I tiptoe out of my room and check for any signs of life in the apartment. I detect none, unsurprisingly. Mother didn't prepare lunch for me today. The usual brown paper bag isn't on the Dumpster couch, where I usually find it every morning before I go to school.
Nevermind. I'm glad she isn't up anyway, as it means I don't have to face her, which means I can avoid a confrontation with her. Maybe I'll even stay out tonight and not come home.
I hop onto my beloved bicycle and stuff my Walkman earphones into place. I check the tape inside. Nirvana's Nevermind. Wonderful. I blast the music as loud as my Walkman allows and start to peddle my way to school.
I'll share a secret right now. It's my deepest and most personal secret. Nobody knows about it, and I mean nobody. Not my mother, not my...well, not my mother.
So here's the secret: I blast my rock music into my ears every morning and just about anytime to prevent myself from falling asleep. Yes, it's true. That is why I listen to loud, jarring music all the time. If you wonder why I'm not deaf yet, it's because I have been doing it since young, when I used to fall asleep in the middle of a dangerous activity, like, oh, mountain climbing. I'm not kidding. When I was about nine my parents took me to this great place in some country in the world to scale a mountain (as amateurs, of course). I don't remember much details, but one thing that really sticks out in my mind is that I fell asleep halfway up towards the end point. I don't know how. I just did. My parents freaked and according to my mother, I would've fallen off the mountain and died if Daddy Dearest weren't there to catch me and slap me awake.
Anyway. Because I've been doing the 'blast music' thing for so long, I'm used to it. Which means I'm immured to it. Which means I continue to fall asleep at the most unsuitable times. Which means I'm a danger to myself and to others. Which means I should be locked up in an asylum for the rest of my life.
You see, I'm not exaggerating. I'm dozing at my bike while Kurt Cobain screams out the chorus of "Smells Like Teen Spirit", and I'm dreaming my butterfly/moth dream again. It's pretty much the same thing, except I'm not running through a nice grassy field. I'm running through a street somewhere in Kanagawa and the butterfly is still far away. Instead of a cliff I'm met with a slope.
And then I feel my stomach lurch. It's flown out of my body, dropped to the bottom of the Earth and I'm now stomach-less and...
...falling off my bike as I careen down the slope. My sleepy eyes fly open. Goddammit, there is a kid in front of me. Shit! I manage to steady myself by sitting on only one butt cheek. The other is hanging off the bike seater. It's a really awkward position. I'm sort of halfway falling off the stupid vehicle and my right arse cheek is painful as hell. To add to that horrible misery, my left foot is off the pedal and it's hovering dangerously close to the ground. If there is contact between foot and ground, I may sprain my ankle.
I swear, it's not fun being me.
The kid screams. I'm still charging towards him. Quickly, I squeeze the brakes as hard as I possibly can and to my relief, the bike is slowing. But fate, or whatever, must hate me, because even though I just saved a kid's worthless life, I have to damage my own. The bike teeters left and right, left and right, and, taking advantage of my panic and my loss at what to do, it finally decides to go left.
My eyes widen as I take in what I'm in for. My brains freeze. My body stops working. All I can do is scream silently in horror as my piece of shit bicycle hauls me into a dirty, smelly drain.
It wouldn't be that bad if my bike suffered with me. But it's not. It's lying by the road side, and I can swear I just saw it smirk at me.
I groan softly out loud. I landed pretty hard on -- you guessed it -- my poor arse and my back is sore. To make things worse, I'm sitting in the wet part, not the dry. I want to get up but I'm so tired and I'm aching all over. This must be karma at work. This must be my retribution for making my mother cry and for treating school like the joke that it is. Dear Buddha, if you get me through this mess, I promise I'd be a good boy forever. I'd convert like Mitsui did. I wouldn't bad-mouth anyone ever again. I'd ignore that baka...um, excuse me, let's try again. I'd ignore that genius Sakuragi's insults and pass him the ball all the time. I'd be grateful to everybody and everything and I'd never, ever utter another complaint for as long as I shall live.
My god, do they ever clean the drains? And what's that I'm seeing floating towards me? It looks like part of a surgical glove. I take a closer look. I poke it. I pick it up and hold it against the sunlight.
Oh, fucking shit. It's a used condom.
There isn't a bloody Buddha.
*****
Despite having my bottom covered in raw sewage water, I went to school anyway. Turned out I woke up early for nothing. I was late.
The plus side to all this is, I'm in school smelling like crap and I'm sure I look absolutely horrendous. Perhaps those morons who're constantly following me would see me as I am -- an unkempt, disgusting boy -- and finally leave me the hell alone.
"Rukawa-kun! What happened to you? Are you hurt? Do you need help? Do you want me to escort you to the infirmary?"
"Oh my god, Kaede-kun! My poor handsome prince! Please say you're all right!"
Guess I was wrong.
Ignoring the voices, I head for class. I think I'm about thirty minutes late for the first lesson, which is Physics, I think. Whatever. Hopefully, if I sneak in really discreetly, the teacher wouldn't even notice me...
Stupid Kaede, who are you kidding? You're tall as a giraffe. People would notice you no matter how 'discreet' you try to be.
True enough, the first thing that greets me when I step into the classroom is the Physics teacher's deadly glare. This guy is a tad more intimidating than Boring Mathematics Teacher. It's the moustache. It makes him look like Adolf Hitler.
Still, I don't really care what he'd do to me. After all, I've fallen in a dirty and smelly drain and touched a used condom. Nothing can ever scare me again.
"Rukawa, you're late."
