He Said She Said
by Trish
Cop: "I don't know why you claim to be Sigmund Freud."
Sigmund Freud: "Why do you claim I'm not Sigmund Freud?"
Cop: "Why do you keep asking me these questions?"
Sigmund Freud: "Tell me about your mother."
-Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
This took hella long for me to get out!! Da-YAM! Sorry for anybody who was waiting for this. I don't understand you, but I'm sorry I let ya' down! =)
Also, a special 'hey' to Danielle (can't wait to read something new of yours!) and K-chan (I'm working on that Daimi!).
The next part will be kinda' long, but I'll work on getting it out ASAP if you participate in K-chan's coolioso contest!!
viii. ... And She Said That
I didn't like Higashi Kaori in highschool. I can't say that I 'hated' her, because 'hate' is a strong word, and people tend to use it more freely then they 'ought to. I just... really, really disliked her.
But she was the most popular senior at Odaiba High, and whether I liked it or not, I had to pretend like she was the best thing since sliced bread.
Looking back, I guess I should have given her a chance. I mean, no one *really* seemed to like her, and she would have been a dimwit not to have noticed. But it's really hard trying to be nice to someone who is not as nice to you.
"Jun-chan, that was some story you read us in English class," she said, her chin resting on the palm of her hand as she flipped through a beauty magazine. I wasn't sure whether she was insulting me or not. She was just vague like that...
"Um... You think so?" I replied, not knowing what else I could say.
"It was so depressing I wanted to hang myself," she continued, still turning the pages, rapidly. She was probably one of those girls who only looked at the pretty pictures.
She was referring to the creative writing assignment I had awhile back. Originally it had started out mirroring Mimi and Matt's sad relationship. I went back and changed the whole thing after he'd publicly humiliated her. It had evolved from a cute, fluffy little romance into this... This morbid, scary, everyone-has-a-drug-problem saga. I wouldn't have made it that way had I any idea we were going to be reading them out loud in class. After a full minute of 'what the hell was that!?' the class hesitantly gave me the obligatory applause.
"Well, we can't all write about a unicorn marrying a pegasus," I muttered, under my breath.
Her eyes snapped up from her magazine, abruptly, "What was that?" she demanded.
"Nothing," I insisted, sheepishly.
"I *thought* so," and again, she turned her attention back to the magazine, totally ignoring my existence.
I waited two minutes.
"Kaori-chan?" I prompted.
"What?"
"Are you *ever* gonna order?"
"Oh right!" she laughed her airhead little laugh and asked me to bring her a salad with low-fat ranch dressing and a glass of diet iced tea.
"Right away," I plastered the 'happy-to-serve-you-waitress-smile' and walked to the kitchen to put her order in. The smile slid off my face the second she couldn't see me. It had taken her ten minutes to order, and she'd engaged me in mindless chit chat so I couldn't leave to help anyone else.
"Hey Jun-chan."
Inoue Naomi was sitting near the kitchen. She was having a Triple Fudge Sundae.
"Naomi-chan!" I smiled, "You need anything?"
"Nah, I'm fine,"
"Well," I sighed, sliding on to the stool next to hers, "Can you pretend you need something so I don't have to go back to serving that unbelievable bitch over there?"
She looked over to where Kaori was and started laughing, "She can't be that bad."
"Trust me," I said, "She can."
Naomi just shrugged her shoulders. She'd never had the misfortune of hearing Miss Higashi whine. She couldn't feel my pain.
"You wanna do something once your shift's over?" she asked, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose, only to have them slide down again.
"If you're willing to wait until ten o' clock, sure, why not?" I grinned, almost sure I knew what her answer was going to be.
"Ten o' clock!? Holy Jesus, isn't that violating child labor laws or something?" After sufficiently freaking out (as was the Inoue way), she looked at me expectantly. Naomi's questions were never rhetorical.
"I'm working the late shift," I explained.
"Sucks to be you," she murmured.
"At least I'm getting money," I teased her, "90% of your paycheck goes towards room and board, and the other 10% is for meals."
She let out an exaggerated sigh of depression, "That's what ya' get for working at your parent's convenience store. I knew I shoulda' taken this job before you did."
"It's not that great. You gotta' suffer through obnoxious customers, endless walking..."
There was a crash in the distance. Naomi and I both looked up to see Yamato standing with an empty tray in his arms. Loads of broken dishes lay at his feet. He stood there for a couple seconds, blinking slowly. When he finally broke out of his daze, he bent over to clean up the mess.
