tomorrow, alright? I have to do something."
She was caught up in the moment, heading on impulse, adrenalin pumping in her veins. She got up and started to run to the exit of the park. She saw a scene in her mind's eye, how Yuu would react to her confession of apology and her love for him, and her affection for Ginta. She let out a small breath. Since the street happened to be empty, she rushed forward to be a step closer to her goal. She had barely set foot on the pavement, when:
"Miki!" Ginta appeared from the other side of the road after Miki had crossed. He held the basket in an irregular manner, as he tried to wave frantically. Miki looked at him and suddenly felt light headed.
"Ginta!" she waved. Ginta rushed forward.and Miki gave a sudden scream for him to step back, but it was too.late.
As the drunken driver was being questioned, and as Ginta's limp body was being wheeled in the ambulance car-...
And....As the blood lay on the road amidst the fallen food from the fruit basket....As Yuu watched the clock from the kitchen wall in the house, and as Ginta drew in shallow breath after shallow..breath...
Miki was leaning against the lamp post, her low battery cellphone in one hand, and another hand swiped against her eye. Everything was surreal, she was detached, the same words in her head.
"...Ginta..Ginta.."