Tell me something I don't know. I cock an eyebrow and walk to my seat, last row, by the window where I can conveniently stare out of. As soon as I sit I feel a wave of sleepiness seize me by horns, and thinking of yesterday's incident makes me feel like an enraged bull in Spanish bull fighting. I cannot sleep. I have to stay awake. Goddammit.
The teacher chose to give up on lecturing me, probably because he knows I treat his words like the passing wind. Now he's lecturing about some light ray thing.
"As a light ray passes from a less dense medium to a denser medium, it refracts and bends towards the normal. Similarly, when it goes out of that medium, it refracts again and bends away from the normal..."
Zzzzzzzz. Next thing he'd say is that the sine of the incident angle divided by the sine of the refracted angle gives us the refractive index n of the medium.
"The sine of the incident angle divided by the sine of the refracted angle gives you the refractive index n of the medium..."
What did I tell you?
I am so, so bored, and my butt is still wet. I should've gone home to change my pants but it didn't occur to me. Well, then again, going home means facing the maternal figure and I don't really want to deal with that right now. Or anytime between now and many oeons later.
"Rukawa Kaede!"
Darn, Physics Teacher is glaring at me again. What did I do wrong? Last I checked, I wasn't sleeping. I'm still not sleeping. Must I always get into trouble at school, even when I wasn't even doing anything?
Me being me, I don't answer and simply stare back at him. His eyelid is twitching furiously, like it's going to snap anytime soon.
The mental image of an eyelid-less Physics teacher is almost funny enough to make me laugh. But I don't.
"Rukawa Kaede!" he repeats. "Did you hear the question I asked you?"
So, that's it. He asked me a question and I didn't answer. Che. And I thought it was something major.
"No."
He glares at me as though I were worse as a human being than a crazed serial killer and spits out through gritted teeth, "What. Is. The. Critical. Angle. C?"
Sine inverse of one divided by the refractive index n.
I shrug and pretend not to know the answer. Physics Teacher sighs in resignation and answers it himself.
"Sine inverse of one divided by the refractive index n. I already went through this. Please pay attention in class."
Do a'hou. You should've asked me
nicely. Maybe then I'd answer your ridiculously easy question.
*****
Not many people know this about me. I tested my IQ once and I obtained a score of 135. I was eleven. It doesn't put me on the genius level, but apparently I'm above other people when it comes to intelligence.
My teachers will probably haemorrhage at that intriguing piece of information. I don't blame them. I fail tests as easily as I make dunks. It wasn't like this before, but after everything my mother and I had gone through, I simply don't give a damn anymore. Just like the French says, Quel est le point?
I'm about to open the cafeteria door when it suddenly flies open and hits me in the face. Kuso. This is so not my lucky day.
I rub my nose gingerly, checking for broken bones but I felt none. Then I turn my attention to the extremely stupid and irritating baka who hit me in the bloody face, and see yet another blond-haired, violet-eyed girl staring at me in shock.
I glare at her. My goodness, how many German-Spanish-French-American-Chinese-Indian-Mexican-Irish-Malay-Italian-Portugese-Arab-whatever Japanese do we need in this school anyway? They are everywhere and they are mostly girls, and it's ridiculous. I don't have a problem with mixed bloods, as I like to call them, but Shohoku seems to have the highest number of them among all high schools in Kanagawa.
This particular mixed blood is blubbering an apology.
"Oh my god, Rukawa-kun, I'm so so so so so so so SORRY! I didn't know you were coming. Did I hurt you badly? Please forgive me Rukawa-kun!"
Stop calling me 'Rukawa-kun'. And stop looking at me like I'm some hot-shot rock star. Can't you smell the sewage on my butt? Why can't you treat me like the plague for once? What have I ever done to deserve this shit?
The stupid mixed blood tries to touch me to do god-knows-what, but I slap her hand away in annoyance.
"Get out of my way."
I push past her, ignoring the hurt that flashes across her face and join the crowd in the cafeteria. Hopefully, I can become inconspicious amongst all the people. I can't stand being yammered at all the time.
"Eeeeeee! It's Rukawa-kun! Let's ask him to join our table!"
Shit. Not again. I give up finding for an empty table and walk towards where I've just came from. I sense movement behind me. I turn to look.
Big mistake. A few girls are running towards me wearing hopeful expressions on their faces.
"Rukawa-kun! Do you want to have lunch with us?"
Are you kidding? Do I look like want to take a trip to hell wearing ten layers of winter coat with a wool hat pulled over my face and with Britney Spears blasting in my ears? Do I look like I particularly feel like lying down in the middle of a busy road, letting millions of cars making me roadkill? Do I look like I want company? Baka!
"Leave me alone."
With that, I walk out of the cafeteria,
turning my back on those girls and their lunch offer.
*****
So here I am now, sitting by myself under a tree facing the school track, lunch-less and company-less. All I have for company is Nirvana, a few ants crawling around me and the tree I'm sitting under.
I wonder how long it would be before I start talking to the tree and the ants.
Oh wait, I forgot. I don't talk.
All right, there's the third chapter. Perhaps the condom thing was a little over the top but I couldn't think of anything else disgusting for him to touch. Sorry, Kaede darling.
Also, I apologise if I offended anyone with the 'there's no bloody Buddha' line. It was to suit the story. I am not against any religion, etc, and neither is Rukawa (um, like I'd know), so um, accept my apology. Sorry again.
Thanks for all the reviews. I'm going through a tough time now so I can't be bothered to reply personally. Sorry. To answer sLL though, you'll know where they get their income really soon.
For anyone who doesn't know: Quel est le point means what is the point.