"... Not to mention angst-ridden teeny boppers," I groaned.
"Motomiya! Here's the order!" The chef called from the kitchen window.
I hopped off the stool and collected the tray, "I'll be back in a couple of seconds, okay, Naomi-chan?"
"'Kay."
+ + +
A couple of seconds turned out to be a couple of minutes. After giving Kaori her order, she made me sit with her while she babbled endlessly about how people liked her only because she was so gorgeous, and not because she was such a nice, generous, giving person.
About halfway through her one-sided conversation, I had successfully mastered the art of 'I-only-LOOK-like-I'm-paying-attention-but-I'm-really-not'.
"... So what do you think?"
But you can never get away with it.
"What do I think?" I repeated, probably sounding like a complete moron.
"About the ski get-away!" She sounded like my ignorance was exhausting to her. And I was just about to make it worse because I really had no idea what she was talking about.
"I'm sorry?" I ventured, hoping she wouldn't explode with rage.
"The ski get-away I'm inviting you on the week before Christmas?"
"Oh yeah! Duh, I knew that," I lied. Ski get-away? This was the first time I heard anything about it. Although it sounded like a lot of fun. Kaori wasn't the *greatest* company, but she rubbed elbows with a lot of important people in the Odaiba Highschool scene.
Oh right. Here it goes. 'Jun is *such* a user'. I'm sure you're all thinking that right now. But nobody's perfect! Of course I was going to be looking out for my social status.
"Sounds great!" My smile was enthusiastic, and it seemed to be contagious, because she smiled too.
"*FAB*ulous!" She squealed.
Things seemed to be looking up. Ski-get away? Luck was on my side...
... Only, it wasn't. Haw, haw. I jinxed myself. Right after the conversation, I waddled over to Naomi to tell her the good news. Only, she didn't think it was as great as I did.
"You can't go!" she said, angrily.
"What? Why not?"
"You said you'd go to the 'Teenage Wolves' concert with me!"
Teenage Wolves? Who the hell were the Teenage Wo-
... Oh.
Yamato's band.
Dillema. I'd promised Naomi I'd go to the next 'Teenage Wolves' concert back before I had met Yamato. I'd never even heard of them. But a promise was a promise. Also, I had a whole not-quite-formulated plan buzzing around in my head involving Mimi, Matt, and that concert. If I didn't go, it probably wouldn't execute correctly, which would mess things up between them more.
But... But ski get-away! Popular kids! Fun! Good times!
"I'll get back to you on that, okay Naomi?" I said.
She looked indignant, and rightfully so, "Whatever Jun. I can't believe you. You don't even like Kaori, but you'd spend an entire weekend with her just to 'up' your social status."
"Naomi-chan, wait-"
But it was useless. She left Crown in a huff.
+ + +
9:48pm.
'Crown' had long since closed, and Matt and I had been cleaning and closing up. Or... At least, that's what I had been doing.
Matt alternated between staring off into space and and furrowing his eyebrows together in what appeared to be concentration. But concentration for what?
Ever since That Day, he'd just been stumbling around like a dumbass. No anger. No harsh words. He was like a whole different person. More... Reflective. I didn't think he was proud of what he did, but at the same time, I didn't think he'd take it back if he had the chance.
By 9:52pm the entire place was sparkly-clean. Well... Not *really*. But as clean as it was getting, and since there was no way for Maeda to know whether or not we'd left at ten on the dot, we could just make a break for it as soon as the job got done.
Matt held the door open for me as we left Crown and stepped into the coolness of the night. Little known fact, Matt holds the door open for girls and pulls out their chairs for them. When I first found out, I was suprised. He didn't seem like that kind of guy. He seemed more the type to let the door slam in your face.
I let out a deep breath, giving the streets of Odaiba a quick once over. It was a pretty quiet night, aside from the rustling of dead, stiff leaves and the occasional howl of the wind. The streets were nearly deserted and the only sources of light were the moon and the faintly glowing streetlight.
Seventeen or not, I didn't feel safe wandering the streets at night. Sure, it was Odaiba. The only thing you really had to worry about was the unexplained monster sightings. But you could never be too sure.
"Walk me home?" I implored to Matt, and he, with his hands shoved into the pockets of his faded denim jacket, shrugged (his equivilant to 'yes').
And so we walked in complete silence. He was doing more of that staring/contemplating, and I was trying to think up just the right thing to say to him, because I *did* have something to say. I just wanted to make sure I didn't screw up. If I did, I was almost sure he would leave me alone in the streets.
Before long, we came to the bridge overlooking the Odaiba river. It looked absolutely gorgeous illuminated in the silvery-white moonlight. The ripples of the water and the shining of the stars made it look even more picturesque. I almost forgot there was a boy with me and that there was something I needed to say to him.
"Can we stop here? I wanna talk to you." He looked ready to object, but I continued before he could, "It's about Mimi."
A look of pain spread across his face, and I could almost see the walls he built around himself go up. But he didn't say anything. He wanted to hear this. There was something about Mimi he was waiting to hear, and he was willing to shut up, just in case I was the one who was going to tell him.
"She loves you," I told him.
He scoffed.
"It's true." I couldn't see why he found it so hard to believe that. Almost every fourteen year old girl in Odaiba wanted him.
"She doesn't love me," he shook his head, a bitter tone creeping into his voice, "She *couldn't*. No one I've ever loved has ever been mine..." And the bitterness turned into sadness, "My parents... My brother..."
"Yamato..."
But he cut me off, "You don't understand, Jun!" He was angry again, "She broke my heart! I was just a kid. She was the first person I was willing to let in... And she just..." His anger was raw and palpable. He'd had a short temper the entire time that I knew him, but I had never seen him like this, "She just blew me off!"
I started to doubt whether it really was a good idea for me to try to set them up. If Matt could still be so angry and bitter at this years later, then did he really feel all the things I assumed he did? Love is forgiveness. It's not obsessing over something someone did to you however many years ago. Not that Mimi was even consciously aware she'd hurt him. She didn't know about the letter. Through some freak accident or another, she'd never gotten it.
"Yamato... She does love you. She told me so herself." Okay. So that was a lie. But I was testing something, and it required a little bit of lying, "She's sorry about what she did, and she wants to make up for it." More lies. But I had to know if his feelings were real.
"Goddamnit, Jun," He slammed his fist against the metal railing of the bridge, "That's not good enough!"
My heart fell. I knew where this was going. I knew what it would lead to. He didn't really love her. He was still intent on blaming her. It wasn't love he felt for her, otherwise he'd forgive and forget. It was obsession. It was... a fixation.
She was wrong. Mimi was wrong when she said those things about him. That he was a nice guy. That he cared about other people. That he was someone you could respect...
"So what?" Tears started to blur my vision, and my voice started to waver. Oh, Mimi, what have I done? "You want to see her hurt? You wanna make her feel the same pain you did?"
His posture straightened. There was a look in his eyes... A look that was hard to decipher, but it was important that it was there. There was still hope left.
"Matt..." I hoped this would work, "If you ever want to be with her... If you really love Mimi... You'll let this go."
Silence.
The water was rushing below us. The foliage was scattering across the cement.
"I do." he finally said, "I love her. And I would never do anything to hurt her again." There was conviction in his voice.
"Then let it go," I implored, softly.
Another silence, but shorter than before. Matt's eyes were screwed tight and he was breathing softly. Puffs of air escaped his lips. "...Alright." he said.
I believed him, but I still wanted to make sure, "Do you really mean that?"
"I don't ever want to see her cry again," he said, wringing his hands in front of him. He was staring into the water, not at me, "It makes me want to die."
We stood there, trying to let what had just been exchanged, settle. My heart felt light. Things were gonna be okay. There was just one thing I had to clear up, first.
"For what it's worth," I began, "She never got your letter." Matt looked at me, sharply, his eyes full of question. I continued before he interrupted me, "She never knew you needed her... Otherwise... She would have been there for you."
*Not the best chapter, I know, but I wanted to stop putting it off.
*I don't know the names of any of Miyako's siblings, so I just named the one who's friends with Jun, "Naomi".
*I know the first part of this was totally boring because it had nothing to do with Mimi or Matt, but it was important that I showed you that Jun has a life too. =)
*I wrote pretty much all the dialogue during Trig class (after an evil test). I'm surprised I didn't include math terms in this. ^_^
*For the next chapter, I'm gonna need extreme audience participation!! If you can think of two songs that would somewhat describe the Matt/Mimi relationship, please send them to me (by e-mail or just leave them in a review). Thanks in advance!
